Mastering the Business of Coaching: 7-figure Growth with Mike Savage

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 another episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:41 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop, and Mike Savage in the house today. What's up, brother? Good to finally connect with you and meet you. I'm excited for this. Yeah, we're going to have a good time today. You're down in Florida, right? You guys are down in Florida. I am currently in Titusville, Florida on the Space Coast. And I'm actually at Space Coast Airport as we speak. This is the old Eastern Airline building where all of the astronauts came through coming over to Kennedy Space Center for all of the early Apollo missions. I'm kind of sitting in like an iconic building today, which is sort of fun. That's super cool.

1:22 That is super cool. Now, Brooke, you and Savage go way back. How did you guys get hooked up in the first place? My guess is probably we're actually approaching 20 years ago. Is that even possible? We're getting close. Between 15 and 20, somewhere in that ballpark. Mike and I, we had the unique, crazy opportunity. We both worked with Tony Robbins. We've probably worked in the ballpark of 50 plus events together. So Savage and I have inadvertently traveled the world together. We've been in many, many events, many stages, many arenas, worked with literally thousands upon thousands of people. When I first got to meet Savage, actually, I know... I can only imagine how giddy he is knowing where he's working today because Savage and I have geeked out many, many times.

2:07 So many might not know about Mike. So Mike's a comic buff beyond a comic buff. Savage, you actually drew comics for, is it for Marvel? You've done a ton of stuff in that space too. So when I was younger, there was a studio outside of Tampa. And the gentleman who owned the studio was a guy named Bob Layton, and then his partner, Dick Giordano. Dick Giordano was editor-in-chief of DC Comics. Hired the likes of Frank Miller, who did 300 and Sin City and all those cool books and Dark Knight. And I worked for Dick Giordano and Bob Layton in their studio, and they were working on their independent books online. Plus all their iconic stuff, Phantom and Iron Man and all that fun stuff.

2:48 So I get to work alongside them on those books. And then I owned comic book stores for almost 20 years. And now you get to geek out in the world's craziest launching pad because you're doing a crazy project. Before I get to that, though... The parallel, how you went from the comic world to the Tony Robbins coaching world, because you became one of the head coaches there and the head training coaches there. You've built your own coaching business. And then now you're doing some crazy stuff, which we'll touch on in a moment. How did that bridge? How did that arc come about? Oh, wow. So I have a background in art. Like I went to Ringling School of Art and Design. So my dream was to be a Disney animator or a comic book artist. And that was kind of the path I pursued because it was my passion.

3:32 Simultaneously, my parents were in network marketing. And in the 90s, it was like Amway and Excel and all the good companies. And symbiotic to network marketing is personal development. These are go-getters who are trying to start their own businesses and They're out training teams. And so they come into personal development and into leadership coaching because they find themselves all of a sudden like leading teams. And my parents ended up inviting a Robbins trainer, which we now know was a Robbins field sales rep. And he came in and sold tickets to, at the time, an event called Power to Influence.

4:15 And he. I won a ticket. And the challenge is my parents were throwing the training. So me winning the ticket looked completely staged. So the FSR at the time and the sponsor, who was actually like a Robbins franchisee, it's a whole big story, gave away another ticket. And I got to go to Competitive Edge, which was a one day event on influence that Tony used to teach at 14 years old. And so while I was pursuing all this creative art stuff, had the Tony bug and the personal development bug. And I started listening to Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar. And like, I woke up every day in high school reading Zigitz, which were like his like daily thoughts and just like, couldn't stay away.

4:59 And so I owned comic book stores in my early twenties, but at some point I ended up back in a personal development event. And that led to me getting some coach training at the Coaches Training Institute, starting my own coaching business. And then a year after that, joining the Robbins coaching team. And then of course, became a trainer and facilitator and all that fun stuff. But that was kind of the bridge. The bridge to today, I focused on wealth creation, taught wealth mastery for a while at Robbins. And really honed in on investing because that was a world that my brother and I did not grow up in with my parents. They did the best they could with what they had, but like their investment was lottery tickets. So I ended up coaching a lot of startups.

5:42 eventually coached the founder of the firm I'm at. And Tony is also an investor in this firm. And then I'm at one of our portfolio companies today, supporting it as COO. Tony is also directly invested in this company. So there's no escaping the personal development stuff. It never goes away. But my foray into leadership really came through executive coaching, which was I built, I'd say, a decent reputation as an executive coach, continued to hone my business tools and skills, to quote our good friend Keith Cunningham. And the mixture of executive coaching, business tools and skills, understanding how to optimize all the things that... You are frankly an expert at Brooke, and it has allowed me to expand beyond executive coaching into like equity ownership inside of companies and coming in and doing really good change work to scale businesses.

