Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. In this bonus episode, you're going to hear what

a coaching session with me is like. Hi, I'm Katie McManus,

business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weenie cast

Squirrel. In the last couple weeks, my podcast

producer, Neal Veglio reached out to me and asked me if I would

please do a session with him because he was wanting some direction

where he should go in his business. And so we did this 90 minutes

session. I have full permission from him to share this,

but he thought it would be an incredible opportunity for

you, our weeniecast listeners, to see what it's like to be in

session with me. Now, each one of my sessions is different depending on

what my client needs. We did some really interesting stuff in

this session, so I hope you enjoy this little behind the

scenes look as to what it's like to work with me as your coach.

Before we get into what you want to talk about, you mentioned in your

intake form that you want to do more consulting. Yeah, I'd like

to. So why isn't there a consulting offer in your offer

suite? My website is just a

mess. There is a consulting offer on there, but I think unless you

know what you're looking for, it's difficult to find. So I would say

probably my most popular consulting is the

audits. Those are the things that really,

I can quite realistically expect to

sell at least one audit a month. Honestly, in November

and December, they kept me afloat. Thank God for them. But it's

the clearest one because obviously I talk about it on the podcast. I talk about

it on LinkedIn all the time. And it's really easy,

open access. But the kind of substantial

version of that which you were sort of alluding to the other day, that is

a little bit less clear. A. I think your audits need to be increased in

price. Doesn't have to be dramatic. It could be like 350 pounds,

400 pounds. But I think to sort

in a more serious podcaster.

And also there's not a big difference between 254

hundred. Like if you're going to pay for an audit for your

podcast, you're going to pay for an audit for your podcast. And then

on the back end of that you could absolutely have a

consulting offer that's like 600 pounds a month. And it

has two calls. You review like one to

two episodes per month and you kind of help them. Like, different things

you cover in the consultation is like, here are the keywords you want to be

using. Here are the topics that you want to do as you're planning

out different topics. Here are the titles you want to go with. Here's

how you make it interesting. Here's your marketing plan, and you're

telling them how to do it. You're not doing any of it yourself. Yeah.

The other thing, you have too many offers, you're giving

people too many choices, and they're going to go with the cheaper option. Except for,

like me. How much time does it take for you for each one? Like,

how many hours would you say you do per month for each package?

Shall you use yours as an example? Yeah,

anything between twelve and 22 hours,

depending on how complex the episodes are. If I'm sourcing

audio for when we've got bits of Dolly Parton and stuff like

that going down, it's obviously I've got to, number one, I've got to sort of

find the license use and reach

out for permission and stuff like, yeah, but then you could

have a podcast where it's like a two hour edit, because it's just

simple. Okay, I'm going to give you a little bit of a peek behind

the curtain on this. I think my biggest issue with

scale is my perfectionism. Yeah.

I don't know if you've ever listened to your episodes and compared them to

other people's episodes, but there is a lot of

quality control that goes through filler words,

breath work, pacing, stuff like

that. That does take time. It was a

decision I took a couple of years ago that, okay, I could go down the

road that everyone else does where just stack them high, sell them cheap, get it

done, and do five episodes in a day like the guys on Fiverr do. But

I was like, well, if I'm doing that, then I've got to really drop my

pricing and I want to get results. And the only way of getting

results is to make it a decent listener experience. So I am

kind of like a victim of my own quality in that.

Obviously I'm putting the time in, but it does take the time.

So there's a limit to how many. Certainly while

I'm a loner at the moment as well, I mean, I do a little bit

of outsourcing very rarely because I

can't find anybody that's good enough to do it. But if I go away or

something, when I went away last year, last September, I had a guy

that stepped in and edited some of the sort of what I would call

less important podcasts

because it is just me. It's kind of like the max I can sort of

do managed services for is about three or four or five at a real push.

Yeah, sorry, I have a couple of thoughts going through my brain. I

mean, bottom line, no one will notice besides

you. No one will notice besides you. You think

your clients are going off and listening to their podcasts and comparing it against other

podcasts. I've never done that.

I've never sat down and listened to mine, and I don't even know what I'm

listening for. I'm listening for. Do I sound like an idiot?

The editing is beyond me. Okay? I know that

we're getting results. Okay, so here's where my brain is going, is

like, if you're going to have lower tier options for people who

can't afford to work with you, then those

are the people that you kind of use subcontractors for.

And one of the perks of being a subcontractor for you is you're going to

do some kind of mentorship. You're going to help them get better because there's

plenty of business out there for everyone and you're still going to be like the

creative, high level person in this scenario.

However, you're not going to be in the weed saying,

okay, well, you need more breath work here. You're going to say, okay, cool, I

want you to go back and listen for the breath work.

Let me go back and listen for pauses. I want you to go back and

listen for what the story arc is here

and you help them get better. The end client, if they can't

afford to work with you, they know they're not getting the master

on their things, right? But ultimately they're not going to know the

difference, right? Think about how many people sign up for an

audit so that you can listen to their podcast and they think it's amazing.

I'm with you. It's overthinking, isn't it?

It is like that hole. You're too close to it.

My brain has been going towards educating people

to understand why it's better, but you're sort of coming from

the other direction of don't worry about it, no one cares. Honestly,

no one cares. So when you get onto LinkedIn and

you start educating people about podcasts, you're actually not talking to your ideal clients.

What you're doing is you're talking to other podcast people. You're talking to the

neils of like ten years ago, right? Which, I mean, if you want

to create a mentorship offer, absolutely, keep doing that.

