Short Summary:
In this podcast, Karl Bryan, a business coach, discusses the challenges of targeting high net worth clients, and the importance of mental toughness in achieving success. He advises building a team of coaches to scale the business and avoid concentration risk, while not overlooking potential clients who are not yet at the top. He also emphasizes the importance of educating oneself on taxes and using a feedback loop to keep money in the business. Bryan asserts that mental toughness is a critical measurement for success, and that mentally tough coaches are committed to their clients’ success and willing to take risks and make tough decisions.
Main Article:
Karl Bryan, a business coach, talks about the challenges of targeting clients with high net worth (over $10 million) and how it can be difficult to scale the business due to the limited number of clients a coach can handle at a time. He notes that such clients require more hand-holding and the talent required to look after their businesses is significantly higher, making it hard to hire and retain employees. Bryan recommends building a team of coaches to help scale the business and avoid concentration risk, which is too much concentration on too little. He suggests that coaches targeting high net worth clients may be missing out on potential clients who are trying to crawl up towards the million-dollar mark. Bryan uses the metaphor of walking through a store to illustrate the importance of not overlooking potential clients who are not yet at the top.
He also emphasized that the secret to growing a coaching business is not just about making money, but also about keeping it. He asserts that taxes are the highest expense for everyone over the age of 21, and encourages coaches to educate themselves on this topic. Bryan explains that Amazon was able to pay zero income tax on $13 billion of revenue by feeding revenue back into the company through property, plant, and equipment; research and development; and stock-based compensation. He urges coaches to consider using a feedback loop, such as investing in research and development, to keep money in the business rather than spending it on luxuries that offer no long-term return.
In the same conversation, Karl Bryan discusses the importance of mental toughness and how it is critical in achieving success. He mentions the book “Money Master the Game” and how it is 80% psychology and 20% wealth tactics. Karl also discusses how physical toughness does not necessarily equate to mental toughness, and shares examples of people who may appear tough on the outside but are mentally weak. He emphasizes the importance of not giving in to excuses and pushing oneself to overcome challenges, sharing his own experience of overcoming financial difficulties.
And before he ended his insightful talk, he discussed the importance of mental toughness in business. He argues that mental toughness is often overlooked as a measurement and should be considered as important as measuring height, weight, body fat, age, and wealth. Mental toughness is the key difference between successful and unsuccessful business owners or coaches, and it can be measured by the number of difficult conversations a coach has. A mentally tough coach is committed to their client’s success and will do whatever it takes to help them achieve it. Mentally tough individuals also take risks and make decisions even with incomplete information. They are willing to face their fears and do what needs to be done to succeed.
In conclusion, Karl Bryan’s podcast offers valuable insights into the challenges of targeting high net worth clients and scaling a coaching business. He emphasizes the importance of building a team of coaches to avoid concentration risk and not overlooking potential clients who are not yet at the top. Additionally, Bryan highlights the importance of keeping and growing money by investing in research and development, rather than spending it on luxuries that offer no long-term return. Furthermore, he stresses the significance of mental toughness in achieving success, as it is the key difference between successful and unsuccessful business owners or coaches. By being committed to their client’s success, mentally tough individuals take risks, make decisions, and overcome challenges, ultimately achieving their goals. Overall, the podcast provides valuable advice for anyone looking to grow a successful coaching business.
Want to learn the business coaching secrets to becoming a highly paid coach or consultant? Check out at Focused.com and also check out our podcast on Spotify today!
Transcription:
[00:00:02.440] – Intro
Welcome to Business Coaching Secrets with Karl Bryan. If you want to attract new high end coaching clients, fill live events, and build a widely profitable coaching practice where business owners pay, stay, and refer, you’ve come to the right place. In this podcast, Karl provides his keys to the kingdom for finding and signing high paying clients and building the coaching business of your dreams. Here we go.
[00:00:41.750] – RodeDog
Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Business Coaching Secrets. Your boy, RodeDog here with the man of the hour, Lil Karl, the little rapper that could. I think that’s who we’re going with, Mr. Karl Bryan the King himself. How are you doing there, big shoots?
[00:00:57.450] – Karl Bryan
I’m doing good. And those listening, they missed our… in the pre show, I just did the worst… I did a little rap song for everybody. Actually, I didn’t do a rap song at all. I did a little 6 second beat box, and then RodeDog cut me off and said, please, everybody was dropping off the line. Anyway, then RodeDog gave me the name. He gave me a rap name and anybody who listens to this regularly will know exactly what he decided that name was. And he calls me Little Karl. There you go. Little Karl
[00:01:30.740] – RodeDog
Just like Cinderella. Right, bud? If the shoe fits, you just gotta, you just got to go for it. Just because it’s a size 5 shoe, it doesn’t matter. Anyways, listen, talking of shoes, we all know you don’t wear shoes. You just wear UGGs. We haven’t gone there in a while or high heels. We haven’t gone to any of this stuff in quite a while there, but ,what’s going on?
[00:01:56.610] – Karl Bryan
High heels. I write my emails all the time. I’m in my wife’s closet, we’re in her best red high heels, making myself feel, Oh, shoot. What’s wrong with that? It’s normal.
[00:02:05.950] – RodeDog
I don’t know the direction that we’re taking. Are we spinning off? Are we not doing business coaching stuff anymore? Or is this the new woke podcast with Karl. Woke with Karl, there it is.
