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Success Story: Martial Arts Instructor

I want to quickly give you an example of a student of mine who, uh, had a particular challenges it's johnny m he's ah long time student mine on he unfortunately couldn't be with us because he used my material to earn so much money that he's traveling in asia for, I believe six months so unfortunately couldn't be with us, but this guy's very interesting he's a pretty big guy, he got injured and he used to work as a bouncer used to do a lot of martial arts got injured, he was like, how am I gonna work again? And he actually, like was concerned about his debt and actually like, how am I going to pay for rent? So he used some of the material for my book to negotiate stuff, and that was the key he negotiated like a very modest feels like a forty five, dollar feet and that for him was a turning point where he said, like, wow, this stuff works and the reason I'm bringing johnny up is I want everyone I'm teaching a lot of stuff over three days it's easy to get comfortable and get overwhelmed a...

nd say, okay, that's great, but I'm not ready to do that yet I'm not ready to change my business and do all this customer research and I don't have access to fifty thousand people you don't need all that. You need to do the eighty five percent solution or sometimes the thirty percent solution pick one thing, which is what he did. You negotiate like forty bucks, and he was like, oh, my god, this stuff works. So he ended up joining my urn one k class and a lot of stuff we're talking about today, and even mohr and he, uh, said I'm gonna teach martial arts so he decided to find out who his client bases. Now, who do you think are the clients for martial arts? What are some examples? Men? Okay, what else? What are other potential clients? No parents. Which parent? Um, dad, I would think that dad okay, so one of the other, I don't know, but one of the other, but a parent, not the kid. Be very careful. What else? You guys watch enemy? Very good. Okay, so kind of like aspirational dudes. Ok? I know a number of women who do it for self defence. Very good. So, there's. Not a lot of opportunities, but do you see the difference in your messaging? If you were targeting mothers versus mm eh, dudes, or if you're targeting sort of like, overweight, you know, guys who just they're like a forty year old overweight guys versus women who want self defense do you see the difference trainer at my gym? He says when you talk to men about working out you use words like what bulk up get big get cut what words to use for women tone lean now you may be doing many of the same exercises actually you really might be maybe the weights are different but you're still doing a little lifting little cardio but you can never use the same words isn't that interesting when I talk to at the beginning today about language, the importance of language how many of us I would simply say I'm targeting everybody I'm a wedding photographer so I'm targeting everybody but women have code words they use for a photography men too that's why you will very rarely see a wedding photography wedding photographer catering to men just doesn't make sense they're not really in that market if I were a personal trainer I'd be using totally different words for skinny dudes who want to get big that was me right? You've tried everything you keep on eating and it just it just goes off your body your friends say wow I'd love to have that problem but what they don't realize is it's actually a problem for you when I'm reading that I'm like god he's in my head right? So anyway this guy he ended up targeting uh law enforcement and martial arts people who actually wanted to get advanced tactical training because he had trained swat instructors and things like that why do you think he chose that market instead of mothers? Well money's one but time they did not need to be convinced of his value they took a look at one look at this dude they asked him who he had trained before he said taught military swat instructors and they're like boom done now he actually used to more sophisticated stuff that I teach in the later half earned one k he did some testing so he wants to see if his packages were actually going to sell so he lowered his rate just so he could get people in the door not deal with the pricing issue and he tought I believe it was something like a ah six week rapid action boot camp in an eight week this and whatever and he found that they loved actually loved having that sort of boundaries and set steps and levels and so he raised his rate backup went way back up I think he was starting at something like twenty and he was like there's no way I can charge more in that how many of us have said that there's no way I can charge more on that and he was able to more than quadruple his rates his clients love him they love paying they don't even question it because they know they're getting massive value from him now. He's learning so much he's on vacation for, I believe, six months in asia. So that's johnny and the reason I pointed him out was all those things as we just went through that story, he ratted he really understood what I called cloud research. What will cover tomorrow? He understood all different concerns and even at a higher level, all different, um, potential clients mother's young women, fat dude's, everybody, law enforcement think about that think about the clients you're targeting right now and ask yourself if you could erase the page just like we did yesterday and say, where do I want my money to go? Where do I want my clients to come from? What would that be? How would you change your language? Where would you find those people? Let's pause there, get reactions from online if you've got him and then we'll move on to something else. Anybody here surprised by anything that we've covered so far? Yeah, I'm not surprised that it well, I'm I'm surprised a lot of it is so obvious, but we're usually at least for me, I'm usually caught up in my own business there that I'm missing what's right in front of my so true. And so you know, I I usedto I wrote my book mostly it took me two years to write and I wrote it at a most at a coffee shop I was working at that time is well and I would wake up around five thirty or six I would write for a couple hours before I went to work and there's this coffee shop near my house and like the coffee shop didn't really have that many people in it and I love it was like a really cool atmosphere and so the owner and I became kind of like buddies and I said, hey, man like, have you ever thought about doing some type of marketing? I tried to give him some free marketing advice, right? I was going to teach him how to blow up his business he didn't to him I was like some random consumer right? So he's just like I'm the guy who sits in the copy shop for two hours of drinks one coffee he's like this guy's a dick but but actually he didn't know that I kind of knew a little bit I wanted to help them, right? So I said, have you ever thought about doing some different types of market? He was like, what do you mean, uh, which is the correct answer you if someone says that you should say, what do you mean not yeah I'm so smart I said you know if you got the email addresses of people who came in and you sent him like a weekly coupon or a weekly reminder probably drive back a lot of business now he goes you know what he said to me yeah, I probably