How to Confidently Charge More with Robin Waite

Please note this transcript is machine generated so it is not perfect and should be used for reference only, you will get the best from the podcast by listening to it in it's designed format.

Jen (00:00:00):
Get ready to listen to some controversial and fearless conversation with the amazing Robin Waite. Hello, and welcome to yet. Another episode of the experts on libel podcast, my name's Jen Hall, your business positioning coach and market leadership experts. And on this episode, I'm talking to a long time friends and amazing business coach, Robin Waite, who is an expert in helping business owners charge their worth among amazing other things that he does. He also specializes in productization and really looking at how you take your business forward fearlessly. He is a proud father, dedicated husband, and eight key surfeit and cyclist. He's also a best selling author of online business startup and take your shot, which by the way, are both amazing books. And he absolutely loves helping business owners to charge their worth. He ran a marketing agency for 12 years before a breakdown in 2016, which led him to closing his agency and opening the doors to his coaching practice, fearless business.
Jen (00:01:17):
And he really is that he really is fearless. He really does say what he thinks, what he means. He calls a spade, and that's what I absolutely love and adore about Robin is that you can have such real conversation with him. So I'm going to let the recording roll so you can finally hear the conversation between Robin Waite and I to find out all of the juicy gossip around what we think around some very controversial topics and also how to start charging your worth and where you might be going wrong with your marketing. So I am super, super excited to be here with the amazing Robin Waite. Thanks so much for joining us.
Robin (00:02:01):
Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. it's not a day too late either. Cause I've been looking forward to this for ages.
Jen (00:02:07):
I know, honestly, I can't, obviously I know where we're doing a bit of a show stop as well. And we've got, we got the two recordings almost back to back today, which is going to be amazing. So I'm excited to have the conversations from different perspectives. And just while we're actually talking about your show Robin tell us what just immediately, where can we go and see that often author listen, listeners have listened to this episode?
Robin (00:02:29):
Yeah, absolutely. So my podcast is the fearless business podcast and actually we'll be streaming it live into the our Facebook group, which is called confidently charge more
Jen (00:02:38):
Fantastic. Excellent. So I'm assuming people can just go in there and ask to join free group, right? Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. Fabulous straight into the promos. I like it.
Robin (00:02:49):
There's nothing unsettled here at all. Jen, it's just showing this plugs all the way through. Sorry.
Jen (00:02:54):
I like it. It's the way it is. I love, I love transparency in selling, promoting, you know, I don't love, I don't, I really don't love the whole kind of like thinly veiled sells and what they, you know, if you're going to sell just to sell, stop, hiding behind stuff. I'd also, you know, if you've got something to say, just say it, stop hiding behind it. So, I'm loving the transparency. And I think that, you know, I love what you do. So just kind of like, you know, your groups called confidently charge more and like I've already introduced you to the audience, but can you tell me a little bit about what drives you to help your clients and, you know, business owners in general to charge more? what made you niche into the angle?
Robin (00:03:38):
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, I, but previously to becoming a business coach, I run a marketing agency from sort of 2004 to 2016, so 12 years and I probably, if I'm being honest, I like, we struggled through most of that. Cause I didn't know what I know now around sort of productizing stuff and you know, packaging up your offer and actually charging, you know, basically what you're worth. So we spent ages hustling thinking the right way to grow business was to just fill our business up with tons and tons of clients. And actually it ended up kind of almost destroying me by the time we went through the recession in 2008, we made a couple of really great changes in terms of, from a pricing perspective, which I learned a lot from, which kind of saved our business when everybody else was kind of going out of business and from there by the time I got to 2016, I guess I was just a bit tired without boring you with the whole story, had a bit of a an emotional sort of mental breakdown and then set up the coaching practice and realized that actually the bit, which I enjoyed the most about my marketing business was helping business owners to just change their mindset around how they were selling their product. So evolved from that basically.
Jen (00:04:46):
And that's really interesting, just picking up a point you sat around you really felt that it saved your business and there could be some listeners on here now, you know, particularly in the midst of this, a pandemic, a potential second wave watching, you know, the economy hanging on by a thread who are perhaps worried about their business, you know, why do you believe that charging more safety or
Robin (00:05:13):
I mean, essentially you've got to, you've got to look at a business it's a bit like or you imagine a little fear chink, potentially the little fit 500. So it's got the 500 CC engine. Imagine if you added rocket fuel into that car's engine, like it's going to do, it's going to do one thing only. It's going to probably go no faster, but it's probably going to break the engine at some point and explode into a little, you know, ball of fairy dust, Dustin Pixies cause rocket fuel is obviously designed for rockets is not designed for fetching, which CentOS. So in this really shit analogy, Jen the fit engine is the business engine. So that's, you know, your marketing, your products, your sales, all of those different things. But then actually the the rocket fuel is then adding more clients that business.
Robin (00:05:58):
So most businesses, because they're so small they they've got these inherent problems in there, but they never get found out cause the business is tiny and as they start to scale, the cracks start to kind of open up and more problems start to exist. So one of the challenges, you know, I saw it when the crisis kind of kicked off, you know, back in March, and you saw all these people who were kind of doing fire sales, they were discounting massively. And I remember there was one particular person. She does. She teaches people how to build e-learning programs. So everybody's like rushing to go online and she she's got a fantastic program and it's probably like, it's way too cheap. Anyway, she was selling it for about 600 pounds. She discounted this thing down to 150 quid. What she didn't realize was so 75% discount, what she didn't realize was though, and I'd warned her.
Robin (00:06:45):
I said, if you do that, you're going to fill up all of your capacity. Cause some of it involved her time to teach these people a little bit of done for you, work as well to actually get them to a point where they could launch their courses. So of course, a week later she's finding that going Robin, my program's full and I can't let anybody else in for two months. What do I do? And now I've only made like the same amount of money, but I've got four times the number of clients it's like, there's nothing you can do. You've gone totally sabotage your business by vastly undercharging and you haven't realized actually your capacity have, cause you've got kids.
Jen (00:07:16):
Genuinely makes me want to cry. Cause I hear about this so often where this has happened and to be fair, I mean, at least she managed to fill her program because 70 times to see people thrash that prices and then also get surprised when they still don't see the outcomes either. So, wow.
Robin (00:07:32):
What was the biggest challenge she's got now is that she burnt through her warm audiences. So what that means is all of the Goodwill that she'd built up. Pre-Crisis, she's got all those clients and they've spent the 150 quid on my program. Now they're going to come out this, you know, she's going to come out of this, sorry, I'm having no clients left to actually tap into, she's got no audience left because you sold to all of them. You know, one of the things that we were talking about throughout the crisis was double down on your audiences, like double down on, like, if you come out of a, a long crisis along recession like this, and you've got two, three, four times the number of people in your Facebook group or on your YouTube subscribe to your YouTube channel, I'm following you on Instagram, when you've then put an offer out, you're going to have four times the amount of attraction as you would have had beforehand. So it's kind of like just gotta be patient and wait for the right opportunities to come along. Too. People are too quick to step over the pounds to get to the pennies when something like this kicks off
Jen (00:08:25):
Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think we saw those kinds of that, that panic in business where people were, you know, slashing when actually for instance, when people were looking at, you know, selling things like a house, you know, go online and it was a really sweet premise that people coming on, you know, well, I'm looking to help people who aren't perhaps online move online and I'm doing it at this price. Do you know, to help people, but at the same time, genuinely believe that they've doing in business wise
Robin (00:08:57):
And, in actual fact that doing their customers a disservice as well in the same process. Cause I mean money didn't just evaporate, but people stopped spending. So the redistribution of sort of, I guess, money across, throughout the business community totally shifted and you've got people who've now gone and spent 150 quid on a course. What she also forgot to tell them was that once they've built their course, they've now got to go and market it, which costs time and money and find new clients for their online course and for most people because it's effectively you know, it's a completely different product to what they were selling before. Albeit some people might have just been doing, you know, face to face work, you know, with clients in a service type business. The, you know, this is like an online version of it, but effectively it's a different way of delivering the same product, which means that actually there's a different market for it as well. So not only if you've got the challenge of like, I'm delivering this to a new market, you've got to create a whole new audience for it, which costs time and money. And now we're also seeing people, unfortunately, her clients getting a bit sort of disgruntled. Cause I like, I wouldn't realize I had to go and market it once we built it. I thought it would kind of just sell itself, which is just a bit dumb, really
Jen (00:10:05):
A hundred percent and so, you know, in a way it's been sold secondly, is that, you know, by doing that with training people that this, you know, this is a one size fits all one and done approach. When in fact that's not how you run a business at all this, there's a life cycle of various cogs that you have to have well oiled in order to get everything working together. So yeah, I think that, you know, it's a shame and we saw a lot of you know, supposedly supposedly business coaches or people who weren't business coaches who overnight became business coaches wanting to help people and actually, I mean, in honesty, but they just weren't qualified to, which was actually quite scary.
