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Episode 008: Becky & Jesse Morquecho - Moving the Needle in Your Business
141 Plays7 years ago
Jesse + Becky (yes, just like Full House!), owners of Idealust, help creative entrepreneurs build + scale businesses that produce profits, joy and time for more adventures. They are big believers in facing fears and creating your own opportunities. They met and fell in love in South Africa in 2008 and are in the process of adopting their daughter from China spring of 2018. When Jesse + Becky are not coaching others to make their business dreams come true, you'll find them backpacking, beach cruising, or eating tacos in the San Diego sunshine.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-becky-jesse-episode-8/
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Transcript
Challenging Industry Norms
00:00:06
Speaker
Just because the rest of the industry is telling us that this is what we need to be doing, if it's not working for us, then it doesn't work for us. And we need to move on and try something else or tweak things. They don't need to be huge changes all the time. But we were willing to go ahead and say, at any point with anything that we're doing, even if we had put hours and hours and hours into something, we were willing to say, hey, we need to scrap this and go back to the drawing board because it isn't working.
Introduction by Host: Meet Becky and Jesse
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands That Book Show, where we help creative businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, David Jones, and today we're chatting with Becky and Jesse of Idealust. They are business coaches out of San Diego, and they help creative entrepreneurs build businesses and scale those businesses so that they produce more profit, more joy, and more time for adventures. And today, they're sharing how we can actually move the needle in our businesses.
00:01:03
Speaker
We just kind of get started around here. That's how we're going to do it. Can you guys give us a little background about how you got started?
Starting a Photography Business
00:01:14
Speaker
I know that coaching wasn't your first business that you guys ran.
00:01:18
Speaker
It was not, and it might not be the last either. We don't know. Jesse and I met in South Africa back in 2008, and we were working on media projects together for this nonprofit. And somewhere in there, he fell in love with me. I don't know what happened exactly. At first sight, right, Jesse?
00:01:40
Speaker
We both know that it's happening. Hey, I teed you up on that one. All you do is say yes. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Becky. No, you're fine. So we came home from Africa after working there for a year and working together and falling in love. And we were starting over. We were starting from scratch. We had both quit our jobs to move there for a year. So it was like, now what? And we had been shooting together in the townships and doing some photojournalism and stuff like that. And we're like, let's start a photography business. Because that's totally logical.
00:02:11
Speaker
How did that go? I mean, in the meantime, I gotta imagine, so you quit your job and you had to start over anyways, but like, wasn't there this sense of like, I need to pay bills too, I need to have money for, you know, rent or mortgage or whatever. So did you just, you just dove in? We did. I had a little bit of money saved. I teased Jesse that I was a sugar mama for just a little while.
00:02:31
Speaker
Yeah, I got nothing wrong with that. But I personally have a really hard time having a job that I'm not really stoked about. So I was actually what happened was I told Jesse, I'm going to start a photography business. And he's like, Hey, what about me? And I was like, Okay, all right, we can do this together. So I had a part time job that I was working at. I was a pre med major, which again, I don't know where that connection came from. But um, so I was working at a hospital as an ER and trauma tech. So
00:03:00
Speaker
I was going from like, you know, shooting a wedding, you know, shooting a bride walking on the aisle to like being covered head to toe in blood in the emergency room, you know, in a matter of like 12 hours. So it was a little bit of an interesting kind of transition in that period. But, you know, that's just how we got started just looking at, hey, this looks like something that's going to be like fun for us. And we just went out and we did it. Like that's what it came down to was us just looking at
00:03:27
Speaker
Hey, this looks like it would be an awesome like job. We love the idea of we love working together You know me and Becky have never not worked together just because that's how we met and so it just made sense for us and so we just went out and we did it and Here we are now I think after moving to Africa I think after you do something like that like the idea of starting a business it didn't seem like
00:03:54
Speaker
We had no idea why something we shouldn't do because we had already kind of done something that people were like, why would you do that? So we just kept going with that route.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Business Beginnings: Trials and Errors
00:04:04
Speaker
And I think there's some wisdom in there about getting started is that you don't have to have it all figured out right off the bat. You don't have to have it all planned out from start to finish. There's value in just jumping in and getting that experience. But how did you guys find your first clients? Like, where'd you even start? And that's where we'll end with the photography questions, because I do want to get into some of your coaching stuff, which I think is super fascinating.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think like a lot of people, we started shooting a lot of friends. There's a horrible story of me going out to a park with flyers.
00:04:36
Speaker
for like $25 family sessions. Because you think like, okay, like moms and families hang out at parks. It's like made these flyers. And I'm not a designer. I stuck it designing these things looked horrible. And I think it was literally a $25. Yeah, she went out just handing these things to moms at parks. And like she was like pumped on it. And I mean, I was like excited to see how it went to but I wasn't the one
00:04:59
Speaker
going out there and handing flyers out to moms at parks. I think that would be a little bit weird. Right. You may have gotten arrested, but that is your question. Maybe that is not how we got clients because that didn't work. So we tried a bunch of things, but the way we started getting actual clients started shooting for friends, friends of friends, you know, booked a couple of weddings for a super low price point where we actually lost money, but you know, had to build portfolio stuff like that.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's the only way that story would have been better is if Jesse was the one going into the park handing out flyers for $25 of family sessions. Do you still have that flyer?
00:05:32
Speaker
I do. It's somewhere in a bin in the garage. We've looked for it before. I'm going to try to get a show notes. Yeah. I definitely want to put that in the show notes, but that's amazing. So, um, you know, to cut to the end of the story, you built a successful photography business. You weren't, you weren't always, uh, you know, losing money. You weren't always trying to get sessions by going to the park and handing out out
Switch from Photography to Coaching
00:05:52
Speaker
flyers. Um, so, you know, after you built this successful photography business, what made you think about moving into business coaching?
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. So it's funny, almost like our clients that we worked with for our photography business, kind of like led us to where we are now. And that we've had these conversations, we were very much like, I didn't necessarily like become a photographer, because I just love photography so much. I do love it. But it was more of the relationship aspect of I love I'm like, I'm an extreme extrovert. I love meeting new people. I love being able to hang out with people and be like,
00:06:29
Speaker
Hey, you're paying me to hang out with you all day on like a really sweet day of your life. Man, I'm in. That sounds like the best. You got paid to have friends, which was really fun. And I can, I can validate that. I mean, we just got to spend a week with you guys and the joke is always, you know, who's gonna, who's willing to stay up with me tonight? You know, and Jesse's always the guy that's like, yeah, I will. What are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, people paid me to do that, which was awesome.
00:06:53
Speaker
Um, and so, uh, you know, we'd have these conversations with them, whether it was at the first consultation or, you know, when we're talking about their wedding or whatever that looks like, um, we'd have these conversations and, you know, ask, Oh, so like, what do you do? Or, um, and they would always come back with, not always, but a lot of the times, you know, they'd be like, Oh, like I'm a, I'm a nurse or, uh, I do this and like, Oh, like, you know, like, how's that going? Like, well, it's okay. You know, and they're like, or like, like, so like, is there something else you'd rather be doing? And.