But your ideal clients don't give a fuck because they don't know the

difference they don't know any of the lingo that you're talking about.

They can see you getting on your high horse about stuff, but also

and think, oh, cool, he obviously knows what he's doing, but it's never a

message that they're like, oh, I have to sign up with

him. It was never those posts that got me thinking

I needed to work with you. Interesting. This is one of the

hardest things for business owners to do for themselves,

right? Yes. Is figure out what about what I do is interesting

to the person who has the money that could be my client,

and what is it that I'm going to say that's going to get them to

decide to buy? So

let's hop into a parallel

category here and do some work on who your ideal client is,

because I had some questions based on what you described, because I know I love

being your ideal client, but also, what about me and what about other

people makes them your ideal client? Where are they in their business? How

much money are they making? What are their current challenges?

What's their greater purpose with it? And what's kept them from

starting a podcast on their own? So let's go through

that. Okay, just word vomit at

me. Is this from the frame

of why you're an ideal client or just generically. Sort of

talking about wherever your brain chooses to go

first? I'll dive in and dig further. So just, if you want to start

with me, go for it. If you want to start with, you know, you.

So it's easy for you to relate to why

you are, if that makes sense. So I think reasons why ideal client?

Well, number one for me, it's about the working relationship.

For me, that's fundamental. I've fired clients not long

ago because the red flags were just all over the place

in terms of clearly not valuing what I bring. If I

can't feel like they know what I'm bringing to the table

and they've not done the sort of the mind work themselves

to be in a position to work with me and trust that then it's making

my life more difficult because then I've got to run every tiny little detail

past them except to begin with you. Absolutely. That's what I used to do with

you. First few episodes. Here's your episode. Here's your episode. And then when you

get to a point where you're like, okay, yeah, this guy knows what he's doing.

I can trust that he's got my best interest, then we can relax a bit.

But that's for me, key fundamental having someone that you

know is going to trust in what you do. Understand

that I'm here for you. And ultimately,

while I'm sort of, like you say, I'm in the weeds with the quality and

perfectionism and all that sort of stuff, ultimately my goal is make you

freaking money. That's what it comes down to.

Even if it's like opportunities that might not be monetary,

stuff's happening that makes you value the podcast. Number two? Yeah, I

think you're in exactly the right kind

of financial bracket of someone

that I can really shift the needle for. It's not like a

massive corporate where you're literally just numbers on a spreadsheet.

And it's very difficult for

people at that level to understand what value I'm bringing to the

table. So you're talking very abstractly when we're talking about

financial bracket and all this stuff. What is

it? What do you perceive is a financial bracket

that makes someone ideal for one of your top tier offers? I

mean, obviously I don't know what your revenue is and that's business,

but from ascertaining an idea

of it, usually I'm looking at sub 1

million revenue. Someone or a

body that is within reach of that, there's an

obvious opportunity there to grow with the business so not

coming in when they've already grown. And what you bring into

something where, for example, one of my

previous clients, she was a travel agent, she pivoted in Covid,

so that all ended. But she could

attribute what I was doing to her growth until the

point where she had to pivot. That for me is really important. I have to

feel like I'm achieving stuff that might be the child state in me, but

yeah, that's a big important factor. I have to be able to enjoy it.

So it has to be something that sparks something in me. So

for example, if you're a bank, I'm probably not going to be fired up about

working with you. Yeah. So what kind of topics spark it for you?

It's not really about topics. It's about impact. It's about

what people bring to the table. That could be a number of things. That

could be something that brings change to everyday

people. It could be political change, it could be financial

change, it could be even spiritual change. I'm open

to. I mean Jenny, that's pretty much what she's doing. It's all

about spiritual, really something where I feel that

it's going to be a fun process and something I can.

And also I kind of like to be able to learn from the projects I

work on as well. I feel like I've learned a

lot from you, just working with you week to week. I know a

lot more now about not just about ADHD, but about business in

general. So, yeah, that's a fairly big

factor that ticks the boxes. Yeah, shut up,

Neil. Tell me more about the goals of the

people that you work with. Goals of the people I work with. I

think money is obviously important, but this is like a

running theme is that most of them come to me and

then money is not the number one primary goal.

Impact is the number one primary goal. They want to feel

like they've left something behind, like a legacy

of significance, rather than just wasting their time posting social

media posts. They want to feel like they've had some impact on the

world. And I love that. That's a big thing for me,

and it's always been. The reason I've podcasted myself is not to

make money. I mean, I've done several podcast projects in the past where I made

nothing from them and didn't try to, but it was his own reward. But

yeah, money is obviously going to be. I'm a business podcast guy.

I can't really go around selling, selling services to people that

just want to piss money in the wind.

Obviously, that is a factor. I'm not oblivious to the fact

that you got to sort of park that purpose a little bit and

bring real world. Yeah, I think

people that are doing it for those reasons. And also,

I mean, it's the whole leah Turner thing, again, no knobs,

as she says. Same for me. I want to help

good people. I know that sounds really

so you. Actually, there are some things here that I know about

me that you've jumped over that I think would be really

compelling content wise for you and selling wise, I

actually don't give a fuck about impact. It's great. I love it,

honestly. But it's not why I do what I do. It's not why I have

a podcast. If you were to ask me why I have a podcast, it wouldn't

even rank in the top 20. Interesting. Yeah, I love

the impact. I love getting feedback from people that it helps, but that's

not the why. The why is I want to be lazier about

my content, right? I don't want to have to create content every single day.