6:35 But that evolution really was a mix of my creative skill set and what I learned in personal development and the marriage of that, I think has given me a fairly unique set of skills when I come into companies. Dude, I love this. First of all, I will just say that while it could seem on the surface to be totally unrelated, I definitely see a link between comic books and getting into personal development. Because really, when we look at it at the end of the day, with comic books, we're just calling to the highest version of ourselves, right? What can we imagine ourselves really becoming or being? That's really what it is at the end of the day, which is a big part of personal development. So it's an indirect but direct path.

7:15 One of the things that I'd love to hear you talk about, Mike, because I think this is really important. At Empire, we work with coaches to help them become profitable business owners because most coaches know how to coach and they suck at running businesses because nobody teaches them how to do it. And I think that so often, one of the reasons I'm so excited to have this conversation with you is that I think that so often coaches don't have a good example of what it looks like. They think they do. They go join a program. Person running the program looks like it's the example, but they're really not. And that's not to say that's the case for everybody, but in a lot of cases it is. I'd love for you to talk about what was a moment for you when you said, okay, you know, I've gotten pretty adept at this coaching thing.

8:01 I've gotten pretty adept at it. I've got good people around me. I can be successful as a coach. I need to understand business if I'm going to keep playing this game. Yeah. I think it was great to start out getting coach training independently. And Brooke knows this. I give Tony credit for 90% of the success and blessings that I have in my life. It was unbelievable to be part of that very intense, but also very broadly abundant organization. Yet I didn't start there. I went to CTI and got coach training. Well, they gave me a good foundation and framework. there was no like next class that said, and here is how you run the business of coaching.

8:44 It just, especially 20 years ago, that did not exist. And so there was a tipping point, I think, while I was at Robbins, and I used to do a very good, for other contexts, Brooke trained my brother in coaching sales. And I had this interesting balance because I never wanted to take clients from the Robbins environment and move them over into my private bucket. That was taking away from my brother's income, taking away from Brooke's income, taking away from his brother's income. And these were guys that had supported me and my family for years. I think more than half my client load came from Brooke and his brother. Right. And Brooke literally gave my brother his launching pad. So there was this like we have to honor the work we've done together and keep it there.

9:29 But I knew at some point what I was qualified to earn as a coach was. was beyond my compensation at Robbins. And I wanted to test the waters and I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to do both. So I bit the bullet and started doing it the old fashioned way, which was I went and started doing free talks every other week at the Chamber of Commerce and joined BNI and started joining networking groups. And Tony had this model of like, go speak for free and then see what comes of it. And I was going into EO and YPO and like the old fashioned way knock the doors down, add a lot of value. That was my lead funnel. Good Lord almighty.

10:09 Because, you know, we like funnels didn't really support businesses like ours yet back then. When I understood that I was coaching... at a level where I helped an executive make a decision that impacted a thousand lives for the better. And that I was working in an organization where I created 7% lift in a year to their bottom line or 8%, which is huge when you run an optimization model. I understood at that point I needed to charge more. I needed to set up something for myself to go do that my own way because I had business tools and skills I had developed outside of even what I was doing at this other organization. And at that point, it was clear, like, it's time for me to set up a business.

10:52 Like, I have to stop treating this like a job and I need to set it up like a business. And then there was the learning curve of like, wait. oh, I have to pay for leads. I have to pay for systems. I need to pay for an assistant. Oh, there's this thing called ad spend. And then there's like a commission to my sales guy that's like, oh, 30%. And so like the reality set in that it wasn't going to happen overnight, but that within two to three years, if I gave it my all, my wife and I would have a seven figure coaching organization with other coaches working for us. And we could go in and start consulting inside of other organizations.

11:33 That's what we do today. But the tipping point was when I realized what my coaching impact was doing, that I needed to take a bigger piece of that. If I was going to scale, like I couldn't keep doing 80 coaching sessions a week was no longer sustainable. I wanted to do 30 and make sure that I was doing a one-to-many impact, not just a one-to-one process. So how do I find leaders where I impact their entire organization, where I could contractually tie myself to the bottom line, where I didn't charge a lot up front? I took more on the back end for the results I delivered. Because I was willing to do that, we've built a really, really healthy seven-figure coaching business.

