Avoiding AI Mistakes and Mastering Marketing for Coaches with Stephen Hilgart

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to episode three of the Coaching Equation podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, alongside my co-host and co-founder, Brooke Bishop. And in this episode, we've got a special interview with Stephen Hilgard, otherwise known as the Obsessed Marketing Strategist. He currently serves as the Chief Marketing Officer for a handful of eight-figure companies. And in the past, he started, built, and sold three seven-figure businesses of his own. Over the last decade, Stephen has also worked as the top speaker and coach for none other than Tony Robbins. Now, Stephen is not only a marketing expert, but he's also an expert in the area of AI. So if you want to know...

1:23 how to market better in your business, if you want to know how to get more clients and leverage AI in the process, this is an incredible episode made specifically for you. So, buckle up, my friend, and let's dive in with Stephen Hilgard. Okay, guys, welcome back to the Coaching Equation podcast. I'm Ryan Lang alongside Brooke Bishop, and we've got a special guest on the show today. Super excited about this. There's going to be so much important, relevant information today in several different areas. Very excited to have Stephen Hilgert alongside us today. Welcome, man.

2:04 Good to see you. Yo! We are excited to dive in with you. Stephen, for the folks that don't know about you and the different things that you do, give us just like a brief little intro to your world and what you do and what your expertise is. Yeah. So these days, people have started to call me the obsessed marketing strategist, and I can't get them to stop. So that's kind of a good term to use for me. I've been all over the place. Brooke, Mr. Bishop here was the one to give me my role at Tony Robbins, where I was for the last eight years as the top speaker, trainer, sales guy there. And throughout the years, I've been really a marketing consultant.

2:44 That's what I've been kind of known best for. And my gift was always to be able to double, triple someone's business in a very short time. So I got pretty successful at that. Over the last two years, give or take, I, like many people, have kind of deep dove into AI and tried to figure out how do I use this? This new world is changing so dramatically, so quickly. So how do I use this? So I wouldn't call myself a self-proclaimed expert, but an expert nonetheless in all these little new AI gadgets. I'd love to double click on one piece before we get into the AI component. Cause something that's really was just such a magical experience with Steven. When I first met Steven, before I hired him on over with Tony, he was a go-getter, like nobody else that ever came into our orbit.

3:28 And so when we first met, so we bonded over martial arts. Cause you're, what rank do you hold? I have a third degree in Shoei Roo and a second degree in Taekwondo. Okay. So we kicked it off, right? Pun intended. Huh? But the thing that was, but don't bump. One of the things that was really rad is when Steven came on the team, he actually came in originally. He's like, whatever it takes to get my foot in the door, like I will do whatever it takes. And we're like, all right, so let's test this dude. Let's see if he's, he's for real. And so he actually started out booking meetings for our speakers that would travel all over the country and they would go in and do these free presentations. And then they would upsell people in, into our events. What Hilgard did that was so freaking rad. We never had anybody in the history of the company that did this.

4:10 he came in to book meetings, instead of working from home like everyone else did, working the calls, he on his own dime flew to the local market where those meetings were going to be at. And he hit the pavement and he hustled. So not only was he doing what normal people in the role were doing, he literally went out and knocked on doors, walked into offices and went and just, for lack of a better term, went and kicked ass on behalf of the person he was working for. So he went like miles above and beyond what anyone else ever did. And because of that, we're like, dude, we want to bump you up. Like you crushed it, like go take it to the next level, which he then did. And then he crushed that as well. So I just want to give proper props to how he showed up as a human being, because I think it was just a real beautiful testament to how far he would go to help somebody else succeed.

4:54 Right. He literally moved himself across the country and traveled all over the country to make sure the person he was working with was successful. So yeah, dude, you're just fucking stand up human being just super, super able to have you on our orbit. Gosh. Back to AI. I didn't even, you never even told me that story. That's fully news to me. Yeah. Wow. I'm looking at Steven through a completely different light and not this really odd hue that I've got in this... bedroom right now. All right. Well, dude, I want to kind of dig in on several different things today. And on the topic of AI, let's hit this really briefly because I think most people at this point have a pretty good understanding of what it is and why they should probably pay attention to it.

5:40 But The super fast version of, in your mind, as someone who is an expert in that area, why Cliff's Notes version should somebody be utilizing AI in their business right now? I mean, it's the new internet, right? I mean, it sounds so obnoxious and so cheesy, but honestly, it's hard to describe how quickly things are moving and how fast our world is changing. And it's changing before our eyes. And most people are so worried about the election or so worried about everything else that's going on in the world, so worried that they're missing this massive shift in everything that's going on. I mean, in the last two months alone, there's been 100,000 jobs that are just let go that are never coming back.

6:21 And we originally thought that these are going to be box packers and, you know, oh, we won't have to sit and store, you know, stock shelves and stuff like this. Well, it turns out it's the blue collar, white collar jobs that are going first. It's been so fascinating to see not just the release of ChatGPT, but all of these things from text to video to text to image to all these things that now all of a sudden, you know, maybe in the next two, three years, we don't even have coders. We don't have graphic designers. We don't have movie CGI artists. We don't have all of those things are starting to go away very quickly. But the one thing that I would say along this line is that most people are so scared that they're just kind of putting their head in the sand. And there's definitely emotional response. I've done a few webinars on AI, and it's fascinating how many people were actually even upset at me for doing it.