I also know that there's a huge market on listening to podcasts that

won't see me on social media. It's a way for me to diversify

how I get clients in a way that's way more

passive. Like two years from now,

there's going to be 150 plus

episodes out there that are going to be doing a shit ton of work to

bring clients in. It's starting now.

It's great. And it's also just starting for me when I

think about why I show up every single week for our

podcast recording and what is the thing is, because I know this is

like the foundation of my own great Wall of China.

You can't have a great wall of China if you haven't laid the foundation, if

you haven't set the plan. Love that. And that's one of the things that's

going to help you sort in and sort out the people who are like, oh,

it's like the cool thing to do right now. People who are thinking the way

I'm thinking of, okay, cool. I want this business to

have a long term growth.

This is one of the things that you can do right now. And then it

brings you into. Anyone who tells you you're going to have

immediate results is full of shit. You're

not. My client, Katie, she started getting sales calls from it six months

in. They weren't necessarily her ideal client. Some of them were absolutely nuts.

And her first few clients that she got from the podcast were nine months in.

And that's extraordinary. Usually people don't get that until a year in.

But what's amazing is that the episodes that got those clients in

are still out there. They're not going anywhere. They're still being

recommended to people. People can still sort through. And the way people

consume podcasts is like, whatever the title

was of that episode is still drawing people in to listen to it.

So, yes, impact is cool.

So the revenue I had when I signed up with you was 250,000

a year ish. My goal, obviously, is to get to

seven figures. So that could very easily be

your guesstimate of where people are. Because

honestly, if someone's spending, and we'll talk about

your prices in a little bit, if someone's

spending, what is it, like 30,000 a year on a podcast?

That's a big percentage. If they're only making 100,000 a year,

you want it to be that benchmark at least,

because you have to remember they have to be able to afford it for at

least a year before they start seeing stuff back. A lot of what you listed

is about you. It's not necessarily about them. Right. So what are the things

that they're struggling with every single day? Making money,

paying the bills. Well, okay, so

careful there. If they're struggling to pay the

bills, you don't want people who are struggling to pay the bills, they're not going

to be able to be with you consistently. Right? So they want

to accelerate their track to seven

figures instead. If you're wanting to draw in

more mes, except for this last year, this last year was a shit

show. But if

you're wanting to draw in more people like me, it's they're wanting to accelerate

their path from here to seven figures. They don't want to work as hard for

it. They want to have something out there that's doing work for

them, that's just constant visibility. They want to have

access to a new audience. Round the clock sales

exec, essentially, isn't it? Exactly. Bigger

picture. Like eventually they want to write a book. Eventually they want to

be paid to be a keynote speaker for

major conferences around the world. Eventually

they want bigger media opportunities.

I think I told you this, I want my own tv show in the next

ten years. To a certain degree, it could be also like

they're ready to step into the limelight in a different way. That's

outside their comfort zone. There's also a degree

of having something to point the freebie chasers to,

right. Because up until you're making 200,000 a

year, there's a lot of freebie chasers that you kind of have to sort

through on your own and you feel bad. You want to give them something that's

useful. It's like, no, go listen to my podcast. I give a ton of value

over there. That wouldn't be a reason to start though, would

it? Not necessarily, but it's a great selling point,

right? You get to create more barriers for people to take up

your time. Essentially the struggle that the people

who are your ideal clients is, they want more time back.

They want to set the stage for their greater dream to actually come

true, and they want to make a fuck ton of money, and they're willing

to put in the time and work for it right now

to set the stage for it, to set themselves up for success down the

road. The rest is stuff that, because

here's the thing. If you're saying, oh, you have to be

interesting, you have to bring this to the table and that to the table,

people are going to be like, well, I don't know if I have that. That's

not a quality that they can sort themselves in from or

for from your content. If their business is a change maker,

if they have a change making business that's easy for people to

see because remember your clients before

they work with you. They have no idea what's possible through a podcast. Right. They

don't know that they can actually affect change through a

podcast. They don't. They don't know if this is going to be like a 30

minutes sales pitch every week. They don't know if it's this

other thing. So what does their business

do? You kind of want to just keep bringing it back to that. The

other thing, I love that you mentioned it, like, naming that they want

to have fun with it, right? Because what have they usually done

up until the point that they start working with you is like they've kind of

looked at what it takes to start a podcast, realized how much they don't know

that they don't know. Thought, okay, cool. Do I have to learn this

program? Do I have to learn that program? Well, that sounds fucking

miserable. And I don't even know what

I'm trying to accomplish here. They've bought a blue yeti. They don't know

the difference. They want to back away from all

the like, well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. The trial and error, because they

don't even know what success looks like. And just not

even acknowledging what it takes to get registered for

podcasts and then to upload and all that shit. I didn't even

get to that point when I was thinking about starting a podcast on my own.

No. Yeah.

So a couple of things that your red flags, essentially,

they're not coachable. Essentially they're not open to actually being

helped, and they're not willing to outsource stuff. So

maybe a litmus test for this is like, they already have people working in their

business that they hand things off to. Good. Yeah.

Let's go back to your offers for this person who

is building the found. I'm changing the metaphor. Who's building the foundation for their mansion

to be built at some point, what's it worth to them?

This is my weak area. It really is. Okay,

so I want you to get out of your head. So I want you to

close your eyes. Okay. I want you to

imagine there's this ball of light and it's kind of bouncing around inside your skull

and it's activating different parts of your brain, and it's probably going to the

fear zone of like, oh, my God, can't ask for that. And,

oh, crap, did I remember to get that from the store?