Robin (00:10:48):
Well that, and also again, what they're doing is they're kind of, you know, loads of people out there helping people for free, which undermines the economy in a way because business coaches rely on having clients pay them money in order to kind of you know, be able to grow their businesses and help more people. So if you've got a load of people out there offering it, which is very commendable, like go and help as many people as you can, we will want to club together during this crisis. But if somebody's an inexperienced coach giving stuff away for free takes the work away from an experienced coach, you can get better results, but also gets paid a decent amount of money for the work which they do. It's kind of, again, it's just, it's negatively impacting that kind of distribution of wealth throughout the kind of business community. And those poor clients as well. They're kind of, you know, Oh, it's free, it's nicer and Oh, we didn't get the result that we wanted a nd then they think that they look badly on kind of the bit business coaching community because they unfortunately worked with a shit business coach.
Jen (00:11:44):
I'm Jefferson, you know, it is damaging to the industry as a whole. I think the good news is, is that, you know, without sort of blowing my own trumpet and blowing, you know, you're, you're Trump is, you know, there are great business cases out there. And I think of, fortunately we stand out as an example of people who get results for their clients and so I think, and that's why, you know, I talk about, for instance, making sure that you become a market leader because it is the, the Nancy nobodies who are literally going to have, you know, even if they have their five minutes of fame, we see it all the time. You've seen it over the years, people being a flash in the pan, rising burning people, taking whether it's a small amount of money or a large amount of money from people burning them.
Jen (00:12:30):
And then, you know, coming through that, unfortunately I think as well as the, you know, the salvia people out there, the salvia business owners also have now, whether it's been through that hard lesson of being burned will actually come through the other side and we'll see those who are in it for the long haul, who aren't the flash in the pants who do get consistent results for their clients. You know, we have a responsibility, I think, to show people that, you know, not to give up that, you know, it's, you, you're not wasting your money and that's something actually we were talking about before this wasn't around, you know, people, particularly around this time, we've seen people reflect on their business and sort of make a decision about, you know, we've seen a lot of Deadwood disappear. And actually I want to touch upon that point because you gave me a really hard hitting line just before we hit record on this podcast. And I was like, I really want you to talk more about that here. Because you have quite controversial belief around that, what I call Deadwood.
Robin (00:13:32):
Yeah. I mean, I'm probably gonna offend a few people here, so apologies. But the thing is ultimately, you know, the people that are listening to this, they will know if I'm talking about them and ultimately the ones who've kind of made the sacrifice and kind of work through this crisis will equally be proud of the fact that they've got through it and stuck with it. My point about it, like when we were chatting before was, you know, there's 6 million businesses registered in the UK at the moment. Most of those are small sort of one man bands, freelancers you know, people, self employed people working on their own. And in my opinion, for a long time, that number has been way too high. We did reach an equilibrium in 2019 where the same number of businesses started up as went out of business.
Robin (00:14:11):
And that's the first time in about 30 years that the two of kind of finally a number of businesses starting up is finally plateaued. My opinion is 25, 20, 25% of businesses out there that just don't deserve to be in business. There's people who just not serious enough about their business. And it was highlighted, you know, March 23rd comes around, they announced locked lockdown. And what's the first thing people do is they panic and go and start working at Sainsbury's now, which is commendable, by the way.I couldn't do that. The way I look at it, it's like, you know, I'm so passionate about my business. I would never want to give up on it to go and get a job in Sainsbury's. Now don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for the fact that those people did that and people do work in those key roles because it's something which I have chosen not to do, but what it does tell me, and this is the controversial part is that actually they don't care enough about their business to stick it out. They're not willing to ride the rough times as well as the smooth times and quite frankly, I hope they stick at working at Sainsbury's. You know, we need less businesses in the UK in order to allow a proper distribution of wealth and to see the best of the best, like the cream always rises to the top. We need to see the best of the best businesses working in this country to pull it forward and pull it out this out this crisis
Jen (00:15:25):
A hundred percent and I think, I just want to reiterate my standpoint in this,like I agree with you wholeheartedly that I do believe that, you know, exactly, as you said, that there are so many businesses out there that really shouldn't be in business, because what they're after is the freedom thereafter, all of the perks of being self employed, running a business, all of those, you know, you're the, the loader of your time and all of those things. But actually what they're creating is just actually, you know, another job that they have to do that is actually, when you look at it for a lot of the businesses I'm talking about, they're underpaid, they're not getting paid on a day. They don't have, you know, sick pay. They don't have all of the perks, actually that job gives them. So they're actually ending up whilst they thought that that dream of having that, you know, that Lord over there that time, it's actually, isn't the reality of the situation.
Jen (00:16:19):
The reality is that they're busy, fools, but you know, there are people before now who, you know, I've worked with who were running two jobs and the some point I want to make clear here from my perspective is that I think, and I think you'll agree Robin is that, you know, it's great that you are working as well to invest into your business, you know, to ensure that your family is safe to sure that you are financially stable because running a business through fear and when you're worried about money is never a good idea, but I think what's happened. We've seen with this recent pandemic is actually, a lot of people have used this as an excuse to just not bother and so they've gone off to get other jobs because it's just been like, Oh, what's the point anymore?
Jen (00:17:03):
And I've seen a lot of businesses who actually, weren't making a lot of money before, you know, it's still, aren't now using this. This is an excuse. And I think those are the people that need to take a long, serious, hard look in the mirror and decide whether they're cut out for this or not. So in that respect, I think that you were a hundred percent, right, but you've got to give you stuff, kick up the bottom to go is, am I up for this? Am I up for everything? And I don't know about you Robin, but there's a, they really is. I've heard this years ago, but how do you really truly feel like I understand this now is that there is a difference between a business owner and someone who is self employed and I do believe the self employed are creating these busy jobs that you have to be willing to delegate 90% of the do to other people. Otherwise you are just, you're just running around. I don't know what you think.
Robin (00:17:56):
I always talk about the business, do a versus the business owner and we always kind of teach people to try and become the business owner having people working within that they're sort of teams, but it's really interesting, like for me, businesses if you were to break it down for me, it's like 90% hard work, 9% risk and 1% luck and most business owners aren't that they're too afraid to actually take responsibility for the 9% of risk. And if you don't do any one of those three things, by the way, your business is gonna fail. It's really interesting. When you think about things like the bounce back loan scheme, for example that I've been in business for 16 years and, you know, I followed business for you know, most of my teenage years as well before that trying to understand and learn about it.
