Episode #074: Yoga Mats to Marketing: Brett Larkin's Journey of Adaptation and Growth
Yoga Mats to Marketing: Brett Larkin's Journey of Adaptation and Growth
Brett Larkin emerged as a guiding presence in the digital space, intimately engaged in the co-creation process with her audience for years. Her beginnings were marked with the challenge of attracting an audience and providing valuable content. However, as her presence developed, so did her relationship with her followers.
They began to voice their concerns and questions - these questions from her community became the seeds from which her YouTube videos, podcast episodes, and social media posts blossomed.
Through this dance of give-and-take, Brett's organic approach in listening and responding to her audience's needs not only illustrated her skill in content creation but also cemented her reputation as a content creator profoundly in tune with her community.
In this week’s episode we cover some AWESOME topics including...
Slimming Down to Scale Up: Find out why Brett took a bold step in reducing her email list dramatically.
The Power of Personalized Marketing: We discuss the impact of tailor-fitted marketing strategies and share how to apply these in the initial business stages.
A Deep Dive into Genuine Invitation: Brett sheds light on how authentic connections fuel her success.
Tune in to hear an authentic convo between two seasoned marketers!Linked Mentioned:
Brett's Book - Yoga Life (Amazon Affiliate Link)
Full Transcript:
Zach Spuckler:
Online marketing podcast, episode number 74. And in this episode we're talking about content co-creation and more with a student of mine, Brett Larkin. So let's get into it.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now I am excited because I have a guest and I don't do a ton of guests, but Brett Larkin reached out to me and said, "I'd love to be a guest on your show. I've been in your sphere for a while, some of your programs, some of your content." And she's created a really massive and engaged following on YouTube with an email list. And I thought, "You know what? It would be really fun to have someone come on too and just dialogue a little bit about business."
So I want to preface this episode by saying there are a lot of golden nuggets in here. We talk about things like YouTube marketing and video marketing. We also talk about things like outsourcing and experimentation. But really I want you to come into this as an open mind of you're just getting to listen to a great conversation, I think, between two business owners who are talking about how they have been growing their businesses over the last years and the years going forward. So we're going to talk about things like content co-creation and really getting clear on how to grow. So if you are someone who loves those high level conversations between marketers and you want to just be a fly on the wall to some of the conversations I like to have, this episode's going to be a good one for you. So without further ado, let's welcome Brett Larkin to the show.
All right, let's welcome to the show Brett Larkin. Hey Brett, how are you?
Brett Larkin:
I'm good. Super excited to be here and meet you.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah, I'm super excited to have you. We were talking a little bit before we started recording, you've been in the Heart, Soul & Hustle orbit for a while, which is super cool just to hear about and see what you've been building over the last few years. So I know a little bit, but for our listeners, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your business, where you come from, what you're achieving, all that good stuff?
Brett Larkin:
Yes. So I am someone who never thought I could make a living teaching yoga, and now I own a little bit of a yoga empire in a sense. I've earned multiple seven figures in the yoga industry, and so much of that is because of you, Zach. So I mean, it's cool to meet you talking face to face right now, but I feel like I know you because I was listening to some of your periscopes really early on. So yeah, I think it's been probably over a decade or close to that or more that I've been in your orbit.
So yeah, so my business's primary source of revenue is I train yoga teachers online, which now is very commonplace, but back when I started doing it in 2014, 2015, it was very new. I also have mobile apps for yoga students, which is sort of like a Netflix of my classes and my philosophy courses, very beginner-friendly. And that I started even earlier. So again, going back to 2012 was when I started my YouTube channel and I have half a million subscribers on YouTube. So yeah, that's a little bit about me in a nutshell. I just released a book as well, which I sent to you. So yeah, that's who I am in 30 seconds or less.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it. So we're going to talk a little bit about the book too, but I want to dive into the marketing because you've done some really cool stuff marketing your business. And specifically you had mentioned that video is a key piece, half a million subscribers. That's incredible. Can you talk to us just a little bit about how you maybe got into video marketing and how that's been serving your business as a whole over the last decade?
Brett Larkin:
Wow. A video is so powerful and I always think about... I can't remember who it was, but someone who said... He commissioned this huge study about why people buy from other people and ultimately it was just because they like them. And so if you can be known and liked, and I think the way that that can come across on video is just unparalleled compared to any other medium. I have very much always focused on trying to co-create with my audience and be of service to them. And I feel like that's something I also learned from you and saw you doing really early in the day.
