How can you grow your business further? Today, Ken Courtright shows us a map that can get you in place within six to ten weeks. In his six to ten wide approach, Ken points out several strategies he uses that can also help you build great relationships with your clients. Meetups are necessary moments for learning, and through this, Ken has established a reliable referral system. Listen to Ken as he shares more tactics on how to sell your service to the right audience.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Go 6 Wide Service
This is episode number 61. We’re calling this Going Six Wide. That means in our many years of growth consulting, I have personally asked myself, “How are we going to double business? How are we going to increase sales? How are we going to sell more videos in our video stores?” Not only that, when I go into a client for the first time, within the first ten minutes, there is usually some form of, “How are we going to?” Meaning, how are you, Ken Courtright and your consulting guys going to help us grow X? I decided a couple of years ago to add something to our events. We hold a couple of events every year called Digital Footprint. You can find info at DigitalFootprint.net and when we do exit interviews of both the speakers and the attendees, every single event, the most favorite segment of the weekend is the game that we play called What would you do?
What we do at the end of Sunday is we’d create what I call a listing of chairs across the stage, either in a V or a slight diagonal. We put all of the expert speakers that either has a global business, has been in business with the same business for ten years or longer, or in any capacity have done multiple millions multiple years in a row. That’s the qualifications. We put them on chairs and then we let the audience attendees one by one come to a microphone and say, “This is my name. This is the industry I’m in. This is my current business challenge. What I want to say to the panelist panel if this was your business challenge, what would you do?” I’m going to do two episodes in a row, episode 61 and 62 with one of the most common what would you do questions, and I’m going to boil it down.
The first one is, I am a health consultant, weight loss expert, physical therapist, personal trainer, but I’m an expert. I provide a service and I tell people what to do. In essence, they’re consultants. My question to you, the panel is, “I am struggling to grow my business and my regular customers. I’m struggling to figure out where to advertise it or market. I am at a loss. If this was your challenge, what would you do?” I’m the one-man panel. What I do anytime I come up with this situation or this question, I want to not just answer the question with what would work now but I also want to show them how I go about this. The first thing that we teach people is when you’re faced with this challenge, if you want major changes and double, triple or quadruple business, you have to majorly change something. If you want major changes, you can’t tweak something and expect major changes.
It's amazing what happens when you truly befriend people and give up your time and ask for nothing in return. Click To TweetMeetups Plus Facebook And LinkedIn Groups
First things first, we teach a 6 to 10 wide approach. If this was my challenge, I would get six columns on an Excel spreadsheet and a piece of paper with a pen or pencil. I would come up with six different ways that are outside the box thinking that could achieve the numbers that this potential customer’s looking for. If this is me and say, “I’m a personal trainer, here’s my six. These jumped right out at me because I know each one of these six could work. Independently, if you put the six together, this would be awesome.” Number one is I would go to meetups fifteen days in a row. In the 1st through the 15th of the month, every day you’re going to go online and you’re going to find another meetup that you can register yourself into. The first day, you’re going to register yourself on the 30th day of the month. Set it for 7:00 PM to go to that meetup and register yourself.
Expert In The World
On the second day of the month when you get home from your day job, you book yourself into another meetup on the 29th. On the third day of the month, you book yourself into a meetup on the 28th. All of a sudden, around the 15th of the month, you can’t go home and book yourself into a meetup because you’ve got to meet up to go to on the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th. The bottom line is this, I don’t care who you are and how good of a personal trainer you are, and each meetup averages across the country about twenty people per meetup. There is no way, if you go with twenty business cards to fifteen meetups in a row, you’re talking about presenting your message in front of 300 people. Somebody in that group of 300 people needs a personal trainer or they know somebody if you present yourself right. Most importantly, the greatest mistake for people that use this approach is they’d go once and done. This is not about blasting your message for the ten minutes they give you and then scraping the leads, going and leaving. No, this is about building friendships and building relationships. I’m going to add another one on the side. Number 1A would be Facebook groups, specifically the local Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups that are talking about this because referrals come from Facebook groups more than personal clients. It’s amazing what happens when you truly befriend people and give up your time and ask for nothing in return. When they know you’re an expert baby, you get referrals. Number one is, I would crush the meetups. If you want twenty minutes of detail on how to do it, it’s one of the podcasts. Number two, I would become an expert in the world. Meaning you’re already an expert, but the world may not know that. Episode number two, my second podcast of all time, is going from rookie to expert in six months or less. It is not more important to be an expert, but it’s more important to be perceived as an expert. You could be an expert, but if you’re humble and the world doesn’t know you exist, you’re too bashful or your self-image is low, and you never leave the house, you have no business. If the world perceive you, especially Google thinks you’re an expert, you have a business until you’re blue in the face.