7:06 And I had friends message me in the back. Hey, you shouldn't be doing this. We don't we don't need to be talking about this. But but but I said, well, that's such a weird response. So the reason they need to pay attention is, number one, it's going to become part of our lives. It already has been. Right. I mean, you scroll through Netflix. That is an AI program that's trying to figure out what's the best thing to show you. Same thing on YouTube. Same thing everywhere else. Now, those are specific algorithms, not necessarily artificial intelligence, but it's a version of it. And nowadays, you shouldn't be on a computer without a tab open with ChatGPT or Claude or any of these other large language models to help you work throughout the day. So I don't know if that necessarily answers the question because it's like, I feel like it's kind of duh.

7:49 You know, if you had a calculator, why wouldn't you use it? I agree. And so from that standpoint, let me ask you this question, because I think this is important. Somebody listening to this right now is sticking their head in the sand. Somebody listening to this right now is afraid of using it or is pounding their fist on the table and going, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to get dumber while the rest of the world gets dumber using, you know, AI, blah, blah, blah. So let's look at this from a realistic standpoint. In your estimation, how much further behind do we get by sticking our head in the sand? Like, what's the consequence that you see in terms of how much faster everybody else is moving if we decide that we're vehemently opposed to using AI for whatever reason?

8:34 It's going to be an interesting 10 years. And I don't think any of us can actually predict how this is going to reshape society, but it's already starting. And I think the challenge is unless you're riding the wave and not just from a like, I need to sell more coaching programs. I need to sell more widgets. Not from that aspect, but the aspect of like, it's literally going to transform our lives in every way possible. And I think it's more than just like, oh, you're going to be left behind. I think it's more of like you're going to be left out of the economy because there won't be a position for you. There's nothing for you to do. So this is why the debates are starting to pop up again about universal basic income or any of these. And it's just because all of a sudden we've got a radically different world that we're living in.

9:18 And it's starting now. It started about two years ago with the release of GPT, but... In all honesty, it's speeding up so fast, it's hard to even give you an answer. But I will tell you this. I caught on something that you said. Well, it's the dumbing down of people. And here's where I'm going to kind of pinpoint a little bit. And this is something I wrote about just the other day. When the calculator came out, the biggest... I don't know if you've ever seen this, but if you go search calculator released, there's a bunch of newspaper articles where teachers are boycotting schools. No calculators in the classroom. It's going to make our kids dumb. Yeah. So that was kind of silly. Today, you can't even imagine not having a calculator, right? And then the search engines took over the internet.

9:58 And what ended up happening when the search engines took over the internet was we thought we no longer had to know things. And this is so critical, this weird paradigm shift that, oh, I have this. And all of a sudden, the smartphone comes out, and we have all human knowledge in our pocket at all times. If you don't know something, you just ask Google the question. Boom, boom, boom. There it is. Now, this entire paradigm that we've lived through, I mean, we're all around the same age. We've kind of lived through this entire shift. Now it's being completely flipped on its head where you need to start knowing things again. Why? Because the AI is already smarter than you. So here's the thing with ChatGPT alone, they're trying to, you know, whatever you believe about IQ, right?

10:41 How IQ is actually measured, but they're measuring quote unquote IQ of ChatGPT about 165, which is smarter than Einstein. So already the large language model is smarter than you. It knows everything. So now if I'm in marketing or graphic design or anything, now I need to know things in order to reference it because it already knows. I'm going to say, hey, Chad GPD, I would like to create a new advertising campaign and it's about squirrels. It'll be like spit it out. Okay, cool. Great. However, if I don't mention a specific historical art factor, if I don't mention color theory, if I don't mention a specific advertising campaign, it would never reference it.

11:23 So I'm never going to be able to get things that I need. Now, this is going to sound a little crazy, but the truth is now you need to know history more than ever. You need to know art history more than ever. You need to know basic branding, copywriting. You need to know who are the best copywriters ever living, who are the best artists ever living. You need to know these people so you can actually reference to Chachipti. Otherwise, it's going to consider you're an idiot because it knows it already. But if you don't reference it, why would it reference it? Mm-hmm. Does that kind of make sense? It does. Yeah. I was going to add just sprinkles on that. You know, we've talked in the past, it's like knocking the door shall be open, asking you shall receive. Like the quality of our questions now really becomes imperative.

12:05 Yes. And it's fascinating because from a societal standpoint, I feel like we've done a disservice to society in the sense that. We haven't been teaching our kids for the last few decades how to ask really good questions. We've been conditioning them to answer the questions that have already been given. And it's almost like society just flip-flopped and it went, okay, now you're not answering questions anymore. Now you have to be really good at asking them. So there's almost like an atrophied part of the brain. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. It's almost like a potential Skynet thing. situation too. Brilliant point, dude. The old corny saying, right? Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We're literally repeating history in front of our eyes. I mean, most people never even read about the Cold War, let alone live through it.

12:47 Now here we are, literally again, 20, 30 years later in the same exact spot we were for the same reasons. Now, if someone had not gone, it's funny when all the kids go to school and they say, Well, those things that you thought you were never going to use, like what was the year of the founding of the United States? What was the year of the collapse of the Soviet Union? Now you need to know these things so you can reference them with AI because here we are in this new world. And if you don't know it, it does. Right. So anyways, that's the idea. We need to know things again. I think this is really an important topic. And Brooke, I love the way that you dovetailed that into asking questions, because I think both of you are absolutely right.