Robin (00:18:43):
And the bounce back loan scheme is like the safest form of borrowing we're ever going to have in business in our generation. I think probably for the next 50 or even a hundred years and yet people are still too afraid to take it out. Oh no, Jen, I can't possibly borrow money to invest into my business. Well, again, that's a little clue for me that if people don't take out the bounce back loan to help their business move forward or survive this crisis, they don't really believe in that business enough. It's the same as like, before this, when you used to get a lot of like tech startups, for example and I used to see a lot come through sort of the local growth hubs and and things like that. And come along to my workshops and my networking events and that they've got this dream whereby they're going to raise a hundred thousand pounds worth of startup capital seed capital.
Robin (00:19:27):
And I asked the question like, cool, how much money have you put into this then? And they're like, Oh, nothing. I'm like, okay. Why wouldn't, why don't you put anything into it? Why don't you borrow some money to get this off the ground whilst you're waiting for that seed funding to come in? Oh, it's too risky. Oh, right. Okay. So it's okay for somebody else to risk their money in your business, but it's not okay for you to risk your own money. Do you really believe in this thing? And then they look at you quizzically and kind of go, yeah, I kind of get what you're saying now, Robin, cause like at the end of the day, any business requires some element of investment. It requires some element of risk. It doesn't matter how big or small your businesses, we could be talking 500 pounds of 500,000 pounds of 500 million pounds and you look at the big sort of businesses out there. But at the end of the day, you got to double down on it. If you believe in it enough,
Jen (00:20:11):
A hundred percent, I think you're going to have skin in the game. Haven't you, if you haven't got skin in the game, then, you know, like you said, you were always going to be falling back on, that comfort zone or that security [inaudible], you've got to really go for it. You've got to really believe in what you're doing and I actually think if you're, if you're listening to this and you're like, actually I am concerned about investing and, you know, putting something on the line, risking something, then you, have to really look at that business idea and I actually believe, and I think, you know, something I want to quiz you around Robin is that this brings us nicely into this whole articulation, which you talk so much on this podcast that, you know, sometimes I think that people really truly understand the value that they deliver and I know you also, you know, the same wavelength as me on this. And so that's possibly why, you know, they're doubting their idea because they put the idea out there and they've not received the response that they wanted and so therefore they start to doubt the, you know, why should I invest in something that isn't going to do? Well, what do you have to say to people who are on that, on that, on those lines?
Robin (00:21:17):
Well, I, this is why I'm kind of slightly compassionate show and take a less harsh hard line here. I think a lot of human beings, people in business that just too humble and they don't really want to go around sort of shouting about, you know, bragging about their results and their clients get you know, which, which is good in a way shows that they're sort of genuine ethical, nice, humble, you know, lovely human beings. But if other people can't see the results, which you get, there's nothing tangible there for new prospective clients to actually get hold of. So one of the things we talk about a lot is like, make it, make it really practical and tactical, like go out and get case studies, reviews, and testimonials from your clients. Let them tell that story about how good you are. Let them tell a story about what the transformation was, which you took them through and what sort of results which they got through working with you and your business.
Robin (00:22:06):
And after a while, you know, for example, on our website, we have a client success page and we've got, you know, half a dozen video testimonials, we've got about 20 different social snippets where clients have shared their wins. We have a case study pack, which we send out to clients, which has a whole load of snapshot case studies and four professionally written case studies. So we shout about our results, but in a, in a a sort of quiet a way as we possibly can. So we gradually kind of feed this information to people to show them what we can do and obviously that the best form of business you can win is three referrals. You know, somebody there saying Robin's amazing, or Jen's amazing, like you're just going to pick up the phone and wants to go and speak to them.
Robin (00:22:44):
So super important, obviously, you know, we to collect those case studies, reason testimonials, but also one of the things I've noticed is kind of looping back to something you said at the start. And we're talking about kind of the coaching industry is one thing which I've noticed about a lot of coaches is they're not really willing to put that skin in the game. So especially when it comes to money. So if somebody is investing several thousand pounds in a, in a, in a coach very rarely do coaches offer any kind of money back guarantee. And the thing is I was listening to a an interview with Jay Abraham. I don't know if you've heard of him. So he's one of the founding fathers of sort of copywriting and direct response copy and stuff like that. Absolute legend.
Robin (00:23:23):
I got some really fascinating things to say, and then interferes listened to last night, somebody, somebody asks him the question about the money back guarantee. How do you actually articulate, how do you position it so that it doesn't sound gimmicky or like it's forcing the sale and he said, well, all you've got to do is just say, you know, make it like the perceived value sort of guarantee. So what I mean by that is, you know, it's not about like take therapists, for example, they can't guarantee to get somebody's confidence up to a 10 out of 10, right? Because it's the mind the body people are unpredictable. You can't guarantee the results, but what you can guarantee is that person, that client is going to go through some kind of an improvement during the program. So if your recommendation is your platinum program, which is you know, three months, 12 sessions from there, where, you know, you're a two out of 10 on the scale of confidence, we're going to at least push to get you up to six, seven, and eight, if we do better than that.
Robin (00:24:18):
Great. But our guarantee is if you get to the end of the 12 weeks and you don't feel that you've had value for money, then we'll talk about refunding you. Because actually, if I can't help you, I don't want to take your money. And actually when you position that to a lot of and it's not just coaches, this is any business owner. There's some really interesting things which starts to kind of come out of that. So the first one is what given their money back. And they're like, because most of the time, as you said, business owners are literally living hand to mouth. They need the sale to pay their mortgage and put food on the table and they've got, fuck all savings. Sorry to put it crudely, you know? And so they've got no fallback. So if a client asks their money back, it's a massive drink cause they've already spent that money.
Robin (00:25:00):
So that's an issue. The second thing is their confidence in their ability to deliver and get results. So I have no quibbles like offering money back guarantees. If somebody turned around to me and said, Robin, your program is shit. I haven't experienced any value for money out of this. I haven't got the results which we discussed at the start. I'd be like, cool, here's your money back because it's not worth my reputation to be selling something which I can't deliver on. Yeah. But also I'm confident because I've had hundreds of people come through my program now. And 98% of them have got the result and the two who didn't it was their own damn fault because they didn't put the work in. So, you know, and one, I just paid off just cause they were such a pain in the ass. I just, I was fed up with them.
Robin (00:25:39):
I just wanted to get them out of the program out of the way. You know, so I think, you know, whenever we're buying it doesn't have to be coaching, but whenever we're buying any kind of a service we should always post pose the questions to them. Do you offer any kind of a money back guarantee? What results outcomes can we expect from this? What's real. What do you think is realistic? And you know, let's get that written to an agree and into an agreement and if you've got a business owner who's hesitating over that, that tells me they're not terribly confident.
Jen (00:26:06):
Yeah, no, I'm not. I think there's a couple of views about that and I think you're, you know what you've said that you've put it really eloquently around that confidence and you know, and I have certain guarantees, I offered to certain clients depending on where they're at. I think there's an argument, you know, around that commitment level to doing it and knowing, and I think, you know, I'm always about the great, there's never a black and white answer and, you know, particularly across different types of businesses, different types of business models, different types of programs and things like that, that, and services that we put up you, I think for me, I think it's great what you said, and I completely agree, but I think for some businesses it doesn't work. I think that actually, you know, that guarantee can work really, really well in a certain business model.