00:07:22
Speaker
Without fail, they'd like get excited. They'd be like, oh man, I would love to open a restaurant. I would love to like go to culinary school or I would love to do, you know, whatever it was that would get them excited and they'd light up. And then I mean, we feed off of that. We're like, oh, that's so cool. Like tell us more, you know, blah, blah, blah. And why aren't you doing that now? And they're like,
00:07:42
Speaker
I could never do that. And it was like, they like transformed from being super excited to being like, oh, like, no, like, I couldn't do that. Like, totally like Eeyore, like from Winnie the Pooh. They just like, they like wilt. And it's like so sad to see. And we'd get in the car and be driving home and like, I'd be pissed. I'm like, why do they think they can't do that? And anyway, after having conversations like that over and over again, we realized we were really fired up about it. And we had a stance where
00:08:09
Speaker
Not everybody's going to be an entrepreneur, of course. Idealist doesn't exist to go convert people into being entrepreneurs, but we learned quickly that we believe that if you have it in you, it's not going to go away. If you have this dream
Monetization Challenges in Coaching
00:08:21
Speaker
or desire idea. After having conversations like that and after having limelight being successful, we took the extra time on our hands and started another business.
00:08:31
Speaker
So how did you find your first clients? Was it through those conversations basically with people that you were working with and people that you knew that were like, hey, listen, you guys have built this great photography business. You obviously know how to start a business and what goes into that. Can you teach me how to do that? Yeah. So kind of transitioning from the photography side to the coaching side, there's a little bit of like a
00:08:56
Speaker
awkward period in between. Obviously, it wasn't pretty. Yeah, it definitely wasn't pretty. So we thought, okay, we can just kind of put out content, start helping people by writing articles and creating videos and walking them through what we believe we were experts in when it comes to growing a creative business. And we thought, okay, if we do this enough, we'll be able to make money doing it. And we didn't really
00:09:26
Speaker
have any monetization strategy. When you get into a photography business, you know how you're going to make money. It's by shooting weddings or portraits or whatever that is, and people pay you to do it. When we went into this, we didn't really know exactly how we were going to monetize this. We didn't know we were going to be coaching one-on-one. We didn't know if we were going to be creating a community that then we have events and we have conferences.
00:09:49
Speaker
And to be honest, I don't think we ever really thought it through to begin with. Me and Becky are big on just like, hey, let's just do it and let's see what happens. We have that track record of just jumping off the cliff, which we usually end up making work for us. I don't advise it for everybody, but it works well for us because then we just figure it out. Yeah. And so, you know, as we transitioned in that, like we had no idea what we were doing.
00:10:12
Speaker
And so we reached out to some people, we got some help, we got some coaching ourselves, and looking at, okay, how do you build a consulting or coaching business in a way that is organic and isn't like, because when you think of a lot of business coaches, or at least three or four years ago even, you think of an old guy with a business suit, and he's taking that traditional- Laser and gel-backed hair. Exactly. We didn't want to be that. We didn't want to be that.
00:10:42
Speaker
I don't think that it would have gone very well for us in the creative industry anyways. And so we just wanted to look at and explore options to how we can do that in a way that is going to be appealing and how we can help as many people as possible in this.
00:10:55
Speaker
As we were doing that, we took on some clients that are at a reduced rate here in San Diego. We had a good community of San Diego photographers. And some of those people, to answer your question, were our friends or people that we had gotten to know that we were sort of coaching anyway. We'd meet them for coffee, or we'd meet them for lunch, and it turned into like, oh, cool. I'll help you guys. And we would. And we loved having those conversations. So a couple of those people became clients right off the bat.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. During your transition, do you find that it was actually maybe a little bit harder to go from one successful business? When you start your first business, you know that it's going to be a grind or the fact that you just don't know anything at that point, you're willing to
00:11:37
Speaker
you know you work through it right but then what i find at least you know that during transitions from one business to the next it's a little bit harder because you're coming from something that's established and successful you're used to maybe like getting a consistent inquiries and then you go into something else and you almost forget what that beginning
00:11:57
Speaker
stage looks like, you know, and the and the hustle and the grind and that, you know, sort of almost torture of figuring out things over again. Right. I mean, did you guys find that at all? Transfer or transitioning into your coaching business? We found that a lot. And we like Jesse was saying, like, it wasn't our plan. Like this transition didn't go how we thought it was going to go. Originally, we thought like all of our income is land like photography. We're down here. And over the next five years, we're going to slowly
00:12:27
Speaker
swap that out and then they had our first big wedding season while we're trying to grow our business and Like I'm the kind of person that like have a little bit of a workaholic in me So like I will stay up late. I'll wake up early We'll just like do what we need to do to get it done
00:12:43
Speaker
Becky needs her sleep. I need my rest. I need my downtime. I can work hard for a chunk of hours. But anyway, we had that first busy wedding season, and I was a mess. Let's just call it what it is. I was crying all the freaking time. I do that anyway, but it was really bad. And Jesse's like, I'm putting on the website, we're not taking any more weddings. So instead of five years transitioning, it was like 90 days. And those 90 days,
00:13:07
Speaker
I don't think we cooked. We were, you know, not as healthy. This is not a sustainable way to grow a business. Yeah. But, but we were able, you know, we looked at, okay, in the long run, like where can we do both of these things or do we need to make this transition faster? And we made the decision when we, we decided, Hey, no, this needs to happen sooner rather than later. We said, well, let's just do it. And so, you know, we were able to completely, uh, transition out of weddings. Um, and we still had a couple on the books, but we, we were able to completely replace our revenue.
00:13:36
Speaker
for our business, which definitely took a lot of the pressure off of that, that feeling of like, oh, like I'm used to these, you know, inquiries coming in and we're able to kind of make that full transition, you know, within 90 days.
00:13:51
Speaker
That transition was way different, way harder, way more of a mess, honestly, than we thought it might be. We were originally going to, you know, over five years time, swap out our income from Lime Life Photography to Idealist. And we ended up doing it in 90 days. Actually the other day, as if I was cleaning out some stuff in our office, I found this piece of paper where we had this chart of like percentages of like 2012, 2013, like what the swap would look like. And then we pretty much tossed that in the garbage.
00:14:19
Speaker
Um, but it was, it was messy and it was hard in that 90 days where we ended up switching and you know, the reason we did, it was just too hard for me personally. Honestly, I think Jesse could have done it, but having two babies and two things we were pursuing with like all of our heart. And we have clients who do this or like, we have plenty of entrepreneur friends who pursue multiple things, but at that stage of our life, it just wasn't
00:14:42
Speaker
sustainable for us to pursue both things. And we knew long term where we wanted to go. We knew idealist was more of our longer term plan. So when we decided let's just make this happen as quickly as possible because Becky's crying too much. We did and it worked out. It worked out in our favor.
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think I probably am like you guys in that where if I have too many things to pursue at once, I don't pursue any of them well. And if you knew you were going in the direction of business coaching and that's really what's getting you excited, I would assume that it would be difficult to get as excited about maintaining or growing your photography business at the time.