13:32 If we can't ask great questions, we're in even bigger trouble than we've been in the past. Let me ask you this, Stephen, with regard to, I think this brings up a really good point, because you kind of just laid out a mistake, which is just, you know, not really having the knowledge to be able to ask great questions to AI in order to get the right answers. But Let's just say I am using AI or I want to use AI. In your estimation, you've now you've been around this for longer than most at this point or paying closer attention for longer than most. What are the biggest mistakes that people are making using AI? Because that's another thing. Like I just like anything else, there are people that are excited about it, but we don't know what we don't know.

14:13 So what are the biggest mistakes that people are making using AI? And let's start globally at first. And then I'd love to hear you kind of niche it down, especially to marketing. Yeah. Well, to nail what Brooke said, I mean, you ask a dumb question, you're going to get a dumb answer. And part of that dumb question is not knowing enough to ask the right question. And that's where now you need to start all over at the beginning of like, hey, Chachip D, you're brilliant. I know nothing about marketing. What are the top 10 things I need to know? OK, what are the top 10 questions that nobody asks that they should be asking? So those really difficult. Now, if I didn't know how to ask those questions, that knowledge would forever be gone from me.

14:54 I would never be able to receive anything there. But when you start asking silly questions along those lines of like, what should I be asking? Now, all of a sudden you get better answers and then you can start to go down these rabbit holes in these different directions. However, the mistake I think a lot of people are going to make is they're going to go down the wrong rabbit hole. What's the wrong rabbit hole? Well, for them in that moment, depending on what they're trying to accomplish. So let's say, you know, hey, what questions should I be asking? Well, you might want to ask about these artists from the Renaissance in order to make this branding. And I start going down the Renaissance thing that has nothing to do with my branding campaign for a bottle of ketchup. You know, so it's like, well, okay, this is really fascinating information, but it's not really directing me down the path I want to go.

15:38 So to answer your question, I don't know because I don't know what their outcome is. When you know what their outcome is, you can start to kind of guess which direction they need to head. So double click on that. Just so I want to touch on this. I think that's a life principle that's so freaking critical, especially for coaches who are in this space and working with our clients. Knowing your outcome should always be the first starting point, whether you're looking at your marketing, whether you're looking at your sales, whether you're looking at any of these pieces. And then obviously within AI, I love that you brought this up because if you don't know your outcome... You're going to be steered versus holding onto the steering wheel. So I think that that's a really critical piece of the puzzle. That 100%, 100%. Couldn't agree more.

16:20 So essentially what we're saying here is know the outcome first, know exactly what you want to get out of utilizing the AI tool that you're utilizing. And that will help kind of send you down the right rabbit hole. The amount of people that have gotten a response from ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, and it's not exactly what they wanted in that moment because it can't read your mind yet. Right. Yet. Right. Some of them can, but it doesn't know what you're thinking. So you need to be able to communicate better than ever. And this is, as Brooke's kind of pointing out here, like the communication level of most people is so poor. They can't describe, here's the exact outcome that I want. Here's the way I want it. Here's what they can't describe it.

17:01 So they get a dumb response from Chachup Tea or whatever. And then they're like, oh, this is dumb. This is pointless. Let me go throw my head back in the sand because this is a stupid parlor trick. Yeah. Yeah. On that front, because I think everybody who's ever used ChatGPT or another AI tool has gotten a response back from the AI tool that they've gone, man, this is not what I asked for, or this is not what I want is probably a better statement, right? So one thing that I'd love for you to hit on a little bit is... How do we effectively, and this plays to marketing, so how do we effectively utilize AI so that we can get the best result possible while still maintaining authenticity in terms of our voice, our thought leadership, all of that kind of stuff?

17:52 That's a really good question because on one side, the best tip I've ever kind of learned, and I don't know who originally said this. Maybe I'll just quote myself. I'll say it was me because that'll make me sound smart. If you talk to it like a human being, if you text it like you would text your friend, the conversation is going to be a thousand times better than if you're trying to be proper and prim because it is a large language model, which means it's a predictor of how we use language. So when you're speaking, it's assuming that these are the next words that should come after these words. Based on all human knowledge, based on all human conversation, it starts to say, well, this is what should be next. So if you go to ChatGPT, hey, ChatGPT, I want to call you Ryan today.

18:34 Is that okay? Sure. No problem. Hey, Ryan, I'm trying to figure out this marketing campaign. I don't even know where to start. What do you think we should do? Okay, cool. I think number two sounds pretty good. How about we start there? Great. Here's what I need to know from you. Great. Is there anything else you need to know for me to make this work right? Like you just start having a conversation like it was an actual human being because it practically is. Again, the parlor trick, it is a parlor trick at the moment where it's just kind of responding to the text. But the truth is, I've had more meaningful conversations with ChatGPG than I've had with some human beings. So, you know, If the average IQ is 160 versus the average IQ of a human being, which is, you know, like 100, which means half of all people are less than 100.