12:13 How would you describe, there are obviously lots of tactical pieces, but how would you describe the identity shift that is required to go from job to business owner? So I thought I was entrepreneurial my whole life, right? So like I owned three comic book stores. I had a mortgage company, a credit repair company at one point. So did Rocco, so did my brother. It was always just kind of like a hobby. We had never actually gone in with like a dashboard and measured anything real. I didn't understand shit for Shinola about business, but I thought I did, right? Because I was managing like, literally paper calculators don't, like it was not good.

12:55 The identity shift was when I got honest and understood that if I was going to go into business, I actually needed to go back to school. And I don't mean college. I needed to understand how to measure profit margin. not just revenue, not to live off of revenue, but to understand profit margin and where that would allow for payroll. And even though I owned the business, I couldn't use it as a cash register. I actually had to come back and start to rebalance things. And I think the other element in identity was I couldn't, even though I thought I was the best coach for the job for that client, I needed to trust that other coaches could deliver impact and that I just needed to manage the outcome, not actually do all the coaching myself.

13:44 And Brooke will tell you that was probably the hardest identity shift for me. I always had the belief I could do it in half the time of another coach. And I think that helped while I was coaching. Yeah. But it shackled me to hours on a calendar, which was really hard for me to unwind. I got used to being the guy and it fed my ego to be the guy. It was great to wake up and have your ego fed by helping other people. But I wasn't helping other coaches. I was helping my clients, but I wasn't helping other coaches. And I had the ability to do that. And I really had to let go of the identity of being the guy. And take on the identity of I'd rather like be bored out of my mind, but have income coming in that I don't have to deliver time for and actually scale something.

14:35 And it was, that was hard. It's still hard. Not going to lie. It's still hard. I have a question because I know this is another piece of that puzzle. I'm just thinking back in terms of, you know, the core ethos of coaching for Robbins, which was, you know, we can coach anyone, anywhere, anytime. Yeah. So within that, how did you land the plane or how did you navigate in that space of going, you know, I'm going to niche into being more of a business coach or, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, you've moved into, I would even say you're borderline consulting with lots of sprinkles of coaching as a foundation. How did you land the plane on deciding like, okay, I'm going to go that route and I want to niche in. Cause I know for a lot of coaches, I mean, shit, we had over the course of time, we probably both saw over three, 400 coaches come through Robbins.

15:17 But you, not only did you weather that storm, you were able to niche in where I saw a lot of people that just couldn't make that leap. So having tried to start brick and mortar businesses when I was younger gave me at least a physical understanding of what it meant to be a business owner. I had sleepless nights where I worried about my employees and payroll. And was I going to be able to stock my shelves? And was I going to feed the families? And I think, My brother and I saw my father worry like that in the companies that he led for a while. And so when I was on the phone with my clients that were managing large organizations, I think I naturally gravitated towards wanting to help the entrepreneur in that situation because I had a physical reaction to their pain and wanting to meet their needs in the coaching.

16:05 Where did I enjoy coaching people down their wealth path? Did I enjoy doing relationship coaching? Sure. But I paid attention to like my own internal calibration. I would crave getting my hands dirty inside of these businesses, knowing that the business owner was just unfortunately wearing blinders. And even though they probably had the skills to get out of it, their attachment was part of what was holding them back. And if I could just hold space and peel the blinders back and then get in a co-pilot seat with them for a little while, we could solve the problems together. And I knew I had certainty I could do that anytime, anywhere, anyplace. And I think that pull of feeling, you know, I'll use a term that we're familiar with, feeling like I was kindred spirits with those business owners in particular, because of my actual business ownership experience, that's what had me niche down.

16:58 And I paid attention, Brooke, to the fact that it fulfilled me as a coach more than any other coaching. And I wanted to pay attention to like how I felt at the end of the day. if I was going to spend eight to 10 hours doing this, like I wanted to do the thing that kept me jazzed and woke me up. That's huge. That's way huge. How's that part like? Because I know you're doing some crazy, and we geeked out about a month ago when you shared with me what you're, the project that you're working on. We're not even supposed to be talking about it. I don't even know how much you can actually share, but yeah, just, I know your background right now for anyone who's listening, he has a picture that's from up in space, looking back down at earth and his wallpaper behind him right now.

17:38 So one of my coaching clients, he was a two-time successful founder who had two exits, started his own venture capital firm. I came in as a partner, invested, Tony invested, and they only invest in deep tech companies. So agriculture, computer brain interfaces, vaccines for bees, and a lot of space infrastructure. And I particularly, because I'm a geek, Love all the aerospace stuff. So we've got hypersonic jets and consumer supersonic jets, and we have a space tourism company. And at the beginning of the year, I came in as an operating partner to support the founders at Space Perspective. We are taking consumers to the edge of space at 100,000 feet.