[00:02:21.430] – RodeDog
On that note, let’s put the train back firmly onto the tracks. First question coming in. This person wrote in, “I’m growing my coaching practice and looking for ways to get new high end coaching clients. They pre qualify here saying that they target companies above $10 million. I’m just looking for any tips or advice on that.”
[00:02:45.770] – Karl Bryan
Okay, love it. Going to clients over $10 million. Actually, as I start this, I’m not sure, hopefully, you guys can hear me okay. I have a little sound trouble today, so I hope you guys can hear me. If you can’t, on the following podcast, you’ll be able to hear me much better just one of those things today. Anyway, so what are we doing? We’re targeting clients over $10 million. Look, here’s what happens. A coach targets clients over $10 million. Not first time we’ve heard that and won’t be the last. The $10 million dollar client needs more hand holding than your smaller clients trying to crawl up towards a million bucks. So the higher end coach gets roughly, let’s say, four clients. They max out because they’ve got 24 hours in their day just like we do. It’s difficult to hire new people because the talent level required to look after your 10, 25, and 50 million dollar companies is significantly higher. Here’s what happens is you’ll get somebody to come work for you, they’ll pull out their calculator, do the math, and all of a sudden they go out on their own. They become competition to you.
[00:03:52.570] – Karl Bryan
Bottom line is that you train them up, you work with them, and then you lose them. It’s like this merry go round where you go round and round. Let’s go back to the coaching business. You got four clients, Christmas hits, you lose two because there will be attrition. There’s attrition for me, there’s attrition for you, there’s attrition for RodeDog. Everybody’s got attrition in the coaching space. Well, when you’ve only got four clients and you lose two, your cash flow gets totally pulverized. And now, by the way, you’re looking at your books and you’re two clients away from them canceling, they’re hitting zero. So I just say the stats are that 96% of businesses don’t hit a million bucks. So in fact, let me give this as a metaphor. I want to explain a higher… And I’m going to get the lead generation of higher end clients. What I want to make sure, remember, it’s what do I do? And I want to make sure you ask the question, what do you want before we get there? So you go to 7 11, and what do you go there for? The same thing I go there for, and that’s milk and bread.
[00:04:57.290] – Karl Bryan
Where is the milk and bread when you walk into 711? With 100% certainty, it’s at the back of the store. Just like when you go to the grocery store, it’s the same thing. And then in order to get there, you walk by 500 items to get there, and then you have to walk past them a second time to get to the register to pay. I want you to think of that when you’re thinking about going to your $10 million company. You’re going… If 90% don’t make it to a million, 96%, by the way, you’re walking past all these million dollar clients in order to get to your 10 million dollar high end coaching client that can afford your fees. If you do a local event or you get invited to speak at anything business related, nine and a half out of 10 of the participants aren’t at a million bucks yet. Again, if you’re the guy or gal that only goes to 10 million dollar companies, you’re only going to such a small percentage. In other words, you’re not going to be able to scale. You’re just not. Again, you get the four clients and you’re two away from having your income and you’re four away from being at zero.
[00:06:04.620] – Karl Bryan
In the accounting world, they’ll call this concentration risk. Too much concentration on too little. The same thing when you have one staff member that’s too important to your business, again, concentration risk. By the way, let’s look at our Almighty Tony Robbins. What does he do? Again, he goes after high end clients. You see, I’m talking about Paul Tudor Jones and all these others in his eight year waiting list, and he charges a million dollars plus upside. He does have those clients, but on the way there, what he does is he puts 5,000 people in a room, gets them jumping up and down for four days, and throughout that process, he sells his 10, 50, and then $250,000 program in the same audience. But the bulk of his audience, make no mistake about it, is that little guy trying to crawl up towards the million dollar mark. We help our clients. We have successful business coaches that work with us, some of the top end business coaches in the world, use our platform or in our community, pay our monthly fees to be a part of the program. But we help them build a team of coaches because, again, they look after the higher end guys.
[00:07:15.790] – Karl Bryan
But walking through 7 11, doing their business event, doing their speaking events, going to the trade show, whatever it is, nine and a half out of 10 of these clients aren’t hitting a million bucks. The bottom line is I think that that’s a strategic error. And again, you might be semi retired or you might only want to make $150,000 and not have any headaches that look like staff and that thing, then look, this might be the right roadmap. But I think it’s important to factor that in. So how do you generate leads for $10 million clients? I got to tell you that at $10 million, 25, a high end business like that, they’ve already got a lot of contacts. They’ve been around. You don’t go from zero to 10 million overnight. These guys are established, so you’re going to have to have some credibility. Generally speaking, there’s multiple ways to do it, but the two best would be forming a joint venture relationship. Think of an accountant, or you do what I do and you have an educational relationship with them. Basically, an educational, you’re listening to this right now, this podcast. If you’re listening to this, there’s a good chance you get my daily emails.
[00:08:29.440] – Karl Bryan
That’s me educating. It’s not about Trojan horse after Trojan horse, the way that they’ll teach in the internet marketing space. Get out there and genuinely help people, which, by the way, is going to take time. It’s going to take effort. It takes expertise. This is again where we lose a lot of folks. You’ve got to go in and you need to be doing it in a manner. What I mean by Trojan horse, don’t just put it out there a little bit and then say, Sign up, sign up, sign up. If you really think about your ideal client, especially that $10 million client. When they hear that, see that, you’re basically going to lose them. So it’s just that delayed gratification. Joint venture, educational relationship or joint venture, the secret sauce of getting a JV relationship, I talked about this lots in my emails and definitely on the podcast. In a nutshell, you want to be Santa over the Grinch. You want to be giving, giving, giving. The way if you just want to get me to go micro granular on that, instead of looking for ideas, start looking for problems. If I want to get a joint venture on board, the accountant, the radio station, the magazine, the newspaper, the coupon book, the digital marketer, the online directory, you name it, I go to them and I think, what is the challenge that they see?