Jen (00:26:56):
But you also have to just as a kind of like an FYI caveat that you also have to look at your upfront costs as well and things, depending on the business, because we've got, you know, if you're talking about coaching services where it's kind of like no skin off your back, or you've got no kind of upfront cost that you have to. So they can't, then I think, you know, it, that's a very bold statements make, cause you just put it. And I think that that provides a lot of confidence to your clients today that you are, you are willing to put your skin in the game on behalf of them. And I think you've got to put a good prequalification in process as well to make sure that people that you are actually saying yes to on that bats that they are committed to the, to the process because you do want committed clients, not just people that are gonna go through and then go, well, it's great. I can just get my money back at the end of it. Yeah.
Robin (00:27:39):
There's always going to be one dickhead who will try and grow them out of it and get their money back, unfortunately. And as much as you can try and assess and qualify people before they come into any kind of a program or by any kind of a service there's always one, but we won't talk about that one. That one dickhead assessment,
Jen (00:27:55):
I can't wait because I can't do as well. No, we didn't. We went, we don't want to say there's no point wasting energy and time on the right back, same situation. And in that, you know, whenever I get to the point, because I take it upon me, like to make sure that I've done that pre-qualification like you said, you will do your utmost to make sure that you get the best clients through the door. And you know, you go through that process and you get that whole, yeah, I'm a hundred percent in I'm a hundred percent. Yes. When actually reality, they were about a 50% that they're giving you the hundred percent because they know that's what you want to hear. And they think they feel like that's where they want to be. But the reality of the situation is that they weren't, and aren't given, as you said, like money, but I didn't want people in my programs who aren't committed, who aren't doing the work that I dread having calls where, because it's just like putting people over hot coals every time, because it's like, well, will you be done anything this week?
Jen (00:28:48):
No. Okay, great. Well this is going to be productive. Like there is absolutely no point in pulling people like that through which is why I never pull people through sales either. Like, if they're like a super like, well, I don't know. I don't know. And they're not willing to risk something if they're not willing to invest, if they're not willing to put their money where their mouth is, but I'm not, I'm not willing to waste my time and spend that with them either. So that's what I mean about prequalification, but I absolutely a hundred percent back, he walked on that. You've got to have confidence and you know, you have to offer some, you know, a guarantee of some kinds. I think that actually, I think, you know, again, agreeing with your head, I think that's where a lot of people have problems because you've got to guarantee something, you gotta have some kind of confidence behind what you're doing.
Jen (00:29:30):
Yes. You might not be able to guarantee. So for instance, you know, we've just had a 1.4 million launch. You know, when people come to me, I'm not guaranteeing that that's going to happen for them because different, different point, different journey, different model, all of those kinds of things. I can't guarantee the same results. But what I can guarantee is that is, you know, loads of other micro moments and, and things that they definitely going to be able to do, that they can position themselves as a market leader and then eventually get there. But you've got to back up something because if you're not willing to guarantee a result of some kind, then why would anyone pay you right.
Robin (00:30:07):
A hundred percent. I think it touches upon the motivation behind sales as well. Because I, I, I mentioned earlier on so many, in fact, I'm going to come at this from a different direction. I call it the dirge of Facebook. Like, don't get me wrong. Facebook's been a brilliant tool for business over the last sort of 15 or so years. And it's only gonna get better and grow as kind of Facebook invest more time and money into the group side of things and monetize that side of it. But how often have we had people who all send you a message in messenger? And I, I bet a lot of your listeners are going to be kind of nodding at this point saying, Hey, I've, I've just seen that. You're amazing coach, how much does coaching cost? And there's always like, I would hesitate at that point, you know, because as we all know that it's way too soon to kind of qualify that person in messenger and actually give them a price.
Robin (00:30:51):
And a lot of people use that price as a filter to qualify people out. And I did a little study and actually most people who are kind of window shopping, just purely on price, about 40% of them. If you actually gave them a bit of education first, before you gave them the price, they would actually become clients rather than walk away. So we're actually turning away a lot of prospective clients thinking we're doing the right thing by filtering them out. But the dirge of Facebook is really one of the reasons why I kind of brought that up is because people are too quick to give out the prices. They're too quick to get the sale because they're so desperate to get the money in for themselves to pay their mortgage and put food on their table. And so what, what happens is without having the right sort of level of education in your pro about your programs, your products, your services, without having that assessment qualification process in and rushing to the sale means that you will be filling your business up with pain in the ass clients who don't really get your value or understand quite how you work because you were too quick to get them into your program.
Robin (00:31:55):
I remember once I used to have a a, a paper based assessment foreman but three years ago I moved into an online form using great little app. And within the first few weeks of sending out, I got a message from a very excitable, young 21 year old fitness professional. And she said, I've heard great things about you, Robin. I really want to work with you. Like how much does coaching cost us for? We do that. We've got to, we've got to jump onto a call, but I need you to fill out my application form. And I kid you not, the answer I got back was I don't have time to fill out a silly little form. Right.
Jen (00:32:31):
It sounds like a great car client material there.
Robin (00:32:34):
Yeah. But I have a three, three strike policy. You've got to piss me off three times before I tell you to fuck off. So, so you've got tolerance. So I have a little bit of tolerance. Cause again, you know, if you felt too hard too soon, you might miss out on a couple of options, like diamond clients who just don't quite fully get it. So I went back to her and I said, that's great, but I'm going to give you 30 minutes of my time on a call. So be really grateful if you could, you know, fill out the form. So she goes way, looks at it, doesn't fill it out. She comes back to me and she says, Oh, I looked at your form. I didn't think any of the questions were appropriate. My first question, Jen is, do you have a business plan?
Robin (00:33:07):
How is that not appropriate for any business? Right. So at that point now I'm angry. So two strikes and now it's just like, right. Go and fill out the fucking form or just fuck off. Cause I don't have time for this, you know, if you want to speak to me, do it. So next day I got a message saying, Oh, I found somebody else. I was like, well more for them. Good luck. You know, but kind of it made it easy for me cause I was going to fire her anyway. So having, but the nice thing about it is like that some people see the like online application forms and assessment forms and things like that as being an online diary, booking systems as being like not personal, it depersonalizes it, but like, no, these are little filters to gather information before you actually get to sit and spend 30 to 60 minutes with an expert and speak to them. You know, so it's, it's worth a little bit of investment of their time in order to get access to that
Jen (00:33:56):
A hundred percent. Cause it, it brings them to a better awareness as well. It helps them understand that problem better because so many times people, they panic outreach and they want help, but they don't feel that they can't fully articulate what's going on. If they get onto a call with you and they can't fully articulate what's going on for them, then how on earth are they going to be able to make a good decision for themselves? And how are you going to be able to identify if you can even help? So it it's imperative, isn't it. And particularly going back to this guarantee thing, if you're going to offer a guarantee, you need to, you need to make sure you've got all of the information that you need to do, you know, to make sure that you're taking the right calls, that you're getting the right information, that you're getting the right people through and that you're doing that prequalification. It's just essential. Isn't it?
Robin (00:34:41):
Well, I had a, an interesting one. So I don't know about you Jen, but I record every single sales conversation I have now with with prospective clients, I've got about 205 stored up from the last 18 months in, in a, in a directory on my computer. And what was interesting is we had a client the other day who kind of we were, I was kind of pushing it pretty hard because she wasn't really doing the work and she pushed it back onto me and said, Oh, this isn't what you promised on the call. And so I was like, Hey, go and have a quick listen to the call. And I found that the bit where I went through, Hey, you've got to, you've got to login to the portal, watch the videos. You've got to fill out the workbook and share pictures of you filling out the workbook into the group.