19:19 I'm having some meaningful conversations over here. So, number one, talk to it like a human being. Number two, edit. And this is going to sound so silly, but if you're actually doing copywriting or marketing and everything, you don't just go with the first draft. You never do that. Key point. But you can't be so lazy to just be like, oh, put it in there. And I was scrolling through Facebook this morning and I saw several ads. I stop at almost every ad these days and I screenshot whatever because I'm obsessed and I'm a nerd, right? But I look at the ads and it's – if you have any bit of pattern recognition whatsoever, you can start to see, oh, this is completely AI written and it wasn't even edited. Mm-hmm. And there's a style which Chatty Petit especially writes in, if you just leave it to its own devices, that it's so clear to see, and you're starting to see it everywhere, that people are going to be very quick to say, oh, that's that.

20:08 If you just change a couple of words, if you just edit a few things, if you make it your voice, all of a sudden you've got something that's really, really good based on solid marketing principles, and it's yours. Such a good point. It's so funny. Every single thing that ChatGPT likes to kick out for me and includes the word luminaries. I don't know why. It's like... luminaries. I'm like, oh, here we go again. But there's something you shared with our academy group. This was maybe a month or two ago when you came in and did a training for our crew. You'd mentioned something about the red zone. It's like you use the AI to get you to your point, like the principles and the strategies and the structure to get you into that red zone, but it's your job to now get it into the end zone.

20:49 So like... Use it to get you as close as humanly possible to where you need to be, pun intended, but really then put your own twist on it so that it is your languaging, but it's built on a model. If you're just doing copywriting, for instance, think of ChatGPT as a junior copywriter. Hey, I need you to start this base article and then send it over to me and I'll be the editor. So now I'm chief editor and senior copywriter and ChatGPT comes in as junior copywriter. That's a great distinction. And I think this is really, really important conversation because I think there are a lot of people circling back to the frustration that some people have with, hey, I asked chat GPT a question and I got back this copy and it so doesn't sound like me.

21:31 And so I'm never going to use chat GPT. I love this distinction because it is a whole new frame through which we view the relationship. Yeah, I love that. Let me ask you, on the subject of marketing and AI, one of the things that I have heard other people say, and I'm going to totally botch this, so correct what I'm about to say, make whatever I'm about to say right, please, Stephen. Yeah. Am I the AI now? Yeah, exactly, Stephen. So I've heard people say that essentially we can, as human beings, we have an ability to pick up something that is not human generated, essentially, if we see it often enough.

22:15 And one of the things that I'd love to hear from you from a marketing standpoint is obviously we just touched on a little bit of like copywriting. How do we make that our own? We're not just going to take the answer and slap it into our page or our ad or our website or our email. We're going to hone the languaging, make it ours, rearrange a little bit, whatever we need to do. I'd love to hear your thoughts with regard to images and that kind of thing and utilizing images that are AI generated and marketing and things of that nature. What are your thoughts there? And what, if anything, is there to the idea that humans intuitively can pick up on things that are AI generated?

22:58 It's going to become more and more difficult. You know, there's AI artists now that have been born out of this that they spend, you know, you look at an AI image and you say, oh, clearly that was just an AI image. Well, no, they spent 16 hours trying to figure out how to exactly prompt to get that perfect image the way they wanted it to. So there is some sort of art to this as well. But, you know, what's fascinating to me is that we've been living in a fake world for 20 years now. You know, you open Instagram camera, it already has a filter. Yeah. by default, it has a filter to make you look better. So you take better pictures of yourself. So you look better, feel better, all of those things. So you get addicted to posting those things. I noticed there's several ladies throughout my Facebook friends list who all they post now is AI pictures of themselves.

23:41 They put their head on something else. Now, I've got one of myself that's cheesy and corny. It's clearly AI. It's very cyberpunk with devices popping out of my head and everything. But I did that on purpose for the very reason, like, I want you to know this is AI. Now, I think one thing that you're kind of mentioning here is the uncanny valley of like, you look at an image and you see it and there's like something off about it. They're smiling way too wide or some, you know, some sort of creepy horror film. But what you'll start to notice throughout a lot of these, have you seen Sora yet? This is the big hype right now is a program called Sora. It's text to video and it's not released to the public yet. I've not got the chance to play with it. I've played now with about 300 different AI tools.

24:25 I sign up for everything and everything is still dinging my credit card every month. But, you know, so I don't I don't think you have to get as obsessed as I am. But Sora is an interesting one because they're flaunting this text. A simple text sentence will turn it into a live action video. And a couple of videos that they put out there looked great. It's extremely realistic. I mean, you would not have known it was AI had you not really been paying attention. Is that the one with the smoke and the fire? Is that the one that's doing that one? There's a couple. The video that I was referencing is, I can't remember, it was like a Japanese woman walking through the streets of New York or whatever it was. Okay, I haven't seen that one. And there was a background.

25:05 I'll send it to you after this thing. But if anybody's listening to this, just go look it up on YouTube, Sora, S-O-R-A, and you'll see some of the demo videos. But you look at it, and if you just glanced at it, you would never know the difference. You would not know that it was not a real person, not a real thing. And they have another one with a cat walking through a garden. And the cat is complete. There's no cat. There's no garden. There's no that that wasn't real. But you look at it, you're like, oh, that's it's a cat. Oh, that's a cool shot. They got of the cat doesn't exist. And this is our world now. It's going to become, again, faster and faster and faster. But to go back to your question, one, I think the image generation is really cool because it opens up a new world for us.