What I'm going to have for lunch. And as you focus

on this ball of light. I want you to consciously focus on slowing it

down. As it slows down, I want you to draw it to a

standstill right in the center of your brain, right

behind where your third eye would be. And I want you to

slowly draw it down, down through

the back of your face. You can almost feel the warmth

in your nasal cavity and the back of your throat as it

passes through. It goes down through your

neck, past your voice box,

past your clavicle. You're going to draw it down

into your chest,

and you're going to plant that ball of light right center in your heart.

Now, in the last couple of decades, they've discovered that, yes, we

have neurons in our brains, but we also have neurons in our heart tissue and

in our digestive tracts. So when you know something in your

heart, you actually do know it in your heart. You can do

thinking there, you can store knowledge there, and the same with your

gut. The only

problem is, we are not taught to think here. We're not taught to bring

our knowing down here.

Now, the thing I want you to also be aware of as I ask these

questions is that there's no language center in your heart

like there is in your brain. So the

knowing may not come up in clear cut words or

finished sentence. It may come up in, like, a smell,

a memory of a smell or some kind

of sensation. And I want you to trust that you know what

that means. You are a great translator for whatever

that means. So what's

possible if someone signs up to work with

you and does a kick ass

podcast for four years, what's possible for their business?

Fame. Fame. And what would fame get them?

Opportunities. What kind of opportunities?

Speaking opportunities, business

opportunities,

investment opportunities,

growth opportunities.

All without what effort?

Other than talking into a microphone? Yeah.

What's the potential payout for all that?

Millions. Yeah. And

in non monetary stuff, like, what is the potential outcome for their

life? Well, depending on what they want, financial

freedom, better

relationships, new relationships,

happiness. A sensation that

when they walk into the room of people who they used to be intimidated

by, they see themselves as an authority. Like that

broadening of their shoulders, like that relaxedness that not worrying about

what you're going to say next, knowing that they belong at

certain tables. What's the tipping point for that

person to decide to start a podcast with you now?

Belief. Belief in what?

That it's possible.

Self belief. Yeah, but also belief in

my ability to facilitate that for them.

Is there any other knowledge that your heart wants to give you in this

moment? Yeah, I

don't have the self belief myself. Interesting.

Let's dig into that for a moment, shall we? Okay.

What does your heart know about that? I've never

given myself enough credit

for what I can achieve.

I think it's all luck.

Damn, you're good at this. Tell me about the luck.

I still think, even though I've done

this convincingly,

I still think it's all luck. I still don't think there's any skill

involved. And what's the impact that's

had? Not selling myself in the right way, I guess.

Yeah. I'm holding back because I don't want to be found

out, which explains why. You'Re always

trying to prove that you're the expert.

So let's ask your heart, like, okay, so I want you to recenter,

right? Like, really focus in on that ball of light.

And if you want to imagine, it's just, like, kind of pulsing with your

heartbeats, and it's lighting up every molecule in your heart.

It's lighting up every single heart neuron there

and activating them so they can really do some deep thinking here.

What would be possible if you believed in yourself?

Oh, God. I

mean, where do I start? Well, I'd certainly be

able to get even better results,

because I would be. Yeah. I think,

number one, making the money that I'm

worth, not what I'm telling myself I'm worth.

And what's the difference there? Huge.

Give it a number. Oh, my God.

It's really pushing me to go big. All right, let's say

it. Millions. Yeah.

So again, I want you to tune into your body. What does it feel like

when you're making millions from doing what you love and having incredible impact

with your clients? Amazing. Where do

you feel it? Yeah. Throughout my entire

body. What's happening in your body?

Warmth. What kind of

warmth?

Pride. What does it feel

like to have that? Pride. Pride and peace.

Yeah. It's a feeling of,

you can do this. So, back to your

heart. What do you have to give up to have more access

to this feeling? I need to prove myself.

Yeah. What do you now know

I can do it? Do what? Achieve results for

people and for who else and for me.

Yeah. Any other knowledge that your heart wants

to give you right now?

Let go. This has come up a lot for me recently, actually.

Let go. What?

My self limiting thoughts and

behaviors. Yeah. What are they doing to you?

Holding me back. Yeah.

What's the benefit been of having those self limiting behaviors?

Proving to myself that I'm right. About

what? About. It's that whole staying safe

thing, isn't it? Yeah. Staying in comfort.

And if I don't prove myself wrong, then

I'm right. Yeah.

Oh, my God. I feel like a child. That's.

You're not unique in this.

Yeah. If you were to put a number to the percentage

of rightness that you've held yourself accountable to up till now, what

has it been? Oh, like

90%. Cool. What's the

new percentage of being right? I'd love

it to be zero. You'd love it to be zero.

But what's it going to be? So to avoid falling into

old patterns, I'm going to say 2020. Okay,

great. So I want you to tune into. You have a

20% feedback of being right.

What does that feel like in your body? Relieving.

Where? Everywhere. And

what does that relief feel like? Bliss.

Yeah. And what does that bliss feel like?

Calming. Like what?

Letting myself off the hook, I think, is about the closest I can

get to it. Unleashed.

Unleashed? Yeah,

it's freeing. And what's possible

from this unleashed free position you're now in?

More opportunities. Yeah. For

growth. And what

will that growth make possible? More

success. What does success look like for

you? It's a really, really good

question. Financial

improvements. Give it a number.