So I was trying to create my first funnel and figure out my website and figure out some basic marketing pieces in my business, and I would go onto Periscope, which for people who don't know what that is, it was basically the first live-streaming platform that we had where you could interact with creators in real time. And my friend Rachel and I, we knew what days you were going to go live, Zach. And we'd be like, "Okay, let's go live and ask him our questions." So we'd just try to do things and then would try to go live when you were live to ask you questions about what was blocking us. So I think I saw you just being so helpful to people. It's like, of course you were selling things. I think I'm sure you had courses and things you were selling at the time, but you were very much there to empower whoever was watching and answer their questions.
And so I started trying to do that same thing with yoga. I would just go live and talk about yoga and see what people were struggling with and someone would be like, "Oh, I don't know how to do child's pose." Or, "It hurts my knees." And meanwhile in my brain, I was just taking mental notes about, "Okay, need to make a YouTube video around that. Need a tutorial around that. Membership community needs to have a six-day breakdown of this." So I think for someone listening, it's like if you can be co-creating with your audience or be in action or in dialogue with them from a place of service, so much of your marketing just becomes easy and done for you essentially, because you don't have to sit alone in a dark room and think about all of these fancy marketing concepts to impress people or feel like the weight is on you to get it organized by yourself. You can just really dialogue and see what people are needing and craving from you.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah. I think that's so key. The co-creation process is something that we've done for years now, and it's so almost second nature for us because what you're saying is so key is that you don't have to come up with content. And so you do in the early days as you're coming up with how to attract your audience and what to give them. But over time your audience would be like, "I don't know what to do about this." Or, "I have this problem." Or, "How do I do X, Y, and Z?" And so I think that you've illustrated this beautifully is that is your YouTube video, that is your podcast, that is your social media post. And we've done the same thing with some of our content as, especially obviously around Facebook ads, it's like people ask us questions all the time in our membership community and I'm just like, "Oh, that'd be a great podcast episode."
So I just think that this is such a key piece to take away is if you don't know what to say, ask people what they're stuck on and they'll ultimately tell you. So you've done some really cool stuff with YouTube, and I don't want to go too far down the YouTube rabbit hole because I know it runs deep. But can you talk to us a little bit about how you got started with YouTube? Maybe somebody who's considering video marketing. It's like, I think for a lot of us there's the two big objections are, I'm not confident on camera and I don't have a beautiful setup or a great background or the right lighting kit. I think there's the tech and then there's also the confidence. How did you find that middle ground, if you will, for you to get started with it?
Brett Larkin:
Well, I think one of the best pieces of news for everyone right now is that you don't need fancy tech anymore. I mean, when I started, I "borrowed" a camera from my full-time job at the time, and I just filmed myself doing a yoga video on my friend's roof. I wasn't even having the intent to build a YouTube channel. I was just so not confident teaching yoga. And I was like, "Maybe if I speak aloud a class it'll help." And it was supposed to just be this private thing. I think I just threw it on YouTube because I was like, "That's free to store it." I had no idea that people were going to comment and engage.
But I see this with my yoga students, Zach, because I teach marketing to them now, and the biggest pitfall I see is they want to invest in equipment. And I think the brain does this thing where it's like, "Oh, I can start video marketing when I have the DSLR camera. I have the studio lighting perfect." It's almost like our brain tricks us and delays us from taking action by giving us shiny object syndrome of all these things I need to buy.
So I just tell them, and when I tell anyone listening, is start right now on your iPhone. The best news is that the really fancy, pretty aesthetic that we used to see on Instagram and that I think used to do well on YouTube as well, that's gone. I mean, YouTube, it's still there a little bit more, but people really want raw now. They want authentic. The more you can just leverage your phone and maybe just a mic for your phone, which you could get for $10 on Amazon. I would just say don't let equipment and perfectionism get in the way because YouTube's all about experimentation and figuring out what the algorithm wants from you.
The number one metric to focus on is watch time. So it's not views. It's basically the two metrics I focus on is the click-through rate, so how good my thumbnail is. So I think a lot of people on YouTube, the number one thing to focus on is your thumbnail. So I used to, for years, spend so much time on a video and not as much time on the thumbnail, but it turns out the thumbnail is actually the most important piece because otherwise people aren't going to click your video. My designer and I now, we don't just make several different thumbnails for each video to see what we like. We actually look at the key search term that we're going after, and I have her imbed our thumbnail in all the other thumbnails for that search term.