25:47 We might not like the world because of the world that we were born in, which is a very realistic, very touchy-feely, very physical world. But this new digital world is being born before our eyes. And I know that sounds so corny and philosophical, but it's the truth. So, you know, the old simulation theory, are we actually in a simulation or not? And it's getting closer and closer to the technology. We will not be able to tell the difference. Hmm. Ryan, I don't know if I told you about this. One of our projects we're working with, so very, very large company, their entire ecosphere was in the metaverse. So their whole corporation, these guys had 120,000 people on their staff.

26:29 So very, very large company, but they didn't have Zoom rooms or conference rooms and they didn't even meet in person anymore. The whole company, and this is already, this is before AI even popped, but they had their whole world in this Facebook community where you have your own avatar and you're cruising around and you got different rooms you go learn in and you have your meetings in the metaverse. And so there's this interesting play. So seeing how AI is going to start to integrate into those worlds. especially with the new goggles and all the VR and all the different pieces. It's definitely getting very, very interesting, just to say the least, of 10 years from now. It's like the hockey stick effect of technology, the technological age. We hit this tipping point where it's like, uh-oh.

27:09 Like we're going Richter right now. So I'm intrigued to see just for our kids in the world that they're going to live in. And I mean, shoot, if you're not good in technology to your point in the beginning, like if you're not putting good inputs in, it's like bad data in, bad data out. So teaching our kids as well as not just, you know, from a business standpoint. But anyways, that's my soapbox that went nowhere. I'll have to go back up. I couldn't agree more. No, I'm with you. I agree 100%. It is going to be interesting to see how this all unfolds. You've got 300 different programs that you've tested out, that kind of thing. What are you most excited about right now, whether it is a use of AI and a specific tool, something you've heard is coming?

27:55 What are you most excited about with AI right now? That's a difficult question because I'm using a lot of different things between the images and copywriting and everything along those lines. I'm a marketer. This is my trade. So I tend to view everything through that lens. It's like, hey, I need great images. I need great visuals for this advertising campaign. Hey, I need great text and copy. Hey, let's try to craft something really cool. Hey, let's do this or that. So it's a little difficult for me to view the rest of the As an example, the self-driving trucks, truckers are going to be out of a job in the next five, six years, right? That's just not going to be a thing that we do anymore. But I'm not focused there, so I don't know enough about that area to be able to tell you. So from the marketing standpoint, I'd give you a couple pieces that I am really excited about.

28:39 Number one is like the agent GPTs. So an agent of a large language model, basically it operates autonomously. So you give it a task and it goes and does it. So you say, hey, I need you to comb the internet for great content based on Schlitz malt liquor. And it's going to go out there and it's going to go search for everything it can find and come up with images and come up with articles and come up with everything and pull it back and then assimilate it into a message back to you. You have your own data researcher. You have your own copywriter. You have your own thing. So these become employees in your business now. Whereas before you used to have a specific human that would go do the research, you would have a specific human that would write the copy you'd have.

29:19 Now there's agents that'll just go do that for you. So much more advanced than just like the normal large language model or the stable diffusion, which is the image generation model. Those are really cool. Those are exciting. And I think that's when we think about AI, that's kind of what we're talking about, right? We talk about Jarvis from Iron Man. Hey, Jarvis, do this for me. Hey, do that for me. And it goes and does it. So we're getting to that point. I don't know when that's going to happen. There's all these rumors already that they have achieved artificial general intelligence already. The whole lawsuit between Elon Musk and Sam Altman and OpenAI and Microsoft. But truth be told, Google DeepMind and Facebook and everyone, their company is run by AI now.

30:01 And I think that's something that most people don't quite realize is that with such a large organization, they have to have something that needs to be able to move a lot faster than a human being can. So it's already here. Will we have access to it as civilians? Who knows? We'll see how that goes. One step at a time, right? Yeah. Yeah. One step at a time. One step at a time. All right. On the subject of marketing, something that all three of us are passionate about in different ways. Let's just say right now, I really want to dig in for the people that are struggling to bring clients to their doorstep right now. listening to this podcast and whether you just started your coaching business, whether you're thinking about it, whether you're in the middle of it, you've been doing this several years, you're struggling to bring clients to your doorstep right now.

30:47 What would be some actionable steps that someone in that boat can take right now, leveraging some of the ideas or tools that you've talked about? So before anybody freaks out, here's what I'll say. Marketing hasn't changed. I love that you just said that. I want to hug you through this screen right now. I say this to people all the time. I agree. All right. Forge ahead. Marketing is three things. Get a lead, make an offer, follow up. That's all it is. And for most people, especially I see this with coaches all the time who are just trying to get started in their career, whether a life coach or they're a finance coach or they're an insurance agent or whatever, real estate agent, whatever it is, anybody who's coaching and doing a professional service, they overcomplicate it so much and they think they need eight bajillion things.