Robin (00:35:19):
And you've got to show up for the weekly. Cause I said, you've kind of, you've done some of it, but you've done about 60% of the work. And when I said those things to you, you went, yes, I can do all of that. And she was like, I didn't really have a leg to stand on. Do I? So there's a part as well where I think with any, you know, I've worked predominately with service based businesses is different when you're kind of eCommerce or product based. But with service based businesses, like it's worth documenting every step in your process and each of your client's journey through that process as well, to make sure that they've, you've kind of done everything, you know, just in case they do come back and they don't fully understand, like if, if something's gone slightly wrong, you know, and a good example of this is, for example, if I'm say, for example, if you book somebody onto a call without getting them to fill out an assessment form and then you get them into the program and actually things don't seem like something missing here, you can actually go back and say, Oh damn.
Robin (00:36:09):
And it gets for like the assessment form. I miss some key bits of information and you can, you can kind of piece those bits of the jigsaw together and start to repair it. But again, like systemize and automate that stuff, like it shouldn't be a manual process. It should be nice and easy.
Jen (00:36:23):
Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think, again, that goes back to just getting on your point of documentation and things like that is, again, that it's that transparency. Like I said, if you're going to sell, sell, and also be transparent about what people are getting, what kind of results can they expect? What, and you know, what can't you guarantee, but be transparent about all of these things, because you know, it builds confidence in those that you are setting too as well. So I think that it's, you know, that, that transparency across the board, I love that you recall, I think it's a great tip actually, because you know, you're confident in what you're telling people on those calls, you know, and you can be as transparent as you possibly can on them. And then you've got that, as you said, for those that, you know, which are Brown, you say, I don't have many of, you know, many tools out of the hundreds of clients I've worked with to do that.
Jen (00:37:09):
But you know, for the few that do come across and there are hoping for miracles without actually having to do any work, you know, you've, you've got that stock you, I think that's, that's a really, really great tip. So in terms of then just sort of moving on to cause you talked a lot about risk and assessment and investment and like, I want to talk about more about this charging more that you help your clients to do. Can you tell me, can you give my listeners a few tips on how they can start to do that? Because you said it saved your business. The fact that it's a rocket fuel, the fact that this is actually going to you know, grow that business almost overnight because we're not always will because you're going to be getting more for the thing that you're already selling. How do you, how do you help people to do that?
Robin (00:37:58):
Well, it's kind of a three stage process. But like ultimately, like I think if you've got, if you've got a running a service based business, most people would agree that a better result would be to have half the clients, but double the income. Right. It's a no brainer. Okay. but the thing is a lot of people. So one of the first sort of pricing mistakes people make is that all the gurus and experts tell you to go out and have a look at your competition. So all of the, not so good business coaches out there go and have a look at your competition, the key ingredient, which I thoroughly recommend, go and have a look at competition, see what they're getting up to the key ingredient. They forget to tell you though. And the biggest mistake is assuming that the competition actually know what they're doing.
Robin (00:38:37):
So for example, when it comes to pricing, if you're going out, looking at Dave and Dave's looking at Tricia, Tricia's looking at Stephanie, Stephanie is looking at Robin and Robin's looking back at Dave like which one of those four or five people is actually an expert in pricing. And more often than not, none of them are, they're just looked. They've all looked at the competition. It's shamed that everybody is charging the right amount. And the thing is, when you look at your competition, you're only left with three choices, right? Choice number one is you, you think that the way to get businesses to be cheaper than everybody else. So you're now the cheapest and you want to cut people. What you don't realize is you're actually offering massive discounts compared to the competition without even really realizing it. And so you're destroying any profitability your businesses ever going to have, and you'll end up on the sales cycle of doing which sell, deliver, sell, deliver, sell, deliver, Oh, I get ill go and hold.
Robin (00:39:20):
They can't sell. Can't deliver, take a big deep breath, self liver cell deliver cells. And so it carries on second option is you go middling, cause you don't want to be the cheapest, but you don't want to be the most expensive. You think you'd just sit in the middle, in which case you're still kind of commoditized more in that value kind of space. And then if you think about it, there's only one person who can be the most expensive at the competition. And I don't know about you, Jen, but I would rather, that was me. Certainly the local area, you know as somebody has gotta be the most expensive. And, and if you think about it, somebody out there is the most expensive in your, in your niche. And believe it or not, they're still getting clients. Cause if they were the most expensive, not getting clients, they wouldn't be in business anymore.
Robin (00:40:01):
So kind of it's like when you, when you say it, when I say it like that, probably people are thinking, Oh God, yeah, it's really obvious. Well, this stuff is actually really obvious. So, so the first thing is we've got to look at how we're actually kind of assessing what pricing need to do. And like, to be honest, most people, if they, if they took a more goal focused approach to pricing their products. So if you wanted to, well, a good example of this. So I've worked with a web designer who their goal was to get to three K a month in hosting fees so that during the summer they could just not take on any new clients for projects and spend time with their kids. They were charging at the time, eight pounds a month for their hosting. So I said, cook quick bit of math.
Robin (00:40:39):
So have you got capacity for 400 clients? Of course, international sign of distress goes out and they're like, no, actually, no way. It's like, cool. Well, how many could you serve? And they said about a hundred. So it's like, great. So how, how could you serve 400 people? I said, Oh, well we could hire a couple of people to manage it when we're not there. It's like on three care months, I don't think that's realistic. Cause that's like two or three people full time wages and you get no money out of that. So it's pointless. So the only way round it was for them to effectively charge more for pretty much the same service, albeit we stacked a bit of extra value. So half an hour's worth of support time and things like that. But we put the basic price up for care plans to 50 pound a month.
Robin (00:41:16):
So more than five X, the prices, a couple of interesting things happen. So 40, 40% of their clients left straight away. Oh, Oh dear, that's a shame. But they're the ones that didn't get the value. Their revenues went up two and a half times for support calls overnight. They're sorry for, for care plans. And then support calls dropped by 80%. So it's actually the nuisance pain in the ass clients who didn't get their value, who are left in their droves and what the people that were left with. They're like, yeah, we love what you do is this is great. And actually they did manage to hit. So at that point now they only needed 60 clients at 50 quid a month. And they did that. It took them a while, but you know, a couple of years down the line, they've done it. And, and this is a business that was charging sort of, you know, 300 quid for WordPress websites and eight pound a month for hosting. And the most they'd ever made in a month was 800 pounds. And then now fast forward two years and they're having like seven, eight, nine, 10 K months, you know, which means that they saved up a deposit to buy a house. They've got an office and they were able to afford to get married, which I think is fantastic. That's that for me is like the best outcome from coaching,
Jen (00:42:18):
What a results. That's incredible. And I think, you know, that the example that you've just given us is exactly why we should all be looking at social services. And there is also like, I love the fact that you added move on you one, particularly when you're having that transition for, for current clients and things like that who have kind of, you know, on, on those rates and if you were advising them, you know, they, they want to see that, that there's something being added. Absolutely. But I absolutely do think, and I know you agree with me is that we probably already under charging for what we're supplying. You said so eloquently earlier around, you know, people are very humble. And we don't see the goals that we deliver and actually that it's worth a lot more. And also what people can afford really isn't any of our business it's worth what it's worth. Right. Yeah.
Robin (00:43:06):
Cool. I'm going to make another controversial statement here, Jen. And again, this is going to piss a lot of people off when they listen to this, but this is so important. I'm charging by the hour or charging by the date is fundamentally unethical. So for the, for the benefit of everybody who's listening, I'll give you a quick story. So Jen, in imagine this scenario, right? You're, you're in the market for a website and we agree that we're a good fit. And the proposal that I put forward for you is about 20 hours worth of work to build up your website and at 50 pounds an hour. Is that okay? Sounds good to me. Excellent. So what I forgot to tell you though, Jen after you signed the contract, was that actually I've only been doing it for about six months.
