Engage, Personalize, Convert: The Secrets of Quiz Marketing with Maxwell Nee

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 back to the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:41 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners. And today's episode is one of the most epic episodes on marketing we've done since we launched the podcast. I've got a very special guest. Maxwell Knee is with me on the podcast today. Maxwell is the chief revenue officer of ScoreApp, which is one of my favorite new tools right now. It's a quiz marketing platform that has over 7,000 paying clients, many of whom are major players in the personal brand and influencer space right now. He is a multi-award winning entrepreneur. And in this episode, we get an opportunity to dive deep on quiz marketing and quiz funnels not just what they are, but why they're probably more effective than the lead magnet marketing that you're doing right now, why they can give you actionable data that you can use to make data-driven decisions in your marketing and in your business.

1:35 We have an opportunity to to talk journey and entrepreneurship and building multi-million dollar coaching businesses in this episode. It is value packed and you are gonna come away with actionable strategies that you can use in addition to some really cool free stuff. Maxwell has been featured in TV, radio, Forbes, Singapore's The Business Times and the Australian Business Review. He's an amazing guy, a brilliant entrepreneur and you are gonna love this conversation. Buckle up. For episode 37 of the Coaching Equation podcast with Maxwell Knee, let's get into it. In studio today with Maxwell Knee, the chief revenue officer of ScoreApp, which is a quiz marketing platform with 7,000 paying clients.

2:23 I am really excited for this interview, brother, and I appreciate you jumping on with us. A lot of great stuff to share today. Thank you so much for having me. Maxwell, I want to get fully into ScoreApp because I had some time to play around with this a little bit. And I think it's, first of all, absolutely brilliant in terms of the approach and the application and all of the things. And we'll geek out on that in a little bit. Before we do, though, man, you've had really an interesting journey as an entrepreneur. And I'd love to kind of give people a little bit of a glimpse for that.

3:06 So take us take us back to kind of the beginning. You know, what was it that sort of started the entrepreneurial journey for you? Yeah, good question. I think it's pretty similar to most people that become coaches or consultants or whatever else. So I was working corporate in finance, and then I totally burnt out. And then I just quit my job and just took a break for like a year before I really got any traction doing anything. And then I found myself originally in consulting. So I was doing like online digital marketing consulting.

3:46 And then that evolved into having a very large-scale coaching business. So myself with my two business partners at the time, One of them, I was like the marketing and sales guy plus a coach. My business partner was like a coach with like 10, 15 years experience. And then we had another partner that was like the tech guy. And we grew from zero... to about 2 million bucks in revenue in less than two years. And, you know, that was all during COVID, you know, in the coaching space, which is highly saturated.

4:30 But yeah, it was definitely a lot of fun. What was it that kind of had you jump from consulting to coaching? And I ask that question because, you know, at Empire, we do a little bit of both. And there's major nuance, of course, between the two of them. What was it that kind of had you make that jump? Well, I originally just wanted to do consulting. I just wanted to come into a business, a person, a problem, and troubleshoot, bring solutions and problem solve. That's what I love doing. And then I realized that a lot of our clients were getting stuck mentally, where, for example...

5:11 I'd say to them, your prices are too cheap. And then they would have a lot of resistance to putting their prices up because there'd be all these mental barriers that they put up. So I had to learn coaching and mindset and incorporating mindset into our solution offering as a necessity for our clients, not because I wanted to be a coach. So that's sort of how it all came together. Born of necessity. I love it. This is obviously, as you know, it is very unique to have a coaching business, especially, you know, during COVID that you can scale so rapidly.

5:57 I'm sure there are a million answers that you could give to this question, but yeah. What do you feel like were a couple of the bigger keys that allowed you guys to scale that coaching business as dramatically as you did in two years? Yes, there's a few things, right? You know, we definitely wouldn't have been able to do that on our own. So I'm a big fan that business is a team sport. And I didn't find my team members until I was probably in my second year of being an entrepreneur. So you got to find your team members because you go faster together. And that's not easy to do because you got to be aligned.

6:41 We had to really trust each other. It was a bit like a marriage, right? We were like shareholders. We got really committed into we win together, we lose together type of thing. we committed to not doing other things. So we focused on what we're doing, even though we weren't making any money in the beginning as we were working stuff out. So that was a bit of a miracle. Looking back at it now, you can't just replicate that tomorrow. You've really got to find the right people. And then I've spent, I don't know, probably 150K on...