Balancing Hustle with Life
00:15:22
Speaker
and i think i see that trend where there is that hustle and that grind in the beginning and late nights and second jobs and all of those things are okay i think for a while you know and then and at some point balance uh balance comes back so we'll have to talk a little bit about that but first you know just in in those 90 days what moved the needle the most in your guy's business to get you to where you want it to be
00:15:46
Speaker
Davey, honestly, in my opinion, I don't think I remember in those 90 days, because we sort of tried to put that 90 days out of our memory. Yeah, it was crazy. And I think that, you know, in the industry, there's this conversation that like, you know, talking about, like, you know, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle versus like, oh, no, you need to find balance. Balance is so important. You don't need to kill yourself to build a successful business. Now, I'm a little bit more on the stance of like, hey, no, there is a time and a place for hustle. If you're not willing to put in the work, if you're not willing to put in
00:16:16
Speaker
the extra hours, especially if you have another job or you're trying to go full time in your own business, there is a 100% need for hustle in your business. And that's where we just went out there and we did the work. Now, we weren't just doing work, though, that was like, oh, yeah, let's just like cold call random people. And, you know, like, no, we were very strategic about what we were doing. And we, you know, have like checks and balances in those things. So we look at
00:16:44
Speaker
hey, is this actually working? And we try to have like a real measuring metrics to look at, hey, if this isn't working, we need to spend our time doing something else. And so I think that if there's one thing that helped us do that as quickly as we did, it was simply just like being real with ourselves and looking at just because the rest of the industry is telling us that this is what we need to be doing. If it's not working for us, then it doesn't work for us. And we need to move on and try something else or tweak things. They don't need to be huge changes all the time.
00:17:15
Speaker
But, you know, we were willing to go ahead and say, like, at any point with anything that we're doing, even if we had put hours and hours and hours into something, we were willing to say, hey, we need to scrap this and go back to the drawing board because it isn't working. And if I had, like, credit anything to us being able to do that as fast as we did, I think it would be that.
Building Brand Presence
00:17:32
Speaker
I think, too, just to add to that, Davey, like, that we were a new business. Like, people outside, people knew us as land-life photography, but they didn't know us as idealists. Like, people outside of San Diego had no idea who we were.
00:17:43
Speaker
And I think the biggest thing also that we did was just like built our brand present as quickly as possible. And like, we did that by leading with value. And still to this day, we still do that, you know, four years later, and we still encourage our clients to do the same. And we went out there and said, Hey, we're Becky and Jesse, we're idealists. Like, how can we help you? Here's some value. This is what we're all about. We took that stance of, you know, freedom of entrepreneurship and
00:18:08
Speaker
We went out there and showed the world who we were even though they didn't know who we were, but did that as quickly as possible by leading with value. I want to unpack that a little bit because I think there's such wisdom in that and leading with value. I think that the companies that get the farthest are the ones that do that, but especially when you're first getting started.
00:18:28
Speaker
Like, how did you measure what worked? Did you have like a single metric really that you looked to and decided, okay, this is working and this is not? Was it always in terms of income? Like, hey, we're making money on this, so we're gonna do this more? Because I sort of feel like when you lead with value and when you're building your brand, there is this value to awareness in the beginning, to people just knowing who you are. And in the beginning, that might not be the easiest thing to measure.
00:18:57
Speaker
So how did you guys navigate that and decide, hey, we're spending a ton of time on X. Is this working or not? Yeah, I think that it's that's a tough question. And it's a tough thing to kind of answer when, like, for example, a lot of businesses, a lot of what we were doing early on, you know, was was a lot of organic things, which can be really difficult to track. I'm very much a numbers guy. So I want to know
00:19:22
Speaker
Okay, like how many people like what percentage of people saw our Instagram posts clicked on it and then ended up in our website or you know, whatever that looks like. And so some of that was kind of like using as much as we could to get concrete answers. And that's where we have to start when it comes to really measuring what's working and what's not. We have to try to find to the best of our ability, like what kind of numbers that we can use because we can't just go on our gut as you know, when or go away.
00:19:51
Speaker
you know, necessarily like, Oh, we got like this Instagram post got more likes than this one, because there's so many variables that go into that. But at the same time, you know, we can't totally discredit like Instagram followers, we can't totally discredit how many likes are getting on photos in the engagement you have there. So I think at the beginning, it was one of those things where we were just trying a lot of different things. And we use some of those metrics that aren't necessarily the most healthy metrics to use in the long term.
00:20:19
Speaker
But just looking at, okay, like when we share this, how many website visitors did we get from this? How's the market responding to what we're putting out there? And without like Sherpa, for example, which we may or may not get into, but without something like that, it was just like, how are people responding? Like, are people replying to our emails? Are they saying this is helpful? And like Jesse's saying, yes, like Instagram followers that we, to this day, will tell everybody like,
00:20:43
Speaker
unless it's like transitioning or leading into people on your list or clients are making you money, okay, let's not spend hours and hours there. But at the beginning when people didn't know who we were, we just had to see what people were responding to most.
00:20:57
Speaker
So individually, per maybe each goal that you guys had, you had some sort of metric in place to figure out whether that was working or not, even if it was something that was relatively intangible, like, hey, we sent out this email, you know, 15 people emailed us back. So obviously, this is something that that hits people, you know, the right way. Totally. So and, you know, we would look at, you know, when we would go do something, whether it was like speaking at a little mini workshop, or
00:21:24
Speaker
put on a webinar or whatever it is, we'd look at the engagement we'd have with people. If people would be asking us questions, if people would email us afterwards and be like, hey, that was so helpful, but I have this question. So often we base things off of, oh man, I think that was good. Or it felt really good. Oh, I wrote a blog post, I feel really good about great. That means absolutely nothing unless it means other people feel good too. Yeah.
00:21:50
Speaker
Some of that has to do with, you know, like we post blogs and, you know, I think that this is something that's going to be a little bit more applicable to like just the service-based creative industry as a whole, because this is one of those categories where so many of us blog, you know, once a month or, you know, whenever we have a portfolio post that we can kind of put up and that's all
Strategic Blogging for Success
00:22:09
Speaker
we do. And, you know, we don't really look at like, hey, is this really doing anything? And that's where we want to look at like, okay, like, well, when we post that on Facebook, are we getting any new traffic from that?
00:22:19
Speaker
We can't necessarily discount and say, oh, man, this post only got like 30 or 40 views. And you're like, OK, well, is that new people coming to your site? Is that people that are friends of people that were just at that wedding that you shot or friends of that family that you just shot or whatever that looks like? And so just because the metrics are smaller and the numbers aren't big, we still want to take advantage of those things and look at those. And so using those metrics, even though they seem like they may be not inconsistent,
00:22:49
Speaker
Don't matter. They don't matter because they're so small. Using those things can still be so valuable because you'll be able to look at, hey, this posted a lot better. Or I tried posting this in a different way on Instagram, on Facebook, and I did an Instagram story about it. And man, that drove a lot more traffic to it. So you can use those metrics like that, even though they may be small, to tell you what's working and what's not.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think analytics are such an afterthought for people. And, you know, in fairness, it's something that seems, I think, kind of overwhelming. And anybody who's been in Google Analytics, there's a lot of things. If you've never been in there before, you're like, I don't know what, you know, maybe 90% of this stuff means. I love them. I think it's confusing. Yeah, right. But there's a couple things going on. I think, one, Google Analytics has started rolling out with with updates that I think make the dashboard look a lot more friendly than it did, you know, even two years ago.
00:23:40
Speaker
I agree, 100%. Yeah, so that's nice. And then the other thing is, too, I don't think, again, going back to just that concept of getting started, you don't have to know what every metric means to make use of something like Google Analytics. You can go in there and you can almost guess, okay, user and new user, you know, what do these things mean? And fortunately, again, just with the updates that Google Analytics has made,
00:24:05
Speaker
There's little icons that you can hover over and they'll give you a little idea of what that number means. But just having those things on your site, especially, you know, when you're launching so that you can go back and look at these numbers and make educated decisions like you guys are talking about. So as you transition into your coaching business, you would mention that you guys had your own coach. How valuable was that in helping you guys figure out or navigate that transition?