should do that but I'm just too busy to do marketing right now and he was out of business a couple years later yeah it's kind of a specific question so when you're you're having open any conversations with people um the last thing your kind of thinking about is collecting data but yet you are still collecting data so how do you specifically, um track that data and aggregate it like do you have a database to you? You know, listen for cures then after we're after your conversation reflects because you want to be authentically listening all of us there's no, I don't have some magical system I use these a combination of everything surveymonkey, google doc's everything it's very messy my data analysis for our last course we had something like twenty five pages of condensed notes but that's like we're years and years into the business starting off a couple of surveys couple of reflecting on what you just noticed keep a little note pad and you know every week say like, what are my key things I learned and what do I need to keep doing there are more structured ways of doing it I could talk about that later but it just started doesn't okay anything else before we move on anything from the web oh yes okay I got one from honky tonk who says you know what my current clients suck this is a wake up to target someone who I want versus someone who's easy good we have christine who says I really like her meets insight on who is my client as a tutor the client is the parent not a child and that's a new one for me god tutors are like such a great company oh my god such a great business if I had any sort of mathematical skill I would totally have been a tutor because most tutors air really bad most people who are tutoring at math have horrible social skills and almost everybody tutoring at math or whatever they don't understand the real client is the parent and the parent wants to be updated and they want the best for their kids there's so much you can do if you're tutoring is such a great that or I would do something in pets if I liked pets but I don't think I want to say so I went on tv I had this segment on abc I was doing for a long time and like I started like telling jokes to see how far how much I could get away with it and they never said anything to me saul is making these increasingly ridiculous jokes right and they would never say anything to me they were just like cracking up so I was like, oh yeah I got this and I did it for a long time so finally one day I was actually on set with the anchor and we were talking about something about saving money or something and I was gonna make a joke about pets it just came up naturally and I knew though I was like smart enough to know that like like pets is a very risky area because people like really like their pets for some reason and I even said to the guys that well, you know, I could tell you what I really want to tell you but it's about pets and I know this audience is pretty senses you guys no, no, no tell me so I had some crack about pets it was like seven out of ten offensive and she goes she so eh? So she laughed, but she was like like she was laughing like, oh my god, I can't believe he just said that, ok, I have got more hate mail from that one appearance than like anything else I've ever done I laughed and left, but the thing I learned from that was it actually brought me back to my parents because is uh like my my sisters wanted to get a dog for years and years and we couldn't get in because my dad was allergic to dogs and then seven years later we found out that my dad was just lying he just hates dogs I was like I can't wait to do that to my kids teo all right so just a really quick one reaction to that have you surveyed how many women you've disqualified a serious states because of usually I don't mention it publicly so maybe we can cut the pet part out of this video that's smart onda a genuine I think good last inside m stevenson says to refine your target market because they will be appreciative of who you are and what you want to offer yes so good so good I have a unisex salon that's right by my house and I'm always just like why don't you just cross out the word unisex and put men's salon because no woman would ever go to a unisex salon right you think about how money was due that exactly that with our clients no affluent woman is ever going to go to some podunk rinky dink service that's that's equivalent for like a high school graduate to someone who's fifty six years old and household income of six hundred fifty thousand dollars you might as well just cross that off but yet we think that if I open it up to everyone then I won't close the doors off to any clients I don't want to close any doors love that phrase ironically your rates become depressed you compete against everyone else and you find the worst of the worst clients who simply want to gouge you and nickel and dime you for everything what I told you about the rate that I charge when I do consulting very rarely there's very few other people who khun consult on that specific thing that I know so I'm targeting a very small audience I rates very high you could alternatively go mass market it's pretty competitive to do but you could do it but you at least need to understand who is your target are you at the hyatt very high end where you have maybe like fifty clients in the world or are you at the very low end and you can simply think about like retailers for example would you find someone who a woman who shops at barney's she's looking for something different than the woman who shops at target right? They may be buying a similar product scarf but what's different about the two experiences anybody know what's different when you go to target versus barney's service quality ambiance very good anything else the type of people that are in the store just like the type of people you serve so if you come to my side you're going to see pictures of people people have helped you see pictures of people here in studio people that are resonating with my material. Now, if you're eighty four year old retiree, you rightfully look at what's going on in this room, you say, you know, that's, probably not for me, and I say, you know what? You're right, it's, not people come to my site, midwestern mothers of three they want to cut back on, you know, buying whatever chicken legs, my sight's, not for you, and I told him that I said, you know what? I appreciate that you're looking for frugality advice, I'm really not the best person to talk about. I don't I'm not the best. I think they're better sites out there. I'm not really interested in it, so you might want to check out these sites, but it's probably not the best fit. I even unsubscribed people from my newsletter, they say stuff like, uh, you know, hey, infact I got this email yesterday I released a lower price product and what I normally release, and I made it clear that it was a lower price because usually my courses are a little bit higher in and they said she said, this is outrageous, all of this should be free. You're taking away and lining your pockets with what other people should already have for free. And I said, I appreciate you. I appreciate your comment. I think we fundamentally disagree, and I probably think that this site and newsletter isn't right for you, so I'll unsubscribe you, so we don't waste each other's time, polite, but firm. When was the last time any of us did that to a prospect who kept on nickel and dime anus?