HSH 145: Let's Disrupt the Industry With Bobby Klinck

HSH 145: Let's Disrupt the Industry With Bobby Klinck

On this episode, we are talking about disrupting the online education industry with a good friend of mine, Bobby Klinck. If you want to change the way you do business for the better, this episode is for you so stay tuned. 

Bobby and I are really trying to make waves in the industry.  There is a massive shift going on in the industry in the way people price, make offers, sell offers, and deliver offers. We talk more about the shifts we are noticing in this episode.                                                

After graduating with honors from Harvard Law School, Bobby Klinck got a prestigious position “clerking” for a court of appeals judge and then went to work at prestigious law firms. His life changed forever thanks to a life coach who asked him if I liked what he did for a living and then. At that moment, he took the road less traveled to build an online business. Once he focused on connecting with my audience really strange things started happening… people started buying my stuff. Suddenly, he had a business that consistently generated five-figure months. 

Let's Disrupt the Industry With Bobby Klinck

Show Notes:

• [02:15] Bobby describes himself as a Harvard Law grad turned snarky storytelling, online entrepreneur.  He was a traditional lawyer for more than 15 years.  

• [05:02] Conventional online marketing wisdom says if you are giving people how to do it, they’re not going to want more.  Bobby is actually giving away some of his best knowledge for free.  

• [05:58] He separated the training from the implementation piece.  His model was giving away the training and selling the implementation piece.  

• [08:51] If we think we are selling information, we are in for a rude awakening. If you sell information, you are competing with Google, Apple, Facebook, and more.    

• [09:25] He didn’t want to compete so Bobby decided to give away the information and training and when people want to pay for implementation that is when there is a charge.  He is focusing on the personal service element. 

• [11:14] Do something that other people aren’t doing that is almost jarring to the industry.  

• [11:55] The secret to Bobby’s success is that he truly loves the people he serves and he loves what he is teaching them and what he does. You can scale the impossible by thinking of people as people.  

• [14:34] Loving what you do, enjoying who and how you serve people will make a huge difference in your business.  

• [15:54] So many of us are pursuing something because we think it is how to make money, but there are people making way more money than us teaching very niche things.  You can do it with almost anything, but the key is you really have to love it.    

• [19:20] He doesn’t charge less because he is afraid to charge more, he charges less because he wants to have the biggest impact possible.  

• [21:38] He asks what is the best way he can serve his audience and that drives everything he does.  It is not a mindset issue. It is a decision. 

• [26:10] Marketing is making the right offer to the right person at the right time.  

• [32:10] Our audience will tell us what they want and we can create a product to answer it.  

• [32:42] Most people are creating a product they want to create, not the product that the market wants.  

• [38:36] Radical giving is about doing the stuff that other people won’t do.  Your default way of thinking is “Can I give more?”

• [39:34] If you want to stand apart and really be seen, care about people.  Treat people like people.  If you treat people like people you stand out.  

• [42:34] Your personality affects what kind of business you should build.  Then factor in what your audience wants.  

• [46:19] One of the best things you can do is become known as the ___ guy or girl.   There is power in that. 

• [48:03] As you walk through this path and are both the consumer and the creator, you need to discern.   

• [49:47] With a new product you are maybe going to convert about 1% of your list. As you get better, it will hopefully get better.  Until you have an audience, you don’t even know what to create.  

• [53:37] Pick one or the other.  You want more people to finish your course or you want to go with the launch.  

• [57:14] When you think about buying a course you need to be at a point where you say if I spend this money and I don’t get anything back it is not going to hurt me or my business.  

• [61:45] You don’t need $10,000 to get started.  Start your service first and be scrappy and work hard.  You can actually figure this out for low investments.  

• [65:15] You’re either going to put time or money into your business. 

• [67:40] You learn a lot when you start by serving clients directly.  There are ways to do it, you just have to think outside the box.  

• [70:51] For most people you don’t need to learn a new strategy, you need to be implementing what you already know.  Learn a little, go try it, and see what works.  

• [71:42] At the beginning you should spend your time learning.  Then you should spend your time implementing.  Spend more time implementing and less time learning.  

Let's Disrupt the Industry With Bobby Klinck

Full Transcript:

Zachary Spuckler:

This is the Heart, Soul & Hustle Podcast, episode number 145, and on this episode, we are talking about disrupting the online education industry with a good friend of mine, Bobby Klinck. So you want to change the way you do business for the better, this episode is for you, so stay tuned.

What, what, what is up you guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Heart, Soul & Hustle podcast. Now, I'm really excited for this week's episode, which is something I say every week, which is a good thing, it means I stay excited, and I'm really pumped because I've got a good friend of mine, Bobby Klinck on the show. Bobby and I are a little dangerous when we get together, so I don't know how this interview is going to go. We are snarky, we are sarcastic, we are really trying to make waves in the industry.

And we had a really great conversation prior to recording this, where we talked about how there is a massive shifts going on in the industry in the way that people price, in the way that people present offers, in the way that people sell offers, in the way that people deliver offers. And after having a nice candid conversation offline without we would have a nice candid conversation online. Now, I'll let him share with you his credentials, his business, all that good stuff, but in just a second, we're going to welcome him to the show. Bobby welcome.

Bobby Klinck:

Thanks Zach. Now, I'm not sure how we're going to do this and have us not get kicked out of the club. I think we may get kicked out at the end of this, but we'll see. But I was laughing when you talked about, you saying you're excited on every episode because I do that too. My episodes start with something like, "I'm so excited for today's show," and I'm like, "I say that every week, don't I?"

Zachary Spuckler:

Yeah. It's good.

Bobby Klinck:

It's funny, but-

Zachary Spuckler:

You got to get excited to stay excited.

Bobby Klinck:

That's right. That's about. I think that's right. We're both excited or at least we're snarky, one of the two.

Zachary Spuckler:

Yeah, a little bit of both.

Bobby Klinck:

Yeah.

Zachary Spuckler:

Before we dive into the shifts that we're both observing in the industry, why don't you talk to us a little bit about your business, what you do, that good stuff. The intro stuff and then we'll get into the meat.

Bobby Klinck:

I like to say that I am a Harvard law grad turned snarky storytelling, online entrepreneur. I was a traditional lawyer for a better part of... more than 15 years. I graduated law school way back in 2002, you were probably in diapers still, Zach, I don't know. Maybe not that small, but. And so I practiced law just as a regular old lawyer until 2017. I did a bunch of different stuff. High credentialed, all that, but I didn't really like it. I don't like suits, I don't like fighting with people all the time.

And so I decided to make a change when a life coach got me into it and it brought me into the online space where I came in and I was originally just selling legal stuff, legal templates. And I like to say that I was perfectly situated for what I do now for disrupting, because I had to market differently because when I started out, I was selling a product nobody wanted, where good results were nothing happened. Think about that for a second. So I can imagine it, like my testimonies are, I use Bobby stuff and nothing happened.

Those are wonderful testimonies, but literally that was what I was living with. And so it was funny, I tried funnels and I tried all the things. And I want to say they didn't work, but it didn't matter. Literally we could funnel it, not funnel it and it doesn't seem to impact sales. And what I found was that actually just going back and changing the way I approach marketing and focusing on connecting, building brand equity, building what's called goodwill, basically acting like people outside the online marketing space work, wait, we're allowed to do that? Doing that actually is what worked for my business.