[00:09:48.880] – Karl Bryan
What is the challenge that they have? An example that I’ve given in the past, I’ll give it really quickly, is a radio station. You want to go build a relationship with the radio station. Before I explain this, understand that all of our clients have their own personally branded membership site with a world class 52 week curriculum. It really acts as a bit of a secret sauce for JV relationships. But let me give you an example. You just adjust this. If you’re not one of our clients and you don’t have your own membership site, just adjust this a little bit. What you do is the problem that the radio station has is that they’re always looking to generate leads. They’ve got salespeople and the way that the radio station makes money is by selling advertising. Do they have enough advertising leads? They could never have enough. They run a draw on the radio that says, Hey, if you want 2021 to be your best year yet, you really want to crush it, you want to really knock it out of the park, be the 15th caller and win a 12-month mentorship to abcbusinessacademy.com. Again, if you want 2021 to be the year that you really make it, mentorship is something that you should be considering.
[00:10:55.140] – Karl Bryan
We are giving away a free 12-month mentorship online at xyzbusinessacademy.com. They get 50 callers, the 15th caller wins, guess what? The radio station now has 50 people to follow up to to sell ads to. You’re going back and forth with the radio station. The radio station is collecting all of the coordinates and the details of the people that are calling up to try and win. By the way, as a business coach, the 15th caller, the one that gets the free membership on your platform, often they will become a high end coaching client. When I say high end, not 10 million dollar client, there’s a nine and a half out of 10 chance that they’re crawling towards a million bucks and trying to get there. But the bottom line, that’s an idea. That’s a platform. What I just did there is we’re Santa Claus, we’re giving. What are we giving? Solutions to their problems. That’s the way that I’d frame it up. And if they have a different problem than that, then you give a different solution. But a lot of the time, you’re going to find that people in our world, this is what they’re looking for.
[00:11:58.300] – Karl Bryan
They’re looking for leads. Something like a membership giveaway can be a beauty. Or go to an accountant and say, you must have a lot of clients that are scrambling and hurting. Here are 10 memberships to my website, to my online step by step 52A curriculum. Use them and then pre use them, but give them the clients that are struggling because I know, Mr. Accountant, you must be answering questions about marketing and business building all the time that you don’t want to answer, so here you go. Boom. By the way, clients of ours, we have a program that I ran, and it was how to successfully form a joint venture with an accountant. I used to charge thousands of dollars for it. When you become a client of ours, we give that to you free. And in fact, the program works so well, we would literally close two JV relationships with accountants for that program. So what am I getting at there? I want you to be asking, instead of what do I do? You got to answer, what do you want? And if you want to have a steady, consistent business coaching company and you definitely want to have one that scales, I want you to really look long and hard at going to 10 million dollar businesses and above because you’re going to find that you will battle mightily to scale it.
[00:13:14.500] – Karl Bryan
And again, as I said earlier, but just Tony Robbins, what does he do? Just walk into his room, look at his 5,000 people, and you tell me how many 10 million dollar companies are there. And by the way, guess where the 10 million dollar companies are generally? In the first five rows. So he sells those guys VIP tickets and that thing. So there’s some magic in that. RodeDog, good question. I know that there’s a lot of coaches out there that are going to $10 million companies. That’s a little bit of a roadmap. There you go, shoots. What do you think?
[00:13:48.020] – RodeDog
Hey, just real quick. You’re on the Rogers network, right? Yeah. So they have a national outage, just FYI. Really? That’s what it is. Hence the audio issues, folks. I was just looking it up to see… Apparently, I’m like Karl’s personal assistant all of a sudden. I don’t know how that happened. But anyways, so there you go, shoots.
[00:14:11.650] – Karl Bryan
Much better looking than the last personal assistant.
[00:14:14.720] – RodeDog
What’s that?
[00:14:16.180] – Karl Bryan
You’re much better looking than the last personal assistant.
[00:14:19.010] – RodeDog
I don’t think Mike’s going to like that one bit that you just said.
[00:14:23.260] – Karl Bryan
Mike?
[00:14:24.570] – RodeDog
That is pretty tough.
[00:14:26.770] – Karl Bryan
True name. Anybody new listening, right? That is the buddy of ours. That’s his name, Michael Hunt. But if you watch Porky’s, you’ll see he’s been given a speeding ticket in his life.
[00:14:38.550] – RodeDog
Registered beautician, to say the least. Hey, speaking of paying less tax, I don’t know how that… I’m really good at segues, by the way. I’m not sure if the folks are noticing just how smooth I am at that. See what I did there? I went from looks to taxes. It’s the same thing because anyways. So somebody wrote, and this is frightening. So whoever wrote this question and, I am scared of the hole that we’re about to enter because it’s a black hole. Karl Bryan talking about tax planning, taxes, accounting. This could be interesting. So here we go. Are you ready? You ready for the question?