31:31 No, you need a way to get a lead. You need a way to make an offer and you need a way to follow up. And so when we talk about AI, one of the simplest things for them to do is just use things like ChatGPT is number one. You could use Claude. You could use there's other large language models that are popping up right now, but I'm still a big fan of ChatGPT. It's easy to use. It's easy to get started. And when you can have that conversation with. So you can use that to craft a basic marketing campaign. Hey, I'm a life coach in San Diego, California, and I would like to get my first couple of clients. Can you give me my first couple of steps? And let's talk about what that would look like. Boom. Chatty is going to coach you and say, Hey, here's what I think you should do. Great. Let's go down this road.

32:12 Let's create that. Now, with that being said, for someone to do concrete steps, to be able to get leads right now, you either need to do free organic advertising or paid advertising. There's nothing in between. Like those are the two things that you need to do. If you do not have a large Instagram following, social media following, or if you have a bunch of jokers, like I've got a lot of jokers. I post some serious business thing on my Facebook and it's nothing but trash talk throughout the entire thing because it's all my friends. You know, it's Facebook. They were meant for friends. So if you don't have a large following or you don't have a following of targeted people that would actually use your service, you got to do paid advertising. That's it.

32:53 So in that sense, you should go to a chat GPT. You should go to a mid journey is the thing that I like to use for images. That one's a little bit more complex. So I would suggest someone who's just getting started with image generation, Leonardo.ai. You can go on there and create a cool image. create some ad copy, run an ad on Facebook, and you can start getting leads tomorrow. Now, easier said than done because once you get that up and running, now you need to tweak it to actually make it work right. But that would be the first step. I want to dig in here for just a second. Before we move off of this, let's just say we've got different demographics of coaches are going to be listening to this.

33:33 Some are in a spot right now where they're going, listen, my business is in pretty good shape. I've got money to spend. I haven't done a ton of paid advertising to date. I want to start with that person really quickly and just go... If they've built their business thus far on a fair amount of good organic social or warm network or referral, why now at this point should they bother going and dumping money into Facebook ads or YouTube or Instagram? Maybe they shouldn't. Interesting. Why? So here's the deal. So, you know, I'm a pretty high paid consultant these days. And it's because when I go into a business within three, four months, I've got them at least double or triple their revenue within 90 days.

34:19 That's usually my promise is like, I'll double your revenue or you don't pay me. And what's interesting about that is nobody does it all right. So when you've got a consultant that comes in and they look at your stuff, there's really, I created actually a new class. If anyone wants to go through, it's all free, stephenhilgard.com slash class. And you can go through what I call the download. And the download is an exercise of like, where are you? Where do you want to be? What's the gap? And now we go through a couple of basic questions that like literally everyone, I was excited to come on today because I was like, okay, we're going to talk about basic marketing, intermediate or really advanced stuff. Because I never get the chance to talk about advanced stuff specifically because nobody does the basics right.

35:01 And here's the basics. Hey, what was the best promotion you've ever done to be able to get the most business in a single month? Well, it's this thing. The follow-up question is, are you still doing that? The answer is 100% no. No. Okay. Do you think we should do that again? Yeah, that's a great idea. Fantastic. So the two questions I always ask is what worked really, really well in the past that you're not doing anymore, that if we just did more of that, that would work. And number two, what's working really well for you right now that you can double down on? Like if you're a master at getting referrals, it would be stupid of me to tell you to go, hey, how about we try this brand new advertising technique that you've never done before in your entire life and hope that it works because it's not going to.

35:42 Anything that works in the marketing world the first time, we call it a complete fucking miracle. So nothing ever works the first time that we do something. So with that being said, to answer your question, I wouldn't recommend that they go spend a bunch of money on ads. I would recommend that they do more of what's working and what worked in the past. That would be step one before anything else. And usually that doubles someone's revenue just like that. I want to hit the pause button here really fast because this is such good advice and something that, especially in our niche, I mean, Brooke and I talk about this all the time. And Steven, I know you know it too, you know, especially in the coaching space. And it's not just coaches, other business owners do this as well, but... When you run a coaching business, there is a special version of squirrel syndrome that comes into play.

36:26 And every new little marketing tactic, we're chasing after it. And it's the shiny new thing. And everybody's promising the moon and stop doing everything that you've been doing. You're doing it wrong. You got to do it this way. It's the only way. It's the fastest way to the results. And what you just said is what worked for you before. Do more of it. before you go off and spend more money or more time on other tactics. I really want to highlight that because I think it's insanely wise coming from somebody who has generated probably hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for his clients over the years. God, I love that, man. So step one, do more of what's working right now.

37:06 Step two, do what worked in the past. Do that again. And then step three, stop doing the stuff that's not working. Yeah, right. I have a buddy. He's really good. I just saw him again at an event the other day and he's kind of a life coach and he wouldn't call himself that, but he calls himself, I don't know, some kind of coach. But what's interesting is he's been trying so hard on Instagram for the last year. He's recording reels every single day. He's posting every single day, three, four times a day. And it gets like one like and one comment and he's got no more followers than he had last year. And it's like, dude, stop killing yourself to do it. It's not working. Like do something else. He's really talented guy, really smart, really brilliant.

37:47 He knows his stuff. It's like, dude, how about you go do what's working instead of trying to figure this out? Because someone told you, you have to be on Instagram. You have to do this. You have to do that. So I'm very scared to tell you, Ryan, it's like, they should be advertising. Well, maybe they should, but maybe they shouldn't. I love that. And I think you guys, one of the reasons I'm so excited and Brooke and I both like so excited that this came up is that this is the foundation of our podcast and really our business in general, like you, Steven. Guys, this is just a tenant of good business in the first place. It's not go out and reinvent the wheel all the time. It's look at what's working, do more of that, stop doing what's not working.

