You've got the message. You know who you're talking to. So why isn't the marketing working?
That's the exact question Adam Roach and Jess Webber dig into in Part 4 of the Maslow Mountain series. This is the episode where the internal work you've done on messaging finally has to go public, and it turns out that's where most coaches hit a wall they didn't see coming.
The conversation starts with a distinction that sounds simple but cuts deep: marketing versus performing. If you've been tweaking your message to fit the room, adjusting your language based on who's watching, or changing what you lead with depending on the platform, that's performance. Marketing is something different. It's a clear, consistent message people start to associate with you before you ever show up. It's reputation built in advance. And the gap between those two things is costing coaches real opportunity every single day.
Adam and Jess also get into the owned versus borrowed media question, and they're not gentle about it. Borrowed media, your social platforms, your Instagram followers, your TikTok audience, works until it doesn't. You don't own any of it, and one algorithm change or account suspension can erase years of effort overnight. The more durable play is building something you own, getting consistent there first, and then using borrowed platforms to invite people into it, not the other way around.
What you'll learn in this episode:
The big idea here is the machine. When your messaging is accurate, when it lands with the right avatar at the right place on the mountain, marketing stops being something you have to push. It starts being something that pulls people toward you while you're doing everything else. That's not a dream state. Adam and Jess are living it right now, and they show the receipts.
"You want people to seek you versus just see you. And that's a big difference." — Adam Roach
Resources Mentioned:
Timestamps:
Ready to stop guessing and start growing? The ILC community is where coaches build businesses they're actually proud of. Head to ilovecoachingco.com to check out the new lead magnet and the upcoming Sellable Offers Challenge.
Jess, we are on, what is this?
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:Episode four here of the mountain, the Maslow Mountain, the hierarchy of needs mountain,
specific to now business.
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:And one thing that we see, let me put my glasses on because I can't see you.
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:there we go.
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:There you are.
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:Hi, Jess.
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:signs that Adam has finally admitted to himself that he's gotten a little bit older.
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:If you're not watching on YouTube, I now see blurry Jess and I see Jess.
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:Hi, Jess.
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:Okay.
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:So here let me get back out.
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:How easily disc distracted I can be.
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:Jess, we see this all the time in coaches, is their language when it goes out to the
world, is way too big.
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:Their marketing message does not land on the mountain, if you will, the Maslow Mountain,
on where their avatar is.
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:And what we want to do by the end of this podcast is to teach them, share with them, coach
them, the listeners, on how to build marketing that works without you.
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:And that's gonna be the key phrase here is how do you get your marketing to work without
you?
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:Problem no.
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:If your marketing does not land with the avatar, where they are on the Maslow Mountain,
you're screwed.
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:Exactly.
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:I mean, it it sounds simple, but the simplicity is the part that most people struggle with
in this concept because, you know, we we know all the way back when we first started
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:explaining the mountain, you know, four episodes ago, that people like to speak from where
they are and they like or they like to speak to where they're going.
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:And so there's a lot of aspirational big language.
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:And I would say that this episode, which
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:is probably the middle of our arc, because I bet we'll end up around seven of these is
probably the the pinnacle, you know, like if we're we're we're getting over the hump or
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:the hurdle of the difficulty level of cleaning up your language so that way it becomes
easier after this.
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:And I'm excited for this conversation because I do think that this is where we when you
and I engage with high level high ticket coaches struggle the most.
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:You know, we see those struggles really up here.
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:Yeah.
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:So let me give you, let's go back a little bit.
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:So episode one was all about what the Maslow Mountain is.
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:So if you need to go back and listen to that, go refresh yourself, go listen to that one.
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:Number two episode was all about what is the payoff?
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:What is the identifiable payoff that that individual avatar needs based on where they are
on the mountain?
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:And number three, last time, Jess, was all about the messaging problem, right?
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:Different from where we were last time, which was just identifying the messaging.
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:Now you have clearly identified the messaging that needs to go out.
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:And now we need to attach that to your marketing.
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:And that's that's what we're gonna talk about today.