[00:15:19.870] – Karl Bryan
Go big shoots.
[00:15:20.980] – RodeDog
How do I help my large, successful coaching clients pay little or less tax? What does Dr. Bryan say about that?
[00:15:28.260] – Karl Bryan
There we go. Dr. Bryan, hey, that’s a better rap name. How do you pay little to no tax? Again, let me answer this a little bit differently. Here’s the question I get asked a lot. What’s the secret of going from $50,000 to $250,000 with my coaching business or 100,000 to 300,000, whatever? It’s an important question, but I want you to remember it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. So if you follow me, you probably heard this before, but I don’t think you could hear enough. Give me a room of 100 people and I ask, What’s the number one expense? 80 hands go up for mortgages, housing, that thing, and they wouldn’t even be close. The highest expense for RodeDog, for me, for you, and everybody we know over the age of 21 is taxes. And it’s not by a slim margin, it’s by 100 bloody miles. So it’s a great idea to educate yourself on this topic. It’s boring, so nobody else ever does. They want to learn how to build cute websites and social media 101 tactics and secret sauce to online marketing. But this would be a topic that I would highly encourage you to delve into.
[00:16:41.850] – Karl Bryan
A few years ago, Amazon paid zero in income tax. And by the way, on no less than I believe was $13 billion of revenue. If that’s not mind boggling enough… And by the way, they also received that same year, I can’t remember the number, but it was something like $130 million tax rebate slash refund, by the way, from the government. Think about that. Zero tax on $13 billion. I hear you ask the question, how in the world would you do that? The answer, and I’ve spoken about this different times in the past, but it is a very complex topic, but a beauty, and that’s a feedback loop. Again, write that down, a feedback loop, secret sauce to many of what you will do, growing your coaching business and then helping your clients grow their coaching business. The bottom line is you only pay tax on profit. If you know anything about Amazon, you know that they’re the most unprofitable business in the history of mankind. Also, most successful. Bezos, again, very gifted individual, and he just saw something that nobody else remember was amazon.scam at one stage, which seems like a long, long time ago, but really not that long.
[00:18:01.440] – Karl Bryan
Amazon avoids tax by feeding revenue back into their business. That same year, they earned whatever it was, $13 billion. They had an operating loss of $627 million, I think it was. How do they do it? Look, three things. Number one, something property, plant, and equipment. They fed back over $60 billion back into their business over the last few years. So first of all, it’s that. Research and development, 22 billion something to that effect, was fed back into the company as they continued to create new products and services. Again, is your client spending money building new products and services? I would dare say no. Research and development, a great way for your feedback loop. Then the third one and the magic bullet is stock based compensation. Your client’s not going to be able to do this, to be clear, or I doubt it, they’re going to have to have a pretty crafty accountant. But rather than pay in cash, their staff bonuses, they offer shares and stock options that can be written off as a business expense. Now, here’s the X factor. The higher the Amazon stock price goes, the more they can write off as an expense.
[00:19:15.800] – Karl Bryan
You talk about a wealth hack on steroids. Again, this is going to need to be a client that’s highly profitable. But that is like… Again, if you look at the Amazon stock over the last 10 years, what has it done? Think about how much it’s increased. Again, every time it increases, it allows them to write off more and more. I don’t know. Last year, I don’t know what it was, but Amazon saved about a billion dollars in tax, and they use them basically a feedback loop is what they did. They just fed operations rather than feeding their pockets. What’s your client doing? Your client finally makes 100 grand or 200 grand if they go buy a boat, or maybe it’s you. Again, the business coach goes from $100,000 to $200,000. They buy a boat. Wonder why they’re not getting anywhere around financially. My dad, he often says the eighth wonder of the world is expenses have a way of crawling up the revenue, or the popular name for it in the business/marketing wealth world is lifestyle creep. It’s the best of the best have been taken by that. How many people do you know they make a million dollars net a year, and they really, when it’s all said and done, really don’t have anything.
[00:20:30.660] – Karl Bryan
And we’re seeing some of those people during the pandemic get caught with their boat down. The other thing about when you buy the boat or you buy the Ferrari or you buy the luxury good, all of a sudden you got to get out on your boat, which, by the way, is fun. I’m all for experiences and having a great time, having a great lifestyle. But again, if that boat is pulling you away from all of a sudden building your business, you’re not quite ready to be taken away from your business because that’s the way you got the damn boat in the first place. Be a little bit difficult. Lifestyle creep isn’t just about the money you spend on the boat, it’s the time that you suddenly spend on the boat. Then what do you do on the boat? Maybe you drink too many beers and it’s Sunday and now we wake up on Monday and we’re not quite ready to go and get our week going. This is all part of lifestyle creeps. Anyway, in a nutshell, how do they do it? Amazon, again, I’ll just give you the poster boy and the most successful of all time.
[00:21:23.820] – Karl Bryan
They reinvest their profits back into the company to help it grow and they therefore pay little to no tax. I want you to think of your business as a child. You’ve got to feed it. You’ve got to feed it. Remember, the business coach goes from $100,000 to $200,000 and buys the BMW. I want you to go from $100,000 to $200,000 and then maintain your lifestyle. Take a little bit of an increase. Buy a new car or a newer car. Go on some holidays, take some experiences, but take 80 grand of the extra 100,000 and feed it back into your business by advertising, take on a staff member, feed it back the way that Amazon does. Most definitely stop and help others, as in your coaching clients, overvaluing cute websites, multiple streams of income funnels. Instead of learning that stuff, multiple streams of income and passive income, that I’ll let you guys decide whether or not you know somebody doing that successfully and you’ll be very… I’ve said this a million times and I’ll continue to say it. If you introduce me to somebody with multiple streams of income, I’ll introduce you to somebody with multiple streams of very average income.