18:23 safely underneath a balloon. There's a small capsule here that holds eight people in a lounge. There's a bar, there's a loo, and they get two hours in space. So in comparison, let's say Virgin or Blue Origin, which are a whole different experience. That's rockets and thrill and all the excitement of what astronauts do, but they only get four minutes in space. You know, Blue Origin just successfully did another mission this week, and that was a nine-minute mission total. landing. And I don't know if you watched the landing, but one of the parachutes sort of didn't come out. They still landed safely and everybody had a good time. We are a six hour ride.

19:03 You go gently at a whopping 12 miles an hour. You get two hours in space to contemplate your relationship to earth. And astronauts talk about the overview effect, which is that they are forever changed when they see the earth. And while everybody thinks They're going to discover space. Most people find that they discover Earth for the first time. And they come back and do more in their communities, more in their families. They understand that the Earth is a much smaller place and that it's their responsibility to have an impact. I'm currently the COO helping to get this thing to commercialization and launch. We will have our second demonstration flight in about a month. We'll be in commercialization by early 2025.

19:45 We already have our international partners inked. So we will be taking people to the edge of space, which is super exciting. Super cool. Brian, I don't know if I told you this, but Mike said that he's already got two seats for us slated for the initial launch. So kidding, but not kidding. Right on. Well, have fun, buddy. No, I'm kidding. This is super cool, bro. I mean, that's serious stuff, man. That's exciting. That's unbelievably exciting. I started at the firm as an executive coach coaching founders, right? And so my niche for a while was to coach... founders between their Series A and Series C during that really tough growth inflection point where they get their first round of growth funding and they go from five employees to 20 and the organization starts to spread out.

20:32 I got really good at doing that. I coached some portfolio companies that are under Mayfield. I coach portfolio companies at the downtown Las Vegas project with Tony Hsieh. And this became like an even deeper niche, which is I'm really good at working with founders at this stage and realized that they have tight funding. So we committed a very discounted coaching rate. And then we take carry in the fund or equity in the company. And again, it's the put your money where your mouth is. If you think you can create change, don't come in with these high fees. Come in and get equity. Play the long game. If you think you're going to do the change work, put up or shut up. I love coaches. Oh, I'm a $10,000 coach. If you only have two $10,000 clients, good luck.

21:12 Or come in with reasonable market terms and negotiate equity or upside and then put your money where your mouth is. And I think that's a differentiator for a lot of coaches today. There are a lot of coaches that claim to be high ticket but they have never really proven the results. When you are a high ticket coach, you come in and work with companies and you bet on yourself and you take upside. I want to ask a question on that because I think there are people listening to this right now that are thinking to themselves, man, you know, I've been told I should charge more. I think I should charge more. Do I really have the goods to charge more? How do we internally as coaches go? All right. It's time for me to actually go there or, you know, I'm worth it.

21:55 Like, what's the line between I believe that I'm worth it and I own that worth and like I'm just throwing out numbers and I can't really back them up? Results are measurable in business coaching. So I'll start there. You know, when it comes to personal coaching or spiritual coaching, like let's measure it on a scale of one to 10 and however the client feels is how you get to negotiate. Right. But when we get down to business coaching, like results are measurable in business. When we run it. an optimization model. And Burke, I love that you do this with these businesses before they start with you to see where are they and then where can they go if they work their optimization model. That's feedback. And whether you believe you're worth something or not, the market is giving you feedback and then you have to start somewhere and build.

22:40 We're also now 25 years into this industry being like a recognized, healthy industry. Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, they have like executive coaches internally now. And, you know, Zappos, God bless them, started early with having a goals coach. I'm super good friends with her. Models are now set for like standards of coaching. You can go get a degree in coaching. from George Mason University, University of Hawaii, Stanford and Harvard have executive coaching tracks that you can go through certification that are tied to the international coach Federation. Like this is not the whole, like I can make it up and wing it industry that it was maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

23:21 And, I think we have to accept that there's a baseline. Now the baseline is high. For executive coaches that have a proven track record, we earn well, seven figures well. We have 20 years of experience. We have 400 clients that will tell you we've gotten a result for them. If you're brand new and you come on the scene and you start talking about results that you haven't delivered yet in theory, and it's part of your marketing, and you 23 years old talking about all the organizations you've changed, you better bring receipts. And if you have the receipts, God bless you. I believe that you could get it done. I was doing it at that age, but I had receipts.