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:Because if if you haven't done steps two and three, go do that before you continue to
listen to this.
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:Because outside of that, you're gonna be you're gonna be lost.
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:And and I may be
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:from internal positioning and language to now how do you turn it external?
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:That's right.
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:Yeah, exactly.
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:So let's dive into this.
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:So marketing, Jess, this is some language that we use, marketing versus performing.
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:Let's talk about that.
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:Yeah.
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:Well, marketing is a clear and consistent message that becomes the staple of what you're
known for.
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:So it is what the public thinks of you, almost in terms of reputation.
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:And that's kind of the way that I like to think about it is a consistent message that is
associated with you.
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:If you don't have that, then I feel like
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:Most of the time we would say that somebody is performing, meaning they're trying to tweak
their language, their marketing, their messaging to fit the moment, to fit the room, to
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:fit the space.
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:So there's a level of performance there versus consistency of messaging and reputation.
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:Yeah.
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:Well, and let we can go back to uh identifying why this happens is because if you don't
understand your messaging to create the marketing, you're going to continue to perform.
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:Right?
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:If you don't know where your avatar is on this mountain, you're going to continue to
perform because you want people to see you versus you should desire to have people seek
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:you.
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:versus just see you.
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:And and that's that's a that's a big difference between being out there.
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:I've been there.
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:I've I've truly sat on that s on that seat going up the mountain, down the mountain.
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:I'm all over the mountain.
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:I actually got stuck on the side of a mountain one time, Jess and I was like, this is it.
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:This is a very peaceful, peaceful space.
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:I was sweating on the side of the mountain because I was I was actually stuck.
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:I couldn't figure out how I was gonna get down.
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:it was bad.
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:Um and that was right after Dana said, hey
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:Be careful on that mountain because she knows I little little rambunctious.
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:Anyway, but let's talk about this because this can land with your emails, this can land
with your social media, this can land with your YouTubing, this can land with your your uh
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:podcasting, whether a hosting or a guest.
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:You can step on there and perform over and over and over.
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:Because if you don't have clarity on your messaging that can then create the marketing
performance for this and be known for who you are.
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:you'll perform over and over and over.
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:Well, I think you hit the nail on the head with really clear language there, the
difference between see and seek.
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:I mean, that's that's what we're getting at in this concept of marketing versus performing
is performance means, hey, look at me, not hey, this is what my stuff can do for you.
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:And there's and so we don't want people seeing you.
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:We want people seeking your outcome, your payoff, your solution to their problem.
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:And you can be the attractive character for this so people can see you out in the world
because you know nobody's gonna buy what they don't know exists.
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:But at the same time, we want them actively looking for your solution, not actively
looking for you to solve things in a unique way.
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:in a performative way, right?
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:And and so that's really kind of that differentiator of C versus seek or marketing versus
performance that almost I would say almost everybody struggles with until they get coached
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:up in it.
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:Yep.
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:And let's go back to some simple language here that we've heard before and we've been
coached up before on is when you do have good messaging, when you do have good marketing,
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:excuse me, and you are not seeing you're not seeing the return on your marketing that you
want, you will get tired of your marketing before your market gets tired of your
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:marketing.
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:And and that happens so frequently.
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:We we see this a lot with people who are trying to double down, especially on social
media.
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:And but it, I mean, it goes across any channel or any platform that you're on.
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:You are gonna see 100% of your content, but the algorithm, whether it's an email one,
whether it's a social media one, whether it's a paid ads one, it doesn't matter, doesn't
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:guarantee that your audience is gonna see 100% of your marketing.
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:And I mean the averages have changed over the years.
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:And now the algorithm on social media is less than 20% likelihood that people are going to
see your content if it's high-quality, high-engaged content.
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:And it could be that no one sees it because the algorithm doesn't think that it's good.
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:And that's the the key to understand is that when you're marketing.
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:lands with people because of where it is positioned language wise and you know leveraging
that messaging, then you're gonna have a great return on it on your energy and time
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:investment here at 20%.
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:Right?
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:And and that's where I think most people give up on marketing way too fast, or they
believe that they need to hire out marketing way too fast because they're bored with it.