7:22 coaching, consulting, masterminds just to accelerate that learning curve. So when I look at other coaches and consultants who are who have what I want, or they might be further ahead of me, you know, in their business and life, and I want to get to where they are. They typically started their journey, either before me, as I've gotten to know them, or they started it in a much more fortunate way. Like for example, one of them never went into corporate. He just had the smarts to not do that, had the smarts to not put six years into university like I did.

8:06 So he worked for a really good entrepreneur as an apprentice earning peanuts when he was, I think, when he was 17. And then by the time he was 21, he had his first million dollar business. So just accelerating that learning curve, and there's a few different ways to do that. The learning curve... Well, first thing, I think you've got to acknowledge that there's always going to be a learning curve. It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter who you are. Elon Musk had a learning curve... blowing up two rockets before one actually potentially made money. Right. Then it's like, okay, well how could I either get someone else to pay for that learning curve?

8:48 You know, could I, could I learn this in corporate? How could I learn this learning curve for free? Or the worst case is you got to pay for your own learning curve. Right. Which is what I did. And, You know what I mean? And that is the best learning, but it's also the most expensive. So there was a period of 18 months where I was earning six figures in my corporate job, went down to zero, and I was paying for coaching consulting at the same time. So it was like a double whammy. It's not just I wasn't earning, I was also investing at the same time. So that was a real sort of dig deep, okay, trust the process period of my life.

9:32 Where I would go to the supermarket and I would buy, I would work out the cheapest bread, minced beef, eggs per ounce. And I would just buy that. I wouldn't even look twice. I would just buy the cheapest because I was like, okay, well, I need to, I don't know how long this is going to take until I work this out. So... Yeah. You know what? I mean, those those are the moments in the journey, right, that we remember. Yeah. Been been there, done that. And I think, you know, it's such a great point that you make. I honestly I don't think it gets made enough that. There are a lot of people that are further along in the journey and their learning curve was just different.

10:16 It was, you know, I I had the opportunity to be in a completely different business, you know, in the energy sector where we, you know, I alongside a couple of partners helped to build an eight figure business there. It was cool. But there are a lot of things that I didn't learn. And a lot of things that I did that benefit me very much now. But when I got into the coaching industry like you, I was in a spot where there are so many things that I didn't know. I couldn't just go figure those things out. I needed to to, you know, I needed to pay somebody in the form of a mastermind to really help me out. So. Yeah. Uh, it's a great, it's a great, great point.

10:57 Um, so, so you guys, you guys built this, this coaching business and, and you're doing great with the coaching business. Where did, where did life kind of take you from there, man? How connect the dots for me? Because, uh, I, I can see where the expertise comes into play. Yeah, so we had a business doing about $2 million a year, a lot of fun, but a lot of hours as well. And then an idea came into my head. I forgot the idea in my head, but they basically said that, did you know that a coaching business, you would never be able to sell it?

11:37 I thought, okay, that makes sense. I said, why? And then I thought about it. I said, well, yeah, you're right. It's a full service business. A lot of people that were buying from us, they were buying based on relationships. They were buying based on my personality, my network, my business partner's personality, his network. We were doing tons of content and stuff. And I thought, okay, well, if someone were to try to buy this income, they couldn't because as soon as I leave... the machine breaks. Right. So, so we didn't think about building a machine. We had more like, uh, what I would describe as like a band.

12:18 So we were like, you know, uh, I don't know, who's a band, everyone would know. I always picture the Beatles because the Beatles, we were like the Beatles that were sitting at... They played, I think, two nights a week for 10 years or something. So we're sitting there playing two nights a week and as soon as we don't show up and walk up to the microphone and start singing and playing a guitar one night, there's no income that night. So it really felt like we worked in a band that... And also people didn't want to come to see half of us. People didn't want to come to see replacements of us. They wanted to come to see us in this coaching world.

12:59 So we were sort of like superstars, but that had a double-edged sword because you can't outsource superstardom to other people. So then I started to become obsessed with this idea of, okay, how could I... only be involved in businesses that could sell. So then you get two upsides. You get the cash flow, you get your monthly, your weekly, however often you pay yourself your dividends, your quarterly cash flow for doing a really good job and helping a lot of people. But then you also build equity in a big house that you sell one day. You get the rental income plus the house to sell.