24:01 If you come and claim all these things and you don't have receipts, get ready to get doxxed, get ready to get called out by other coaches who actually deliver results. But on the flip side, what I have seen are a lot of really skilled coaches that can deliver the result. Okay. that have delivered the result. They're amazing at coaching. They just need a business partner to guide them on the business tools and skills, the marketing, and on how to set their pricing. And I think if they are one of those coaches that like, they have really done a good job for years in coaching and they've struggled With their pricing model, coming to an organization, I love what you guys do because you can do that checkup from the neck up.

24:46 Look at what they've delivered. Look at their freaking lumpy charging. I guarantee you, you look under the hood and they're charging this guy six grand and this guy two grand because that month they just needed more money. And you can come in and help them equalize, set a standard package, set their hours, benchmarked against what they can deliver and the market that they're going after. You know, if you want to coach kids, good luck. Like, God bless you, but that is not a market where you get paid crap tons of money. If you want to coach small and medium-sized businesses, there is a range that you can charge for SMBs. If you're going to coach larger markets, there is a larger market fee you can charge. And so you've got to figure out where are you happiest coaching and then what's your target range?

25:28 This is all data-driven. And anybody that wants to claim that it isn't data-driven is living in a fantasy world. And so I think we use metrics to define where these coaches can go have an impact and have make good money, but they have to take feedback from the guys that know the business side of this. And I mean, both of you have done this for years. I know where both of you have had massive impact with coaches that have built their online business. And if they will quietly listen, they will get the feedback. I think it's no different than when somebody wants to sell their house. There's what you think the house is worth. And then there's what the realtor tells you you can sell the house for.

26:08 Sometimes they can negotiate more than you're asking price. But very often they need wiggle room for negotiating a little less. You have emotional attachments because it's your baby. They're looking at the data to get the transaction done. And we're in business. We're in the business to make money. And so we need to understand how the transaction set works and then work inside of it accordingly. Sorry, that's my soapbox. I'm done. We're live streaming this to the website right now. So we're just going to let you roll. Great answer. But no, it's so huge. I actually like the fact that you dovetailed that because there's Ryan, you correct me if I'm wrong on this, but we see so often one side of the house where somebody has this crazy skillset where they're like they're gangster level coaches, right?

26:51 They've got every letter after their name. They've got all the training and the certifications. They've gone to every organization under the sun, but they do none of the business pieces. Or we see the other side. You see these guys who are out in the, in the game and they're like next level marketers, right? Like they're legit marketers and they've developed that muscle. But to your point, like getting people results or getting people the receipts or being able to walk in the door and go, Hey, we can actually, we've got meat and potatoes behind what our claims are. You get this. Oftentimes it's lopsided, right? So finding that balance in the middle where you not only can crush the business, but yeah. Yeah. My favorite thing is the marketers who put everybody in a mastermind.

27:32 And their goal is that the mastermind helps each other. And they're just holding space as the person who knows the marketing. And they deliver no actual value to the business. If you can layer a mastermind with business tools and skills, with coach training, now you've got a recipe for success. But some of these hyper marketers, God bless them, they're super good at the marketing component. They over-promise and under-deliver. on the actual side of like helping to scale the business. I think there's more of that out there today than ever before. There's a lot of people with a good marketing message who promise to help you scale your business, but then leave you hanging on the other side.

28:13 Mike, I want to ask you about something. One of the things just hearing you talk that is clear, there have been multiple points in your life where you've entered into an opportunity that maybe was unexpected at the time, or you entered into it in one capacity and you came out on the other side in a completely different capacity with growth, with something more new to show for it. And with a nice stepping stone into the next thing that you were going and doing. And that walked out of my business that I had helped to build Tate figures in a completely different industry. I got my ass handed to me when I first became a coach. And it really wasn't until I decided like, okay, I need to put this on hold for a minute.

28:56 And I'm going to go to work for a few people and learn some things about the things that I need in a coaching business to be successful. It wasn't until then that a lot of it started to kind of, that the light bulbs went off for me and things started to change similarly. You get an opportunity, you do something with it. You get another opportunity, you do something with it. I'd love for you to speak to the person that is in a spot right now where they find themselves going, man, you know, I really do want to coach and I want to do it at a really high level. And it might be that maybe I've tried to do it and I'm stuck right now. So much so to the point where like financially, I've got to find another opportunity or I'm I'm in a JLB right now and I want to find my way out of it, you know, but I can't see the through line yet.