Let's say a couple of million. Couple million. Overall or

per year? Overall. What else goes

into this picture of success?

I still want to come back to cheerleading.

What does that mean? Cheerleading clients and

just reveling in their success.

What's important about that? I hold a lot of my

value in people's success that they've had with my

help. Yeah. How does that serve you? It

fills my cup. It makes me feel like it's worth me. Getting out

of bed every day gives me a purpose and a reason

to do what I'm doing. Otherwise, I might as well just get a job.

If the only success metric is to pay the

bills, then I could do that a lot more easily.

But I don't want to do that. I've resisted that because

getting success for somebody else is not my idea of success.

If someone else takes the credit for it. Right? Call it

ego. No, but I'm being honest about it.

The image I'm getting is that you're the tide. You're the tide.

And the tide doesn't give away credit for covering

up the beach, doesn't give away credit for lifting buoys and boats and

docks. Like, the tide is the tide is the tide. It just lifts everything

when it comes in. It's not egotistical that it's

not giving away credit for lifting all these things. It just

is. Yeah. So as you rise,

everything rises with you. That's the plan. Absolutely.

That's always been the plan, yeah. Eventual tide would

want to sink everything. Eventual tide coming, rushing

in would fuck up docks. It would sink boats

versus a purposeful, confident, yet calm tide

comes in and just brings everything up. Any final message

from your heart before we end this portion of the session? Oh, my

God. What? I just got this overwhelming

sort of feeling of give

myself a break. Like, yeah, I've been

really bad at this lately, and do it for the right

reasons. Don't half ass it. Which I've been. Yeah. Okay.

So I've been really

lax with meditation

and going for walks and doing all that

stuff, and I've made a point of meditating, but

it's been for the wrong reasons. It's been because I feel like I should rather

than because I want to. And I've fallen into that

trap. Yeah. A couple of years ago, I fell

into a trap of just not giving myself space

to just be. Yeah.

Which is why one of your episodes was very triggering recently. Not

in a bad way. Seriously, even Kate's telling

you I need to definitely

hold space for myself to just be at least a little

bit each day, and I'm not doing it, and it's risking

burnout. Okay, so

anytime we finish talking to the heart, I always like to do

a big, deep breath, but into the chest, so you can kind of feel like

your lungs are hugging your heart and just, like, giving it an

extra squeeze to give gratitude.

So when you're ready, I want you to take that big, deep chest breath,

and when you release, I want you to just feel your heart, just accept the

gratitude, and

then come on back. Jesus,

you got more out of me than the freaking hypnotherapist did.

You've got another revenue stream there.

Sorry, David, you're fired.

Just a little bit training for a second. So anytime you want

to tap into your heart, you can do that on your own. Oftentimes, when I

have clients who are so stuck in their heads,

one of the things that I'll assign to them is, like, daily journaling from their

heart and from their gut. And it's just like, if you want to go into

the gut, it's, again, just drawing that ball of light down into your digestive tract,

and again, just letting it kind of float around, activate the

neurons. When you go to close with your gut,

like, to just swallow a little bit of spit, send it down as a little.

Thank you.

Disgusting. I know, but it makes people

giggle.

Your heart is where your inner leader lives, or your spirit, or

whatever you want to call it. Your gut is where your intuition

lives. Your intuition is sometimes hijacked by your fear

gremlins, like that feeling of nervousness in your

gut. There's a difference. There's a difference between your

intuition and that nervousness. So something you may want to do

as you're kind of reinvigorating your meditation

practice is to do some heart journaling. It just has to be like four or

five minutes. Doesn't have to be long. So what's that? Just

noting down what my heart is. Telling me, tuning

into your heart and writing whatever comes up. The funny thing about

writing from your heart is often sentences don't make sense.

Often the grammar is shit. The spelling is all over the fucking place,

even when you know how to spell the word. I'll have you know that I

was an a student in English.

Well, your heart doesn't know that. Your heart didn't go

to spelling class.

Yeah. Your heart doesn't have a language center, so sometimes the shit that comes up

from your heart space just won't make sense. Right. But again, you get to trust

yourself that, you know, you're a good translator. Yeah. Right. So

you can do journaling from the heart for four minutes and then

decipher it for another ten. Right. And

kind of journal about what it just told you. Awesome.

So we have some math to do on the

complete other end. Okay, so the number

that came up is a couple of million. Does that still feel

resonant to you. Where I am right now?

Yeah,

you're probably thinking, that sounds like a really small number. No.

For long term.

Nah, it's not about me. It's not my life.

It's your life. Your ideal life gets to look however the

fuck you want it to look like. It's not my ideal life. It's

your ideal life. And that's all that matters. We have to figure out the math

to help you get there. Okay. Doesn't matter what I think.

Deal.

Okay. We need that in a t shirt. Deal. Question mark.

Deal. Okay, so a couple of

million. When do you want to have it by?

My brain has gone into freaking weenie

mode. Yeah. Okay, cool. So this will happen. This will

happen. So if you need to kind of anchor back into your heart,

you can. And also notice that your

brain is going to weenie mode. That means that you landed on an answer in

your brain and your brain was like, no, that's not

realistic. And it took you somewhere else. So where was the first place

you. Landed the year after next? In a couple

of years? Yeah. Cool. And what will that 2

million mean for you? Are you going to quit? Are you going to retire?

What's going to happen? Do I have to find another producer?

No. So the plan is long

term is to franchise. Yeah.