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:They've done it and they aren't seeing the results they want from it because
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:They see a hundred percent of it, but they don't n their people are not landing with it.
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:Yeah.
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:It's it's so fascinating and so true that I mean it's it's we get we get bored.
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:Right?
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:We we we we get bored and yet the avatar, at least a hundred percent of it, hasn't even
seen your stuff.
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:And that that's why that's why I actually don't this is a whole nother podcast, but I
don't necessarily believe that social media is the right applot approach.
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:You know, sometimes I don't I
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:Social media is good for what it is, but we learned a long time ago that that is that is
borrowed media, right?
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:And borrowed media from that standpoint can become a good machine over time if you have
the right avatar watching you, which is a little sneak peek of of the avatar problem,
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:which is episode number five.
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:Uh, but we're not gonna talk about that right now.
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:Is
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:Jess, we know that the job here in the marketing space is to attract the right avatar
because the messaging lands.
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:And if you can build a database with the right avatar and you can control the marketing
that goes out to that database, now you have a collected, correct group of people
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:receiving the right marketing that a higher percentage will now start to raise your hand.
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:And that's what we want to talk about is how do we build marketing that will work without
you?
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:This is the machine component.
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:Well, and that's I love that you brought up owned versus borrowed media because I think
that's a huge piece of this.
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:Is a lot of times people will double down on borrowed media, which is something like
socials, because you don't own the platform, you don't own the audience, you just collect
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:followers, and you don't have a way of staying connected to them that you own or operate.
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:So that's why we call it borrowed media.
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:Most people will lean into that first.
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:In order to build up their own media.
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:But I think the key strategy here is truly create consistency in your own media and then
invite people to it using borrowed.
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:And that's not a hard thing.
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:And so the reason I say this is if you can create consistency, and a perfect example is
this podcast.
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:We record one episode a week, that's consistent.
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:It's not three posts a day or five or seven stories a day on Instagram or anything like
that.
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:This is one episode a week that we deliver in audio and video format.
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:We have a newsletter and a blog that pairs with it.
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:So now you've got written format.
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:Those are all there, there's borrowed platforms like YouTube, but we still own the video
content that we can produce in other ways.
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:We borrow
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:The mechanism of an email delivery platform, but it's all email that we write.
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:Our blog is ours on our website.
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:So we we started with the owned ecosystem.
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:And then when when we feel like the time is right and ready and we want more eyeballs on
it, or we want to invite more in, that's where we can transition and build out something
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:simple.
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:So, you know, this is where you'll hear lead magnets and funnels and things like that to
invite people into an already existent.
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:consistent ecosystem.
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:Yeah, yeah.
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:And you're absolutely right.
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:That is the piece that people miss when building the machine is I'll we'll keep picking on
social media.
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:Social media says, my gosh, I'm gonna go start my own coaching business.
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:Great, love that idea.
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:And I'm actually gonna follow I Love Coaching's uh blueprint, even better idea.
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:What they do then, Jess, is they'll go jump into their social medias.
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:And I say that plural because it could be Facebook, could be YouTube, could be Snap, could
be TikTok, whatever it is.
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:And they say, Wow, I've already got 5,000 followers.
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:That's who I'm gonna go after.
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:Now, that's not the approach that we're talking about here, you all.
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:And that's where we fail, is because the marketing that you have established isn't
necessarily for all of those people.
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:You've got to go out and be seen.
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:Versus, I'm sorry, BC have people seek you versus just go out and be seen.
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:And that's why we like owned media first.
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:We can do this, we can establish the marketing and the language and the problem solving
here.
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:And then we know that those listening, we know that those reading our emails, we know that
that will land because that's going to be the machine that we build and develop.
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:All of our stuff is for that, Jess.
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:Even our upcoming challenge, Sellable Offers, is for the avatar that we will serve.
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:Exactly.
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:Well, and that's that's why I mentioned lead magnets, funnels, and things like that, which
we can talk about for a minute here.