Originally I was just doing it to build my business, but then people started asking me about how I seem to be able to build connections with people in an authentic way in the online space and thinking that it couldn't be taught, "Oh, it's a natural skill," I said, "Oh, let me tell you, I used to suck at this crap. I used to be horrible, I am not actually a sociable guy." And so I started teaching people that, and I've been doing that now since, I don't know, like may of 2019 I think it's when I first launched a business stuff offer.

And now I got the legal stuff that I still do, but I also help people with a business coach. And I basically help people market what I would say is the right way, and use professional marketing concepts in their business.

Zachary Spuckler:

I love it. And we're going to get into some of this. Just gets me really excited just thinking about it, because one of the things that you've done that I think is a really perfect segue is, especially in the online space, we hear things like give them the what, not the how. And you're doing something very different, which is you got a full-on online marketing university that people can just sign up for. It's got pretty in-depth training and it's actually the how of doing things.

And conventional online marketing wisdom says that if you're giving people how to do it, they're not going to want more. And so I'd love to just hear your ideology and start there as to why give away some of your best for free when you, not only could be charging, but I know you had an email marketing course and you've taken some of those fundamental pieces and put them in the online marketing university, which is free.

Bobby Klinck:

What I would say is I'm lucky, and again, because this is where I look at like providence, whatever you want to say led me to the right place. Because the beautiful thing was, when I was doing the legal stuff, it was very clear to me. I could give everybody all the training, all the information that I wanted because they didn't want it. They were just like, "Can you just give me a template to just do it for me? Can you just give me, sell me the implementation stuff?"

And so I started actually back in, I guess it was the fall of 2018, I separated out the training from the implementation piece, in my legal stuff. And so I was giving away the training, selling the implementation piece. That was my model in the legal stuff space and has been for a long time, but I was being like most people in the marketing side. I was like, "Oh, well, I'm going to sell you the how," and that's what I was thinking. But something hit me recently, and I've had this notion of being a radical giver has always been one of my core values.

And one of the things I've found is the more I give the more I get, but you can't give as a tactic. You can't do it like in the, oh, influenced teaches prosody and blah, blah, blah. I think a lot of people hear me say that and they're think like Gary V's with jab, jab, jab, left hook, so it's like a right hook, whatever it is. So I give, give, give and then I ask, and so it's like their thinking formula, but that's not how I approach it. I'm just like, "I'm just going to give and I assume the university is going to take care of me. Weird, I know.

So I did that and what happened was, this whole bad-ass online marketing university came about last summer. So summer of 2020, my integrator and I were talking, trying to figure out like, if we hired someone who didn't know online marketing, didn't know the space at all, how in the world would we trade? How do we even get them to even understand what we do? And we didn't have an answer. We couldn't come up with it because we just couldn't think of a place. I'm like, "Well, I've got access to this course, and that course, and that course." I'm thinking of all of these different courses, all these different programs that I could put it through.

And it's funny, this is I'm cataloging and I'm like, "Well, I spent $2,000 on that, $1,000 on that, and 1,500 on that, and 3,000 on," and I just was going down the line thinking about it. And it's so funny because I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that. All these courses that I paid all this money for, I'm not even using it because I decided it wasn't the business model for me. And so I started to think about that and recognized that's actually what's happening to a lot of people.

And aside from that, honestly, Zach, I'm weird. We know this, you and I both know this, and your listeners will figure it out soon, but like when I first entered the space, the whole notion of $1,000 course was just crazy to me. I'm like, "Isn't there just a book I could buy for 25 bucks and do it?" It wasn't about me being cheap, I didn't get it. It didn't make sense to me, but if you're in the space long enough, that just seems like, well, great.

Zachary Spuckler:

Normal.

Bobby Klinck:

That's what you got to do. This is all been going around in my head for a long time. Maybe the worst thing that happened to the online marketing space, maybe the best thing, I'm not sure how you put it is, I decided to actually take formal marketing training, not online marketing courses. Courses by professors in marketing. I know. You laugh because it's so funny. And I was like, "Oh, what marketers in the online space you're doing?" Actually is it marketing? It's selling, not marketing, and so I went back and I was thinking about all this.

And then in my mind, I said, "You know what? If we think we're selling information, we're in for a rude awakening, because if you sell information, guess who you're competing with? Google, Apple, Facebook, all those companies, I'm just telling you, it's not going to be in the long before they start creating courses and just putting it out there in the world. And I don't know about you, Zack, I don't want to compete with Facebook, with Google.

I don't know who's going to do it, I don't know who's going to come around, and we already have masterclass.com. And I think you're going to have entities like that who can just do this at scale. And so I said, "I don't want to compete." And so what I've decided is I'm just giving away the how. I'm giving away the information, giving away the training. And when people are ready to pay me for implementation, that's when I'll charge them.

So I've got a coaching program, I've got VIP days, but basically it's weird, I'm going completely against the norm in the industry and saying the scalable stuff I'm giving away for free and I'm focusing on the personal service element, because I think that's where we have an advantage. That's where we're going to be able to compete over the longterm.

Zachary Spuckler:

I think that's so key, what you said is like coming from the offline world to the online world. It's crazy how we've normalized things costing $1,000, or $2,000, or $3,000. And then we position it with this message of like, "Oh, you can stay stuck or you can make progress." And it's like, that is... It's not as pervasive as it used to be. I think people are coming around to that. But even two, three years ago, that was the webinar script, that was the script to make the sales.

And I think that what you're doing is so interesting because you're still... Because conventional online marketing wisdom says that what you do won't work and yet you're running an incredibly successful, and I would say company, because you got a team, you've got processes, you've got systems, you've got scalability. And yet you still have a very intimate connection with your community, which I think is very unique to this space. And I'd love to just touch on that a little bit.

I know that you talk about radical giving, and building connections, and doing it authentically. How have you... I think that part of the reason you're growing such a following so consistently and so successfully is that you're doing what other people won't do, which is, correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't done as much marketing training as Bobby here, but is really a principle of marketing is to, I think Seth Godin talks about it, like the purple cow it's to do something that other people aren't doing. That's almost jarring to the industry.

And I think that's why you're being so successful with this, but it's working, so can you talk to us about how you're doing almost like this scalable intimacy, but not from a place of like, oh, I'm going to send a video note to everybody who enrolls because then they'll buy the next thing?

Bobby Klinck:

Here's the thing, and this is the other thing that it hurts my heart when I see a lot of people in the space. Because so many people in this space are building businesses they don't like serving people, they don't really like, or that they don't care about. Maybe it's not that they dislike them, but they don't really care about them. I think the big secret to my success and the reason why I'm able to do it, and what I push everybody I teach is to find this for yourself is, I truly love the people I serve and I love what I'm teaching them and what I do.

So I honestly feel like I get up every day and I go play with friends. That's what it feels like, so it's like when people are like, "Why are you on Facebook so much?" I'm like, "Because I'm hanging out with friends." I'm literally just spending my days, interacting with people who I enjoy interacting with. And when you're able to do that, it's amazing, but also it's one of the things that a lot of people don't get is, you can scale the unscalable by doing these things and just making a point of thinking about people as people.

And people pick up on that and they will pick up on, I don't want to say like your heart, I don't know what it is, but they can see through you and see the kind of person you are. That's the way it works. But yeah, I spend time and it's one of the big challenges we have as I grow and as we grow the team is like, how do we make sure that I'm still there? That's it's not my team doing it and not me. And part of it is I enjoy doing it.