And this is kind of what I was talking to Heather about the other day,

actually, because obviously, you know yourself, she's the master with community

groups and things like that. And the 2 million

is actually for facilitating

that. It's for having a

headquarters, if you like that. I can then operate

as a sort of a nerve center for basically

turnkey systemizing for other

podcasters. So podcasters around the

UK can have a set way of doing

it where it's operational across

the bottom, so you don't have to go and necessarily invest in different types of

software and experiment. You can just literally pick up, go. We're doing the

pod nose way, obviously keeps their overheads down because they don't have to

go and invest in various different. And with AI coming in now as well, there's

a lot of crap. So finding the stuff that

actually does the job and works in the right way. Yeah.

So the 2 million is kind of like a seed fund for

making that happen to then take me to the next stage. So it's not really

2 million in the bank for me. It's like if I can get the 2

million, I guess like what you're doing with

your laundry, your business that you're investing in, same sort of idea. I want to

get to that level so that I can start investing it

sensibly in growing it to the next stage, because I

can't. I mean, I'm 48 now, turned

48 last week. And of course my mortality is now in my brain. And

retirement, I will never retire.

My mum was just frowning at me the other day at dinner because

she was like, are you ever going to retire? And I was like, probably not.

And I was looking at my dad, bless him, he's 82. And I was looking

at him, Jesus, I won't be able to do this when I'm your

age, though, will I? So I need to figure something out, but I'll always want

to be like that. I'll want to be a chairman or something and just

oversee that and. Yeah, that's the idea. Sorry, I'm waffling on now,

I'm sorry. No, this is all highly

necessary. Okay, cool. Let's acknowledge your heart is

not necessarily a business mind, right. Your heart is like, cool, 2

million. This is a benchmark for when we're allowed to go and do this thing.

But the beauty of it is that your heart knows you want to go and

do this thing. So we're going to say, okay, great, cool. That you think you

need $2 million to do this.

You didn't go to business school. Love that.

Yeah. Okay, so I'm kind of seeing your business splitting into two, right?

There's you working with people and doing their podcast for them, and then there

is the mentorship side, and it's

where you're kind of not necessarily

beta ing, but I mean, you could just jump into

creating a beta of it, of that pod nose

franchise. It could be a membership. It

could be a membership. It could be like serious

mentorship where you're mentoring other podcast

producers and really showing them like X, Y and Z.

It could be a training that you take people through a

certification of sorts. If the goal

is to franchise it, the key to it is like you want to give away

enough that there's value, but not so much that they can just take

your system for free and run with it. Right. This is

the problem I've had with it is like, at what point do you then make

yourself redundant? Right. Well, don't worry

about that yet. Don't worry about that yet. So a model that

you could absolutely go with is like EOS entrepreneurial

operating systems. One of the things that they do is,

I think it's like a $30,000 certification

program. Like, you go through their certification, you learn

their process, you kind of become an EOS coach, and

then you owe them every month like $1,800

for as long as you're coaching within their system and using their stuff.

Now, you're not allowed, while you're doing that to blend it with other

modalities. There's licensing at play.

You're going to want to talk to someone like David Fryman about the

franchising, especially like in the United States. You might want to create an

LLC in the United States so that if anyone

violates the licensing of it, you can go after them here

so that your contracts have some teeth. But I mean, it's

possible. It's 100% possible. And think about

it. If someone, say, gets three clients

that they're producing and creating the content for

and they're charging, I don't know, like 2500 each, that's

7500 a month. And then it's totally worth it to pay you

2000. Yeah, that's only three podcasts out there that's

only like three people that they're supporting using your system.

That could easily be someone's side hustle. That could easily be something that they

do in addition to other stuff. Or

they can carry five. That's a very

healthy income. Their net, after paying you is still going to

be 13,000 a month. Right. So let's rework

your offer suite because I think that's going to be the key to kind of

like informing your marketing, messaging, redoing your

website, all that shit. Okay, so let's stay with the

mentoring side for a second because there are a lot of people who want to

do it themselves. You're also just one person. You're going to max out on

hours. All the audits in the fucking world.

I would rather you do an audit that's live so other people

can listen. Like, you could do one live audit per month and

people get to submit their show. Been thinking about, listen to it together

and you all take different notes. Yeah. And you kind of

show them like, here's what you're listening for. Here's this, here's

that. And then you go through. Cool. So here are my notes based

on these last ten minutes. Here's what you need to work

on. Here's breath work. Here's this, here's that. You could have a separate

call. That's like idea spinning,

helping people come up with ideas for different episodes. You

could have like a heartbeat chat kind of set up where there's a whole

room of like sourcing guests. Equipment's not working. Mayday,

mayday. This, that, the other thing. You could have a

whole bunch of them. It's like, oh, like creating content

about the know the naming sequence. You could have a

monthly q a call. So far I've listed three calls that could be an

hour long. So that's 3 hours out of your life.

Plus occasionally popping in and answering questions and

getting conversation going. This is really going towards a

membership, isn't it? Yeah, it's really the. Because here's the

thing. It crosses both off. It addresses

the people who are your future clients, where you're going to be their podcast

producer. And it helps those people who

want to be in a membership because they want access to you, because

they see what you're doing. They're like, I want to do the same thing. Because

it's specialized, because there's no

other access to the knowing that you have.

I would have it be like 200 pounds a month for

the, like, I'm doing it myself. Podcaster. And

then I would have almost an upsell for

those who are wanting to be the neil of

their little world and have that be 350 or

400 a month and maybe they get like a bonus call once a

month where they get to ask any question they have.