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:But the key is when you start with your own stuff and you create consistency around the
own stuff, it makes the lift of inviting people into it much easier than trying to start
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:with figuring out messaging and marketing on a borrowed platform and then it flopping or
not landing and not having any way to bring people into your world.
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:So a great example of this is um
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:A coach that you and I have worked with in the past had a specific real go viral, you
know, multiple millions of views, grew their their page massively, and they were trying to
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:use AI automations and a team to like DM people and close people on all these things.
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:Well, a competitor reported them for whatever reason, and their Instagram was shut down
for weeks.
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:Yeah.
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:suddenly this massive audience that that they had gained so much traction with was wiped
out in an instant when they couldn't log in.
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:And they had no backup.
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:They had no owned media, even though we had coached with them and we had told them, hey,
use leverage the success on borrowed platforms to get people into your owned world.
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:They ignored that that philosophy and spent tons of time, energy, and money trying to get
this Instagram back.
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:Because they felt like their business was stagnated because they had nothing to show for
what they had done.
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:And so that is why marketing is so important.
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:Again, I we're deviating slightly, but it's related, is you don't have to do all the
platforms and hire a marketing team.
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:That's not what we're saying.
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:We're saying find your messaging, be consistent in your own space, and then you can
leverage borrowed spaces to grow that.
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:And then if your your account is shut down or a server is down or whatever, you still have
everybody's data that has raised their hand and said, I want to be in your world.
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:And those are the people who are more likely to seek you than just see you.
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:And that's the whole kind of ball of wax that we're getting at here.
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:And and and we can let's go back into the the the machine itself here for a second, Jess.
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:And you started to touch on it uh a second ago.
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:We track, we have March, April, and I'm assuming we'll have May here at the end the month,
email data, right?
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:Email data that we send out emails, the open rate and the click-through rate.
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:And and I want to I want this, I want, I want the listener to hear this.
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:When your messaging is accurate.
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:When your messaging is accurate, and then the marketing lands with the messaging to the
right avatar, we now have watched our open rates go from sub-20 to in excess of 65% open
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:rate.
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:Okay, pause for a second and let's let's just digest that.
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:So nearly a 40% increase because the messaging was right, and the machine, which we turned
on in an email form, which has been running for a while, had the right subject line.
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:Right is just meaning that the the messaging was correct.
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:We have built brand recognition, so people trust the brand now.
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:And the language inside of the email messaging was.
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:Right avatar.
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:Okay, so it jumped up to 64 60 is almost 67%, was the April open rate, right?
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:Right.
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:Let's go back to March for a second.
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:So inside of March, we had, I believe it was 54 clicks.
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:Right.
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:So of all that that was going out, we had 54 clicks.
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:Okay, that's great.
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:That's that's a that's a that's a good click rate.
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:Next month, which was April, because the marketing was consistent and the messaging was
accurate, we had 244 clicks.
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:Mm-hmm.
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:this is the machine that we're talking about here is when you build this marketing
component, when you build a machine that reaches out to the data of the right avatar and
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:the messaging is right and the consistency is right, we even increase the consistency a
little bit from March to April, ah you will see the ROI that you expect as it relates to
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:building the brand and building the awareness around the problem that you solve.
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:Right.
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:And and those are, you know, we're not telling you're doing it wrong if you don't have a
67% open rate or anything like that.
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:But hear, hear what we're saying of you.
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:Hear what we're saying in terms of messaging matters.
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:And that's why the next episode talking specifically about Avatar is so important too.
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:Because the other thing is, is I would much rather have a higher
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:percentage open rate of a smaller email list than a larger email list and a lower open
rate because we know that we've got the right people in the list.
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:And again, that's why I think it's so valuable to build a list from something you own, not
starting with the borrowed.
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:And so, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, my God, this is a lot.
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:This is changing my strategy, whatever, know how easy it is.
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:I I
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:I am notorious for doing something kind of as an early adopter, whether it's uh, you know,
using a new AI tool or doing something else.
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:And I will have people ask me, how did you do that?
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:Can you teach me?
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:Can you write it down?
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:Can you show me whatever?