29:40 How do you take the first step? How do you, how do you think about it that way when you can't necessarily see the end game yet? I think I'm going to answer this two ways, which is one, if you're thinking about becoming a coach, it's likely because you've been doing it for a long time. I guarantee you all three of us coached our friends, coached our coworkers. We were the person For people with the real, deep, natural skill set to coach, it's always been present in their life. They just didn't understand that they could monetize the skill set. I think it has to do with being empathetic. I think it has to do with being empathetic. sometimes firmly empathetic because you have to be empathetic, but also be able to push people.

30:24 You naturally see people's higher self, their optimism, even in tough situations. There's, there's a natural way of being that I think really good coaches sort of always show up to the world in. And if that's you and you've struggled to figure out how to make the leap from your J O B into coaching, you're, I think the second thing is people think, how do I accelerate this? How do I go from here to here, like super fast? They hear all the seven figures and like they think they're supposed to be there immediately. And, you know, we've heard this term, we overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a decade. That's true. And so like be with yourself where you are today and just start with an understanding that your first two years are for learning and growth.

31:11 And then every one of us here decided we were going to go accelerate our career by learning from other people who had paved the way. And we were able to go further, faster. You know, Brooke, you know, I went for almost a year and worked alongside Tarek El Moussa. Right. So this was a whole other like left field thing that I did for a year. Yeah. Tark El Moussa, you know, HGTV, real estate, by the way, nicest guy on the planet, huge heart. And, you know, his skillset is really understanding how to like do a deal in real estate fast. And this is a guy who like secured a TV show on HGTV to flip houses and he had never flipped a house before.

31:53 The first house he flipped was on television. Yeah. Because he just sold a vision and believed he could get it done. Right. And there's this idea of like further, faster. And if you ever hear Tarek or his wife, Heather, also like beautiful human, if you ever hear them speak about how they started in real estate, they both talk about how they went and found the number one agent in the office. Yeah. and said, I want to learn how to do these deals. I will give you 50% of my commission to learn from you. I have deals. If you will guide me through them, I will get, and they pay to play. Huh? And even though I was an ICF certified coach and had my own coaching business and I was knocking down doors, my time at Robbins to earn less, but get all of these clients and build the muscle was pay to play for me.

32:39 I understood that. I didn't come in expecting that I should get a bigger portion of something. I was pay to play for me. I'm giving up a portion of what I think a normal coach should get. But in turn, I'm getting the best training, the best coaching. I'm learning from the salespeople. I'm learning from the business. And I love the pay to play model because it does allow you to turn decades into days. It allows you to go further faster. You can wing it on your own or you can give up a little bit and get around other people that are running fast and you will figure out how to pace with them. I think that's the value of communities that are doing this together because you got three coaches that are killing it, two coaches in the middle, and maybe you're the rookie. But man, you just being in proximity to people who have done it helps you go further faster.

33:25 And so I would tell anybody getting started, like, what's it costing you not to pay to play? you're spending $8 a day on your crappuccino and you know, you're not cooking at home. You're eating out every day at $60 a plate. And so there's the money you need to go join a pay to play community. And if you don't do it, God bless you. Go build the muscle on your own. It's just going to take longer. If you want to break in and you want to accelerate, it's going to be a pay to play model. And I look at pay to play today and why, you know, They're going to spend 50, 60 grand. I don't know, maybe a little more to be in a year to radically grow their business. Go open a comic book store. I spent 200 grand on shelves and flooring and lighting before I could even sell something.

34:12 200 grand. And then you got to pay your first line of security and you got to go pay your taxes and get a sign. And then I had to stock the store. That was another 200 grand in product. So you're half million in. You haven't even been able to click the open sign yet. 50 grand, you're in this business where you get to control your revenue and your profit margins just by turning a couple dials. This is by far one of the coolest things to do if you've got the heart for it. But if you want to accelerate it, it's got to be pay to play. And I know the coaches out there, their hesitation is they want to go from here to here quick. And it's like, well, there's a path to that. Go ask anybody who's done it. And they're going to tell you they Or they paid the player, they did both, and were able to do a whole lot real fast.

35:01 I think it's pay to play either way, right? You either pay someone to help you do it. You literally pay with your sweat equity to, and I did it too, you know, where you go, look, I don't give a fuck. I'll coach anybody. Just put them in front of me. Let me learn. Let me grow. Let me sit here and figure this out. Or you just be stubborn. You don't do either of those two. And you pay because you're going to lose a shit ton of time and a shit ton of money trying to figure it out on your own. Listen, I paid to play like multiple times because I came out of my other business with this just unreasonable sense of confidence that I was going to figure it out. And I was like, oh, I did this thing and now I'll easily have this figured out.