Brett Larkin:
So we're actually trying to see how well is it going to stand out. What is that click-through rate? How can we get that as high as possible? And then really having a hook. I mean, all marketing is about a hook, but for someone listening to this, if you were going to make a YouTube video really thinking about what is that hook? How are you going to establish a rapport and have them want to keep watching to hopefully get to that 10 minute mark because if you can get to that 10 minute mark, YouTube's really, really going to reward your channel. It's looking at how long is someone watching for. So I think a lot of times people get obsessed with views or subscriber number, but really it's that watch time stat that for me, I'm constantly looking at how can I increase that number because I know that's ultimately what's going to drive growth.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah. I love that. And I think that what a lot of people don't realize is most people start really simple. What's that saying is, "Someday or today. It's your choice." And I think that that's so key. And we always have this perception that people are judging us when there's always, especially I know especially on YouTube, there's always people judging you whether you put yourself out there or not. And just for context, when I moved into... We moved back to Ohio a few years ago, and for two and a half months I was like... The last thing on my mind after moving across the country and being off the grid for four days and just moving into a house was, "Oh, I hope my video background is beautiful." And so I was in this empty room, horrible echo, no good microphone, beige wall. I have a nice bookcase now.
And guess what? It worked. It was fine. Honestly, I don't think anybody ever said anything. I think maybe one person was like, "Oh, are you going to put anything on the wall back there after two months?" But it's like people care about your content, people care about you, people care about connecting with you. And I love that you're talking about this. It's like start with your iPhone. We did reels on... Reels was really big a few years ago. I mean, they still are, but we just create content because the people care about the content, not so much the context always.
And you said something else that I'd love to just go a little bit deeper on, which is you were being specific to YouTube, which is totally fine. But I think it applies to everything which is that in business, in YouTube, in Instagram, in Facebook, in advertising, in marketing, it's all about experimentation. Can you talk to us about how you... What I love is that you're like, "We have a process. We do this and we do that and we do this." And it's lik, how did you experiment your way to a clear process and what is, or maybe I should say, how is that process continuing to evolve?
Brett Larkin:
Well, one quick thing I want to say, and before I dive into that too, is just because I know people listening, you mentioned some people are camera shy. It's just visualize talking to one person who's your friend, and I do this with my email marketing too. I think you do this also very well. It's like the minute you think you're talking to a lot of people, you get nervous and you become formal. The more that you're just very, very casual and just visualize that one best friend. Or I still visualize just my friend Jackie because she was an early person who I connected with yoga around. Even when I'm writing emails, I'm visualizing writing just to her or talking just to her and it makes it so much easier. So yeah, just shouting that out.
And then in terms of the structure, it's interesting. Structure is such a delicate balance because I used to batch film my YouTube videos, so I would film maybe 10, 20 videos in sometimes a week. Yes, my body was very sore after. Obviously tons of planning would go into those shoots and then I would drip that content out over many months. One thing I'm finding more and more is that while that process has great aspects to it, meaning I only have to get dolled up and set up my film space every six months, it doesn't allow me to be more adaptive to the algorithm.
So something that I'm changing actually in my process for this new year is that I'm never allowing myself to film more than eight videos at a time because the algorithm's always changing and I'm seeing what people want and what the algo wants from me on my channel is evolving. And so I'd find myself a lot of times with these longer workflows where I'm like, I already know that it's changed. It wants this other type of content now, but I'm still dripping out this stuff because I had happened to bank it and film it a long time ago. So it's always this moving target where you're like, "What fits my lifestyle?" I have two little kids, so it fits my lifestyle really well to batch film. But at the same time this year I'm looking at how can the wins of many of the aspects of that process happen, but maybe on a shorter creation cycle.
Zach Spuckler:
I really like that. You just said two really big things that stood out to me, which is number one, it is about adapting and experimenting and just seeing what works. And really the underlying thing for that is the feedback. It's like what is the feedback telling you? In this case you said watch time or click-through rates. That's really clear data points and there's also more qualitative data points. Are people commenting? Are people being positive? Do people like this? Are people literally responding to this?