13:40 And... So then I started looking into that and realized tech businesses are the machines that do this well. They're also the hardest to build. That's why they work so much. And then I get an email from my friend Daniel Priestley saying, hey... we have just put quiz marketing into an app called ScoreApp. Would you like to invest? And I said, holy crap, this is what I've been obsessing about. And I said, yes, of course. So I threw some money in, threw money in three times, actually like follow-up investments into ScoreApp as an angel. And...

14:21 it was just like a no-brainer. It was a no-brainer because at the time, to do like 200K, 250K a month that we were doing in our last business, in the coaching business, we needed 2,000 leads a month to stay healthy. We could do it with less. We could do 150K with half that, but 2,000 was like the green light number. At 2,000 leads a month, 25% of those at least came from quiz marketing before ScoreUp was made. So we actually...

15:02 I knew that quiz marketing worked because it's a very engaging thing and it helps to really cut through the noise and offer something different. But we built our own using Google Sheets and Zapier and... And like six to eight weeks of building for my tech guy and, you know, would it cost like $10,000. And then all of a sudden, there's an app that you can use a free trial, right? And do the same thing. So that was a no brainer. So I invested... And then all of our clients were coaching clients. So I recommended them. I said, hey, look, this is working really well for us. Told them the same story, 500 leads a month.

15:44 Jump over. And then so after I invested, we helped ScroRub to get to its first 1,000 users, which was a key milestone, cash flow positive. And that was in like 18 months. It's a tech investment anomaly, right? And then now... I'm helping to build the business in a different region because, I don't know, 80% of our clients are in London, pretty much. And we're getting out into the UK, getting out into Asia Pacific. And if you could work for 5000 people in London, it could work for 25,000 people in the US, right? You know what I love about this too, man, is that the, first of all, it's funny. You talk about the deal with coaching business and inability to sell.

16:27 And I have a really, really close friend who is a wonderful entrepreneur. And it's funny, the first time we met when she kind of found out what we did inside of the coaching industry and helping coaches become profitable business owners, she said, you know, The thing that drives me nuts the most about coaches is that none of them ever consider selling their business. Like you ask a coach that and they go, my God, I couldn't I couldn't even imagine doing that. And so to your point, if you were going to do that, it is something that you have to be intentional about at the very beginning, because it does have to become a machine that cannot be, you know, it cannot completely live and die.

17:08 on, on a human or one personality. Um, and I think that's a really, it's a really great distinction that a lot of people don't think about. Um, when you think about, I, I, I'd love to hear this from you right now. People, I, I know a lot of people that are listening to this right now go, dear God, 2000 leads a month. Um, Um, I want to get back to, I want to come back to score at before we do just a really quick interlude on when, when you, what are the couple of things that you would say quiz marketing, obviously a big part of that at 25% of your lead flow, which is great.

17:52 We love quiz marketing, uh, and it is really engaging, uh, What were some of the other things that you were you guys were doing, even 30,000 foot view that was helping you to generate that kind of volume of leads? Was it a combination of organic versus paid or how did that kind of work for you guys at that time? Yeah, well, yeah. Earlier in our journey to hit that first 100K, we were pretty much all organic. So we were sending direct messages, inviting people to... We were ultra over-servicing the industry. So we were probably the first people to give...

18:33 live workshops where we would coach life and say, Hey, look, what's the problems in your business troubleshoot live. There'd be 200 people on a zoom call and we would be getting to people's limiting beliefs then and there in five to eight minutes and turning them around and turning, turning around five coaching, five coaching limiting beliefs in a row. And people will then say, wow, you guys really know what you're doing. We say we do. And then, then, then they book a one-on-one call. So, um, You know, I really believe that I do business not necessarily to make money. Like money is obviously whatever it needs, but I do it because I want to do something exciting.

19:13 And what's exciting for me is doing something new, you know, cutting through the noise, being different. And that's also what's exciting for the audience. You know, so at the time, everyone was really into like this is, you know, five years ago now, more than five years ago now. Yeah. everyone was really into the automated webinar. The automated webinar is a really nice idea and it's really nice for Max and Ryan as the business owners. But to the ocean of potential clients, it's boring. You've seen it before. And is it real? Skepticism is super high. But if you could sit on there on a Zoom call and do a coaching workshop, people you haven't met in different time zones around the world, you blow up your business.