The Role of Coaching in Growth
00:24:33
Speaker
I don't think we'd be where we are now if we hadn't made that move. Yeah, which is I think one of the big reasons why we still do what we do because we saw the value in that we had no idea what we were doing before that. And, you know, so we searched out someone who was doing what we wanted to do that was like maybe two or three years ahead of us. And, you know, maybe a little bit more than that even and just looked at, okay, is this person going to be able to help us do what we want to do?
00:25:01
Speaker
Um, and we, the answer was yes. Um, and so, you know, we hired this guy and, um, ended up being probably one of the best business decisions we ever made, even though it was super uncomfortable, even though like it wasn't something we're like, okay, like, yeah, this, nothing comes from this. Like it'll be fine. Like, no, it was a very uncomfortable decision. I was a big investment for us. And, um, that was just something where we realized that, and we had to ask ourselves,
00:25:27
Speaker
Is this going to be something that is going to help us do what we want to do faster? Is this going to help us take a shortcut to where we want to go to be able to really make that transition in our businesses as fast as possible? And the answer was a yes for us. And so we realized, hey, that's totally worth it. So we closed our eyes and handed the money over. And here we are.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I want you guys to talk a little bit about what went into that decision. I think that there's probably some misperceptions out there about who needs a coach, right? I think some people think, oh, well, only if you're just getting started. But you guys had already built a successful business. So on some level, you knew what goes into building another successful business.
00:26:12
Speaker
And then there's others that think, okay, well, once I make it to the level I want to go to and I have all this money laying around, then I'll go and pay a coach. But to a certain extent, the coach is the one that's gonna come alongside you and maybe help you get to that level. So what went into hiring a coach and who's a coach for?
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah. A lot went into, Jesse and I literally laughed. Like when we heard the numbers of the investment, I was like, oh my God, babe, you'll never guess what I, you know, this is much funny. And they're like, no joke. Literally laughing. I was like, like, what kind of person, like what kind of idiot is going to pay this guy this much? Hands up. We're the idiot. But we're not. I was like, yeah, that was me.
00:26:59
Speaker
So the decision, I mean, to get there though, it was just how we knew we, when we know we want something, like we're like, we're, we're risky. People look at us. Oh, that's a lot of money or that's a risky decision. But like, we knew we wanted to get there and we wanted to get there fast. Like then we knew we needed help. And I mean, we have tons of clients. I mean, we have a range of clients ourselves from early, they're just starting out or they've been in business a long time and they're doing incredible things. They just want to take it to the next level. Like as far as who needs a coach.
00:27:29
Speaker
whoever wants to take their business to that next level and is tired of doing it on their own. And even if, I mean, we've also have clients who are, um, they're, I mean, they're doing great things. They're not even super stressed out. They just want that, like that partnership or collaboration. Um, they want to make sure that like all that time, you know, we have clients that don't have, you know, 80 hours a week to work on their business because they want to have that balance. And it's really important for them to make sure that every minute they spend on their business,
00:27:58
Speaker
is a minute that is moving the needle, that is helping them grow their business because every minute they spend on their business is a minute they're not spending with their family, a minute that they're not spending doing what it is most important to them outside of their business, which is the reason why they have the business in the first place. And so that's something that for a lot of people, and for us why we hired a coach is because we didn't want to spend
00:28:24
Speaker
another six years building a business. No, we wanted this to happen a lot faster and we knew that we could because we're willing to do the work and we were excited about the work we were doing and we knew we could help people. We knew we had a good product or a good service for people and so we just need to know how to get it out there. We knew that if we had that right direction that we'd be able to do it way faster.
00:28:44
Speaker
Um, you know, they say like another level, another devil. So anytime you're ready to hit a new level, there's always going to be new challenges. There's always going to be things that pop up. Um, whether or not you're moving, if you, even if you don't like make any more money, you're not bringing out more clients. Marketing changes so much how you can communicate with people, whether it's via platform, whether it's algorithm changes, whether it's, uh, you know, what other industries are doing and how that affects your industry. I mean, there's so many variables to all that stuff.
00:29:14
Speaker
And at the time, we didn't want to have to figure that out all by ourselves. And so, you know, it just made sense for us and it made it so worth that investment, even though it was so painful. And I think that the fact that it was painful made us really like say, like, Hey, we got to make this work. And we still had to do the work. It's not, I mean, we handed the money over, but at the same time, like Jesse and I worked our butts off probably more so in that, you know, period of our life than we ever have.
00:29:39
Speaker
I always relate it back to hiring a personal trainer or somebody who's going to help you get somewhere. If I'm hiring a personal trainer, I'm going to go work out because I hired them to help me do that. It's more expensive than just a gym membership that you get maybe for $20 a month or something like that.
00:29:56
Speaker
And then you never go. Yeah. And so when you show up to that personal, you're going to try to get your money's worth. So I think that's an important point just for the investment that you make for coaches and why coaches are worth it. But I think if you look at any high performer across any industry, there's somebody in their life that's outside of what they're doing that's speaking into their life.
00:30:18
Speaker
And I think that makes a huge difference having an outside perspective. It might be a business coach, might be somebody who's not even a business coach, maybe more of just a life coach, but I think there's value in having somebody outside of what you're doing, speaking into what you're doing, because they can ask that question and be like, why are you doing that?
00:30:38
Speaker
And it's not a stupid question, right? When I came on, even helping Krista, I was coming from education, so I was able to come into that business and I was able to ask a question just, why are we doing that way? And all of a sudden, Krista would be like, I don't really know because we've always done it that way or because everybody else does it that way. And so it was a good opportunity to stop and evaluate, OK, is there a better way to do that? And I think a coach is just somebody who can come along and ask those questions for you and make you think about those things.
00:31:11
Speaker
So in the creative industry now, just with, because you guys work, how many clients do you work with at a time about? Max usually around 12 ish. Yeah. Okay. So, so throughout, throughout the course of a year, right? You're going to see, you're going to see up to, you know, dozens probably of, uh, of clients. Um, so what, you know, what's working in the creative industry now? Well, what's not? Yeah, I think that.
00:31:36
Speaker
In this digital world where people live vicariously through other people's Instagram accounts and all of that, I think that what's working the best or what is having the most impact, even though it is a lot of work, is taking people offline, looking at how you can
00:31:56
Speaker
be as high touch as possible in your business. That's something that even for us that we are hitting really hard this year. And we probably sound like a broken record because we've been saying the same thing on Instagram, on our blog, in our newsletter, everywhere we go. Like people are probably sick of Becky and Jesse saying the same darn things. But these things aren't, they're not going away. They're only getting more and more important, especially with technology and like beautiful websites. And we appreciate beautiful websites. Trust me, we do, but people hide behind them all too often. Like,
00:32:26
Speaker
we want, especially us personally, like we want to know real people. Like that's why we have a call with somebody. No, we're having a video chat and people are like, Oh, I've never done this. You know, it feels sort of weird. We're like, I know, I know, but isn't it better? Like we can see each other's faces. Yeah. So that's something that we're really shifting towards in and seeing that that is working so well is, you know, adding little high touch points throughout, whether it's, uh, you know, making sure that people can see your face, whether that's doing Instagram stories,
00:32:52
Speaker
And and actually showing your face and not just like taking pictures and kind of curating the world through that way But actually being in front of the camera or doing video calls instead of a phone call We had a client just this week tell us she has booked two of her highest, you know priced packages, which is a big number for weddings and She said I've been doing these, you know video responses and she's like it's golden. No, that's her quote, you know, it's been golden like
00:33:18
Speaker
Instead of emailing somebody back, like taking that high touch approach and like sending them a quick video. Hey, so-and-so, it's so great to get your email, X, Y, and Z, more info in the email. I just want to say hi and I'm so excited. Like that's so small. That's such a small thing, but it's booking her more weddings.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's incredible. So high touch. And I guess one question I wanted to throw out there is a difference because with online, with digital marketing, there's all sorts of online courses out there that you can take. And on a certain level, that's awesome, right? Because you don't have to go to the local community college, the local college, and take a class in those things anymore, right? Online, you can learn pretty much anything you want
Personalized Coaching vs. Online Courses
00:34:02
Speaker
to learn.