Robin (00:43:43):
Not very good. Your website is not going to fan on, on be found on Google. And in about three months time, when I come back, there'll be a few features which I've missed off. Okay. And we're going to have this awkward conversation where you're going to be like, can you add the blog on? And can you add those products? And a bit of e-commerce on there for me, you know, it'd be really helpful. And I say, yes, I can't Jen, but we've used up your 20 hours. So it's going to be another 10 hours. You're happy to pay for that.
Jen (00:44:04):
Well, yeah, exactly. And that's when you saw again, the problems, isn't it. When your clients start coming back to and going well, no, it's not because you've not delivered on my thoughts on, and that's the key word, isn't it on what I thought you were going to deliver. There's so many assumptions when you charge for time versus results.
Robin (00:44:20):
So a better, a better way to do it. So on the flip side of that, and there's two stages to this, we've got Dave now, Dave is a brilliant web design. He's been doing it for 20 plus years, knows all the ins and outs his websites get five to 10 leads a month for your business because he, he he's doubled down on this. What he's learned about search engine optimization. Now imagine a scenario where Dave's actually so proficient, but he's shit at business. He's still 50 pounds now, but it only takes them 10 hours to do it. So you've got this guy who was much better at delivering the thing who is earning like a third or a half of the money that the less experienced person is earning. On the flip side of that, they've upskilled themselves learns a little bit about packaging, pricing and sales, and he comes to you, Jen. And he says, well, Jen, listen, I can build this website. I can guarantee that you'll get five to 10 solid leads a month that you convert at least two or three of those. And you've got a 10 X ROI in the investment in me, but this website is going to cost you two and a half grand. You'd be like, it's more expensive than the cheap guy who was less experienced. However, he's kind of saying that he's going to guarantee his results for me.
Jen (00:45:24):
And then it comes right back to that. Doesn't it about being confident in it? And this is what I love. You know, everything comes back to what you do confidently charging more. It's not about just charging more. You've got be confident in your results, confident that you know, in what your worth and your people will pay it when you, when you back it up with confidence. And it's all part of becoming a market leader guys, like when you're thinking, you know, going back to what you were saying earlier a bit around being the most expensive in your industry, there's an automatic assumption that you get what you pay for. So if you're the most expensive in your industry, you are automatically perceived as the best in your industry. So bear that in mind when you're looking at your pricing, I think that's key, right?
Robin (00:46:01):
Absolutely. A hundred percent. And you know, again, if that, if you, if you go and do a Google search for somebody and you can't find enough information about them, whether it be Google reviews or testimonials on their website, or just literally can't find anything or look at their website, and it's just a bit rubbish, maybe I know I've talked a lot about websites, everything, isn't all about websites by the way. But if you can't find this stuff about the expert, you're about to invest your hard earned money into you probably want to think twice about whether they're the right person for the job, because somebody who is good at what they do, the results will be able to speak for themselves across all the different social media channels across their website, across Google, you know, and all over the place. Like, cause that person has positioned themselves as an expert. And that's absolutely vital. It's, it's the same reason why, you know, shameless plug time gen. But it's the same reason why I wrote my books. I wanted, I wanted the people to, I want it to be visible. I wanted people to be, to be able to search for Robyn, wait and find a shit ton of information about me because it just, it shows that I've invested in myself to position myself as that expert. And it just builds trust.
Jen (00:47:06):
Oh, a hundred percent. Yes. This year. It was literally my next thing I want to talk to you about with your books, because if you written, is it five bucks,
Robin (00:47:13):
Five books a year six, if you include the Spanish version of take your shot. So if you're into Spanish and you want to read VAP or Ella, you can,
Jen (00:47:22):
You know, we do have some listens even in Spain, so that's good. I'm pleased.
Robin (00:47:27):
Here we go. The rankings need a bit of a boost guy. So if you are Spanish, then please go for it.
Jen (00:47:31):
Awesome. It really does help by the way guys, like again, you know, and Robin is like so hot on this and I watch it him with all, but you know, that's, what's helped his positioning and what he does with his books asking for reviews. And that's like, again, another thing is, like you said, ask your clients, there's testimonials, ask for that, you know, social proof and get people to review, review your stuff because it does help with your positioning. And it's not that people don't want to give them either. They just need a kick up the bum and you know, don't ask, don't get, so, you know, do I do do those Shamus blogs? Do you ask? Because no one ever got there by not asking everybody's successful has done it through asking for that engagement, asking for these reviews. And it really, really does help.
Jen (00:48:20):
So, you know, if you have enjoyed this interview today with Robin, it's just been incredible. It's such a juicy conversation. Seriously, please do review that the Spanish book, if you're in Spain and to be fair, any, you know, I've, I've read take your shots a couple of times now, and it's brilliant. And the reason why I was gonna bring up the books next was because your examples just then they just so beautifully adequate in demonstrating, you know, the different situations that people are in and how by just making those minus small tweaks can make such a significant difference to your business. And for me take your shots is a great example of that. It's, you know, it's a, it's a great story that really demonstrates it and you know, does what it says on the 10 or I do, I do love these kind of blatant epiphany moments that you get when you, when you read something that say profound. And I do believe that, you know, for me, you know, I love all of your books and I've done, I've dipped into a few of them, but take your shot is probably one of my faves. So I definitely go out there and get that on Amazon guys because it's, it's genuinely is mind blowing. I'm really, really enjoyed it. So thank you so much for creating such amazing books, but also, you know, how has that worked for your positioning?
Robin (00:49:38):
Oh, it's made such a massive difference. So the first book I wrote was online business startup, which was a bit more, that was when I was still running the agency, sort of that came out 2015. And that was just, I was getting frustrated about the sort of people's perceptions of sort of web designers and people in the creative industry. So I wrote a book which was, you know, online business startup, which was designed to change those perceptions. And I kind of wrote it for my clients to kind of educate them a bit about how we worked and what to expect from a website and how much we might charge for it and things like that. And it really took off, it's sold tens of thousands of copies. And as a result of that, I started getting invited on to things like podcasts to go and do speaking engagements at various different sort of networking groups.
Robin (00:50:21):
I got featured in, you know, dozens of different articles online, offline, all over the place. And, and that was the start of the shift for, me from that sort of done for you web design marketing work that we were doing, and it's that expert space that kind of coaching consulting and training. So it was transformational. And one of the, one of the reasons I wrote take your shot is because when I sat at the coaching practice in 2016, I needed, I needed a book which supported the coaching practice, which I didn't feel my business startup did. And it was also commercial. I was like, it's one of the best lead magnets I've got, I know that for every hundred copies of take your shot, that gets sent out the door, I get a client from it.
Robin (00:51:02):
So commercially it works incredibly well for me because it abundantly gives value at teachers five of kind of the core coaching principles, which we use that fearless business through a very simple example, which is a story about Russ who was a golf pro, who I worked with sort of close to four and a half years ago now and got great results with. So people can really kind of the way I tell the story, it's like a first person kind of like through, RAICES eyes, if you like. And people can really empathize with that story. So they really get into it. And also there's loads of like really dull, like business books out there that like hundreds of pages long, and it's really difficult because there's so far to actually get into them. So I was like, I want to a short book, less than a hundred pages shortly, you can read on a short haul flight.