20:02 And we also did have a leg up into knowing that this would work because we were doing this in in-person workshops. So we partnered with a co-working space in London and said, hey, your ideal client is solopreneurs. Our ideal client is solopreneurs. Could we run some free workshops in your office? So they gave us free venue hire, free drinks, free food. And we had a really good partnership going on there. We started filling up. The first one had like, I don't know, 18 people. Then we got it up to like 35 and then the room was full. And we didn't want to get a bigger space because having that full room was like... really cool and like a cool novelty that everyone was like, wow, you know, I can't find a seat here.

20:44 So there was a bit of excitement in the room. So we said, okay, well, why don't do that online? And if we do that online, we, we, you know, a hundred X the market size because we go from London to, to coaches in Germany that can attend, right? Coaches, even some on the East Coast of the US that can attend. And that's what happens to the business. So the business is sort of like 10x because we 10x our exposure. And then not just that... from these live coaching workshops, we made really good content. So we would then snippet the coaching that we would give into like short form content and also just, you know, full coaching, you know, powwows, post that on YouTube, And then we'd have people start to come on calls for the first time ever after like three years.

21:38 Like a sale used to take, you know, three follow-up calls for people to trust, get to know and get to the pricing and go through the objections and everything. And then all of a sudden, one day someone said, Oh, hey, I've been watching your videos. I'm ready to buy. And we thought, wow, you know, what's this, what's this rainbow, this unicorn that's showed up in our business. So then we doubled down on YouTube, right? Yeah. So yeah, a lot of money, you know, we've given Mark Zuckerberg a lot of money, given LinkedIn a lot of money, but, you know, a lot of hustle, like a lot of organic hustle as well. Yeah. So when you guys... one logistical question that I have for you on this. I love doing the workshops, both in person and virtual.

22:21 So engaging. And I also love that you guys were out there just delivering a crap ton of value to people because I still think, you know, Maxwell, I don't know about you, but I, I, I still feel like even in the days where there are a lot of people truly being very generous about their content, there's still a lot of people that are really afraid of going out and quote unquote, you know, giving away their best stuff. Um, And I think it's just such a fallacy proven wrong by several successful entrepreneurs like you. So when you guys would do your workshops where you mentioned a call where you basically would you do the workshop and then drive somebody to a call is typically the way you would do it?

23:02 Yeah, so we do. We do have weekly work. We had two sets of workshops. One was weekly that would have about 25, 50 people on there. That was like the lifeblood of the business. And that would book, we would book between 35, sometimes even up to 50% of those people onto calls. And then we also had like a quarterly workshop, which is a big, like a big spotlight. We would have a guest speaker. So we've had like, we've shared the stage with, My now business partner, Daniel Priestley, Marissa Peer, a few big motivational coaches based in Australia, where they came on, they shared their audience.

23:47 Also a company in the UK that helps you a bit like Toastmasters, like a professional Toastmasters helped you to improve your public speaking. So we shared our audience with them, they shared with us. And just to mix things up, because otherwise, if you keep putting out the same message, you can start to turn a bit gray to people. So we wanted to... And that's a lot of work. When I look at businesses like Tony Robbins... I just look at the ads and everything and yeah, they've got a big following, a big email list, but that is just like a sales and marketing machine.

24:30 If you look at the hours put into filling that room compared to the hours coaching delivered, there might be... 2000 hours of sales and marketing put in from humans compared to one hour of coaching from Tony. And I found the ratio is the same type of thing when you're a solopreneur. When you're a solopreneur, at the beginning, you're at least putting in 10 hours of sales and marketing and admin and trying to work shit out compared to one hour of actually paid coaching. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think it's a good point relative to, you know, the ratio of those two things.