And we were actually working with a brand ventriloquist recently who was creating a voice guy for me and for the company. And one of the things he said is, and he was using sympathetic versus empathetic in a very different way than most, but he said, "Most people are sympathetic." They're like, "Oh, buck up." They're going to encourage people, they're going to inspire people. And he said, "It seems like you actually just get down in the dirt with them." I'm like, "Yep." That's just always been my way of being.

When I was working at a law firm, I was an associate on the partnership tracks. I was like one of the chosen one or whatever and we had staffatories, who would never make partner, they did work and they would do a lot of the groundwork. A lot of the associates were just like, they would just assign work to them and leave, not me. If I had worked that was going to keep them there late, I was going to stay late too. I wasn't going to... like you know

Now if they were being silly, like there's one woman who worked too much and I couldn't get her to leave. But if they were working on getting a production of documents out for me, I was there until they got it out because I thought, hey, if I'm doing this to you, I should be here with you, and I think that makes me weird.

Zachary Spuckler:

Yeah.

Bobby Klinck:

I just think it does, but what I'll tell you is if you read like Good to Great by Jim Collins and you read how he describes level five leaders, that's how they approach things. Like I said, I didn't do it intentionally, it's just who I am. And so I thank the Lord every day that that's who I am naturally, because I don't know that I could have taught it, but I think that's the big thing, is loving what you do, enjoying how you serve people, who you serve and all that will make a huge difference in your business and make it so that you can do these things.

Zachary Spuckler:

Yeah. I really do resonate with that because I think a lot of people jump into like, "Oh, I'm going to teach Instagram, oh, I'm going to teach Pinterest, oh I'm going to teach online marketing or funnels," because they think that is the quick cash, that's the money grab. Because it's easier to explain the transformation, because everything's easier, but it all, it all comes to the double-edged sword because it's way more saturated, it's harder to stand out. Ads, cost more money.

So what's really interesting to me is that you, like one of the things you said is like, "I've pursued formal marketing education." And one of the things that... Like I've talked about this on my podcast, on other podcasts, I loved the idea of what, and originally I thought it was just like making money, but I later learned was marketing, sales, recruiting. I've done everything from like direct sales to affiliate websites.

What I learned that was really geeking me up was the process of finding, acquiring and converting people, which I know sounds a little black and white for the conversation we're having, but it's the study of that really geeks me up. And so I just loved the direction this is going because so many of us are pursuing something because we think it's how to make money, because we think it's the way to go. But there are people making way more money than us teaching very niche things.

And you can do it with almost anything, but the key is, you got to really love it, and you just have to feel good about it. And I've gone through ebbs and flows and we've talked about this and I've talked about it on my podcast, in the industry where I've been disillusioned with our industry and I don't love things about it. I think you're doing the same thing that I like to think I'm doing, which is instead of being disillusioned with the things we don't like, we can operate in a way that changes.

And so I think that this is so key, and this is something that I see you doing that's so powerful is you're changing the narrative. And maybe that'll be the title of the episode, we haven't yet. We basically chose one topic, we're going to riff, we're going to have a good time. But I do, I think it's changing the narrative and I'd love to get your opinion on something because a lot of times when we change the narrative, I have a mentor who I said, "Look, I'm going to price this new program I'm launching at 300 bucks because I think that's super accessible for my audience. It breaks down to 120 bucks a month, I think if you want to start a business, that's very reasonable. It's 12-week course, goes four weeks longer than the conventional business course."

And the big message that I got from multiple people was three things. Why aren't you going high ticket? What is your mindset issue that you think you can't charge more? And if you compete on price or value, you will lose. And I'd love to just... I don't want to talk too much because I'm fascinated by what you're doing. What are your thoughts on those kind of like, I think it's like the triad of BS. It's like, "Oh, if you price approachable, you're wrong. If you don't sell high ticket, you're wrong." And you have a mindset issue, if you aren't charging five, 10, $20,000, regardless of your level of experience.

Bobby Klinck:

I have all kinds of problems with it. And again, the thing is, Zach, I had started this weird whole giving thing. You remember back, I think it was like 8th March or April 2019. When I'd been in the mastermind with you, for what was it? I think like three months at that point, and I decided I'm going to give my privacy policy template away for free, which is the only legal template that's required. It's the only one that people have to have, and most people charge 300 bucks or more for it.

And I just started giving away and people like, "Wait, no, no, don't do that. No, no, don't do that." But people have quit telling me that. You're going through now what I was going through back then where everybody was trying to say, "No, no, no, no, no, no. No, you can't do that, that's crazy." But my thing is that one of the questions I always ask and I did an episode on my podcast about this recently. I'm doing this whole series about being a serve first entrepreneur, and I believe honestly, and I don't say this to attack people, but I think of The Princess Bride... This is driving me nuts that's doing...

Princess Bride quote, when I think of serve first entrepreneur that you keep using that phrase, I don't think it means what you think it means. Because most people use that and yet their first question is, how do I make more money? Their first question is, how do I get more? And my question isn't that, I'm like, "How do I serve more people? How do you get a bigger result?" And this is what's weird and this is where we're being different than most people, I don't charge less because I'm afraid to charge more. I don't charge less because of a mindset issue.

I charge less or give bomb you away for because I care about having the biggest impact possible, I care about serving the most people possible. And so if I can serve 10 times as many people by cutting the price and it's a wash, I'm going to do it. Because I'd rather do that so I can actually have a bigger impact and change more lives. Because again, this comes back to having a passion, I care about the people I serve. It's not about me, it's about them.

And again, this is the fundamental thing that my marketing, my formal training that I've figured out and learned is, I said, "Most people using the word marketing, aren't marketers, they're selling." And there's a lot of great quotes you can come up with, but there's this guy, Theodore Levitt, who was a business thinker, a smart guy. And he basically says that the fundamental difference between marketing and selling is that selling is about the needs of the seller to convert his or her product into money. Marketing is about the needs of the buyer.

And it's that subtle shift that I think a lot of people need to make is... And so again, I asked my question is always, what's the best way I can serve my audience. And that's what drives everything I do. It's not a mindset issue, it's a decision. It is a decision I make to figure these things out and to find ways to do it. But again, there's other stuff that we could talk about like mindset issues. We've all heard this that the magic happens when people pay money, and if they're not paying money, they're not going to be committed.

And it's funny, I know what's happening there. It's a causation correlation mistake. Now, if you charge less or if you give something away for free, guess what? You will have more tire kickers who take you up on it. But you know What? The people who would have gotten success it's $1,000 course, they're still going to get success if it's a $37 course.

Zachary Spuckler:

Yup. Yup, yup, yup.

Bobby Klinck:

And you're going to have more people who get results because it's accessible to them and they wouldn't have been able to buy it at the more expensive. And so, there's a lot of this, but candidly, there's also the reverse. You talk about the, why aren't you charging high ticket? that's one issue, but on the other side, I think there is this push to like stop serving people directly way too early.

And again, it depends on what your mindset and why you're doing it, but the whole push of making everything scalable and making it so that we can just give a cookie cutter approach to everybody. And then by the way, charge them 2 or $3,000 to me is obscene. It just as obscene when I look at it. And there's all of these things happening, and I don't blame people. I don't think people are doing this. There are some people who are doing it to be evil, let's be clear, but most people aren't.

I like to say it's like a bad game of telephone that someone learns something like, two decades ago at the beginning of internet marketing and it's gotten passed down and gotten like the message has gotten changed and gotten worse, and worse, and worse along the way, and that's what's happened.