Robin (00:51:45):
It's, it's something you can empathize with. So it's gotta be told us a story. And also I wanted to get to get people kind of focused on their future as well. So one of the ways I did that was through like this, one of the star characters is this guy who's like in his fifties, his guy called David he's a business coach happens upon Russ starts helping him out with his business. And actually I modeled David on myself where I want to sort of be in 20 years time, not necessarily on a golf course, cause I don't play golf, but you know, just being able to kind of just mess around and just help people abundantly without there being any expectation that it, because you know, all of the, the, the assets are already out there for David, he's sweating for him. He's a business owner, not necessarily the business business doer. And, so that all comes through and take your shot.
Jen (00:52:29):
Yeah. I want to say it guys, seriously, you have to get it like you will read it and they will be numerous penny drop moments as you're reading it. And like Robin said, it's an enjoyable read. You actually want to get to the end of it. It's not a dip in and out. It's a less, you know, it's almost, it's almost like the shot, the shot, you know, does take your shot. It's almost like a shot glass of a business genius. You really do need, you do to get it. But you know, Robin's written these incredible books. And you know, it's, it's Testament to, you know, to your positioning because I mean, I hear the likes of, you know, Daniel Priestley talking about you, you know, who's really big in the kind of like the key person of influence they've written his own amazing books.
Jen (00:53:13):
It really has taken you to bigger Heights. And, you know, I talk about writing books all the time on this podcast because I really do think it's such a key positioning piece and just waving back very quickly around, you know, cause obviously you've your, business career started out in the website industry back in, back in the day where the houses were going around the wheels, not showing up there to Robin, but, yeah you've kind of seen it from the beginnings of all of that industry all the way to where it is now. And you know, I really want to kind of reiterate Robin's point around if you're looking to do business with someone who doesn't have a good website or a website at all, seriously, have a good thing about who you're doing business with. Because it is a, yet another positioning piece, but it's not just any old positioning piece. Like for instance, Robin's amazing books. That is something that takes you to a new level of positioning by websites or basic positioning, you know, at it's easy to have one, there's no reason why you shouldn't as say, if you don't, then there's serious alarm bells that go off. Right.
Robin (00:54:23):
Absolutely. I mean, the thing is like, you know, websites don't have to be, you don't have to get all singing or dancing ones. There's tons of like DIY web builders out there now, which are pretty professional, you know, the likes of Squarespace. And I hate to say it, but Wix and Weebly, they're a bit,
Jen (00:54:36):
Sorry, don't be the Weebly.
Robin (00:54:39):
The thing is that every new business has to start from somewhere. So, and you can do it. You don't have to spend big bucks to do it. You know, it's something that's really just free and great is Google my business, you know, get a, Google, my business listing, set up, get it verified and smash out 10 reviews as quickly as you can guarantee none of your competition, you've got 10 reviews and you'll start getting picked up organically, you know, and it's totally free. It's a Google product, get 10, 10 videos up onto YouTube, which talk about, you know, answer questions that your clients are asking. Again, that gets, that's a Google product. It's gonna get picked up in Google's organic search rankings, you know, and now all of a sudden you've got what we call real estate on Google search page when somebody searches for Robyn weight or Jen hall or whoever, you know, whichever, whatever your name is.
Robin (00:55:21):
And, that just people don't necessarily even need to start scratching any deeper than that. They're happy to scratch at the surface because that's enough to say, okay, they're serious enough about their business to invest in like several different forms of media. You know, this, like marketing's changed so much. It's like you've brought back some happy memories that Jen did back in 2000 and 2004, you know, marketing like Zuckerberg was in his pants, like building the first version of Facebook and it didn't get out of Harvard for several, you know, even for, I think it's two years after that. So before it started to go into the other universities in 2004, like all you needed was a business card and a website. And we kind of got in at the right time. You know, and if that website was good enough to be found on Google, like our clients were winning like left right and center nowadays though, you've got Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, like all of these gazillion different platforms. And you do need to have a presence on all of them and it can be incredibly overwhelming, but the reason why people feel they have to invest so much in all of these free marketing platforms is because they haven't got the business thing right. In the first place. And not fundamentally, they're not charging enough for, for their product or service that they're selling. You know, and imagine the snow marketing is a dancer easier. If you've got to get half the number of clients, because your prices are double what everybody else has.
Jen (00:56:37):
Yeah. A hundred percent. And, you know, just as a little tip and I don't know what you think about this, like, you know, this is where my business coaching journey began. It's all in the niche. You know, part of the reason I think people don't see the value and the reason why they don't raise their prices is because they are not niched enough to see the, the, you know, the, the impact is in the, in the granular. And if you're not granular in how you present yourself, that it's gonna be very difficult to see that value or didn't do what you think about that.
Robin (00:57:05):
Well, I, of course I have an opinion on it, Jen. A lot of people when you ask them who their target market is, they go S and E's why I talked about 6 million small businesses early on 40,000 of those businesses are L I E large. So basically SME stands for all of the businesses. That's not a target market or a niche, and, you know, being a Jack of all trades and a master of none, again, it's just going to like, you're just going to get lost in amongst all the noise. Whereas if you stand up and you say, I help dentists with their Facebook advertising to get new clients, I'm like all of the dentists in the room who were interested in Facebook ads are gonna look up and go. That sounds interesting. They're talking about me. So that niching part absolutely vital you, you've got to double down on it and not, not just, I don't know if you kind of caught it, but it's not just niching on a particular audience. It's an issue on the product side of things as well.
Jen (00:57:53):
Yes. Yes. Big time. Can you give me your, with the examples? Can you give the guys an example of a niche thing on the product side?
Robin (00:58:02):
Yeah. So I take, take VA's for example, virtual assistants. So, you know, they're 10, a penny, they're all over the world. You can get them for expensive in the UK or cheap in Singapore. It doesn't matter. And they're all to varying degrees of, you know, good, bad and the ugly. And, but most VA's will hone in on, on manage your inbox for you. And I'll, I'll be a VA for all businesses. Whereas actually, if the AI comes along and they say they've found their niche coaches, for example, they only work with coaches. That's great. So that's nice and easy there. The market understands them, but an example of product niching is, would be for example right. I'm going to have a concierge service for finding your podcast interviews. That's actually a VA service. It's a more advanced one. It's technical.
Robin (00:58:43):
If they've built up a bank of contacts, you know, who host podcasts all they've got to do is start, you know, driving some outreach to those various podcasts hosts. Next thing you know, they found 10 podcasts for some, for that coach to guest on. What's really interesting here is like most of the A's are charging somewhere between what Singapore sort of eight pounds, $8 an hour, you know, in the UK, you can spend up to sort of 35, 40 pounds now for a good VA. Whereas actually, if you had like a podcast finding service for coaches, you could actually charge for a pack of 10, which might be two and a half thousand dollars, for example. But actually it might be not much more than an hour's work to actually get that podcast, you know, organized get, get the show notes sent across and send the host, the headshots and things like that. And you know, so you're making a 10 X, you're making 10 X more than a traditional VA because you've picked a specific service area to focus on.
Jen (00:59:40):
Excellent. Well, yeah, exactly. Great example. Another one again, if, people are listened to that kind of example, and I've talked about Alessia or a couple of the other episodes, but Alessia Pandolfi who is someone I've worked with, so I can vouch for her work. She's absolutely amazing. Came to me when we worked together in terms of her being my client, she used to be my BA and she was like, exactly, as you described, like, I'm kind of like sick of working all hours under the sun charging per hour. And, you know, she's, she niched into helping coaches, you know, launch online programs and set up summits. And by just, you know, productizing in those areas, she's now selling huge high ticket packages, you know, the amp, but by the hour. And so she's able to save time and make more money.