25:13 And I love the cadence of, you know, the two different types of meetings. The other thing, too, that I love is the collaboration. That's another thing I think people are just too afraid to do in a lot of cases is bring somebody else in. And, man, it makes a difference. Um, we try to do that as often as we can. Uh, and I think that having, you know, spending the time to make great connections with, you know, really talented, uh, heart centered human beings that, that, you know, are, you know, are, you know, are, you know, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, uh, kind of rolling in the same direction, even if they're not exactly in a, you know, the same industry per se can be unbelievably powerful. Uh, if, if nothing else to switch up that, that messaging and that languaging, um, you know, in, in, in your events.

25:59 So that's, that's brilliant, man. Well, let's, let's get back to score app. Cause I really want to dive in on this. Um, So let's talk for a minute. Let's I want to I want to be fair to the people that go quiz marketing. What are what are you guys talking about? We both know what that is. A lot of people know what that is. But for the person who's just a total novice or has no clue what quiz marketing is, help us understand that a little bit from a basic level, just in terms of the approach. Yeah, so it's a methodology of marketing that helps you to engage with your audience. So a really common example that you would have seen or probably done before...

26:41 is the personal trainer quiz marketing where you might see an ad, you might see like a promotion or an offer at a gym that says, find out which body type you are, you know, small, medium, or large frame. And based on your exact body type, we will recommend and tailor for you a customized nutrition plan and workout schedule, with the workouts specific to your body type so that you could potentially cut your transformation time to get your summer body in half, right? Because if you're doing the wrong thing, you're going nowhere fast. So that's a really common example of...

27:22 quiz marketing. And there's a few reasons why that's compelling. The first reason is that it's a two-way interaction. It's not just like, fill out this form, get it in e-book, and then you read it and then you come back to me. No, it's this... fill out this form, and then we're going to give you something personalized to you. And then based on that, you'll get another personalized step. And then you get another personalized step, right? And that personalized segmentation compounds very, very quickly. For example, Ryan, if you and I were to go onto Amazon.com right now, we would both see completely different websites, right? Because my Amazon has 10 years of my purchase history.

28:06 Your Amazon has 10 years of your purchase history. And then Amazon's, you know, keeping out the noise and only putting segmenting stuff that's relevant to you and I based on what we're looking for. So when you start to do that, even at a small scale, you know, in a business, it has huge compounding effects. I love it. And I think the one of the keys that you just hit on is the is the interactivity and customization of what somebody is getting. That's such a difference maker, because, number one, just just the same way. And, you know, on the front side of it, just the same way that a good sell by chat would function, for example, there's back and forth.

28:54 I could send somebody just straight to my, you know, my pre-call application and let them fill it out. Or I can go through a sell by chat process where I'm actually asking them questions. They're responding back. It feels more personal. And then with the deliverable that in and of itself being personalized is, is, I mean, is a game changer. And I think the other thing too, that I love about this is, you know, It we're curious about ourselves. It's why we we love quizzes in in general anyway, because we see something and we want to kind of know internally, like, where do we stand?

29:35 Where where really are we at? Um, and I think that's unbelievably powerful. So tell us a little bit about how score app works and, um, you know, and, and I'll, I'll let you kind of lead in terms of how you tie quiz marketing into that and all that good stuff. Yeah, so what we are is we're a technology company. So we are a lead magnet technology company where we help you to get more data, which then turns into more sales from your clients. So if you think about us, we have a lot of clients that replace ClickFunnels with us.

30:16 So we're like a mix between, we serve the same function, the exact same function of ClickFunnels, as well as like SurveyMonkey. So, you know, and less than half the price, you know, probably even one third of the price of those two put together. So that's like the tangible thing of, you know, a quick win that you could probably jump into for anyone listening. And then what we do that's a little bit more special is, yeah, you know, we've also integrated AI into the tool. setting up marketing and sales tools takes a bit of time. And it's a bit like setting up a website.

30:58 There's a little bit of tech involved, like branding and moving stuff around, customizing stuff. It would take about a day and a half to get set up originally. But since implementing the AI tool... We put you through a scorecard, a quiz process, an assessment, and then our AI tool spits out a whole marketing campaign for you based on the questions you should be asking, how you should position it. So it'll write about six or seven hours of copywriting for you in about five minutes. So you can go from zero to set up, draft one, two, and three, publish in 20 minutes. Wow. Wow. That's remarkable, dude.