Zachary Spuckler:

I love this parallel you're drawing between sales and marketing because I think of... One of the really core principles of marketing, I'm trying to think of what the book is, it's nominal space. It's basically risk reversal. They talk about risk reversal guarantees. It might be Jay Abraham, it might be Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got. But there's this concept in there that's like, if you want people to buy from you, then you need to reverse the risk. You need to make it so that your at a deficit, if something goes wrong.

And in the book, I'm like 90% sure it's this book, so don't quote me on this, but they talk about this company that sold widgets, I don't remember exactly what it's for, like a fitting. But if the fitting broke, then the company was responsible, the company who sold the widget, which in our space, if you draw the parallel, it's fascinating because that doesn't happen. And you look at like guarantees where people are like, "Oh, I guarantee you'll get results if you jump through hoops, upside down, backwards while doing a handstand then still have to email us 13 times to get your money back." That's selling.

Bobby Klinck:

Yeah. I'll never forget, there was someone who like, they had a show your work refund policy and it like you had to show that you had... And it wouldn't even show you worked, it was that you had to show that you had shown up for coaching calls for six months and had gotten no results. I'm like, "does this thing-"

Zachary Spuckler:

Yeah, if you're in business.

Bobby Klinck:

I'm like, that's a no refund policy. Just call it a no refund, because no one is showing up after month four or five if they've gotten zero results, it's just not happening. But no, I think like the other great quote about marketing versus selling it's from, there's this guy, Peter Drucker, who's a famous marketing, management consultant guy. And he said this, he said that you'll always have a need for selling, but the point of marketing is to make selling superfluous so that your people so well that you can create an offer where..." This is my paraphrase.

You can basically say, "Here's my stuff." And they say, "I want it." And they buy your stuff. And that, I think is the thing that... And where I say is like, if you got to use, like you were talking about that, you have two choices, you can stay stuck or, if you have to use any of that stuff, if you have to use manufactured urgency, manufactured scarcity. If that's the only way you can sell your product, you're not marketing right.

It's a sign that you probably have the wrong offer, you probably aren't actually serving people and you're doing all of this backwards, and you and I were talking about this, so much of the messaging that we see, the selling, the marketing, everything is from a negative space. It's fear-based, it's, shame-based, it's like all of that stuff. It's fear of missing out. That's what the whole launch model is. It's fear of missing out.

I don't care if it's right for you now, if you don't buy now, you're not going to have a chance to buy for six months or a year or whatever it is. And so a bunch of people buy when they shouldn't, or it's shame, or it's all of those things. And I'm like, "Why don't we try instead to lead from a positive place? From an inspirational place? And from a positive message. And that is the big thing that I'm trying to shift everything I do.

And again, I can't claim to be perfect. I'm sure I still have stuff on some pages, some places that is using a lot of that stuff because like I'm sure you understand, Zach, I got a lot of stuff out there and trying to figure out-

Zachary Spuckler:

Oh, sure.

Bobby Klinck:

... where it is impossible. But it's one of those things we're trying to get it out of everything we do and really just... One of the things I like to say is I think of marketing as making the right offer to the right person at the right time.

And all of those rights are for them, not for me. And that means that's why I don't launch, that's why I don't do open cart, closed cart. Now, I'm not saying you never use that. For my coaching, I guess I did, but otherwise it's like, "You want my stuff? You can come get it any time. I'm a store, you can buy it when you need it, when it's right for you and it'll be here. And I think that's the way again, one of the questions I always ask myself is, if what you're saying is so great, why isn't Apple doing it?

And again, some people say, "I don't want to be Apple." I'm like, Fine, fine. Don't use Apple, use whatever company you want outside of the online marketing space. If they aren't using the tactic, I'm like "That at least makes me say," "I should think about this and should I be using this tactic?"

Zachary Spuckler:

I think that's such a good jumping off point because a lot of us, we study what's working in the online marketing space, we don't study what's working in the marketing space. And I just did, I don't know, was it a podcast or it might've been inside one of my courses, my brain's not on full function today. I told my team, but it's like I'm not canceling this interview because I was really excited and I canceled once if you guys want to know. So I'm not canceling twice.

But I was talking about how we were in a small e-commerce business on the side, just my partner and I just to keep us sane during quarantine, we started a small e-commerce business. And in the e-commerce world, you figure out your cost, you figure out your return, you figure out your team costs, your labor costs, your material costs. And that's how you price your product. And that is pretty conventional wisdom if you're not talking about online marketing.

It's like you don't price things based on what you want to make or what you want to earn, you price things based on... And unfortunately in our space, this does happen when you price things based on what the market dictates, on the branding, and on the ROI that you need to generate to break even on your marketing costs. And it wasn't our course. When we were teaching people how to price their stuff, we were like, "Why don't you evaluate your numbers? Why don't you see if you can actually even make money."

And then if you come up with a price point that doesn't make sense, then how do you actually, and not this BS, "Oh, it's worth $10,000 and I'm going to sell it for 1,000," but how do you actually create the value that the pricing, and the marketing, and the cost requires? And I know that this feels very tangent, but I want to bring it back to what you were saying, which is, we get so swept up in our bubble that we forget that our bubble is a lot of selling, it's not a lot of marketing.

It's not a lot of marketing principles. It's not a lot of copywriting principles. It's not a lot of advertising principles. Even ads for Facebook, I don't know how some of them get approved, but you see them, they're like, "Are you struggling to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?" I think you're not even supposed to do that, Facebook has actively said, "Don't do it." People do it anyway. And it's like it's that fear-based, shame-based negative marketing. It's trying to convince people that you got the one and only answer.

Where I really would love to hear from you is like, if we do embrace this, what are ways that we can start adopting what I would call like traditional marketing principles with new school, online marketing? Where is the blend of these two where you're still sticking true to things like guarantees, and relevant urgency, and things that matter that we know are principles, but we can question what is an actual principle and what is, "Oh, if you end in a seven, you'll make more money."?

Bobby Klinck:

And again, this is where it's like, I think... I'm going to go to tangent degression here. Part of the problem is that so much of what's happening in the online marketing space is people are like, "I don't want to learn the why, just teach me what." They want someone to give them, here's a recipe, follow these seven steps in this order and you're going to be successful." I got bad news for you, it doesn't work that way. Marketing is art, science, it's a bunch of stuff.

Your personality matters. Your niche matters. The people you're selling to, all of that, you got to factor in for this to work. The bad news I have for people is, you got to learn some of this stuff. But the way to really understand it and to give a very brief overview, what online marketers, and I use that term in quotes now, because really they're not marketers. What most of our space is using is they're in a concept of marketing called the selling concept of marketing.

It's the concept that was the prominent method in the '50s leading into the '60s. Then in the '60s, most professional marketers developed the marketing concept of marketing, which is silly, I'm like, "Isn't that redundant?" But the shift is, and again, here is the definition, the textbook definition of the selling concept of marketing is that people believe that without marketing there will not be sufficient demand for their product. So marketing is about creating demand for the product.

Now, again, Zack, when I say that, doesn't that sound remarkably like what most people in the online space are teaching us-

Zachary Spuckler:

Yeah.

Bobby Klinck:

... why we market. That's what [crosstalk 00:33:20] it is. The different concept, and what came later was that you don't create a product and then go find a market for it. You listen to your market and marketing... Here's the big thing people don't get. What most people in the online space think of as marketing is one small piece of it called marketing communication, which is my outward market outbound. Marketing is equally about the information coming back to me, it's about doing the customer research. It's about understanding my people.