00:34:02
Speaker
So what's the value in doing something like coaching or doing something just high touch like coaching where there's a more personal one-on-one than doing something like a course? You have accountability, first of all, and you have somebody walking you through and it's custom. All of our clients, their journey looks totally different because their strengths are different, their ideas are different, their businesses are different.
00:34:29
Speaker
So it's personalized custom attention versus, and we have courses. Courses aren't bad, but we like the mix of both.
00:34:38
Speaker
But when you have somebody who's just a course junkie and going to every webinar, we have some of these clients come to us and they're like, we literally tell our clients stop. Don't buy anything else. Everything you bought, we agree. It's great. Those people who are putting that course on, we love them too. They're great. But you're not doing anything. You need to do something with everything that you have at your fingertips right now before you go out there and try to get more.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I think there's people out there that they buy a bunch of courses and they don't get through any of them. And I think statistically for anybody, you know, so we run a course as well, I think statistically too, there's a contingent of people who buy the course and they never complete it. And no matter how much encouraging you give them through things like email, so they just don't complete the course.
00:35:20
Speaker
But with coaching, and again, I think comparing it to something like hiring a trainer at the gym, you're not gonna show up to the gym and just be like, hey, I'm just gonna hang out here. I'm just gonna sit on one of the benches and if you guys, could you just give me an hour? You're gonna do what the trainer asks you to do.
Creating High-Touch Marketing Experiences
00:35:38
Speaker
So high touch marketing, what are some things specifically that people can do to incorporate high touch in their creative business?
00:35:47
Speaker
So this is something that we've been preaching for a long time. And we're not going to stop. We're not going to stop. And that's just using video. One of the easiest ways to create high touch points and give people as many opportunities to connect with you as a person is just put your face in front of them in video. Like video is so much easier to show personality a lot of times than just using a photo with like a blog post with all these different words.
00:36:12
Speaker
Because when you get in front of people on a regular basis, and I'm sure that for people that listen to your podcast, Davey, or the people that listen to videos from a specific person for a long time, what happens is you start to be able to hear them talk when you're reading what they say. And you're like, oh my gosh, I'm hearing, they're in voice inflections, I'm hearing, oh, they would get excited when they're saying this. And it allows you to get to the people, you're giving people the opportunity to feel like they get to know you on almost a personal level.
00:36:40
Speaker
which is so powerful. Whether that's Insta Stories, whether that's Facebook Lives, whether that is just recording a quick video to put on YouTube and put on your blog, that's one of the easiest ways to create those high touch points with your potential clients or with your audience. There's so many great side effects with using video. There's a big conversation about how people are very upset because their reach is being taken away
00:37:07
Speaker
from different algorithm changes and stuff like that. But it's like, we want to beat the algorithm. You can use video because video is going to get so much more reach out. It's not going to be like the glory days of Facebook necessarily, where, you know, you share a post when you have a thousand followers on Facebook. Just 40,000 people. You know, it's not quite going to be that. But if you want to take advantage of, you know, these holes in the algorithm where you can get in front of a lot of people, video is going to do that for you.
00:37:35
Speaker
And so video you'll hear us say over and over again, but then also just like back to those relationships, whether it's your clients, whether it's people you want to get to know, whether it's people you want to work with or for some day, like Jesse and I are big believers and not like one big like.
00:37:48
Speaker
Send one gift that costs hundreds of dollars. Like that's great. And if you have the budget for it, cool. But you know, it's better sending like six different things to your clients or even a quick email after you're finished working with them. Hey, how are you guys doing that? You know, honeymoon in Maui looked incredible. I just wanted to reach out, say, Hey, I was thinking of you the other day because X, Y, and Z like stay on people's minds. And the best way to do that is just to stay in communication with them and not like,
00:38:14
Speaker
Be as high touch as possible, be in their inbox, be cheering for them, and then you're done with them. All right, on to the next. No, stay in their life. Stay encouraging them and cheering them on. That's a super easy way to be high touch.
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think we confuse, you know, high touch with being expensive all the time because high touch doesn't necessarily scale in the same way that some other things do. But I like what you said about not having to send these super expensive gifts to every or this, you know, anything that's even just really elaborate to past clients or current clients that you're working with. Cash Moyer, who we had another interview with and that you guys have worked with as well.
00:38:51
Speaker
She was talking about how when she got started, she sent 30 these packets almost, you know, that probably cost $50 total. So 30 packets $50 total. And when she was just getting started, and she probably booked 10 weddings off the relationships that those started. So there's a crazy return on investment off of something that's not super expensive. Yeah, I do want to go back to the video stuff. And I asked this, this is sort of a personal question, because
00:39:20
Speaker
I want to love video. I want to do more video. Some of the reason that we're doing the podcast the way that we're doing where you can look at it, you can listen and watch it on YouTube or you can listen to it as a podcast on iTunes is because I want to do more with video for all the reasons that you're talking about.
00:39:38
Speaker
But I like writing, and part of the reason I like writing is because I can go back and edit, you know? And you should see me edit, you know? It's back, back, just make sure everything's kind of buttoned up and great. Whereas with video, to do that, it requires, you know, it just, for me, I feel like it requires all this editing and just this additional work. And then I'm sitting there, I'm like, do I look stupid? I look stupid. I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna post that.
00:40:04
Speaker
So what tips do you have for people like me, all right, who would love to get into video but are just sort of scared of it? Yeah, I think that like one, like, Davey, I'm all like you. I shouldn't say I'm a lot like you in this way. But I say a lot of things that I probably shouldn't. Or I think before I don't think before I speak sometimes. And I think some of that is just like, I got to get over the fact that like, hey, I'm going to look like an idiot sometimes I'm doing these things. And
00:40:31
Speaker
I'm going to say things that maybe it was a little bit too blunt or whatever that is. I had to be okay with that. I think people want that. I think people want that. I know people want that actually.
00:40:45
Speaker
I don't know. You can have this beautiful brand and you can have this persona. I think that's all great. And we want to be known for these things of like being very specific and putting out in the world. And like, we don't want to like stray from that in a video and all of a sudden not be a good representation of our brand. But at the same time, we want to be real people. Like I appreciate it when I see somebody, you know, out there who, you know, they look right now. I don't know. I'm tripping over my words, whatever that is. Like everybody does that though. Like, um, so my advice to you, Davey and anybody else out there, like Jesse saying, like,
00:41:15
Speaker
just bite the bullet, get over it and just do it. Yeah and sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves to like make these super polished like you see all these like video bloggers or we see these all these YouTubers that are like these super polished like they have these cool intros and like their videos are so clean like the music goes so well with what they're talking about and they're so eloquent and I think that we put all this pressure on ourselves to create videos like that where
00:41:40
Speaker
Like we have so many tools where we can kind of like get our feet wet with Instagram stories or Facebook lives or you know, we love live stuff like that because you can't edit it because once you say it, it's out there and it gives you practice in just doing, you can't go back and say, oh, I'm going to start over. And so you get practice thinking about, okay, what is it that you want to say? You get a little bit better prepping for those things and being able to kind of think on the fly a little bit more.