31:39 And when I think back on this, I left my previous business and started to get into online marketing for my first coaching business around marketing. 2016. And when I think about the hours and hours and hours of time that I spent with the 16 different tech platforms that I was, you know, not an expert at using to build one single funnel. And now we're talking about, you know, a day and a half set up and, uh, you know, five minutes, uh, of good work that spits out your marketing campaigns.

32:19 It's an amazing universe that we're living in right now. Let me ask a question. For specific to Score app, one of the things that I'm curious about, since you kind of referenced a couple of other platforms that people are familiar with, to just go on the tech side of it for just a second here, is... Does it integrate with other CRMs and things like that? Do you guys have an API? Tell me a little bit about how that works for my tech nerds that are listening to this podcast. Yeah, 100%.

33:00 So we have some native integrations like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Zapier, and then obviously through Zapier, we pretty much integrate into... or tech marketing APIs. So I would love to hear from you, what have you found and what have your customers found in terms of benefit from utilizing this approach? How is it really helping to change the engagement of the lead and by doing so, then create a better quality sales engagement if that's where you're pointing people.

33:46 Yes, there's two ways you can use a tool, right? Three ways. The first way is top of funnel. So you can use it as your lead magnet to basically replace your click funnels, right? Then you could also use it as your... your sales call, I don't know, enhancer, needs assessment. So, you know, when you... People also use a bottom of funnel, you know, in the sales call. Some of our biggest clients that use it the most, they've got like a coaching business where they have like a 25-person sales team. And each sales team member uses it with their clients, their referrals, you know, their network, doing business development, all that type of stuff.

34:30 Yeah. And then we also, because it's a survey tool that collects data, we also have people that use it with existing clients where, for example, if you're in a 12-week coaching program, you might want to have the, you know, the... the Ryan Empire Building milestone scorecard where it'll check in with your mindset and it'll basically do customer surveys with you. And you might want to do that at the beginning, middle, and end of your coaching program. So people are using it for that as well. Yeah. That's brilliant.

35:10 And I think it just shows, I think it just shows, first of all, I love the versatility of the tool in terms of the different places inside of the funnel that you can utilize it. And, and the power of data is, is amazing. I think one of the things too, that I think about when you've got a really, when you're doing a good job with this type of tool, I would imagine that it puts you in a great position as well as a coach or service provider. to gain some pretty valuable insights in terms of, you know, maybe even what what our clients need next. You know, what are some of the weak points or stuck points for people that we're maybe not addressing right now?

35:52 That's one of the things that we're really big on is is asking about that as, you know, as often as we can. I would imagine this would be a great tool to be able to go down that road as well. Yeah, you know, the results, the data could reveal that a one-on-one call in week four could make all the difference. Right? You know, little things like that, that you don't need to guess. You could just use data to improve it. Two scenarios that I'd love for you to speak on or give a word of advice. The first one is, and let's just touch on this one first, for the person who is in the job right now and is doing a coaching business as a side hustle and would love to be able to make the transition but hasn't been able to do it yet, what would be your word of advice for that person?

36:42 Yeah, you know, I... foolishly, but I wouldn't have it any other way, jumped all in. And because, you know, when you're, it's not just about time and money. It's also about energy and focus, right? So I'll give you an example. Like my partner now, my future wife, she's going through this exact scenario where she is transitioning out of corporate drugs she hates and she's really nervous because she's never done it before. She's got to rely on me. you know, financially a little bit more, which I'm totally fine. Like I'm really for this because I've been through this experience. And she's been trying to work out this side hustle and try to get this up and get this going whilst she's in this toxic corporate environment, right?

37:35 And I'm sorry, but that's a really nice idea, but it just doesn't work because... you know, you're not sleeping properly. Your brain isn't plugged into being an entrepreneur because you're just constantly trying to survive, literally just trying to survive the 8 to 10 hours that you've got to put in 5 days a week at this other place. And, you know, what I found, at least in my journey, is that when you go all in, you'll end up working 17 hours a day thinking about your business. So you actually have less time to potentially make money, but you'll have more energy.

38:17 So for some reason, going for what you want in your life isn't just about... getting the money and getting the clients and going there. It's also about cutting off like the gangrene that's in your life, that's ruining your environment, that's putting toxic air into your alignment. And there's a huge – and you won't quite know what I'm talking about until you experience it. But as soon as you experience it, you'll know, yeah. It's a key distinction, man. And I think a lot of people don't think about it that way. We really do end up working either a little bit more or close to an equal amount of time if we're if we're trying to straddle the line between both.