Jen (01:00:27):
So everything that Robin's been saying like that again is another example of someone who's, who's done it. And if you know, anyone can do this staff, you've just got to be smart about it. And you know, if you are stock invest in someone like Robin, invest in people to help you productize what your services and move away from this charging for the hour, and perhaps invest in someone to help you really shine a light on, you know, your goals and help you with that niching help you with the raising of your prices and getting more comfortable with that. And, you know, know that your price is also on, you know, station to me that they're fluid and they, they can raise as your business becomes more seasoned and, and, you know, op levels and skill and so and so forth. So, you know, you, you've got to make those investments and just kind of buckling background to something we're talking about around skin in the game. And you went broke more follower.
Robin (01:01:22):
I am. Yeah. Progressive property in that side of things. Yeah.
Jen (01:01:26):
Well, he's saying which are probably going to get wrong. So when I go and try to say saying, it always does, but it's, if you don't risk something, you risk everything. Is that right? If I got that right? Yeah.
Robin (01:01:36):
A hundred percent. Yeah, of course it costs more to do nothing. Okay.
Jen (01:01:38):
Exactly. You, risk everything by risking nothing. So you have to, you've got to put skin in the game, you've got to risk something. I, you know, financially energetically you know, situational, whatever that looks like, you've got to put something on the line and you've got to have confidence in what you do and what you're selling. And if you're not, then do get that investment. Do you get that help? Because if you are serious about being a business owner, not the deer is me and roping up and talking about, you've got to take these step forward, that step forward to actually get help to do that. And I genuinely believe, like, I don't know about you Robin, but for me, my situation, I've been a business owner
Jen (01:02:20):
For over 16 years now, since I was 19 years old and I didn't stop properly making money and actually having it, why would call it a serious business? Until probably about six years ago. So I wasted 10 years chasing my tail because I refused like an idiot to invest in the right people to help me take my business forward. Well, I know, I know, and I will start there. I will stand by that Robyn I'm absolutely, you know, it was wasted and I don't want to see anyone else go through that because if you know, there's, there was no need for me to have struggled for that length of time. I definitely believe there's a need for struggle. No, not 10 years, my God.
Robin (01:03:03):
Yeah. But believe it or not, it's that investment in time is one of the best investments you'll love having ever made. Cause you had to go through that pain in order to understand what you needed to do. Like, I believe that business is compounding compounding all the time. Any investments you make in times time or money in your business compounds. So have you heard about, there's a book called the slight edge, which talks about this, where you can either be just above the line or just below the line, but you can be just above or below the line for years. And then all of a sudden you can diverge away from that line in a really positive way or a really negative way. And it's actually, if you can just stay above the line for long enough, eventually things will come true because all of those little bits of investment you've put into your business, whether it be, you know, working with a mentor or coach or paying for a marketing program, or, you know working with clients and, learning about their ups and the downs and sharing that journey with them and what it took to get them better results several years in, eventually that line's gonna start tipping up and you just got to stick it out because that's ultimately what business is about.
Robin (01:04:01):
There's no, there is no quick win, no easy, easy way to make cash in this day and age. I don't believe
Jen (01:04:06):
No. And I think it is if there's a lifecycle that you have to be, that you have to take and I do a hundred percent believe I took them many lessons from that time, you know, I'm not going to say like wasted, you know, my businesses are making money. They just want, you know, I'm an ambitious woman. Like, you know, my businesses I wanted to do well, I was seeing, you know, which we're seeing, you know, now the seven figure launches and all those sorts of things, which I'm really proud of. And, you know, I'm so glad that we got to that stage. It's just a look back at those.The things that held me back that I wish I didn't, you know, I didn't know I was stubborn. You know, I had that stubbornness I can do, I'm so stubborn and I'm, I can do on my end. I don't need help and I'm fine. And I'll just work it out. And it's all trial and error and yes, to a certain extent. That's true. I just think that if I just go out of my own way a little bit quicker, I could have been here a little bit quicker, but Hey, isn't hindsight a wonderful thing,
Robin (01:05:04):
But the thing is like, Jen, that's one of the things I've always admired about you the most is your tenacity to like, just knock it down and put in the hard yards, no matter like how well or how shit things are going. Like you've always been consistent like throughout. And I think kind of like you're leading from the forefront. People can learn an awful lot from that.
Jen (01:05:21):
Thank you. And did say back to you, I mean, again, you're another example of somebody who's, you know, not just, you know, had that kind of heart, that, that hard drive through business, right. From the, from the ground upwards and stuck with it. And, you know, through thick and thin, you've been through, you know, already the 2007 recession, you've bounced back from that. And you're also doing incredibly well at the moment, you know, throughout this pandemic showing, you know, guys look at this, this is why you need to be aiming high. This is why you need to be becoming confident about what you do aiming for that market leadership status. Because, you know, again, Robin is again, proof that when you can do that, you can, you can weather any storm. You can create your own economy, regardless of what everything else is doing, because you're always going to be seen as the best and therefore, you know, even a small percent percentage of our planet, put it investing money into you is a lot.
Jen (01:06:14):
So, you know, aim for that because, you know, it just goes to show that you stick at it, keep aiming for the next day that raising the bar slightly every time. And you will consistently stay at that at that level. It's gonna pay back. So honestly, I'm going to, I'm going to cut it here because Robin, you've just given so much value in just over an hour of your time. And I really appreciate that, you know, you've taken this time with us to stay with us and share all of these amazing tips and insights. And I think there's going to be so many are hard moments, but before I cut you too short, I just want people to know where they can go. Obviously we mentioned the very beginning your group remind people where they can go to a group.
Robin (01:06:55):
Yeah. So if you head on to Facebook and then search for confidently charged more, you should be able to find the group. And then I've got a little gift plan for everybody, Jen, as well. So in terms of like take your shot, if you want to copy of it. And you're based in the UK you can get a paperback by heading on over to fearless.biz, click on the resources link, and you're be able to apply for a free copy there on the proviso though that you do promise to leave a review on Amazon. So it's a little gift from me to all of you
Jen (01:07:21):
Amazing. And if I haven't got that link already, I'll get that off of Robin and stick that in the show notes. So you could go there, head there and click that link and get hold of that. But that's really generous. And guys yet please do review because it makes all the difference. You know, not just to Robin's rankings, but in order for other people to also take the value that, you know, this is, this is something that I, I know because I've known Robin awhile. This is how he gives back to those that perhaps aren't at the right stage for the full on investment as well. So, you know, it's how you can reach much further, you know, to helping these people who need that, that, that kind of like the beginning of their journey. This is how that's going to begin for them and say, please make sure that you do review this because it's really going to help, you know, other people as well. I think it's, it's really important. And so you've got the gift. And also you've got YouTube channel. How you, yeah,
Robin (01:08:11):
Yeah, I've got a YouTube channel. So we just started a new series actually called fix your business where I business owners, interesting business owners, and do a bit of life coaching with them. And we we actually get some screen shares up. We go through some coaching models for their businesses and try and transform their business in sort of the space of 30 to 40 minutes. So there's it, there's, again, there's a shit ton of value that for anybody kind of either just starting out or feeling like they're a bit stuck that YouTube channel is a good place to go see, and just gone to jump onto YouTube and search for Robin Waites within the, on the end of it.
Jen (01:08:38):
Fantastic. Excellent. Again, I'll stick that in the show notes as well. So you can binge on all of the Robin goodness and there is there there's a lot out there, but it's all worth while like you need to, you need to spend that time and, and look at this stuff because it's, just fantastic. And again, thank you so much, Robin. I really appreciate it. You know, spending your time here today. I hope you've enjoyed our conversation.
Robin (01:09:00):
Of course I have. It's always a pleasure, Jen. Thank you. Fabulous. Thanks.