38:28 Yeah, I think that's really, really good advice, man. And I also love this. One of the things I want to highlight for the person listening this right now is there is no universal answer to the question. I think to kind of read between the lines and expand on what you said a little bit, Stephen, essentially is, hey, your business and your clients and what you're good at and what you've done are all completely unique compared to the coach or the business owner next to you. you need to pay attention to your uniqueness, so to speak, as my friend Rory Vanden would say, and leverage those pieces of the puzzle. Man, I love that. So good.

39:09 So, so good. I want to make sure that people know where to engage with your stuff. You threw out a URL here just a second ago, and we'll give another one too on the AI pieces of the puzzle. If you really want to dig in on that, if you're just getting started or you haven't started with AI, Stephen's got a marketing in general, let's just kind of circle back to marketing in general for a second here. When we look at... I think one of the things that's really interesting about marketing, Steven, is that in our space, there's a sense and a sentiment that for some reason, the coaching industry is different from other industries when it comes to marketing or anything else.

39:49 And people all of a sudden forget that they're running a business just like any other business. Yeah. So in your mind, when you think about that, and you're considering marketing in general and successful marketing, what would you say over the course of your career in marketing? What are probably a couple of top tenets for marketing in general that people need to know if they want to do this right, not as a coach, but as a business owner? God, there's so many paths. There's so many things that we could talk about here, right? First and foremost, this is something I learned, and you guys probably learned this before I did. I'm a slow learner. But you can meet someone who's ultra successful.

40:32 They're doing $10 million a year, and they're doing an incredible, great business, starting from scratch, and they're doing extremely well. And they say, I got it. I nailed it. This is a plan. If you just do exactly this, the way I did it, you're going to be successful. And people are like, oh, actually, that sounds like a pretty smart thing. And then someone comes along and they're doing $20 million doing the exact opposite of what this guy said. And they're twice as successful. And then someone comes along who's $30 million and they're doing things way different than these guys. So like you said, there's a million different ways you can go about this. And your uniqueness, if you will, is part of the special formula. But at the end of the day, if you look at the foundation of all of those things, they did the simple things, get a lead, make an offer, follow up.

41:14 And they just continually did those better. Now, I would probably argue that there's a lot of people who, when they're just getting started in their coaching career, they've got a branding issue. Because like me, for years and years and years, I have three brothers and my dad and all these people. And for years, they saw me as little Steven. And I was an idiot for my entire life. And then it's still, it wasn't until I paid for the entire family to go for holiday and Christmas. And we did 10 days out in Mexico and we did this big all-inclusive resort. And I didn't realize how big my family was until I offered to pay for everything. I thought it was going to be like 12 people and ended up being like 48. So after paying for that, then they looked at me like...

41:54 Now you're still an idiot. So here's the same experience that all of these coaches are going to go through that they say on Facebook, I'm now a life coach. Everyone on your Facebook is going to call you an idiot. Even if they don't say it out loud, they're going to say, oh, here we go. That's like... You probably shouldn't market to those people because you're only going to get dissuaded. You're only going to get put down. You're only going to feel stupid. Now, I've got this whole theory of the path. I've got this whole idea of the mountain and the valley. And when you go climb the mountain, there's going to be people in the valley who are going to say and do things to dissuade you. Not because they want to see you fail, but because if you start climbing that mountain, they know you're never coming back. They're going to say things you've changed. You're not the same.

42:35 Why are you doing this? Because even if you physically came back down from the top of the mountain, you're no longer the same person. So they've lost you. So your friends and family are probably going to be your biggest haters or it's going to feel that way. So if we start with that foundation, we start to understand like, OK, let's not market to these people. They're not my target demographic. Now you go back and you say, okay, what are the basics of marketing? Get a lead, make an offer, follow up. Okay. How do I make an offer? Hey, do you want coaching? Now it could be a hell of a lot better than that, but that's a start. If you just ask enough people, yeah, it's an offer. If you just ask enough people that somebody would, some sucker would say, oh, great. Yeah, I'll do coaching. All right.

43:16 And then you get a chance to prove yourself and you get to grow from there. The other piece that I would say along these lines of, you mentioned it already with, I call them Ponzi schemes. Even though they're not necessarily Ponzi schemes, they built a business selling the business of building the business that did the thing. Perfect example. You can get clients for your coaching business with a Facebook group. All you got to do is buy my course on Facebook groups within my Facebook group to go start a Facebook group so you can be in a Facebook group. Never seen that before. No, no, no. Hey, you can do a webinar. If you do a webinar, you can get a course. All you got to do is buy my course on webinars so you can teach webinars so you get clients with webinars to do webinars. And it's like these insane Ponzi schemes. Now, brilliant on them for figuring this out.