39:07 But energy is a big, big component to it. Um, beautiful answer. Last question for you. It, when you think about the, the, the spots in your life and your entrepreneurial journey that really felt like, man, I, I don't know if I made the right choice or gosh, I've been banging my head against the wall and things just aren't working out yet the way that I really want them to. A lot of people, everybody will experience that in some way, shape or form. And if you haven't yet, just wait. You just haven't been in business long enough. What would you say to that person? What's something that kind of helped you get over that hump, whether it was in the moment or retrospectively?

39:52 Yeah, you know, so when I wasn't earning any money, I had a few part-time jobs that I had to go into to just tie things over. And some of them I enjoyed, some of them I didn't enjoy. So, you know, there is that reality of, you know, you got to find half solutions if you can't find a full solution type of thing. And that sucked. And, you know, every time I went through that, it just, like, for example, I received a few job offers that solved all the problems, right? And then I actually went to, like, try those jobs for a month.

40:32 And then I realized, wow, you know, I actually just hate this and I can't work for anyone else anymore. You know, I'd rather... I'd rather be living a modest life with less income but have 100% of my freedom and time compared to earning mid-six figures working for someone else. So I think what's gotten me through that... process is just alignment. Just really, really knowing in my gut, okay, if I were to try this other job, that's a quick win in terms of the bank account and the money and whatever, would you feel good and buy some stuff that I want?

41:20 Deep in my gut, is that actually going to make me happy you know, a year from now, it won't. So it's about being really, really honest with yourself about, you know, because even if things aren't working, but you're happy where you are, like you know you're doing what you're meant to be doing, then it doesn't feel... doesn't feel horrible. You know, it's like what feels horrible is being totally out of alignment, forcing yourself to do something that's out of alignment. Yeah. That's the soul sucking work at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd rather be aligned with no money than unaligned without money.

42:04 Because I've tried all variations. And, you know, as long as you're aligned, but you're struggling, but you're struggling about something you care about, that's called passion. Yes. Right? But if you're struggling to do something you don't care about, that's called stress. So I don't want any stress. Yeah. No matter the cost. I love that, man. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great point. And I think one of the things that I would say about it, too, is that this is also a good check in moment. If you're listening to this right now and you find yourself ever stuck between do I want the certainty of the job and more income or do I have that pull towards what my unique skill set is and being able to do things my own way and having passion for what I'm doing and that kind of thing?

42:57 Because there's no right or wrong. There are people that have a much happier life just having the certainty. But for people like you and I, that doesn't work. And I feel exactly the same way. I've been in the same boat. Yeah. Well, Maxwell, brother, thank you for this. This was really an incredible chat on a number of different levels. I really appreciate the way that you dug deep with us and so many good nuggets in here on the marketing side of things, on entrepreneurship, etc. Tell the audience a little bit about the freebie that you've got to give them and where they can get it.

43:38 Yeah, great. So we have a free book called Scorecard Marketing. It's a best-selling book on Amazon written by my business partner. And we have a bunch of free copies that we can get out to anyone listening who wants it. It breaks down into what this is, why it works, and how you get it to work for you. So it's everything you need. You can read it in like three hours. It's a very short book, very punchy. And all you need to do is go to scoreapp.com forward slash book. And we'll get you out a physical copy for free while we can. If not, you get a PDF. That is awesome, dude.

44:19 What a generous offer. So just to repeat that, go to scoreapp.com forward slash book to get a free copy of the book and highly recommend checking out score app as well. I'm going to be I'm going to be honest with you. I just had the opportunity to learn about this because of you, Maxwell. And I I can't wait to to dive in to score app and spend some time with the tool because it sounds incredible. And there are just so many valuable pieces in terms of the data, in terms of the relational marketing and the personalization and everything. Well, brother, thank you again for spending some time with us today. This has been outstanding.

45:02 Very excited for you guys and where you're headed with this application. I love what you're doing. Thank you for sharing your story with us as well. That was really wonderful. And I can't wait to have an opportunity to potentially connect again on something else, man. Thanks a ton. Perfect, all good, thanks. Thank you for listening to this episode of the coaching equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. 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.

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