00:42:05
Speaker
I mean, those are the things that people really want to see. They want to see the real Becky and Jesse. They don't really care about the Becky and Jesse that like we wish that we could portray to every single person. No, they want to know that like.
00:42:18
Speaker
like, um, Becky Christ. Yeah. Hopefully not too much on Instagram live. Yeah. But yes, I might say things that I shouldn't sometimes. And it's a tangible way to do that. David, just like we, even still to this day, we've done tons of videos, tons of Facebook lives, and we still like outline stuff out to this day and we might go on a tangent, but then we always have something to come back to. So as far as like tangible tips, like write it out. If you're going to do a Facebook live,
00:42:44
Speaker
What are the three points and what, what are you going to end on? So it actually feels like there's an ending because people sort of freak out like, here's the bet. Here's what I'm going to say to you. Okay. Bye. So just having something to wrap it up and intro and going over that stuff, practicing, I mean, no matter how good you get or how long you've been doing it, practicing is still super important in my opinion. Yeah, for sure. Smiling, smiling, smiling brings the energy. It does.
00:43:11
Speaker
And so, you guys have seen, so video, I'm gonna keep those things in mind because, like I said, my goal this year, and we even did a roundup post, right, with you guys, and I think one of my things was to focus on was video, and I'm so echoing everything that you guys are saying about video, so hopefully by the end of the year, I'm gonna come back to you guys, and I'm gonna have you guys grade me on how well I did incorporate, I know. Hey, Jamie, where are these videos at?
00:43:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to really, I'm really going to try to get better, uh, at that. Um, especially Instagram stories, uh, things like that. I've struggled partly because I get, I get a little bit of energy from being able to see the people I talk with, even on something like a webinar where people are eight, you're able to see the questions that people are asking, right? Whereas Instagram stories, it's like you're basically talking to yourself, you know? You definitely.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna try to get I'm gonna try to get better at that. Are there any other ways that people can incorporate like high-touch marketing into their business You know whether you're photographer or planner or florist Yeah, I think that one of the another great way to be able to use high touch You know in your marketing be high touch point or be high touch in your business. It's just in your relationship so often you know, we don't
00:44:31
Speaker
Like we would try to automate everything. We try to, you know, even in something that we preach all the time is, you know, like automate everything in your workflows. If there's anything that you do for every single client, like you need to automate that if you can. And that doesn't always mean making that like this like email template that goes automatically. It could be things like, you know, automating and setting workflows in place or systems in place to where it's going to remind you, hey, check in with these wedding vendors or these industry friends and just
00:44:58
Speaker
Like, go show them that you're a fan on their Instagram. Comment on a couple things of theirs. Like, go out there and say like, hey, I'm going to get together at this coffee shop. You know, I'd love to have you guys come over and just hang out. It's, again, not so much about these big, grand gestures or like going to these networking events and like trying to get as many cards and meeting as many people as you can. It's about showing people that you genuinely care, which usually adds up to showing people
00:45:28
Speaker
that you do care on a regular basis by commenting, by seeing if there's anything that you can do for them, always coming back to you, leading with value. It's so easy for people to see through you being like, oh, hey, let's grab coffee so that I can maybe work with you in the future. Instead, you know, like go into that with zero expectations, with looking at instead, how can I help you? And being a good listener, I think, in conversation in person, but also just to your market, to what you're putting out there, to what your clients are saying,
00:45:57
Speaker
to what your friends and family of clients are saying is they post stuff like just listening in general instead of going out there and feeling like you need to talk, talk, talk and bring it all the time. Like take a step back and see what's going on and then respond.
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I think that for relationships especially, that's one of the questions that I've asked pretty much every interviewer that I've, or every, during every interview that I've done so far. And it keeps on coming up. You know, there's this idea of relationships and you really can't replace that and you really can't, you really can't not do it, right? You got it? It's not going to get very far. Yeah, sure.
00:46:34
Speaker
So, what are some things that you're seeing in the industry right now that are just not working? And I want to, I'm sure that you guys have maybe some common things that come to you as a client says this and you're just like, just every client says I'm doing this and you're like, ah, just stop doing that right now. Don't focus on that at all. I think the first thing and probably the easiest thing, depending on where you're at is
00:47:02
Speaker
looking at what's currently in front of you or the thing that's being ineffective. People are not looking at what's currently in front of them. They're like, I need more. I want more. How do I get more? And I get it. We've all been there. But I guarantee anybody who's saying that has something directly in front of them, whether it's relationships, emails, something in their business that there are holes that they can go in and fix and fill those gaps with some of the other stuff we've already been talking about.
00:47:26
Speaker
before just trying to get more. So, like, filling the gaps and just looking at what's right in front of you is something that we start with all of our clients. Like, all right, what's working well? What's not working? Let's, like, take some inventory here before you go out there and panic and freak out about needing more. So it's different for a lot of different people. You know, if you say, hey, this strategy doesn't work, there's going to be, you know, for every person that says that, there's going to be five people that say, oh, no, that's working in my business. And so I think what kind of
00:47:55
Speaker
elaborate a little bit on what Becky just said, just looking at like in your own business and being real with yourself. I think that you have to be able to look at this and say, hey, like this really isn't working, even though you want this to work so bad. Even though you put money and time, I mean, even I remember when we took down just as an example, when we took down like our photography site, we still have our blog up. But I remember that day, like Jesse had said, like, that was our first baby, we put thousands of dollars, like the promo video, which we still have out there. But like,
00:48:23
Speaker
the site, all of the stuff, I'm like, this was thousands of dollars and now we're going to take it down. But we did that because it was no longer serving a purpose for us. Yeah. So, you know, applying that to smaller areas of your business, like if you if you're working so hard on something, but it's not working for you, like giving the freedom to like surrender that and move on, I think is super important. Yeah.
00:48:45
Speaker
But to answer your question about specifically what are some things that we see that aren't necessarily working as well as maybe they used to or things that people get excited about doing that don't really do anything for their business, I think one of the biggest things is just blogging for the sake of blogging. That's something that we see all the time that people just put up a portfolio post and then they get in this cycle of like, I'm going to post on Instagram, hey, come look at my pretty work.
00:49:14
Speaker
And they may get some traffic there and then people get to the blog and they don't give people anywhere to go. And so I think that it's usually an easy fix. It's either changing up the way you blog so that you're maybe a little bit more story based or you're pulling out something from that wedding or from that portrait session or from working with that client that is going to be able to draw people in that people are going to get excited about.
00:49:39
Speaker
because when we get in that cycle where it's just like, oh, I'm gonna blog, I'm gonna post, no one cares. And a lot of people don't know why they're even doing it. Yes, like, oh, I blog this, I need to put out in the world, maybe it'll give me more clients, but lack of purpose behind every move that they make just because that's what everybody does. Yeah, we find that a lot, especially since one of the things that we teach on is SEO is there's this half-truth out there that blogging is good for SEO.