Right? Okay, so just so I can get this. So what you're saying is have

the general kind of access area for DIY

podcasters, but then have like an upper level tier

for those that want to take it to the next level and become producers themselves.

I'm with you. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense because it's the same

content, just more. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a different approach.

Right. Because they're going to ask, how do you schedule this?

How do you do billing? How do you do this? How do you do that?

And it kind of gives you this Runway to play with, how you describe

things and how you explain things and figure out kind of what your broader

model is going to be. It also gives you an

audience to sell that to. It's a funnel, right? It's a whole

pipeline of potential clients or franchisees because I bet

you they're going to struggle. I bet you they're going to sign a few clients.

They're going to lose them after a couple of months. Like, what am I doing

wrong, Neil? And it also gives you that financial

influx as you're putting together all the stuff for the

franchise, right? Because it's going to take to, you're going to have to build out

the content. You're going to have to get the contracts in place. You're going to

have to establish it in a lot of different ways. But I don't want you

stressed out about that yet. That's coming. Right.

I want you building the pipeline and the

income that can kind of just float you until you get

there. Like the membership. That's something that Lauren Lefkowitz and John Spears

could hop on. It would help them immensely. You could

have a monthly tracking workshop where they're

going through and looking at their numbers and seeing, know, what's the

listener rate. What's this? How many new subscribers do you

have? It's incredible how many people can't get their head around that as.

Exactly. And, and you could have it in a Google form that

they fill out every month, and you could hire a VA who just

compiles it all into. I mean, you could even have AI do this.

They take all the data that's been given by

lauren@laurenluskowitz.com. And they could

put it into a graph that shows how it's increased and how it's decreased

and all that jazz. So that's like the mentorship side.

And then my intuition is telling me

you're not doing it for them if you're not handling everything

anymore. You can either consult with them

for 1000 pounds a month. If they really want to do it themselves,

they can do it themselves. With expert guidance. You

can absolutely put together some trainings on how to use

Zencaster, some trainings on here's how you're going to edit,

here's how to make simple edits, here's how to go and get licensing. This is

going to be foundational stuff that you can use for the franchise later,

but it's for the people who want to start their own podcast.

They don't necessarily want to do podcasting for other people. And you'd give

them feedback. You'd be their coach

throughout running their podcast. There's

a lot of breathiness in this episode. Here's how I want you to edit it

going forward. Right. This lagged on. It needed something

kind of like to spark it in between. Here's how I would have edited

differently. So you said that would be 1000 a month. So what

would that be like a call a month? I would say

a couple of calls a month and you could design it with them if they

need you more on the planning side. They're pretty confident in the editing and

they might just want the occasional feedback, but they have a hard time coming with

ideas or figuring out how to get guests. You can absolutely come in there. You

could also have it be like they want your feedback before they put the final

edit up and you could go through the feedback with them.

And even if they want to hop into the editor while you're on the call

with them, you could say, okay, cool, go here and you see this little part

here. Okay, cool. I want you to splice that. We're going to add something different

in here. I love it. And then I want you just doing

what you do with me. But you need to charge a lot more money. And

I hate saying that because I know you're going to raise my rates and that's

fine. You need to be charging more for that. You do. You need to

be charging more for that. 2000 pounds a month is not Neil, but

Neil, you do so much.

Well, you've got April and then I've got to send you an awkward email in

March. Anyway. It sucks. It really does.

But you need to raise your rates, right? Yeah. In

all transparency, as you know, I always am too

transparent sometimes. Yeah, I don't know if you remember, I sent you an

email about six months ago or something, and I said to you,

no, I was actually last April. That's right, because I put my

prices up for all my other clients. And I said to you, you only started

in October, technically November. So I said to you,

locking you in for the same day. So basically the package you're

on doesn't really exist. Yeah, exactly. I

know, but what I've been thinking is, because

where I am now in terms of what I can do versus what I

was doing, my idea was I was going to, in April,

raise the prices across the board. But basically the idea

was not charge them more, just to charge them more, because I hate

that. What I want to do is say, look, what we

were doing is kind of the old way of doing it. There's these new opportunities

now. So, for example, like I've been doing with you,

with pay tracking and stuff like that. So my

idea was to sort of say, right, this is now what we're going to be

doing. So for the higher price package, this is basically what we're doing for

you. We're getting you more opportunities for press coverage, we're getting

you more paid traffic to the apps,

we're getting you more Facebook coverage and all that sort of stuff. Because what I

didn't want to do, and it was really interesting listening back to your episode, actually,

where you were talking about grandfathering people in and things like that.

In my head, it was like, yeah, I love the idea of that, but what

I don't want to do is say, right, so we're going to just put your

prices up. We're going to grandfather that in and then the client

going, yeah, but what am I getting for that?

Okay.

You live in the world, right? I live in the world. I

hope so. Buy food. Yeah. You buy

clothing. Yes. You pay for vet bills for

your dog whose butthole keeps falling out. Love

that. I get to say that. I know it's uncomfortable for everyone,

but I'm not uncomfortable because it's happening for you and not me. And I get

to have those

prices gone down in the last couple of years. No, they haven't. Okay. What have

they done instead? They've gone up. Cool.

Okay, so this goes back to you feeling like you need to prove

it all the time.