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:So I've gotten to the point now where I have my AI partner write down the steps that I
took in a like a PDF guide, and then I turn that into a lead magnet.
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:And then when I'm in a room on a podcast, in a Facebook group, it doesn't matter where I
am.
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:That lead magnet now becomes a piece of value that I can offer to people that I'm already
in rooms with and say, my gosh, here's the solution to your problem.
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:And I can put them in my my email list with little to no friction.
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:But that's because I built the email list first.
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:I knew what I stood for and I made lead magnets that aligned with that.
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:So I knew what I was bringing them into before going out into the world and saying, Here,
have this lead magnet.
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:That is the Yeah.
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:you to share how simple of a lead magnet it was from a marketing standpoint that you had
because you had developed it, but you knew you did it because number one, you needed it.
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:But number two, you knew the avatar that you desire to attract would need it also.
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:Because I want the listeners to hear how easy it is to create an asset, a lead magnet like
this.
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:Yeah, well, I I think it's funny because I spent time building a very pretty one that has
like significantly fewer downloads than the simple one that was made by my AI tool that
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:was like a document.
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:And so the one that has had the most downloads and most engagements for me is how I broke
up with Chat GPT in a in a weekend and transferred everything to Claude so that I could
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:start working on a Monday without any friction.
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:um
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:And literally it was just a document.
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:Like it wasn't fancy.
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:It didn't have a bunch of links or anything like that.
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:It was just here's the steps that I personally took to make this thing happen.
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:And it was delivered to people's inboxes as a PDF.
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:That's it.
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:That's it.
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:That and again, that's how simple this is, right?
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:That's really how simple this marketing can be, is understanding the right messaging to
land with the right avatar based on where they are on the mountain can build your own
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:media space fast.
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:It can build fast.
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:and that one lead magnet has tripled my um number of individuals on my email list.
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:Now my email list was small, but I've still tripled my list from one thing that I made
through AI while on a Zoom call because somebody asked me to write down the steps that I
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:took to do the thing over the weekend.
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:Not because I spent a bunch of time, not because I hired out a designer.
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:Not because I even made it in Canva.
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:It's a Google Doc, y'all, that I converted to a PDF.
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:But it was that easy and it solved an immediate pain.
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:And so that's the key thing here is that the marketing, the messaging was speaking to
where they were on their mountain in the moment, not where they wanted to be, and not
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:where you were, but where they were.
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:And so I solved something simple and specific.
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:And that grew my audience.
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:And I've I've had a few unsubscribes here and there.
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:And that's fine.
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:If people only want the PDF, so be it.
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:But even with tripling my email list, my open rates are still between 50 and 70% every
single week on my newsletter, which means that I'm still having a good success rate,
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:despite the list increasing in size, which means the messaging inside of my newsletter is
valuable.
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:And you know what my newsletter's about?
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:The podcast episode I filmed several days and released earlier in the week.
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:So again, I am not making this complicated.
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:I am not saying build some big content machine.
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:I'm not saying hire out anything.
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:I'm not even saying start a podcast today.
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:But the the thing here is start with something simple that you own and then create an
opportunity to invite people into it.
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:And at the end of every episode on my website, on my emails, it says, Hey, if you want to
know more, either respond to this email or go to this website.
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:And so I've cr removed a lot of friction.
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:I haven't put them in a big sequential funnel that makes them jump through twenty-seven
hoops.
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:I give them an easy way to continue the conversation with me if they're ready.
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:Mm-hmm.
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:Love it.
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:And that's the title of this podcast is Marketing That Works Without You.
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:And that's what that is.
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:That is Marketing That Works Without You.
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:Remember this?
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:I don't remember whether it was a couple weeks ago, a couple days ago.
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:I can't remember.
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:It's all blending in time for me right now.
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:I guess once I got glasses, it's like the old man syndrome just kind of sits in and I
can't remember half the stuff anymore.
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:Anyway, kidding.
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:Um, we found just remember we found a lead magnet or we found a a value add page that I'd
created.
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:A bit.ly link for which means we can track it.
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:And we opened that up the other day, it's like a time capsule.
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:It had over 9,000 views, you guys.