35:44 I'll be at six figures like that, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Fast forward a couple of years later, you know, when I'm like 150 grand in the hole. trying to figure it out on my own, investing in things that weren't getting it done for me at the time. And then I went to work for somebody. So I just, I double paid to play. It was like the, you know, an extra value meal for me. If you got the learning and parlayed it into a business, that's good. If you go do that and you don't take the learnings away and you go into victim mode, that organization didn't treat me right. Or they did it. That's the problem. Correct. Right. Our good friend, Keith Cunningham says, well, all you did is pay the dumb tax. That's exactly right. You should only pay the dumb tax once, right?

36:26 After that, you better start getting the learnings and the learnings from anyone who is already earning, let's say healthy six figures. There needs to be seven. Any coach that's earning three, four, $500,000, they are doing something right. And you should, if you're a new coach, you should be sitting and listening and listening And taking notes. And when they give you feedback, your response is thank you. And then you go test the feedback. Now, it's a maybe, maybe not, right? Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But it's thank you and go test it. They're sharing an insight. And really good, successful coaches, they want to see you succeed. Like, we need more good coaches in the world. We need less bad coaches, right?

37:07 We need less half dedicated coaches who want the lifestyle, but don't want to do the work. And we need good coaches. And so if you're a good coach and your heart is in it, like, God bless you. Come join the ranks of like people who've done this for a couple of decades. We want you amongst our peers. Like we need it. Amen. We don't need the coaches and want the lifestyle without the willingness to like really grow professionally and do the work. I couldn't agree more. And I'd put a cherry on top of that Sunday and say that all three of us want more good coaches who actually want to understand business as well so that you continue being a good coach. Because guess what? If you don't ever learn the business part of it, I don't give a damn how good you are. There are going to be a lot of people who never get the benefit of what you do.

37:50 Going from a good coach to being a resentful coach, because then you get better that you can't live your gift. So yeah. What were you going to say? Full transparency. I mean, Brooke, you've known Valerie and I for a long time. And I think it was only five years ago, I actually hired an outsourced bookkeeping company to actually start breaking down our expenses and our books and looking at what our employees cost and looking at what our ad spend was. And now I have a monthly dashboard and I can actually turn all that over to my tax attorney. And it's like a blessing because now it is giving us a gift of a lot of freedom. I've been doing this for 20 years and it took me 15 before I got like my accounting dialed in to treat it like a business.

38:32 Like I had a dashboard for client engagement and feedback and all the measures for delivering coaching. I was scared to actually look at what our profit margin was. I understood revenue was high, but I also understood like what hotels and airplanes and travel and everything else cost. Yeah. And I didn't want to really admit, right? Like you fear the number because then like, can I still claim I'm a six-figure coach if it comes in under that after? And oh shit, am I going to be a fraud? And then like, it was so good to look at the number and go like, oh, this is just for tax reasons. None of this actually matters. My revenue is huge. My margins are still huge.

39:12 And my lifestyle is cared for through the business. Holy crap. You know, like it, but I think some coaches, they don't understand the business. And if you don't want to do the business side of things, I totally get it. My wife never wants to do the business side of things. I don't mind it as much. There are people, Empire, who specialize, Empire, in getting this done for you, Empire. And like, they're great on it. And like, Brooke has always been on this side of the business, helping on the front end, loading people's client loads. And like measuring the business. And, you know, Ryan, I know your background as well. And you've done this for people and help them scale, clarify their offer and figure out their niche, but then like really measure the other side of it.

39:55 And, you know, of course, there's other houses out there. I think you'll shoot me. I think people should shop. But at the end of the day, look at people who've done it for decades and produced a result. Real results. And that narrows it. This week's episode sponsored by Savage Incorporated. Narrow it down by less than this many fingers of people that are out there that can actually help coach. Yeah. I think there's less than three companies that can get it done. Dude, one of the things too that I just want to say thank you for mentioning is that I think that there is this perception that those of us that have created any kind of success in business in general, we've stopped looking for outside help for things in our business. That is such bullshit.