But you said something else which I thought was so important, which is you're like, "How does this serve my lifestyle and my goal?" I jokingly, not jokingly because it's true. I said it on my membership call earlier today. Somebody was like, "Well, how often do you work?" And I was like, "I really don't like to work more than 35 hours a week." Full stop, I won't lie. I don't have kids. I don't have a lot of personal commitments in my life. I've got family that live nearby and we like to see them on the weekends. But for me it's just like I know at 40 hours I burn out. I just do because I'm a very intense worker. When I'm on, I'm on. And I do a lot of calls during the week.
And so can you talk a little bit about how you... You said it is this balancing act. But for someone who's listening to this, I think what would really benefit them is, can you talk about how early on you found that balancing act? Because I'm spoiled and I know that where it's like I don't have kids. I have three cats and a dog, and they mostly take care of them themselves. But it's like for someone who's getting started, when I got started I was working 70, 80 hours a week, and that's not sustainable or manageable for some people. So especially early on, but maybe even more recently, how do you find that middle ground to play that balancing act?
Brett Larkin:
Yeah, happy to speak to that. And just to say too, as we talked about the lookback, I mean, a great takeaway maybe for folks listening is to do a 90 day lookback. I mean, if we want to formalize a little bit of what we were saying, I just talked to my team about that earlier today. I was like, "Everyone, you need to be doing 90 day lookbacks, which basically means just you look back on the last 90 days." And one of the highest paid YouTube consultants that I learned from, this is what he teaches. He's just like, "Look at the past 90 days and see how things were going." And so I do that on Instagram, with our emails, with YouTube, everything with sales, and it's just okay. A lot of times what worked once is going to work again. So that's I think a lot of people think they need to reinvent the wheel. It's like, nope. If this silo or if this keyword or if this type of content is working, just keep after it.
So love 90 day lookbacks. The work-life balance, that is always a challenge. Some tips that I have for people who are listening, if you're just starting, because similar to Zach, I was working a lot. I mean, I always think of getting a business off the ground as like a plane taking off. It takes so much fuel, it takes so much focus, it takes really everything. And then once you're in the air, it's different. There's some turbulence sometimes or maybe you want to go in one direction or another, but the plane is off. You have product market fit, you have revenue, you're in the sky, so to speak.
But that initial takeoff is going to demand more of you than you could ever imagine. And the thing is to remember it's just a season. I was lucky because I did that season before I had kids, but I'm also someone who likes to work a lot. I like to grow. My business scaled a ton in 2020 when all yoga teacher trainings and everything came online and I was already there. That was a very intense year and I think I was pregnant with my second that year.
So one big tip I'd give is just to hire early. So something I did even when I was attending those Periscopes with you, Zach, in my living room and had zero revenue and no idea what I was doing. I actually hired an admin, even though I still had a full-time job because the yoga was my side hustle. I hired an administrative assistant essentially from the Philippines. Maybe you told me to do this, who knows. But he really started helping me with video annotations. And if you hire before you're ready, it's really fantastic because it forces you to take your business seriously because now you have someone else you need to tell what to do.
I'm not saying hire them full-time, even just a couple hours a week. But it really changes your role into being a business owner who's responsible for other people. And so if you just feel lazy, you can't not come to work because at least for me, I'm like, "Okay, I'm paying him. I need to give him tasks and things to do." And I didn't have product market fit at that point. I was like, "Oh, he can just help me experiment and fail faster while I figure out what works, or free me up to go live on Periscope myself while he answers emails or responds to YouTube comments with templates that I've created or things like that."
So I think leveraging your time is incredibly important. And I mean, I know we've all heard this. It's like don't do $20 an hour tasks in your business, but I think a lot of people don't do that until they're earning a lot of money. And I guess what I'm saying is if you want to grow, you need to have the mindset that your time is worth $100 or $200 an hour from the beginning and then it takes six years to become a good manager. And most of us can't grow businesses by ourselves or that's very difficult to do everything. So the sooner that you can start exercising also that skill for yourself of how to manage other people, the better.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah. And I do want to point something out because I actually have... If anybody follows me on Facebook or see me talk about this, I had a, I wouldn't say controversial, but I would say contrarian take on this, which is like I do think that you should have... And again, I love that we can have different opinions on everything too. So this is not anything bad, but it's like I think you should have a little bit of revenue before you hire. Or what you did, which is you still were full-time. I think a lot of people hire without resource and you had resources.