Yeah, sure. I love that. As a business person, as someone who wants

to give an excellent service to your clients, you want

to incorporate some more things. Absolutely. And also, I just

want to check in on that voice in your head that tells you you're not

allowed to erase your rates without justifying it.

If you wanted to, say, give someone a discount for

paying in full for the year from your new rates, great. You

get a nice little influx of cash right now. But also think about,

like, come July, are you going to regret that?

How do you deal with money when it comes in?

Yeah, and just doing some quick little

math. Also, if you're charging 300 pounds a month for

the group mentorship for people who want to do their own

podcast, you get 25 people. That's 7500 a month.

It's not bad. No, that's really good. Yeah,

it's not like an insane amount. You're going to be able to answer everyone's

questions. They're going to get so much fucking value out of that. Which

means you may not need to carry that many one on one clients.

You really get to guard your time and also focus on

building the stuff for the franchise. Your time is a limited

resource right now. You don't necessarily have to do more. If there's

stuff that you can add, maybe put more towards advertising,

that'll help your clients. But also you don't have to just raise it by

that amount. Right? Yeah.

See, this is where I have a real

problem. We're back to that whole me not believing that I'm

getting the results that I am kind of thing, and that's where that

falls down. You're right. Did you ever see that movie in the

80s? So it's Bette Midler, Danny DeVito, a bunch of

other people. Danny DeVito actually pays a hitman to kill his

wife because he hates her, but she has all the money, so he doesn't want

to divorce her because he'll lose all the money and he's having an affair. It's

like. It's like. So anyway, so he hires a

hitman, but she gets kidnapped by people who he

screwed over in his business. And so he wants her gone,

and they're trying to ransom her back because they want money to make up for

what they lost. He's like pretending like he doesn't have the money and

all this stuff. And he's trying to pretend to the police that he's so upset,

but then he doesn't really want her back because it solves so many problems

for him. And so he basically ends up negotiating with

them about what the ransom should be. And it keeps going down.

Keeps going down. Meanwhile, she becomes friends with them

while she's being held hostage by them. And they

start explaining to her what he's doing, and she just starts

crying. Be like, I've been kidnapped by

Kmart. We keep discounting

her.

You're not in business to give people a deal. You're not

Kmart of podcasting. When you think of

like five other podcast producers who do what you do. But aren't as

good, well, that's easy. How much do they

charge? Yeah, yeah, you're

right. God, you're right. So

if it makes your stomach squirm to charge three and a half

grand. Yeah. So you don't have to go there

overnight. And I'm not just saying that because I'm like, I don't want to pay

that, but genuinely, no, because here's what happens when your

body's not on board with like, oh, my God, I

can't charge that. You're never going to get a yes for that because you're going

to start self sabotaging in your sales call before you even

get there. Okay, so can we back it down to like 2000?

502,700?

Where in there would you feel really

confident? Here's an interesting thing. So I don't even know

if this is something that's a first for you, this problem. Okay. So

I really resonate with Americans.

90% of my client base is Americans.

This is one of the reasons I haven't gone limited as a company

here. Because if I go limited, I have to

charge vat, right? And if

I charge vat, that technically prices me out

of the client base that I've got that are

Americans that are already paying a bit more than the

UK price because obviously there's the. So obviously you're

paying $300 more based

on the currency conversion. I guess so that's the thing is

like, if I put my prices up too much

suddenly for you, it's. Was it like $1,800, isn't it? I

think that's 1500 pounds. So

that's obviously, again, full

transparency. I just about break even. Just

about. And that's being super efficient with it as well. But

I have another client who's just starting with me.

And for her it was like, really, the breaking point was like

$50 more and it would have been a no

go. And how would you approach

that, knowing that your clients are going to be priced up anyway?

But remember how you've been

marketing to people has been. I'm proving that I'm good at what I

do. I know my shit. I know what I'm doing.

Not, here's where you are,

here's where you want to go. Here's what

you're struggling with. You hearken back

sometimes, and you said it in this session. I've noticed it lightly

throughout your content to you're struggling to pay the

bills. That energy is sometimes in your

post, sometimes overtly and sometimes subtly interesting. Because

here's the thing. If someone is struggling to pay the bills and they want to

go with the person who's going to be 100% accurate 100% of the time because

they have no margin for mistakes. So your

messaging has to shift out of that and into here's

what this looks like and here's what you want, and here's what you're struggling with,

and blah, blah, blah, and really focus it on your people now because

you want to do some mentorship. There's the separate marketing

messaging around I know my shit. And if you're

struggling with x, y and z because you're doing it on your own, you should

join my membership. But a lot of that is going to correct. Now, it will

take some months to shift your audience

and start getting attention in a different

way, but you have to make that energetic shift in your

mind around I'm not just going for the broker books.

I'm not just going for the people who are worried about paying the, you

know, another question I might ask is like, are you allowed to own an

LLC in the United States and run it from where you are?

That's a good question. I need to look into that. And that's something you might

want to ask David Fryman about. But if you're really wanting to

work with the american market, I think there might be like five

states in the US where you have to pay taxes on services

rendered. I know Massachusetts, California and

Pennsylvania. I've never had to pay taxes like sales taxes on

anything. Like I have to pay actual income taxes. But that's

different. Yeah, that is. That's definitely a good idea. Yeah.

If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business that makes

money, then go ahead and book a generate income strategy

call with me by going to weeniecast.com

strategycall. On this call, we will talk about your

goals, your dreams, and your frustrations in getting

there. And if it's a fit for both of us, then we can talk about

different ways to work together.