SEO Benefits Through Purposeful Blogging
00:50:07
Speaker
You know, which is, you know, it's true, but only if you're doing it purposefully. You know, if all you're doing is blogging personal stuff because you saw a popular blogger out there and all she does is blog personal stuff. So you think, oh, if I do that, I'm going to get a ton of clients and traffic too. You know, you're probably, you're probably,
00:50:28
Speaker
You're not going to be happy with the results probably, right? It's probably not going to lead to more clients. You have to have a purpose behind why you're blogging. And I don't think that, you know, again, I feel like people struggle especially with blogging. And I don't know if you guys have found the same thing. But I think thinking through that purpose,
00:50:49
Speaker
It's not super difficult once you sit down and say, okay, why do I want, you know, what kind of people should be laying in on my website? Why am I putting this piece of content out into the world? And I think people will find that they save a ton of time if they think through those things that you guys are talking about. Because otherwise, they're going to be publishing these posts that get really no traffic and they don't really move the needle and they spend hours on them. You know, and like you had mentioned earlier in the interview, when you're spending hours on that, you're not spending hours on something else.
00:51:15
Speaker
Right. So is there is there anything else that you find, you know, people are coming to you and they're like, hey, you know, I'm really trying to grow, you know, my Facebook page, you know, or I'm really trying. Is there anything else that people are doing that just really isn't moving the needle? Yeah. This might lead to something specific, but I think people, a lot of people aren't diversified. They're putting all the eggs in one basket.
00:51:40
Speaker
They've been in business five years. It's all referral based, which is so awesome. That means they've built incredible relationships. They have a great client experience, all of these things that are going well for them, but they haven't done anything else outside of that as far as marketing goes. And so now five years in, you think like I'm home free and all of a sudden people are panicking. The inquiry stopped coming in. Right. So I think the mistake or the ineffective thing is like just solely focusing on that one thing and not being able, sorry, one more thing, not being able to like, um,
00:52:11
Speaker
shift and move how the market moves and how technology is going and how our industry is going and like bringing back to what Jesse was saying earlier, like people are panicking or they freak out or they don't want like, oh, Facebook, the algorithm are not getting the reach and like totally that sucks. We get it. We all hate it. But if this is what's going on and we can pay 10 or 15 bucks to get in front of a couple thousand people,
00:52:32
Speaker
Even though you didn't used to have to do that and you're kind of bitter the fact that you do now have to do that, you have to be flexible as far as what's going on in the world and not just put your, I don't know, stomping your feet that you can't get what you used to with Facebook. Is there any one channel that you guys would, if you only had to choose one or maybe one or two channels to focus on, what would you tell most creative services businesses to focus on?
00:53:01
Speaker
I think that the key word there, for me at least, is channel. Because it doesn't, for me, I don't care where our clients get traffic from or get visibility from, but the key thing is that you have a channel for people to come through. Even if, for example, a lot of our clients focus on Instagram because that's where their clients are hanging out. They're not necessarily hanging out on Facebook as much anymore. So if that platform is Instagram or where that channel starts is Instagram, it's important to know
00:53:30
Speaker
Hey, where does that customer journey take them? So often, we post on Instagram and we're like, hey, but no one's coming to our site. And it's like, well, are you asking them to come to your site? Are you giving them a reason to come to your site? Are you telling them to come to your site? Because here comes a blunt Jesse quote. But people are dumb. And you have to tell them exactly what they do. And it's not just that people- He means that in the nicest way, everybody. Sure. No, I completely agree.
00:53:58
Speaker
It's not that people like aren't intelligent. It's the fact that we're a little bit lazy and that we're being bombarded with so much stuff that we need to make sure that we're leading people where we want them to go. And so I think that more important than just looking at like, OK, where the traffic or where the the channel starts, I think is much more important to look at. OK, where am I taking them from there?
00:54:22
Speaker
Because once you have that, then it doesn't matter if you're taking them from Instagram to your website to an inquiry page or if it's from an in-person networking event to something like that. You have an idea of where you can take people. And I promise if you can do that effectively and you can lead people down a journey where you're intentionally designing, hey, when they come to a blog post, I'm going to give them a call to action that says, hey, do you like what you see here?
00:54:47
Speaker
Like, I would love to chat with you about shooting your wedding. And we keep coming back to the wedding because that's where we started, I think. But that's such a great example of how so often, for example, when people are blogging, it's just a blog and there's no calls to action. That's why people, they look at this like, people come to my blog, but then they just leave. And it's like, well, are you giving them any reason to go anywhere else? And I think that that's more, that's such an important conversation to have with yourself and such an important exercise in looking at
00:55:15
Speaker
where it is that you want them to go and then looking at if you're actually leading them there. So, you know, once you have that figured out, I think that looking at it totally depends on you looking at where your audience is hanging out. And what your strengths are as well, because as much as we preach video, for example, like we know video is great for business, but it might not be everybody's strengths. Like we do think everybody should try it, but at the same time, like they might be so much better at connecting with people in a different way. So it comes back to their strengths as well.
00:55:44
Speaker
I think that's a great answer and I love what you said about leading people. I think one thing that we see on websites a lot, we do a lot of different website reviews for clients, that they have these pages and they have links to a thousand different things. In that case, that's almost a little bit different than what you're talking about, which is just as important having a single strong call to action at the end of a blog post that tells people that you want to work with them.
00:56:09
Speaker
And then on the other end of that, if you lead people everywhere, they're gonna go nowhere. And so I just love what you guys said about having to lead people and having an understanding of what their customer journey is, I think is also super important.
00:56:28
Speaker
Yeah. So if you guys are, you
Choosing the Right Coach
00:56:33
Speaker
know, so going back to coaching, especially with you guys, like, what advice would you give people who are like, you know, I need that, you know, maybe they're, maybe they're sitting there, like, I have 1000 different ideas, I need someone to help me, you know, find a little bit of clarity. What advice would you give to people in seeking out a coach, like, knowing what you guys know, being the experts, if someone's looking for a coach, how do you think they should go about finding one?
00:56:57
Speaker
Well, there's a good idea left. Absolutely. We've done coaching with you guys and we found it extremely beneficial. We can attest to not only just the value of coaching but how fun it was to work with you guys. You guys helped us specifically around a launch that we're doing. Again, just going back to what you were saying about coaching.
00:57:18
Speaker
I feel like I am fairly technically savvy, you know, like in the sense that I like I can figure it out, you know, it might not come super naturally as you know, I feel like you are one of those guys that you Tyler Harrington, you know, a couple friends of mine that are that, you know, you love the tech world and you're always in it. But I do feel like I can figure out things for the most part.
00:57:40
Speaker
but when we're doing this launch with you guys, I knew I could probably figure it out and the launch probably wouldn't go as well and I'd probably make 8,000 mistakes along the way, which is great and I could learn from that for the next time, or we could hire you guys. We could do it pretty much right the first time around and still learn a ton in the process and probably spend half the time that we had spent trying to figure it out on our own. But just finding the coaching in general,
00:58:09
Speaker
You know, like are there certain things that people should be looking for? I think something that's super important outside of like the business realm because those are there I want to get to some of those too, but like it's do you click with them like Personality wise that's why like every strategy call we have with people like we do a zoom call or Skype or whatever it is because we want to we want to see their face and we want them to see who we are and Vice versa because you're gonna be working with this person
00:58:33
Speaker
And not just so that you get along, but so that you are coachable. Um, like if you don't respect somebody or you're like, Oh, it's just, something's a little off. Like you're not going to listen to what they have to say. For us, that's very important. I mean, we talk to our clients, uh, you know, our, our, uh, like longer term clients every single week. And we talk to them a lot more than they talked to a lot of their friends or even family. And so it is important that, that they do like us and we have like at least a healthy working relationship in that they have to be able to,
00:59:02
Speaker
at least be able to believe some of the things that we believe in and the philosophies that we have. Another thing as far as business-wise, can they help me? What am I looking for? And have they helped other people get there? Or have they done it themselves? Or have they done it themselves? Are there other people out there that have been in my shoes and now they're here because they hired so-and-so?