And so it's like we have to trade and I think you've made an excellent point, which is like we have to value our time at where it's valued. And so when you have that full-time or you're doing that full-time, I think that's really smart to hire early and hire fast with the caveat that at least for us, it was like I didn't have that. So when I hired my first person, we had been in the business for a year or I had been in the business for about a year, but I was working in an assistantship making $14 an hour. All my money was going to rent. And it's like you have to be mindful that you leverage your resources correctly, which you touched on too, is your time is a resource and so you have to leverage what you have and not burn yourself to the ground.
So I just want to highlight that little point that I think it's like that's really smart that you hired early on, and you made sure you had the resources to do it because I see a lot of people. And I won't name names, but I see a lot of people in some of the Facebook groups that I'm in are like, "Oh, I heard to hire early. I've got no money and no job and no business, and I hired my VA and now I can't afford to keep them." And it's like there's that duality there of you got to balance your resource with your ability, and I do think we waited too long to hire too. So I just wanted to touch on that. I know that it's a little counter to what you said, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that:
Brett Larkin:
No, no. Not at all. I mean, I was in a position where my full-time job was funding my side gig and therefore I was like, "Let's grow the side gig." Because I didn't have as much time to be in the side gig as I wanted, hence the admin. I think another really great touchpoint to... It's like you can't just have faith like, "Oh, I'm just going to hire and hope they have things to do." I mean, I think maybe better than revenue almost what we're circling on together is once your time is maxed out, I didn't have time to annotate YouTube videos anymore. Or I mean, this was so old back in the day, but we had to manually drag a subscribe button onto the screen through this really old editing tool, things like that. It's like if you have things like that in your business where you could make a video for someone else to do it, that's when you want to hire and get help.
I also just want to shout out because your original question was about work-life balance. I mean, getting help at home, especially if there's women listening to this. I mean, I have so many yoga students of mine who I do business coaching with or try to help within the context of our yoga teacher training programs. And really their business just isn't going to grow unless they outsource some of their home tasks. And that might mean that instead of an admin, maybe they're going to hire a babysitter or a cleaner or someone to come once a week and do the grocery shopping for them. And that's still going to grow your managerial skills and that's still you viewing your time as critical and as important.
So I have a lot of help at home and a lot of times when I'm doing time management, I'm like, "Do I want more home help or help with the kids or do I want more business help? And is this a specific role that has key performance indicators attached to it?" So there's this interesting dynamic where it's like the time really is your most precious resource, and where do you want that to go? And then how can you build scaffolding around you being extremely supported?
Zach Spuckler:
I love that. And I think you said something that's so important and we don't honestly talk about this enough on the show is we have a lot of help in home. We don't as much right now, but we have a cleaner who comes a couple times a month. When the laundry gets overwhelming, I'd be lying if I said I don't drop it off at the wash and fold and just pay the flat fee to not have to deal with laundry for 8 or 10 hours because we have a lot of clothes and we let them pile up. By we, I mean me. It's technically my role agreed upon, but I always let it slide. We use Instacart. We don't have a personal shopper, but we use Instacart all the time, which comes with additional fees and costs. And you may not be there today, but you have to be thinking about that long-term is like...
This morning, this is a perfect example, we Instacart-ed because we didn't have food for lunch. And I was like, "I don't have time to run to the store today. It's just not happening." My husband was like, "I really want..." This is so bougie. He's like, "I want bruschetta on this bread we picked up at this French bakery." But I was like, "I'm not running to the store, but if you want to make bruschetta, that's totally chill. Just Instacart it." And it's like those little things that we don't think about where the nice thing about technology is it doesn't have to be this big... You even said it. Hiring somebody oversees even for just a few hours. It doesn't have to be this big daunting thing.
It can be switching from spending an hour and a half at the grocery store to spending 15 minutes making the list on Instacart. It can be looking up a local laundromat and dropping stuff off. It can be finding someone on care.com to watch the kids five hours a week. And it's like when we start thinking about it, it's like you don't have to buy your life back. You're buying your time back. And so time is a very measurable resource that we can look at. 168 hours a week, I think. Sounds right. 168 hours a week, let's say. And you can say, "I need four of those hours and I'm going to put that to the business." Or, "I need five of those hours and I'm putting two to family and three to work." I just think that's so key.
And you're right, we are circling around the same thing and it's just different ideologies about how you get there, but at the end of the day, you want to grow. We're both on the same page that eventually you need help and getting that help sooner than later in whatever capacity that is. I love that you brought up the home help because I know a lot of people who start there because it is easy for some people, not all. But for some of us it's easier to conceptualize, I don't have time to clean the house, than it is to say, "I should just respond to this email." And there's definitely the dynamic where we struggle with that, with all kinds of different socio and economic norms, but I think that I'm just so glad you brought that up because I think that's so important.