[00:22:40.370] – Karl Bryan
The benchmark that I use has hit $5 million with one stream of income, and then talk to me about the real estate and the stocks and everything else you’re going to be doing, one stream of income. But learn how to read financial statements over cute websites as an example. It’s a borderline travesty, very common mistake, see it all the time, clients, coaches, etc. Basically, the answer is a feedback loop, which I’ve written about multiple times in different emails. If you Google my name feedback loop, you’ll be looking at a lot of info about that and how to correct it, navigate it, etc. But instead of taking the money… Okay, RodeDog, you make 200 grand a year and then you buy yourself a $100,000 car, the car doesn’t cost you 100 grand. If you finance it, this gets even worse. But when you bring the $200,000 into your business, you take 100,000 of it out to buy the car, you’re really spending $150,000, roughly, on the car because you get taxed twice on the money, once through your company and then once personally as you take it out. Again, Amazon keeps it all underneath the umbrella of the company.
[00:24:05.910] – Karl Bryan
RodeDog, that’s the answer. Of course, smaller businesses aren’t going to be able to do that as effectively as Amazon, but I think that it’s a good idea to use Amazon as your framework and for your client’s framework and then adjust from there. What do you think, RodeDog? That’s my answer, bud.
[00:24:27.230] – RodeDog
Love it. Hey, listen, this is going to change gears a little bit here because somebody wrote in in terms of creating mental toughness. The only thing I want to say about that is 75 hard. It’s funny how everyone thinks it’s a fitness program, which it’s not. That was actually created to be more of a mental toughness type of program just to keep people committed for 75 days. Other than doing something like 75 hard, how do you create mental toughness?
[00:25:01.340] – Karl Bryan
I just want to expand. I love what you just said. It’s like I’ve often said this RodeDog, you know the movie… Sorry, not the movie, the book Money Master the Game? I’ve recommended that. I recommend many a time. You asked me to recommend a book for the average family and Western civilization. I say that that’s a must Read. I always say again, it’s funny because it’s a book about wealth, but it’s 80% psychology, 20% wealth tactics. It’s maybe a little bit like the answer we just gave a second ago. It’s like you go from $100,000 to $200,000 with your coaching and you buy a boat, it’s the mental toughness of not getting taken by the boat or the five series Mercedes. You know what I mean? Being okay. Do you want to look rich or do you want to be rich, I guess, is what comes to mind. Anyways, interesting. I agree. How do you create mental toughness? Great question. I would say that Snowflake Nation has taken over. If you follow my emails, I talk about that a lot. I talk a little bit of abuse for it, but I’m good with that.
[00:26:13.040] – Karl Bryan
Look, physical toughness, mental toughness. I played hockey in my day. I’ve broken almost every bone in my body, my nose five times, which is very obvious when you look at a photo of me, unfortunately. Eight fake teeth, hyper extended my knee, broke my wrist, broke my elbow, broke my collarbone. Ouch. Had more concussions, quite frankly, than I care to think about. Most painful was when I cracked my cheekbone. Bottom line, I’ve had some injuries in my day. But I’ve got a buddy, he could kick anyone’s you know what. I’ve seen him in bar fights and it’s a little bit messy when he decides to get mad. But mentally, I would classify him as weak. By the way, I’m not going to give his name because he could be listening to this. I don’t want him to give me a sock in the nose next time he sees me. But we all know that guy or gal I think I’m describing, right, on the exterior, super tough. And those are often, I think, the most mentally weak. And it’s a little bit of a shell, quite frankly, that bravado. I remember back in the day, I had one of my first ever business coaches.
[00:27:19.660] – Karl Bryan
She was like a quiet, neat old gal, but wow. And it was negotiating time and she was closing clients. Her clients were, Oh, I can’t do this. I’m overwhelmed, whatever. She took no crap from anybody and not a backward step. And some of my coaches that picture the barrel chested alpha male, and they would cower when the going got tough with their clients. Or Warren Buffett would be like another really good example. He looks like Jolly Old Grandpa. Looks like he’s soft as a pillow. But I’ve never negotiated with Warren Buffett clearly. That’d be awesome, but not even close. I could only imagine the level of toughness. Charlie Munger is offsider, same thing. Funny old Jolly Guys. I don’t think they were winning any bar fights back in the day. But again, tough as can be. I played hockey. I love the unrelenting guys. They were really tough on the rink, but then great guys off. I’ll tell you, in hockey, which I think is relevant, but in the last two minutes of the game, this is when you know who’s mentally tough. Or the playoffs versus the regular season. The ultimate compliment you could ever give me back in the day is, I hated playing against him.
[00:28:40.760] – Karl Bryan
They hated playing against me, but they take me on their team every day. Again, I don’t know that everybody was saying that, but that’s what I loved hearing. I think in business, I try to be that guy. I’m tough, but I’m not… You want me on your team, but at the same time, you tell me that you’re overwhelmed. You tell me how difficult it is. You tell me you don’t have time in the morning to work out, etc. I’m just not accepting it. You get the idea. I remember back in the day, I had $100,000 unsecured line of credit. I built it up. I went through a tough time. It got up to $96,000. At this stage, I called my mentor. He’s one of my best buds’ dad. The guy’s got more money than you could ever count. I don’t know if he’s got a bee before it, but 500 million, I would guess, on a very bad day. I called him. I said, I had some serious financial issues. The first thing he said is I am not bailing you out. I am not sending you five cents. Do you understand that? I’m like, I got it, man.