40:36 Brooke and I literally had a meeting with a guy yesterday talking about our marketing. Oh, but don't you guys help people with marketing things? Yeah, we do. Guess what? Sometimes we can't see the label from the inside of the jar. Right. I think the day that we want to pound our fist on the table and go, you know, we just got it all on lockdown. We don't even need to bother looking at other people to help us from the outside looking in. There's a good way to figure out that the person that you're being mentored by is full of shit or probably going to crash and burn pretty soon. People that I know that are at the top are consistently looking for more outside help who are better at things in their business than they are. I love that you brought that up. That's a big one. Brooke knows that I occasionally get these random calls and I always have a side project.

41:18 And one of the most recognizable faces on Instagram called me about a year ago and asked me to come in and just give some advice. And when I got to the table, every advisor at the table was the best of the best of the best in marketing marketing. in funnels and understanding offers. These are all icons that we probably all look up to and have been in the game a long time. And there wasn't just one at the table. There were like 10 of them around this dining room table. Most of them direct competitors and the iron sharpens iron. What are you doing differently? Hey, let me tweak your Facebook ad account, do this and this. like the abundance that they came from to help each other because they all had enough to eat, like everybody at the table was eating well, was inspiring.

42:08 And I think there comes a point in the game where if you aren't getting someone else to come in and peel your blinders back and show you your blind spots, you will ultimately sink. Like, The algorithms, the way offers are read, the way Instagram and Facebook and Google and YouTube deliver, that shit changes at light speed. And you have to have other voices helping you pivot. And, you know, Brooke, it's the whole eat your own cooking thing. It's like, if you're a coach, you better be coachable. If you're not coachable, stop. Ryan tells me that all the time. Yeah. Come on, Brooke. God. Yeah. Brooke and I have a friend named Rajiv that we talked to a lot.

42:49 Well, you guys know Rajiv. He's got all the AI good news, right? Yeah. And the three of us will get on the phone with each other and dump a problem and be like, I'm being an idiot. Can I get some feedback, please? And we're like not nice to each other, but we don't expect nicety. We expect somebody to go like, you are being a moron. Stop that. It's happened on and off for decades at this point. And my brother will jump in every once in a while. Like you need healthy outside perspective. And that's the value of coaching is somebody who cares enough, but is on the outside looking in and is helping you adjust your swing. And I think that's the value of coaching. being part of some of these coaching communities and masterminds is you're with a group of people that are like-minded and they can help you adjust your swing regularly.

43:34 And I think having been a part of those, like my entire career has probably been another accelerant, both for me and for Valerie. I wanted to thank you, man, for I know your time is ridiculously valuable. And I know you've you're literally putting people into space. So honestly, man, just super, super grateful that you carved out time for us as well as for our listeners. And just there's so many notes that I've got here that I just grabbed just knowledge bomb galore. But yeah, man, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ryan, any last pieces you want to hit brother? Dude, I just want to say thanks and honor you. I honestly, again, first of all, selfishly, it's just fun to finally get a chance to connect. And I look forward to, as I've talked about many times, I get down to Florida fairly often because of family and I lived there for 20 years.

44:18 So I'd love to hook up in person one of these days. But bro, one of the things that I just really appreciate about you taking the time out is that you've had such a wealth of experience and such a journey through coaching and now into business and entrepreneurship. Yeah. that I know how valuable this is going to be for other people. And I just really appreciate and honor you for taking the time to share that wisdom with us, with people that are listening right now, because I know it's going to change some lives. You've done quite a bit of that already. I know you're not even close to done, but I know that you've done it on this podcast today, man. So I appreciate you and thank you. And I can't wait to jam out a whole lot more from here on out. Yeah, I look forward to everything that you guys are doing. You know, there's an essence of family involved in some of my harder times where I was going through a dark tunnel.

45:05 Brooke, his brother, his mom, let me be very clear, his mom, Melissa, who's a rock star, and his uncle, Mark, really picked me up and then elevated me in times where I felt maybe I didn't even deserve it. That servant's heart is, is the heartbeat of everything they do. And so, you know, if Brooke says, hey, let's have a chat, like the answer is yes. If Mark calls, the answer is yes. And I hope everybody understands that that is what they put into the work they do. And so, you know, working with Empire and Brian by extension, I'm sure, I'm certain that you live in that same space. You don't just become a client, you become family. That's a big deal in a world where everything is transactional.

45:48 And so I'm hoping when people engage with you all in your content and what you do, that they're getting that and that they understand that that's one of those sometimes immeasurable differentiators that helps set them apart in the work that they do. So thank you guys. I've appreciated the conversation. I'll show up anytime Brooke asks, just so Brooke knows that. Appreciate you, brother. Well, Mike, thank you again. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Thanks again to Mike, Brooke. Thank you, brother, as always. And look forward to 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.

46:38 To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.