And so the big shift people need to make, and this is where I've said... One of the big things in the shifts I made like back in 2018 is, I haven't created a product since 2018, except when someone and multiple people have asked me to create the product. Literally, my people tell me what they want and I create a product to answer it. And I don't go out asking them, they come and tell me directly. I don't do... And again, this is where people are trying to teach a shorthand version of this, do like validation calls.

That's great, but I'm just going to tell you, look, if I'm your friend and you call me and say, "Hey, I'm thinking about creating a course on this. What do you think?

Zachary Spuckler:

I'm going to say, "Sounds like a great idea."

Bobby Klinck:

Right. Most people are going to say that. Now, if you got me on the phone, I'd probably say it's dumb, but that's me, I'm different than most people. So most people, they're creating a product that they want to create, not the product that the market wants and-

Zachary Spuckler:

That's so good.

Bobby Klinck:

... that is a fundamental mistake people are making. But then also understanding that the sustainable businesses, like if you look outside of our space, sustainable businesses are built on a mix of things, but it is not all direct response marketing. This is the other big problem in our space, is it's all direct response, which is I say, "Hey, do you want this thing?" People take an action in response to it. Now, there's a place for that, there's no question. But if you think about it, Pepsi... I shouldn't use Pepsi.

Does Pepsi advertise? I'm sure they do, but Coke, most of their advertising has nothing to do with them. Most of what they're doing has nothing to do with that. And forget the big companies, think of like your local, small town, general store. Think about how they build their business. They build relationships, they build what's called goodwill, which is like people getting to have a good feeling about them, a positive experience, and so they want to do business with them, and then doing it that way. And when you do this, this is the [inaudible 00:35:56], it takes time. You don't get it overnight.

But I like to tell people, my signature legal product now is $1,000, you get all my legal templates. And 65% of my sales of that don't come from a funnel, they don't come from affiliates, they don't come from anything. Look, the first thing that happens is they land on a page on my website. They're not on my list. They land on a random page on my website and they go and they buy my $1,000 product. And when we look at like our Google, was it? Search console, the most popular search terms are Bobby Klinck or Bobby Klinck legal templates.

So what that tells me is there's word of mouth. There are people who say, "What do I need?" And somebody says, "Oh, you need to go buy Bobby's legal templates." Or they've seen me in a group, or they've just had that experience. Folks that's marketing. That's what marketing is. That's how you build a business that'll be here. Here's a crazy stuff. I could turn off my ads tomorrow, and I don't want to say it wouldn't affect anything, but it would actually in the short term cash flow positive for me to turn off my ads.

And that's what you need to be thinking long-term to build a business. Now, you run ads, you do the direct response, especially early on to bring in revenue. But you need to be thinking about the longterm because otherwise you're constantly chasing and you don't want to be in that.

Zachary Spuckler:

Yeah. It's funny you say that. I was pulling up my search console because you've got me nosy. And what's interesting is that a lot of my stuff is either the name of my company, or my name, or my name plus challenge. I think what you're saying is so key is like I started talking about challenges years ago, back in 2016 and I even left for a while, I took a little hiatus from courses and stuff. And it's fascinating how we forget how important the non, I don't want to say traditional because it isn't... it's traditional to us.

Like, "Oh, send out an email, build your list, do all this stuff." But it's like, what about everything else? And what about building relationships? We've had people come into courses and it's the simple act of doing things like somebody gets stuck and you actually help them. Somebody pays you once and instead of saying, "Oh, that only goes in the Facebook group," you take the three minutes to shoot a loom video. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when I hear radical giving from you, the first thing I think is, oh my gosh, I've got to pour everything out there, and create all this content, and do all this stuff and give, give, give.

But in my mind, radical giving to me is like, just do the stuff that other people won't do. We had somebody in one of our programs and she came onto a call and she was like... I'm like 90% sure she was just on the verge of a breakdown. She was like, "I just don't get it, it doesn't make sense to me. I'm so lost, I'm so stuck." And the average person says, "We'll go post in the Facebook group and we'll get to you." And when I said was, "Hey, let's just schedule a call."

Obviously, I can't do that for everybody. Obviously, it's not scalable. Obviously, some people are going to listen to this and be like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't get a call." But at the end of the day, I did it not because I don't want to lose the sale or give her a refund, but because I genuinely want her to get the result. And I think that that's something that's really missing in our industry, especially in the more, more, more mentality; how do I make more money? How do I get more leads? How do I grow more emails? How do I run more Facebook ads? How do I get more conversions, as opposed to, how do I serve my audience more? How do I show up for my audience?

Bobby Klinck:

I think that's exactly. And what I'd like to tell people, the radical giving thing, what I try to tell people is it's not a formula, it's not that. You come at it from an approach of, and the way I like to think is, if, instead of asking, am I giving too much? Your default is, can I give more? If that just becomes your default way of thinking about things, you're there. It's like I say, "I don't worry about people who have imposter syndrome, it's the people who don't have imposter syndrome who I worry about."

I don't worry about people who say, "I'm my selling too much?" Because the people who are selling too much never have that thought. So it's really this thing, if you just have a mindset of it, you do it. And again, what I would say is, step back for a second. Again, strip away everything you've been taught in this online marketing space for all and ask yourself, what would you do as a human being? If you saw someone in front of you in pain who you could help in real life, most human beings would say, "I'm going to help this person."

But somehow in the online space, we're like, "Oh, I will only help you if you're able to pay." And again, I'm not saying like... I want to be clear, I sell a lot. I sell and promote more than most people, but the difference is my people know that I'm going to give, and I'm going to serve the living crap out of them, whether they buy or not. And so, because of that, they don't mind if I sell them. Literally, people want to get my sales emails because they think they're funny sometimes.

It's this different mindset of things of saying, "Look, I'm just going to figure out a way to take care of people, and if you have that mindset, if you have that approach to things, people see it. And like you said, it's this weird thing that in this day and age, and I use this, I make pop culture references. I watched The Office partly because it's always on reruns on Comedy Central, and in one of the later seasons where it wasn't so good after Steve Carell had left, what's his name? I forget Robert California, forgot to play... James Vader.

He's coming in and he's telling this office about how they're going to compete with the big people. And he makes this comment, he said, "The age of personal services back." I don't think it ever left. And the weird thing is here in the online space especially, you want to stand apart? You want to really be seen as like whoa, that's the purple power, whatever? Care about people. Treat people like people. If you treat people like people, you stand out. It's a sad statement, but it's true.

I don't believe in secrets, but if there were a secret to my success, that's it, I care about people. I treat people like people and I assume that everything else takes care of itself.

Zachary Spuckler:

That's so good. One other thing I'd love to throw in here that we touched on is, there is this element, especially in the online marketing space, which feels like a very small bubble some days that you're actually being told what your problems are and what you need. And not everybody needs the same thing. You might not need a webinar. You might not need a challenge. You might not need Facebook ads. You might not need Google ads. You do need a privacy policy, so you should go find Bobby.

But the reality is a lot of times we're being fed messages about what's. I don't know how long you've been getting served up the ads for this space, but I know when I started, it was like become the six-figure this, become the six-figure that, become the six-figure coach, the six-figure consultant, everything was six-figure. And I think over the last like one to two years, the market sophistication, and you can't see it, but I'm doing air quotes, the markets sophistication has been, "Oh, we'll just change it to seven," because now everybody feels like that's not enough.