Brett Larkin:
Yeah. If an entrepreneur, if you don't have that product market fit yet and you don't have all those little things like the YouTube annotations that I mentioned to outsource yet, home help could be the place that it makes sense because that's going to free you up to spend more time on your business to figure out what's going to take to get that jet fuel of the plane off the ground. You're the only one who can do that. So yeah, in my opinion, the money shouldn't go to an admin. Maybe the money goes to something else, childcare or whatever it is that's going to support you to have that dedicated focused time.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah, I love that. When we were in California, we jokingly said we had a Mitch. He knew. His name was Mitch, and he was so great. Home manager three days a week, laundry, walk the dogs, cook dinner. It was great. And that was when realistically, just for those who don't know, I had the course business. I shut it all down to run full-time agency. Obviously that's not the case anymore. But it's exactly what you said when we started the agency, it was getting that plane off the ground. I was like, I don't have time to cook and clean and do laundry. I need to get this off the ground because I shifted my entire business model to essentially a new business. We went from an email list of 14,000 to 2,000. I was like, "If you're not interested in this, you're off the list." And we just started over, which was really bold and stupid in retrospect, but it worked out.
I love this. This is such a good conversation. So we've talked about a few things. We've talked about experimentation and bringing in help and the power of video marketing. For those who are listening who are like, "I love this concept. I want to put myself out there more and I maybe want to buy back my time." Can you give us something maybe even from your early days that you were like, maybe conceptually and then we can make it more tangible, is like, what is something that you did that helps you get that momentum? Because if you're talking about, if we use the same analogy, it's like how did you extend the runway? How did you get the jet fuel? How did you put the energy in to essentially take off and create the long-term sustainability?
Brett Larkin:
I think inviting and asking people to work with you. I know that sounds so obvious, but that was huge for me. I think you need to... Even my yoga students for example, they might have family and friends or a small email list and they'll launch something like a challenge or a course or they want... But then I'm like, "Well, when you didn't get the results, did you email each of them individually and invite them?"
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah.
Brett Larkin:
Sometimes I think we just forget the power of an invitation, especially if you're working with a small list or a small audience to just email someone, not through Mailchimp, but I used to do this in my early days. I'd be like, "Okay, well maybe my Mailchimp email isn't getting through, or it's a deliverability issue, or maybe that just feels too generic. I'm leading this retreat or I want my first 100 members. Why don't I just send them a little personalized email that's clearly from me, it's from my email address, and just invite them to join?"
So the power of an invitation is so incredible. And when I was going live on Periscope just like you, I mean, yeah, I was giving all these tips, but at the end I would always add that invitation. If you want to go deeper around this... So it doesn't have to be salesy. I think people often are afraid of spamming people or being salesy. And the reality is, if you're inviting someone... If you believe in what you're selling, you are inviting someone to have a transformative experience with you or to increase their ROI with ads or whatever it is that you do, and you need to be in that energetic place. This is where a little bit yoga and energy I think comes into it.
If you're in that energetic place of feeling full and in love with your offer, you are magnetic. And I think that magnetism translates through email. It definitely translates through video because you're just excited and you're wanting to share and you're wanting to invite them to be a part of it. I think that comes back to co-creation, what we talked about early on. Instead of it being like, "I will do this for you." It's like, "I can help you, but also look at what we could do together. Look at what we can build together." And when you include other people in it that way and invite them into it, it's so, so powerful. So I think, I don't know if that's exactly what you were looking for, but I know that that's something I focused on early on. If I didn't…
Zach Spuckler:
No. That's exactly what I was looking for because I think…
Brett Larkin:
Yeah.
Zach Spuckler:
... so often we don't think about that. I don't know what it was in, but we had a training where we called it the scrappy effect. It's like people don't want to get scrappy, and you've got to... Especially early on, we look at the big names and we see even someone like yourself with 500,000 YouTube subscribers, and we're like, "Well, I've got to do what they're doing. I need to scale. I need to hit half a million subscribers." Or you see someone like me and you're like, "Oh, well the secret is to have 10,000+ on your email list." And it's like, no. The secret is that early on, and there was a great talk I got to listen to from John Lee Dumas when I was early on in my career. He runs EO Fire podcast and he said, "Do stuff that doesn't scale, especially early on, and worry about scaling later." Because so often we hear the message online of scale, scale, scale, seven figures, scalable, one to many, courses, coaching. And it's like, but the individualized stuff will always work. It will always work.