[00:29:53.890] – Karl Bryan
There was no very clear rules of engagement with this. But rather than try beg, borrow, steal, and find a way that I could borrow money off him or anybody else, I picked up the phone and I made more sales than you could ever imagine in the next 30 days. I remember I also did a live event. We talked about this different times, RodeDog. We were going to Seattle. I was doing it for a buddy of mine who’s just getting into coaching. I said, Look, man, fill this bad boy up and then let’s do it. Basically, less than a week before he calls me, he’s like, It’s not happening. Nobody in the room. We got four people booked. Let’s quit it. Let’s stop this and let’s do it next month. Let’s have another shot at a later date. Little man syndrome kicked in and I picked up the phone. I said, No way, man. My name is attached to this thing. We’ve done a direct mail campaign, etc. Maybe some people are just going to show up out of the blue. Basically, I picked up the phone and I can’t remember exactly what these numbers are, but I put about 50 people in the room that only fit 30, and I did it less than a week.
[00:31:00.370] – Karl Bryan
And all I did is I picked up the phone and I started hammering them in private messages, social media. And I’m some fairly comfortable saying there’s no other way to describe it than mental toughness and maybe decidedness is exactly what filled that room, the end. I remember when I had a tough time when I was $96,000 in debt on a $100,000 line of credit. My mortgage, by the way, was $4,600. If that kicked in, I was in trouble. Another thing, my mentor told me was that, You better fix this, and you’ve got less than a month to do this. Because once that hits, they’re calling these loans and now you’ve got a serious problem. When I say I picked up the phone, I lived in the Pacific time zone. I was calling the Eastern time zone in the morning. I was calling my time zone in the afternoon. I was calling Hawaii later in the day. And then I was calling New Zealand after that, and I was calling Australia after that. Cold calling, picking up the phone, sending messages, going hammer and tong. Again, decidedness is what got it done. B y the way, that’s the same program.
[00:32:05.060] – Karl Bryan
I have had one product for 15 years, and that’s the same product that I have today. I’ve built into an eight figure business. It’s the same one that I was picking up the phone and hammering on way back then when I was in stride. By the way, I don’t want to sit here and pat myself on the back. I’m trying to give you a little bit of a picture that sometimes you see the success and these guys on Facebook with their private jets and their Rolls Royces that they own, not the idiot that rents them and then takes his photo in front of it. Please never be that guy. That’s just so lame. I won’t go into that one. But that would be the opposite of mental toughness. When you rent a car or stand in front of somebody else’s car, take a photo and then put it up on Facebook. I don’t think that’s a good idea. But anyways, it’s just mental toughness. I don’t know. You can’t measure this stuff. I could go into other… I’m trying to think, Okay, so that side of it is “tough”. But I remember my wife had a miscarriage.
[00:33:09.760] – Karl Bryan
I don’t know if this is the topic I want to be talking about here today, but she didn’t have a miscarriage, by the way, she had a molar pregnancy, which basically means that I didn’t have any biological children at this stage, two step kids, but I had no kids. You can imagine how difficult this was. It wasn’t a miscarriage, but it was a molar pregnancy, which you don’t know that is. Let’s just say that nobody was getting pregnant anytime soon. There was a decidedly level of lacking of mental toughness is what I’m trying to say there. I was just grateful to have some very good friends at the time that prop me up. Don’t pretend you’re Superman. Don’t get your client to pretend like they’re Superman. As I always say, just get a little better every single day. The end game is what? The end game is the results. You can have your dreams or you can have your excuses. Let’s just say that. Again, line up the successful, the successful, the Warren Buffets, the Jordans, the Bezos, the Wayne Gretzky, the Tom Brady, my boy, love him. It’s Oprah, it’s Serena Williams, it’s Fedor, Roger Nedel, who I think is a total stud by the way.
[00:34:20.250] – Karl Bryan
Lots of mental toughness going on with those guys. Mental masturbation is just not going to get you there. Mental toughness, I think, is like, if you were to ask me to sum it up, get a vision and then take the action required in order to get you there. Then if you are wondering, am I going in the right direction? Am I doing what I should be doing? I would just say, really, what we’re talking about here is it’s not so much setting goals, but setting a vision. I would get you to ask three questions, maybe in some ways, to sum this all up. One, and I don’t think most people ask this one, but am I setting the bar high enough? I don’t think this is talked about a lot, but there’s a lot of reward in setting lane goals. What is that? That you don’t have to play big, that you don’t need to stretch yourself. It’s the guy going to the gym who puts on just a little bit of weight and then doesn’t have a spotter, pumps off, can, puts it down, and then talks about how they’re really going to the gym, which is fine.