Honestly, I fought with that for a long time because I didn't know if I wanted a million-dollar business, because the reality is, I don't care what is being fed as someone who's run a business at multiple levels and different industries from making my first 10,000 to first 100, to... What I found is that there are growing pains and we say like new level, new devil, or same problems, different hat. But if you want to run a million-dollar business, you probably need a team of four, six, 10 people, depending on your business.

Some people don't want that. Some people want to make $50,000 a year by themselves without anybody as a service provider, and especially poor service providers, they get the raw end of the deal, because everyone's like, "If you're doing services, you are doing yourself a disservice because that doesn't scale." And it's like some people don't want to scale. Some people don't want to run empires.

And I'd love to get your take on that side of is like, as marketers marketing to marketers or sellers selling to sellers who sell, where is that line between finding your own identity and not getting sucked into another $2,000-course when you haven't finished the last one or it's not the right time, or it's not really serving you?

Bobby Klinck:

The thing that I say to people is... There's a couple of thoughts. Now, part of the problem is happening is, in the quest to make it scalable in the quest to make it so that we can sell something to everybody. There are so many things being ignored. Again, your personality affects what kind of business you should build. If you don't like people, if you don't like interacting with people, maybe let's not create a membership where you're supposed to be interacting with people. And yet we don't hear that from people.

Or if you don't really like teaching, if teaching isn't something you're good at, maybe let's create an online course, maybe was like, "That's not for me." But you also have to factor in what your audience wants, and so that's why I'm saying all of these things, people are being sold this stuff and what I think of is, and I think you'll agree with me on this, it's not that hard to figure out what to do. We can figure out what to do. Now, you need some guidance, especially when you're starting out and all that.

But if I want to figure out how to create a YouTube channel, guess what? I can go on YouTube and I can watch videos on how to create a YouTube channel.

Zachary Spuckler:

Absolutely.

Bobby Klinck:

It'll be there. So the big thing that people have to understand is most of the different programs, and again, maybe this is okay, but they're really messaging programs disguised as something else. And it's not that they're disguised or being whatever, but of course, about creating courses, really it's about how do you sell the course. It's not about how to create a course because I don't think creating a course is all about hard.

Membership, same thing. Creating a membership, not that hard. How do you market it? How do you do those things? That's the harder part that you have to figure out. But there's a lot of this that's happening, but you made this thing about talking about service providers, you can make a million dollars without a team as a copywriter if you're really good at copywriting.

Zachary Spuckler:

I can think of someone who's done it.

Bobby Klinck:

Right. And I'm just saying, let all your listeners in on something so that you know this. The chances that you are going to make a million dollars in a year, make not revenue, but make a million dollars that you put in your pocket building a scalable business, I don't know the chances, but I bet you, you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning. You have a better chance of going and buying a lottery ticket and getting a million dollars there.

What I've realized is that a lot of what's happening in this online space is, it's like people are basically being told, "Go to Hollywood to become a movie star." That's effectively what it is.

Zachary Spuckler:

Such a good analogy.

Bobby Klinck:

Because yes, there are some people who do, but what I want to shift is maybe let's say, I want to be a working actor, or like in the music industry, I want be a studio musician. I don't need to be the front act. I want to make a living doing something I love. You talked about $50,000, I was thinking about one of the people who is one of my students that I know who basically said, she and her boyfriend, their plan eventually is to have a subsistence farm, and she wants to make enough money through her online business to be able to buy the stuff that they can't buy.

They have to buy with a subsistence farm, so 50 grand, she doesn't want to turn, and so pushing her to do something else, it would be silly. Again, you and I have had this discussions, separate from everything else, you and I both know that I could have a six-figure launch, I could have a seven-figure launch probably if I wanted to. Now, it might be that a seven figure launch means that I'm going to spend $985,000 on Facebook ads to get a million-dollar launch. I'm only going to make 15 grand from it, but I could do it. And we know cases of people.

Zachary Spuckler:

Absolutely.

Bobby Klinck:

You hear this. They have $125,000 launches, but they're spending 75 grand on Facebook ads. Now, I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but the reality isn't what a lot of us are hearing is the big thing. But I do want to circle back to something that I forgot to talk about when you mentioned, when you went into your search console. There's an important message there for people, that people are still searching for you about the challenges. One of the most powerful things you can do is become known as the blank guy or girl or whatever.

I'm in various circles known as the legal guy, or the email guy, or that, and so people associate me with those very specific things and there's power in that, and most people aren't doing it. A lot of people don't want to get that niche, but if you can get to the point that you are known for that particular thing and that particular audience, that's beautiful.

Zachary Spuckler:

Yeah. I just think it's so important that we get clear on... There's like this through line, and I was actually talking to a friend about this, is that what it really comes down to is discernment in some capacity, both as the creator and as the consumer. Especially in the online marketing bubble where, because we want to learn more, because we want to advance ourselves, we buy courses, we buy trainings, we buy books. And it's important to discern what makes sense for you.

I have invested in high-level courses and been very disillusioned, and I've invested in low-level courses and been shocked by how great they are. And I really do believe that that is a skill you develop in this space where you stop buying into the marketing messages and you get better at discerning once around the other side, if it makes sense. Honestly, I think I've refunded two courses in my life. One, I was like, "This is not even what was on the sales page. You actually should pay me for the time I wasted on this." That was one.

And the other one, it just was a technical thing, we never actually got into it and I was like, "Just forget it." But what I'm getting at is, as you walk through this path, as you are both the consumer and the creator, you need to discern. So if you're creating, you need to say, "People," and I'm not talking about this, "This is for you, if you're a driven entrepreneur. This is not for you if you are not taking your business seriously." I'm talking about saying to people, "Hey, if you don't have a list, you're not ready to launch."

We launched our course and we are working with people who don't have a list and it's a 12 to 16-week program, but we said, "I you don't have 500 to $1,000 to spend it, my expertise is growing an audience with Facebook ads. I'm not going to give you some killer organic strategy. I'm not going to teach you how to do this a fancy way. I'm not going to say, "Leverage other people's audience or run YouTube videos," or any of the stuff that I don't understand.

I may touch on it, I may reference it, I may give you resources, but if you don't have 500 to $1,000 to spend over the next three months, do not buy. It's that simple, and so many of us, because we are being sold this sales message to just sell more, do more, get more is we think... This is terrible, but I do know people who think like this, if they're cash is green and then they're my market, and that's not true.

Bobby Klinck:

And again, this is where the shift I want people to make is because that approach, and I've seen it... I was an affiliate for a launch recently, I don't affiliate for launches anymore, but I was recently. And literally what the person had set as don't join, unless you have at least this many people on your list. I multiply that times four for my list. And I told him, I basically said, "If you don't have 1,000 people on your list, I don't think you're at a point yet where you should be investing this much to learn this thing."

Because I just said, "Realistically, it's going to be hard like on average." And again, listeners," you get this? this my experience, especially a new product, you are going to maybe convert about 1% of your list. I don't know what your experience has been Zach, but I think that's about right.

As you get better, it'll get hopefully better in those things, so that means if you have a 1,000 people on your list, guess what? Let me do some math for you. That means 10 people are going to join. And that is a sobering thing for a lot of people thinking, Oh, I'm going to create $100 product. I'm like, "Ooh, I'm going to make $1,000 from this, and I'm going to spend $2,000 to learn how to do that? Maybe I shouldn't yet."