Brett Larkin:
And it's where your goal is too. I mean, I have a huge email list, 130,000 people something. When I launched my most recent program, which was a very high ticket, I sent personal emails to everyone who I knew from our community who I thought would be interested. Yes, I asked them to book a sales call with our sales call person, some of them. But most of them I was just like, "Hey." And a lot of them I tried to get on calls with. I was like, "Hey, do you want to just talk to me about this?" Before I even launched the program, I was doing interviews with them.
And I think this is something I wanted to say earlier on when we were talking about co-creating with your audience because I know some people listening to this are going to be like, "Well, that's great. You at that point already had 10,000 or 30,000 YouTube subscribers. Or Zach, you already had 2,000 on your email list, or you already had people to talk to." But if you don't have anyone, find your ideal client. Find the avatar, as they say, and ask them out to lunch. Ask them to coffee and if you can, record it because if you ask them about their problems and hear all the language they're going to give to you. Every time I can talk to a student for the new program I developed, I interviewed them and I was just... Everything that they said is on the sales page.
The sales page was so easy to write because I literally just... I had a huge survey that I sent, so I literally asked on the survey, "Do you like these words or these words more to describe this type of movement?" I'm like, "What is going to help them get it?" And then I combined that survey data with the interviews I did from the people in my community who really love our style of yoga and our approach. And the sales page was the easiest thing I've ever written because it was just all regurgitated from them. So you can do that just sitting across and having coffee with... If you want to help small business owners, is there a friend of a friend in the family? Does someone own a laundromat? Can you just ask them to lunch and ask them what their problems are? So you don't have to do this. It's not like you can't do this if you don't have a big platform, I guess is the point I want to make for folks listening.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah, this is great. And you even said something even at the level that you're at, you're sending out personal invitations, and we did the same thing for our coaching program. We reached out to people, gosh, this would've been six months ago. But when we did our last iteration of our coaching program, we literally reached out to people and we're like, "I think you'd be a great fit. Are you open to a conversation?" And it's like there's two big things here, which is number one, that willingness to go for the ask. And that's what you said is those invitations, thinking of it as an invitation. "Hey, I have this thing. Would you be interested in talking more?" It's not these spammy DMs that's like, "Hey, friend, I just met you. Do you want to hop on a call? I can get you 30 to 50 booked appointments this week." It's not that. It's the, "I have this thing. You're in my community, or I know of you, or we're connected through so-and-so. I'd love to have a conversation."
And two, knowing that there's rejection in that and being okay with that, that some people do say, "Hey, it's not the right time." Or, "I'm not really interested." Or, "Hey, not today." And the more you can make peace, for lack of a better way to put it, with that, sometimes you got to do the uncomfortable and sometimes you get the uncomfortable in return. But that's where the magic is happening. And I think that it's just so beautiful that you're illustrating that in the sense that you've got such a massive audience and you're still doing things that don't scale. And I think that that's just so cool.
Brett Larkin:
Yeah, and still reading. I mean, obviously I don't respond to every YouTube comment myself. But I mean, we had a video this week that's performing extra well. It's performing two and a half times better than the average video. I'm reading all the comments on that video specifically myself because I'm like, "Okay, what is it? What are people loving? How can we lean more into this?" So I think it's a great way to put it. It's like if you lose your connection with your ideal client and customer, no matter how scaled you are or whatever scaling stuff you're going to do, it doesn't matter. That is the heartbeat of your business because you're solving a problem for someone and you need to know that person intimately.
And again, I'm really into energy because I'm a yoga person, but when I'm sending those one-to-one emails, my energy is in such a good place. Often I will get dressed up. I'll do whatever I need to do. Maybe it's like I need to do it in a specific coffee shop or a nice restaurant, or I need to do my hair, or I need to... I try to be full frequency excited about the offer and what I'm trying to attract, even if I'm just sending an email because I know that that energy is going to be laced through the email.
And with most of these invitations, I'm not emailing that person just to hit a quota. I genuinely love them in the program because I know enough about them that I'd actually be really excited if they were a fit. So I mean, it sounds a little silly, but the more you can psych yourself up in a way. Maybe that means you maybe take a shower or do a quick jog first or a power posture, I don't know. But I never write emails when I'm in a bad mood. I never record videos when I'm in a bad mood. I always make sure that my energy is super lit up and excited so that's what I'm transmitting.