43:58 But the truth is a lot of coaches are going to be wrapped into those things. And what they're not understanding is that that's just a tactic. That's not a business model. For coaching, the business model is do an introductory call, see if it's a good fit, fill out the application, whatever it is, and then pitch them at the end of the call. Like, hey, if this is something you want to do. It's the same thing as therapy. It's the same thing as, I guess we can't say that out loud. FTC, that wasn't me. I didn't say that. But you got all these situations where people are trying to make it so advanced and thinking, the only way I can build my business is because I watch this marketing that's really good for a Facebook group. The only way I can build a business is webinar. Now, if that's the way you want to build your business, if that's the way it was successful in the past, great.

44:41 Do more of it. Brooke taught me this years and years ago that for the Tony gig, when I was selling tickets, if I just got my ass up, got in the shower, shaved, threw the suit on, drove to the next, you know, used car lot or, you know, real estate office, no matter how well or how poorly I did that day. The sales process was the same, that if I just get up and did the thing, someday I would make sales, someday I wouldn't. And this is what's missing for coaches. They don't have a guaranteed sales process that if they just woke up and did this thing, then they would get some sales. So I know that was a mouthful. If we're in person, I'd be giving you big hugs right now. Oh, gosh. It's so true, though. I mean, the reality is if you get enough eyeballs looking at what you have, and if they have a problem and you solve that problem and you have a sales strategy to roll them through that can move them to emotion and then they make a buying decision, then the last piece of that is you just have to fulfill on it.

45:35 So I love that this came full circle just in terms of our conversation about AI and talking about... The fact that business really hasn't changed, marketing really hasn't changed. It's just we have new tools, but we sure as shit, we got to know how to use these tools. Otherwise, our competitors, they're just going to be able to move faster than us. And I think that's kind of the biggest piece of this whole thing. I'm going to put a bow on just today. It's like, if you don't use these tools, that's okay. You can still grow your business, but just know there's going to be a tipping point where you're not going to be moving as fast. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Basically, we're putting a bow on this by saying from a guy who spends a lot of time looking at a lot of new stuff that's out there. His directive when asked about what to do in marketing was not go find every whiz bang tool on the face of the earth.

46:20 It was do shit that has been working for the last 40 or 50 years. I love that. And guys, here's one of the interesting pieces of the puzzle. I'm hoping that this hits home for somebody who's listening to this right now and is going, holy crap. Okay. It really is simple. And there's not just an easy button to do this. That's the other thing I heard you say, Stephen, that I want to highlight for people is that in order to grow a successful business and in order to create sustainable marketing efforts and things of that nature, there is no, it happens overnight. It is something that you do and you rinse and you repeat and you do it again and you tweak and you rinse and you repeat and you do it again and all that stuff.

47:04 And thank you so much for spending time with us. And one of the things that I just think is so valuable from this conversation is, you know, number one, obviously, don't be afraid of the AI. Learn how to use it and learn how to use it better. And instead of trying to find the new whiz bang idea, the new whiz bang tool, or the new Ponzi scheme marketing thing that's out there right now, stick to the basics, learn how to do the basics really, really well. And that's what's going to serve you as a business owner, dude. Tell people where where's the best place to go to, first of all, to interact with you. And then you've got a really awesome offer for our listeners relative to learning more about AI and digging in on that world.

47:46 Go ahead and throw that out. So let's start with the cool stuff, the freebies. I've got a school group, school.com slash the path, S-K-O-O-L dot com slash the path. So they can go there and I'll invite you in. It says it's a paid group. I'll let you in for free, no problem. So you can come in there. And there's marketing stuff and business strategy stuff and AI stuff. There's a lot of cool things in there and just cool community. You guys are obviously in there giving advice and talking to people in there as well. And then, you know, my day job is as a consultant. So if you go to stephenhilgard.com slash consulting, if your business is doing 250 or more, I have an offer for you. If your business is doing 3 million or more, I have a different offer for you, fractional CMO services and stuff like that.

48:27 These days, I've got a couple of really large clients that take the majority of my time. So most of my stuff, I just give away for free. So you can come by the school group. You can come hang out with me there. Go to stephenhilgar.com. You can see what I got there. And that's about it. Brother, thank you for taking the time. Dude, this was an incredibly valuable lesson. Make sure, guys, that you go check out Steven's stuff. And we'll make sure that we throw the links in the show notes as well for you so that you can go grab them there. Brooke, any last words? Thank you, Steven, for coming on and sharing your wisdom. Thank you. Hopefully our audience and our listeners are grabbing those golden nuggets and they're pulling over on the side of the road and whipping out their notebooks and capturing because there's so much gold in this episode. So thank you, man, for coming and sharing with us.

49:08 And yeah, I'm sure in the future, we're going to have some more episodes with you because this thing's just cooking and moving. It's not too fun. 100% man. Yeah, this is first of many for sure. And brother, before we bounce, I just want to honor you two for being, you know, you and Brooke have such a long history and you and I haven't even known each other that long. And one of the things that just jumps off about you is that you're an incredibly genuine human being. You truly care about other people. You give so freely of yourself and your expertise. And there's no agenda behind it, which we're so appreciative of. So I just want to say thanks for that, my friend. And looking forward to getting this episode out there and really looking forward to digging in on another one here very shortly.

49:52 Yeah, buddy. Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys. All right, my friend. Guys, thank you for listening to the Coaching Equation podcast. I'm Ryan Lang alongside Brooke Bishop and Stephen Hilgart today. Have a great day. Go crush it. Go check out all of Stephen's stuff, and we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.