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:So people are still out there finding the stuff that we had created because it solves a
problem.
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:So if that isn't language of itself marketing that works without you, that page, which was
uh entry into our blueprint way back in the day, which was probably like blueprint version
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:number four or something.
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:is still getting seen and it's a private page.
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:I don't even know how they're seeing it these days, but it's at over nine thousand views,
which is super cool.
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:have the link attached to something somewhere, Adam, but who knows what, where, why, how.
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:And see, this is this is what's so funny is like you you did the bit.ly for your own
tracking purposes.
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:I don't even go that far.
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:I just use my my don domain name.
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:So big ideasmade simple dot com is my domain.
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:And every time I make a new lead magnet, I just slap a subdomain in front of it.
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:So the the chat GPT breakup guide transfer to Claude.
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:I literally just made it a URL that I could rattle off in any group without needing a
bit.ly link.
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:And I just have Claude dot big ideasmade simple dot com.
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:And anytime I'm anywhere and somebody starts talking about it, I was like, here, I made
this a while ago, but you're welcome to use it.
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:And I throw it in there and it's literally a simple form, name, email, address.
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:Great.
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:I'm gonna send this to you.
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:And that's it.
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:Like it's not a fancy funnel.
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:I didn't.
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:I'm not using Go High Level.
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:I didn't pay somebody to build something complex.
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:Russell Brunson would probably cry if he looked at it next to what he teaches for
ClickFunnels and Two Comma Club.
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:But at the same time, I have tripled my list and kept my open rates, which means a lot to
me.
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:And I have the opportunity to continue to do that when I live life and solve problems
simply for people and create new lead magnets from it.
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:I see I see what you just did there, by the way.
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:I see how you put that into the podcast for the podcast listeners to go find that, go
download it because I'm sure it'll be useful for them.
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:Did I just s that was really good, Jess Weber.
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:That was really
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:Really good.
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:We're gonna see a triple, if not quadruple size uh database right now.
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:Okay.
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:and I mean, but the my point was is anybody who is feeling overwhelmed by this
conversation doesn't need to feel overwhelmed.
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:And so the reason I was sharing it was not to put people in my world, but to show you how
easy it is.
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:And if you don't know how to do those things, either ask somebody or ask AI how to do the
things that I said because they're easy.
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:They're not difficult, they're not complicated.
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:You don't need to pay somebody to do it.
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:You can have AI write down the steps that you took.
336
:Very true.
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:Very, very true.
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:Okay.
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:Land the plane here, Jess.
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:Land the plane.
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:I mean, we we have lead magnets all the time.
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:We're we're actually launching a new one.
343
:So if you haven't been to I Love Coachingco dot com, head over there after this episode
drops and you'll be able to see a new one that we're building.
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:And it's the same premise.
345
:Ours is just focused on all things coaching and being able to understand and audit your
coaching business as a business to make sure that you're setting yourself up to grow and
346
:scale without scaling the the effort at the same time.
347
:And that's really what our our love and passion is, is to help people create simple
sellable offers so that they can build a coaching business designed around them and how
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:they want to show up in the world.
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:And I mean, we've got a challenge coming up as well.
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:So don't forget to check that out.
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:Same website, I love coachingco.com slash challenge.
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:Yeah, pretty simple.
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:Okay, nice job there.
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:I have no doubt that this landed for people, and I'm gonna give you a little teaser on the
next one.
355
:Okay, the next one, which is episode number five, and I believe it'll probably be out of
seven.
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:Episode five.
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:In episode five, Jess and I will share how we took a database from 13,000 down to 900, and
we called it the avatar problem.
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:So we're gonna show you guys.
359
:And explain to you how and why that happened.
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:But think about that.
361
:You think you're gonna go win the World Series of connecting with people and you have
13,000 people on a list, and you get to only connect with 900 of them out of 13,000.
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:So come to the next podcast.
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:That will be the next title.
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:Okay, Jess, anything else?
365
:Nope, that's it.
366
:Thanks for listening.
367
:Thanks for listening.
368
:See you guys bye.
369
:Bye.