[00:35:27.650] – Karl Bryan
That’s better than nothing. But think about that. That’s really easy to accomplish. Are you setting that bar high enough? If your job is total fitness, your job is to take your shirt off beside the swimming pool and look good in the summer, you might want to extend that a little bit. But number one, I’d be asking, did I set the bar high enough? And then number two, which would need to be a follow up to that, because I think also people miss this one where is the goal achievable? You’re limitless, but you are limited. You are a human being, so there’s only certain things that you can accomplish. You’ve got a certain amount of resources at this present moment in time. You got so much money, so much time, so much people resources. If you don’t have a team, you are limited to what you’re going to be able to accomplish right here, right now. You’re going to have to go to building your team before you go set this bar ridiculously high. Those two questions complement one another. I think that most people ask one or the other. Is the bar high enough?
[00:36:28.160] – Karl Bryan
One, is the goal achievable two? I would love to be able to dunk a basketball, but that’s just probably not going to happen for me unless you get a trampoline that I can jump off of. Three, I think the follow up on those two is are you willing to pay the price? The end. And again, I think that might sound a little bit platitudinal as I say it, but ask yourself that question and see, everything comes at a price. And the higher the bar, the higher the price. Think of it as a math equation. And if your mind is going towards four hours work weeks and this horsepucky, please just save yourself. It’s not happening. You’re not accomplishing anything impressive in four hours a week, the end, including working out. If you go to the gym once a week, you might as well just stay home and eat potato chips because you’re not going to get anywhere. But the bottom line, if you want to accomplish some big things, I would encourage you to ask those three questions. But the bottom line, I don’t know, mental toughness, RodeDog, it’s a tough one. But I do encourage people to that big bad boisterous man or woman.
[00:37:40.060] – Karl Bryan
It’s normally a little bit of a shell, and those very often are the, I don’t know, mentally weakest people you’re going to find. So it’s not about bravado, it’s about consistency, it’s about habits. So that would be my answer, RodeDog. But I agree, mental toughness is absolutely critical, boss.
[00:38:00.270] – RodeDog
I know you specifically said that you can’t really measure mental toughness, but, Karl, suppose for a second that you could, what would you say would be your answer on how to measure mental toughness?
[00:38:11.490] – Karl Bryan
That’s a good question. It’s funny, you measure anything, right? Height, weight, body fat, age, wealth. But not something as important as mental toughness. Because again, if you ask me the difference between a successful business owner or business coach and unsuccessful, just that mental toughness, intestinal fortitude would be another way of saying it. Here’s a question. If you want to know if you’re mentally tough or not and you’re a business coach, what happens when a coaching client tries to close or cancel your agreement? Do you cower at just another one and kick the desk and go, Oh, here we go again. And of course, they won’t get on the phone. Or do you stand up straight and say, Not here, not now, not happening, and you dogmatically save that person. The other question, how committed are you, not to your success, but their success? And again, why do you save them? Do you save them? Think about the mental gymnastics here. Are you saving them because you’re worried about your cash flow? Or are you saving them because you want to help them? Are you willing to reduce your coaching fees for a period of time? Because make no mistake, they’re not canceling because they’re overwhelmed.
[00:39:28.460] – Karl Bryan
They’re not canceling because X, Y, whatever they tell you is not the reason why they’re canceling. They’re not getting results and they don’t see value in your relationship, the end, and that includes on Christmas Eve. You got to turn that around and you need to dogmatically get in there, but you got to come from a place of saving them for them, not saving them for you. Again, mental gymnastics and possibly sounds a little bit platitudinal and trite, but I got to tell you, the difference is the grand canyon wide in terms of the difference in your approach. In my world, when I built a five and a half million dollar coaching company, we used to do $400,000 a month in new coaching clients. I got to tell you, I was pretty famous in my own little world. I own the company, so whatever. Famous is a horrific word for it. But my clients knew, my coaches underneath me knew that basically when I sat down and tried to sell you coaching, I wasn’t leaving until you bought. And again, I didn’t do my best. I did what it took. And the other thing is, when you were trying to cancel, if I stepped in, there was a pretty damn good chance you were sticking around.
[00:40:39.200] – Karl Bryan
You’re overwhelmed? Well, that’s why you need us. You’re following behind? That’s why you need us. You’re scared on the direction and your husband’s screaming? That’s why you need me. You’re broke? Now you definitely need me. So trying to frame your business up for sale? That’s why you need us. You’re trying to exit this thing, that’s why I’m here and what I’m going to help you do. Actually, here’s a way, you mentioned measuring it, right? A way that I think you could possibly measure that is count the number of hard, quote unquote, hard, I want you to bold that, Italicize it, capitalize it, hard conversations that you have. I think you’ll find that a lot of people, and it might be you, they try to avoid those tough conversations with the client, with the prospect, with the staff member, with their husband, with their wife, with their kids. I think mentally tough people run to those questions or run to those conversations and just keep it tally. And there you go. And this could be a measuring stick. Again, a mentally tough business coach is the one where the prospect says, I don’t have the money, and then you commit because you’re not in it for you and how much money you can make.
[00:41:59.190] – Karl Bryan
You’re in it for them. Go create the money so that they can pay you. You win second and they win first. That’s okay. Mentally tough is no one comes to live events and then you bloody well do it anyways. Mental tough is Facebook ads don’t work anymore and pounding through until you make it work. Mentally tough is the coach that builds a business during a pandemic. We’ve got lots of them. And then we got also lots of coaches. The truth is they’re cowering behind their phones. Mental tough is the coach that will… What do you do? You hire the staff member when you’re not ready. When I tell somebody they have to hire a lead generation expert or they have to hire a coach, get a coach in behind them, they say, I will when I’m ready. I automatically say, You’re never going to be ready. That’s not the way it works. Reasons come first, answers come second. Hire them and then watch what happens. You could always let them go. But that’s mentally tough. Not having all the information. Warren Buffett says you need to make 70% of the decision with 30% of the info, which once you’re 70% there, you’ve pretty much decided.