Right To Succeed Website
Number three, you need what is called a right to succeed website and that’s a website that immediately when they open it, the world knows, “They know what they’re doing. They’re an expert.” They don’t even know necessarily exactly what methodologies they use as a personal trainer, but I can tell the world, “I love this guy or this girl.” Right to Succeed site is episode number 40 if you want the details.
Read Your Client’s Mind
Number four, I would go to episode number three and I would understand how to read your client’s mind because you as the expert and the personal trainer cannot be the client. Meaning you can’t think like the client. You think you can, but you can’t. It’s called adult confidence and you’ve got to check out the podcast number three called Read a Client’s Mind. When you’re building a website, this podcast shows you the titles of your first twenty posts on your website and it uses a tool via Google, which is free. It shows you exactly what your potential clients are typing into Google to find you. If you know that, it’ll show you exactly how to title your posts. Google will see you as an expert in that local area, so you will get all of that business and traffic.
Podcast As A Personal Trainer
Number five, I would do a podcast as a personal trainer. I would then make sure you transcribe each podcast and pump it into a blog. More importantly, in a personal trainer space, you want to chunk out paragraphs of those transcripts and pump those into Twitter and Facebook. Even use those as some of the seeds to what to talk down in the Facebook groups because if you do that, you’re going to supercharge your right to succeed website. Google is going to see all that communication going in the Web 2.0 world and you’ll be an expert that faster in the eyes of Google. As most of us know, when you’re an expert in the eyes of Google, you’re quickly an expert in your local area and nationally. I would jump on HARO, Help A Reporter Out. If you’re not sure how to use HARO, I would Google it or YouTube it and check out. There’s a couple of 7 and 10-minute videos that show you how to use HARO. When you’re doing the HARO responses, which is free, make sure you reference in your signature line, in your credentials that you have a podcast because that’s like a radio show.
Befriend Chiropractors
They think immediately when you have local media or a podcast that you’re an expert and then you’ll get those HARO posts, which will blow your website up nationally. You need that when you want to charge a lot of money as a fitness consultant or a personal trainer. HARO is what I call the Mac Daddy. Finally, as a long term approach, but an incredible approach, I would, in your local community, befriend every single chiropractor within an hour’s drive, maybe even a 90-minute drive. Chiropractors are social people, they’re great at sales, and they love referring their patients to good people. I would do shock-and-awe boxes to every chiropractor. I would hand-deliver a Christmas present to every chiropractor every Christmas. I would make sure every chiropractor knows who you are as the personal trainer and weight loss expert in town, and I would live in the meetups and with the goal of making friends with every chiropractor. You’ve got all these meetups and all these chiropractors become your salesperson. They’re constantly referring.
I did an older podcast about the case study a guy did when he went into East LA in the middle of the night asking directions to prove a point that even the toughest gangs in the world, when they’re asked for help, they have to give you directions. It is our inherent nature to want to help people and a lot of people forget that the fastest way to grow a business is word of mouth. It isn’t fast in the sense of 1980 when a restaurant would grow slowly like my dad said, “Forget advertising, just cook good food and the world will find you.” That is true, but it took my dad 15 of his 27 years to get there. In the world of social media, word of mouth can launch a business in 60 days if you give it a chance, but what you have is you have to have what’s called the Big Bang effect. You have to influence a handful of 20 to 50 people. Who are they? Those are the people in the meetups and the local chiropractors, and you’ve got to get to know them. You’ve got to find out what makes them tick and add value to them first.
Meetups are about building friendships and relationships. Click To TweetRemember, seek to understand before you’re understood. What does that chiropractor need? What can you deliver to them first before you expect them to refer you to a bunch of business? If I’m a health consultant of any kind, I’m going six wide and I’m going to crush this. I’m going to go to every meetup in my community and I’m not going to go to them just in the first month. I’m right there at nighttime. You go to these until your business is solid. You’re going to become an expert by listening to episode number two. You’re going to build what’s called a right to succeed website, which is episode number 40. You’re then going to read your client’s mind. After episode 40, you’ll see the structure of what works to get clients and keep clients, but then you have to understand what to build into that. I covered that in episode number three.
All the tools that will show you exactly what to write or have someone write for you, and then jump on a podcast, start a podcast, and start transcribing that podcast, which has a great blog and social media material. This whole map I’m giving you, you can have in place within 6 to 10 weeks. Once that podcast, you’ve got a few episodes and you launched the podcast with no less than six episodes. A podcast is free. Get yourself a decent mic and then jump on HARO, HelpAReporterOut.com and I’ve got a couple of podcasts on that. I talk about HARO a lot and then I would jump into the joint ventures, use leverage and get the people that have existing audiences to start sending you business. In my opinion, there is no way you hit these 6 to 7 bullets. Your business is not incredibly further along and more profitable in six months. I hope this helps. See you on the trail. Take care.
Important Links:
- DigitalFootprint.net
- Episode number two – past episode
- Right to succeed – episode 40
- Read a Client’s Mind – episode 3
- HelpAReporterOut.com
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