Zach Spuckler:
No, I love that. And we actually, I met with a client today who had somebody that was like, "I'm all in. I'm ready to join your program." A few thousand dollars for the program. And they were like, "Oh, they said they'd pay on Friday, but it's Monday. What do I do?" And I told them very similar to what you're saying is, come to that email from the energy of, this person's busy. This person forgot. This person is psyched to work with me. I can't wait to have this person. I don't need this sale. This person wants what I have to offer, and they probably just got busy. And when you bring the energy, I know it's not exactly the same. But when you bring the energy to that email of, I'm just reminding them. I'm actually doing them a favor. It totally changes the dynamic from feeling like you're chasing down money, to you're inviting people back into your fold and I think that's so key.
There has been so much gold nuggets in here I love. I cannot wait to publish this episode and hear what people think. For those who want to find out more about you, I know that... So for those who are listening, Brett has an incredible book on yoga for busy people, which if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a busy person. Can you talk to us a little bit about where we can find more about you, your YouTube channel? Give us some information about the book, and tell us what we should do next if we want to stay connected with you.
Brett Larkin:
Yeah, thank you. So the best place to stay connected or find all about what I do is my website, Brett Larkin. So it's B-R-E-T-T L-A-R-K-I-N. If you type that name into YouTube, Brett Larkin, you'll find all sorts of classes if you want to just do some quick yoga with me. And I offer primarily yoga teacher training online, so certifying yoga instructors. But we also have that same membership site that Zach helped me start building over a decade ago. When I was working with you, Zach, I was trying to get my first 100 people, and obviously we have a lot more since then, 10 years later. So that's more for students. So those are all easy ways to connect with me.
And then my book, Yoga Life. So the book is called Yoga Life because it's all about integrating the ancient wisdom of yoga into your day-to-day, even if it's just here and there between other activities. So the book helps you create a 20-minute personal ritual because you can have a very potent, transformative, both spiritually and physically experience, I think in just 10 to 15 minutes if you're practicing the breathing techniques and the postures that are designed to balance your personality. So the book starts with a personality quiz. We reverse engineer yoga to fit you based on what you answer through a variety of quizzes throughout the book. So it's really fun. And then I'm giving you tons of what I call little yoga habits. So these are ways to sprinkle more mindfulness, breathing and also Vedic wisdom into your life. Again, even if it's just while you're waiting for the tea kettle to boil or while you're in your car.
So yeah, very much designed for people who are busy. I wrote the book because after having my kids and my father dying of cancer and the business being so busy, I couldn't practice yoga the way I used to. I didn't have time to do my own YouTube videos that I was telling other people to do. I was really hard-pressed for time, and that's when I developed this personalization framework to make your yoga practice more potent in half the time. So yeah, the book's called Yoga Life and it's available anywhere books are sold. Definitely designed for beginners so even if you're listening to this and you've never done yoga, you can really benefit from the book, I promise. It's designed for people who are new to yoga with you in mind.
Zach Spuckler:
Love it. Well, we'll definitely link that up in the show notes. We'll link up your website and the book and your YouTube and all that good stuff. Brett, thank you so much for being here today. Such a fun conversation. And for those of you who are listening, I highly recommend you check out Brett on YouTube and in the book Yoga Life, which looks phenomenal. I got to go read through some of it. It's a great book. And so we'll link that all up in the show notes, which I'll give you the link for in just a second here. Brett, thank you so much for being here.
Brett Larkin:
Thank you.
Zach Spuckler:
All right, so what'd you think? I hope you got a lot of value from this episode. I know it's a little different from what I traditionally do, where it's like, do this, do that, click that button, here's my strategy. But I don't know, something, call it a intuition, a gut feeling said this was going to be a great episode. And the conversations we had were really great. And while we covered a lot of different topics, I'm really excited to share with you this episode. So if you want a recap of the show notes, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap074. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap074 for not your average podcast, episode number 74. And let me know, do you like these interviews with other people? Do you want me to have more guests on the show, more individual episodes, solo episodes? DM me over on Instagram @zachspuckler and let me know. I love hearing from you guys, and I want this show to be valuable for you for years to come. So without further ado, have an incredible week and stay not so average.