[00:43:11.750] – Karl Bryan
Being willing to make the decision with only 30% of the info and being 70% of the way there, look, I would dare say that that’s mentally tough. Mentally tough is being scared. What are you all doing it anyways. Mentally tough is the one that knows when their client says I’m overwhelmed and I need to cancel, knows what they’re really saying is that I need somebody stronger than me to step in here, point me in the right direction, hold my feet to the fire and keep going. Again, it’s I don’t know. That’s mental to me. That’s mental toughness. Again, question, as I go through that, are you mentally tough? And if not, you don’t have to become Superman tomorrow. Work to improve it every single day. You’re like, How? I just told you, run towards those hard conversations. Actually, no otherwise word to create. If you don’t have those conversations, you don’t have the coach, you don’t have the clients, you got to run towards those hard conversations. That hard conversations for you might be approaching the accountant, approaching the radio station, approaching the magazine, approaching the online directory, approaching the digital marketer. Then measure them every day.
[00:44:28.280] – Karl Bryan
Have your little calendar with your red pen and write down, instead of the date where there’s a 12, a 13, and a 14, write over top of that, 3, 4, 2. Those are the number of hard decisions you have. Again, are you doing what’s right or you’re doing what’s easy? I wrote about this in an email recently with my seven year old. I could put her in bed at night with a TV, and yes, she will eventually go to sleep, but is that what’s right or is that what’s easy? A gain, on a Saturday night, we’ve got some friends over and I’ve got beers flowing, have I put her to bed with a TV on? Absolutely. Am I going to do that on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on a school night? No, I’m going to revert to what’s right, not what’s easy. Are you going to cancel your speaking event or postpone it because you don’t have enough people not locked in? Again, which one’s right, which one’s easy? There’s your acid test, RodeDog, right there. How many hard questions? Again, something like a coaching client looking to cancel, how do you approach that conversation?
[00:45:32.460] – Karl Bryan
I think that that will be a pretty good barometer for a business coach going, Do I got some mental toughness? T his is what you have to instill in your clients as well. Again, they got a challenge with a client. They got a challenge with a staff member. Move them towards that call. And afterwards, you guys have all experienced, I’ve absolutely experienced it, RodeDog experienced it, where we do have that conversation of what happens afterwards, we feel great. Or another one is that a coach is finally going to do that live event. They do the live event and there’s poop in their pants and, Oh, my gosh. They do it and afterwards they feel so good. They’re like, I can’t believe how well it went. It was awesome. By the way, if they see that event, if they videoed it and they go back to it 12 months later and watch it, they would cringe a little bit because after they’ve done 10 or 15 events, they would look back at the first and say, Oh, my God. That was brutal. But afterwards it feels good. That’s how you a little bit of mental toughness shoots.
[00:46:31.590] – Karl Bryan
That’s the answer, man.
[00:46:34.310] – RodeDog
Just to close us out, what would you say would be your one thing from today’s podcast that our listeners could take into their business today? One thing.
[00:46:43.740] – Karl Bryan
Look, the tax again, we talk about this all the time, right? But understanding that tax is not a sexy, not a fun topic, but it’s a winner winner chicken dinner. I think that’s that. But I don’t know, the mental toughness, I like that. When your client goes to cancel, what is the approach that you take? That’s going to tell you your level of mental toughness. The needle mover there is you got to segue from your bank account and your coaching business to not happening and you’re not doing it for you. You’re doing it for them. Again, Tom Brady’s got a coach. Lebron’s got a coach. Jordan had a coach. Gretzky had a coach. Tiger Woods had eight coaches when he was top of the world. They need a coach. Just the question, is it you? And they need a mentally tough coach that’s not going to put up with their excuses and accept their excuses. So become that guy or gal. So that’s what I say. I love the mental toughness one, but that’s cool.
[00:47:43.220] – RodeDog
Well, there you go, folks. That’s it for, can’t believe It. That’s another episode of Business Coaching Secrets in the books with the main man on top of the hill, my boy, King Karl. And again, if you’re not on the inside and getting access to the free show or you aren’t getting Karl’s daily emails or just want more information on how to build your coaching company, visit Focused. com and subscribe today. Also, if you enjoyed the podcast, please share with a fellow coach or someone you think that might make a great coach. And of course, as always, we’d appreciate it if you’d rate this episode as we know that iTunes and Spotify give an insane amount of weight towards reviews. So please leave us a review if you like what you heard. And that is it for another week. We will see you next week. Remember, folks, progress equals happiness. Take care, everybody.
Karl Bryan built profit acceleration software 2.0 to train business coaches how to find any small business owner more than 100 percent $100,000 in 45 minutes without them spending an extra dollar on marketing or advertising. This becomes a business coach’s superpower. So as a business coach, you’ll never again have to worry about working with business owners that can’t afford your high-end coaching fees. Check us out at Focused.com.
If you’re interested in becoming a high-paid coach and consultant, contact us today at Focused.com and learn more about this exciting opportunity. Also check out the podcast Throwback to Episode 100-100 Episodes Ago on Spotify to hear it for yourself!