But also I can tell, you have an audience, you don't even know what to create. This gets us back into that other circle of literally people just creating what they want to create, not what the market is telling them to create. But yeah, what I say is part of, I think what affects me is I'm not looking at this sale, I'm looking at how do I turn everyone who buys anything from me into like a brand advocate.

Now, I want people to be brand advocates and I have brand advocates who've never bought anything from me because they don't have a need yet. But the notion is if you are focused on getting people in no matter what the cost guess, what's going to happen. A lot of people are going to get left behind. They're gonna have a bad experience and that's not good. And you know what's going to happen? They're never going to buy anything else from you.

Now, if instead you tell them, "Don't buy this time. Don't buy yet. Wait, do this first and then come back to me." They're going to come and they're going to thank you." I've literally had that happen. I had that happen when I was an affiliate that same launch where someone told me last year, she literally said to me, said, "You probably don't remember me, but last year during this same launch, the affiliate launch, the same product you told me not to buy. And I want to thank you because I was not ready."

"So where's your affiliate?" Like, "I'm going to buy this year and I'm definitely to buy through you. And again, that's one small example, but what I'm saying is if you cultivate that approach of truly serving people, of truly telling people the truth, and saying, "You're not ready yet. Don't don't do this. Wait til the right time for you [inaudible 00:55:08]." This is part of the reason why the whole launch model, I don't love. Because if you're doing the big launches that people are doing like once a year now, guess what?

It puts immense pressure on people because like, "I don't want to wait a whole year." I don't know how you counsel those people. It's a hard decision to make, but I'm simply saying, this is part of the bass-ackwards nature of things. And again, what would Apple do? I say, wouldn't it be odd if you walked into an Apple store and you said, "I want to buy an iPhone." And they said, "No." You say, "But it's right there." They said, "No, come back in six months, and when you come back, I'll give you a one-week period in which you can buy it. And if you miss it, you won't be able to buy it for another year."

Imagine what your response would be if Apple did that. You'd be like, "What the hell is wrong with you. I'll go to Samsung. I'll go buy something other than an iPhone."

Zachary Spuckler:

That and sold out. I love that. We're sold out loud of a scalable course.

Bobby Klinck:

Right. And this is the thing I'm thinking about where I'm like, "Just ask yourself." And again, there are reasons to launch, especially when you're starting a new program, especially it should definitely be a beta launch is the way I love doing it. I think it's the best way to test it after market says, "Yes, this is what I want." Sell it before you make it, and only once you have enough people that it makes sense to say, yes, I will create the product now.

Again, if you're doing like intensive support, okay. But I just think there's a lot of this happening and I'll hear people, Zack, I cannot lie on this. I hear people who use this model, use the launch, fear-Based, open and closed cart, once a year launch, and then I'm like, "I don't get it. People sign up and then don't finish my course. Because a bunch of people bought because they weren't ready.

Zachary Spuckler:

They weren't ready.

Bobby Klinck:

It's the cognitive dissonance sometimes that we have like, That's happening. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that's what's happening. And you can't simultaneously do both of these things, pick one or the other, you want more people to finish your course or you want to go with the launch. But yeah, you're right and I love the way you describe this courses for you if you're a driven entrepreneur.

This course, it's not for you if you're a lazy, worthless human being.

Zachary Spuckler:

Right. Because it's basically a list of stuff you want to be in and a list of stuff you don't want to be in. It's classic positioning and yeah., I think this is just such a good and important conversation. Right along the lines of discernment, just to play the flip side of the coin, and then we'll start to wrap up because I know you got stuff to do. But the other side of the coin is like, as the consumer unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we now have to discern ourselves.

And so before I invest in something, I say, "Do I sincerely believe based on a couple of things, one, the integrity of the person, which sometimes you do have to judge in a store a period of time two, based on the quality of their content that I've experienced, which sometimes is good, sometimes is bad. And three, based on the content I'm being proposed, am I actually going to see a return on my investment?"

And I think so many people unfortunately get swept up in the, "That guy just made 100K never talking about his profit margins. That guy just launched his course to 80 people never talking about the fact that he already had a list that you get swept up in not is this actually a value to me, but am I chasing the pie in the sky? One-Off success story.. And as consumers, anytime you're in this space, you are both a creator and a consumer. I sincerely believe that.

Even now books have the little go-to blah, blah, blah.com/guide, which is a webinar, which is an automated webinar that sells you on the course that implements the book. But you can, as a consumer discern, maybe you don't need the course. Maybe the book is enough. Maybe the freebie is enough. Maybe bomb you is enough for now. And maybe when you experience and can see where the ROI is, then you discern that there's going to be a return for you.

Bobby Klinck:

I love that and it's funny. So like I was saying about, because I'm in the middle of writing a book and unlike most people, my books is going to send people to bomb you. It's just going to send people to free things. No upsell, because again, it is what it is. I'm like, "If you want to learn, go here." But no, I think about that and what I tell people is, and this is what's weird because we've got to include testimonials if we're marketing, we've got include case studies.

What I want everyone who listens to this, when you're thinking about buying a course, ignore them, seriously. Ignore the case studies, ignore the testimonials, unless like if there were like six people in a program last year and five of them are testimonies, then you're like, "Okay, now I can listen." But here's the reality, the reality is a lot of times 1,000 people took the course and 10 people did a testimonial. Now, that doesn't mean that 990 people didn't have success, that's not what it means.

But let me be clear, I hope, you know this if you're listening to this podcast, we're going to include our best testimonials. We're going to include the people who had all those things. But again, I'm always careful about this because you'll see testimonies, "Oh, they didn't even though they didn't have lists." They don't mention this person had 70,000 followers on Instagram. I'm like, "Okay, so they had a following. They didn't have a list, but they had an audience."

Zachary Spuckler:

Right, right, right.

Bobby Klinck:

And it's often in those little details that things get left out, but again, the other thing that I'm just going to tell, I hope everybody gets this. I love the way you described it and thinking of it, can I get an ROI and being honest with yourself. But also at some level you have to be at a point, and I would say, if you're going to buy anything, especially a course or training-based thing, and this is sad to say, but you need to be at a point in saying, "Look, if I spend this money and I don't get anything back, it's not going to hurt me or my business."

Zachary Spuckler:

Yes, yes, yes.

Bobby Klinck:

Like when I was launching my coaching program for this year and someone was coming to me and basically said, was talking to me and she was conflicted. And it was like literally she was going to have to choose either to join my coaching program or to spend money on Facebook ads. I said, "Don't join the program." I said, "If you don't have a big enough list, you're going to get more." I said, "Especially because I'm going to bomb you, you're going to have that training. You're going to be better served taking that money and spending on growing your audience. Then you will pay me."

Because if you pay me as a coach, but you can't grow your audience, yes, I can teach you stuff, but if you need this to work now, it's going to take a while if we're going organic, let's just be clear. You can build an organic following, but that's going to take a while.

Zachary Spuckler:

Takes time.

Bobby Klinck:

And so I just think that we all need to be like... I'm not like you, Zack, I throw money at things randomly. I buy courses, just [crosstalk 01:02:01]-

Zachary Spuckler:

Oh, I'm the same way. But it's because I can be like that, but when I'm... I'm the same way, but there's... I think it's what you're saying is that when I'm investing for a return, I'm investing for a return. When I'm investing, because I'm curious, or nosy, or impulsive, it's not going to kill me.