00:59:26
Speaker
And I know that you guys occasionally turn people away, you know, and just say, hey, this isn't gonna be a good fit. And I think that there's real value in that, you know, I mean, just realizing as coaches, or in any profession, you know, whether you're a photographer or planner or whatever, that not every client is going to be exactly the right fit. And I think that says a lot about the coaches as well. So what do you guys, so let's say somebody really wants to hire a coach, but they're just simply not in a position
Retreats as Affordable Alternatives
00:59:53
Speaker
to do so. Because like you said, it is an investment.
00:59:55
Speaker
And I think in a lot of cases, as you guys, I assume do too, think that in a lot of cases, it's well worth the investment. But if somebody is not in a position to hire a coach, is there anything that they can do in the meantime? Yeah, I think that there's a few things. One is that's why courses are so popular, I think, is because it does give you a chance to work with us or
01:00:23
Speaker
on a smaller level, but still be able to get some of that information, get some of that direction. Unfortunately, courses work for a certain type of personality for people that are gonna go through it and actually make those changes and do the work on their own without any outside accountability. There's also other things out there, like we're having a marketing retreat this summer where we're giving a lot of people the opportunity that haven't had the chance to work with us in the past, whether it's because our schedule is full,
01:00:51
Speaker
or because they're just not in a place financially to make that happen, where we're gonna bark her down in Airbnb with eight to probably 10 or 12 people max and look at, hey, what can we do in our businesses that's gonna help us grow? What are the things that are working, what's not, and how can we apply those strategies to your business specifically? So again, for people that are like, oh, I've done the course thing, I need a little bit more hands-on,
01:01:19
Speaker
Um, something like that, I think would be super beneficial for people. Um, because so often it's so hard to, when we're get caught up, they'd have all these people telling us, um, Hey, you should do this in your business. No, no, actually you need to do this in your business. Nope. Instagram is dead. Oh no. Instagram is the best thing ever. And you hear all these conflicting things and it's so hard to sift through that when you're just like, I just want to know what to focus on. Uh, I just want to know what I'm willing to do the work. I just need to know what the, what I need to do.
01:01:47
Speaker
I need some help in direction and I think that's one of the reasons why we're doing that is because we know that we can help people very quickly just simply by helping them lay out a game plan, help them apply those strategies to their business specifically. And we like in-person stuff and we like tacos so all of that stuff can happen. But if they can't go into that, something that they can do on their own is just like something we mentioned earlier like
01:02:11
Speaker
take an honest, like honest look at your business. And even if it's things that you don't want to see your numbers, you don't want to see and like what is working and what is not working. And then also what are those gaps that something that's been like that little devil on your shoulder, like, no, you need to get those systems in place. Whatever it is, the things you like know that's just nagging at you that you haven't done yet, like do those things. And I get that that's not fun or easy all the time, but you have to, you have to start by filling in the holes before you can go out there and be like,
01:02:40
Speaker
Give me more, because it's just going to snowball in the wrong direction if you don't have that other stuff figured out. Yeah, I think retreats, conferences, things like that are a great alternative in the meantime, you know? Especially, and I want to talk a little bit more about what you guys are doing out in San Diego, right? Because that sounds incredible. Because you're still going to get a little bit more attention than you would taking an online course. You're around people, both attendees, who are in it with you.
01:03:06
Speaker
and the speakers and the educators who are trying to impart whatever it is that they're trying to impart. And you meet so many people that way. You make real in-person relationships when attending a retreat or conference at generally what is a lower price point than what coaching would be.
01:03:27
Speaker
So I think I think that's a great way to go something that I do for books and online courses and this is actually it was a rule that I started with books because I would I would order books and then I would not read them or I'd read a quarter of them and I'd be done, you know,
01:03:41
Speaker
Uh, and so we'd have all these books laying around that I've never read and I would just keep on ordering books. One thing that I decided, yeah, this is what, and Krista, you know, Krista was a large part of this rule came into existence and by large part, I mean, she, she pretty much created this rule.
01:03:57
Speaker
If you don't finish the book, you don't get to get another book. Even if it was a book that I didn't enjoy. Sometimes we pick up books and we're just like, this is useless. It forced me to finish the book before I went and got a new one. I think the same thing. We're a fan of online courses too and we put those out.
01:04:17
Speaker
But if you don't finish the online course, there's no reason you should be buying another online course Finish it do the work and then reward yourself by getting whatever that next thing is that you think You know is going to is going to help you in your business, but
01:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it saves, you know, it's crazy. Read the compound effect. It's crazy how much money you end up saving, I think, down the road. But, and there's all sorts of things that I would love to talk to you about online courses, you know, how valuable they are, and then some of the pitfalls of them too. So that's gonna have to be another podcast episode. Jesse, I would love to have you come back on and talk about
01:04:53
Speaker
you know, the numbers and just metrics and Sherpa, which is this great, you know, software that that you've built or help built. So I want to I want to bring you back on and talk about all of those things, Facebook ads and stuff. But before we before we end it here, you guys are doing something in San Diego. Do you guys have dates and details about all of that? Yep.
01:05:15
Speaker
We do. We do have dates. It's August 12th through the 15th. It's going to be here in San Diego. We're going to get one or two beachy Airbnbs. It's going to be like the real world. We all sit together in the same house and like great marketing comes out of it and we're going to have some beach cruiser bike rides, some yoga, lots of tacos.
01:05:37
Speaker
It's all marketing. It's a marketing retreat. It's all marketing. And then also we're going to have some one-on-one time for everybody there. So we get a little one-on-one coaching as well. And the whole goal in this and why we're doing this, because we want not just people to learn these things. We want them to walk away with a game plan moving forward. So people that are going to come to this thing, they're going to walk away not only with the strategies, but those strategies that are applied to their businesses so they can walk away knowing exactly what they need to do.
01:06:04
Speaker
over the next six months to a year to be able to get on the right track and start achieving some of the goals they have in their business. And we're going to practice things that people have been avoiding. We're going to practice some video. We're going to practice some consultation, some sales stuff. We're going to literally on the spot do these things. So that might make people feel uncomfortable. If it does, that means this is for you because you're finally going to tackle these things. But we're excited just to come alongside people. We love our one-on-one clients. We love working with people so personally. And this is going to be very personal.
01:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm a little bit jealous of the fact that in San Diego you have 70 degrees and sunny all the time. You're going to be out on the beach.
01:06:43
Speaker
Arguably, some of the best tacos that you could probably find in the United States. Handstands. Handstands, yeah. Yeah. Just for those things. I would sign up just for those things. The fact that you guys are going to be teaching and educating and coming alongside people, I think, just puts that over the top. Those details you can find in the show notes. Head over to the show notes if you want more details about that and I'll link to get to more information about that.
01:07:12
Speaker
But guys, thank you so much for joining me today. If people want to learn more about you all, where should they go? Yeah, our website is idealistlife.com and Instagram is probably where we hang out the most, especially on Instagram stories these days. So yeah, those are the two main places. All right, awesome. And you can find all of that information in the show notes. Thanks, guys. Awesome. Thanks, baby.
01:07:43
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Brands That Book Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and leaving a review so that others are more likely to find it. For show notes and other resources, visit DavianChrista.com.