Bobby Klinck:

I bought a course last May, which I'm guessing it's a great course from the Harmon Brothers. So I did like, yeah, yeah. Like the squatty potty all of a sudden. I haven't looked at it yet, but I bought it, I was like, "At some point, I'm going to want this." So I literally just bought it because I don't know, it was like 1,500 bucks and I was like... because I'm at a point where 1,500 bucks, I don't say it doesn't affect me, but it doesn't affect my life in my business. And so I was like, "Cool, I'll buy it."

I have the login credentials somewhere. At some point I should probably access that thing, but yeah, the problem, I think that's happening is so many people are being sold on this false promise that you can start an online business with no money and just buy one course or whatever, and you're going to be done. And I look at it and I say this... And we see it like in tech, we see people who are trying to find free or Frankenstein tech and all that, and I look at it and say, "If you were starting like a brick and mortar, physical business, you would never think I can start a business with no money, with no investment, with nothing."

And so I to say to people like, "If the whatever, it is $100 a month for Kajabi is a deal breaker for you, we got some bigger problems." And yes, with the pandemic right now, and you can't get a job, fine. But normally I will say, "Find a way to make some money, to put some money away so you can invest for a year of whatever is," Kajabi, I don't care what it is. But what I'm saying, if investing 1,500 bucks for your tech stack in a year is going to be a problem, we need to have a different discussion.

And I don't want to sound rude and privileged, that's just reality. It's not right or wrong, it's reality. Which by the way, that's also in part of the reason why I said my bomb you, you cannot buy. Part of the reason I created it was I saw these people who came up with me like in 2018, it was really when I had my rise in the online space. And they started with me and they've literally been driven out, they've been like chewed up and spit out by the industry. And they spent $2,000 here, $2,000 there on all of these different things, chasing these courses.

And I don't know if they would have been successful if they didn't have to invest in that, but I'm like, "What if they could have learned that stuff without having to spend $10,000 on it? Is it possible they might actually be here with a successful business?" A lot of them I know are great entrepreneurs. And so part of what I wanted to do was create a resource so people could get that education without what I call death by a thousand courses. Again, I have no problem with courses to be very clear. I buy courses all the time.

Zachary Spuckler:

100%.

Bobby Klinck:

Sometimes I thought I have to hide it from my team and don't tell them I bought courses or wait until I've done something good so they can't get too mad at me for doing it. But I think it should be a luxury, not something that you have to do to succeed in this space.

Zachary Spuckler:

Yup. And just to tack on, and then we'll wrap up here and then you can give us your closing thoughts, but when you say it's the reality, what I really want to communicate is that it's the reality of creating this specific business model if you're going to do it the way that makes sense. Because you can... Because I think it's really important, especially for my audience and for the audience that you have who's just getting started is that we're not saying you need $10,000 to get started. What we're saying is sell your service first.

Be scrappy. Everyone's like, "Oh, be premium, be high ticket, do this." Be a freelance writer on Upwork until you make $500 and go through bomb you, go to YouTube university, go to Google university, learn how to run ads, build a list to launch something. I've worked with people who have gone through my free resources and gone on to do 5,000, 10,000, $20,000. Because the reality is when you are told by the marketers, you can either stay stuck or you can buy my program. There's actually an option B, which is, you can figure it out.

Because I think of people like Sara Blakely, Spanx. She's like, "I started in my living room." There was no course first Sara Blakely that was like, "How to start your clothing brand in 30 days and make a million dollars." No, you actually can figure this stuff out for free, for low cost, for short investments. When I started online, I was freelance writing. It was funny. The guy I used to write for, a company works with me, and he joined clubhouse the other day, which I took off my phone. Because it was driving crazy.

Whole nother episode we can have, Bobby.

Bobby Klinck:

Yeah, we can talk about that for-

Zachary Spuckler:

We can talk about that all day, but that's where I started. That's where I made the money that I later invested in ads and courses. And when I was short on money or I needed extra money, I would freelance. And you know how much it costs to freelance? Nothing if you go on Upwork. Do you make 10 to $15 an hour? Do you do it in your spare time? Do you get scrappy? Do you work hard? Absolutely.

When I started, I used to pull 18-hour days. Now, luckily I was 22, I literally could not do that now, which makes me feel very... I'm 27 and I can't do it anymore. It makes me feel very old, and Bobby's laughing because he's like, "I was in law school when you were seven, so calm down." But-

Bobby Klinck:

Look, I love you saying that and I will use... Katie, my integrator as a really good example here, because... She had a business and then she decided to come on board with me and close her business now. But her business, she only paid one time. She spent, I don't remember 497 or something to buy a blogging course upfront. And when she did it, you know what she did? she figured out ways to... She tells her story way better than me. It was like repurposing stuff.

She would go to like the, not Goodwill, but something like Goodwill, that kind of place, buy stuff cheap, fix it and then sell it. That's how she made money-

Zachary Spuckler:

Upcycling.

Bobby Klinck:

Yeah, upcycle, to buy that course. Since then all of her money has come. She has only invested back in what she was making. The thing is, people don't want to do that because it's the sow way to do it.

Zachary Spuckler:

Slow way to do it.

Bobby Klinck:

And again, it's not fair. I'm going to be honest with you. This is the thing, I wish life were fair, but life isn't fair. You know what? I had an unfair advantage here that when I was starting my online business, like my first year in 2017, I dumped 50 grand into that business and made nothing back. I could do that because I'm a lawyer, because I had the things, because I could do stupid stuff and it wasn't going to put me out on the street.

And when you look at a lot of the people, and Zack, you know this, not last year, but 2019, I was planning be all in on my business, but then all of a sudden I got some work in my law firm that again, I think I brought in... It was just me and I brought in something like $300,000 in my law firm. So guess what? That pays all my expenses, so all of my business, like online money, you know what I could do, I could put it all right back into business. Is it fair? No, but you're either going to put time in, or you're going to put money in.

Those are your choices and I wish more people just be honest with the people about this. Because I see all this, like people scrambling around about trying to figure out cheaper tech and I'm like, "Again, I get it, but at some level you're going to have to figure something out." But yeah, the services, funny story, I'll tell there. One of them my success stories in my coaching program last year, [Suzanne Deganesia 01:09:55], she joined the coaching program at the time she was trying to build a business.

She had course, or a membership, or maybe both about gluten and dairy-free baking. She had not had success yet. So she was doing VA work on the side, that's how she was paying her bills. And by the way, she's also proof positive of this stupidity of if they don't pay, they don't get a transformation because I let her come into my coaching program last year for free. And I did it because she had been one of my huge supporters, brand advocates, always in, so I was like I wanted to pay her for it, if you will.

So I let her in and very early on, she had this thing, she said, "I don't really think I want to build this membership or course business. I really love working and doing client service with people." And she was at the time literally just doing VA work. Over the course of last year, she decided to go all in on that and it is now known as like a Kajabi sales page builder. Gets paid. I think her minimum contract now is like $5,000.

She did, again, she's a crazy success story and she's told me, I can tell people that. She hit six figures from nothing doing a service business without a lot of expenses because she doesn't have all of this other stuff. And I just say, those are the things that you can do if you're willing to be open. Because again, it might be that you do the service and you find you like doing it. It is one of those things, it is also very funny because I'm coming back almost full circle to where I started.

I think she was episode, I don't know, 20 on my podcast or something. I had Dorie Clark on. I don't know if you Dorie Clark. I don't remember what her first book was, but she then wrote this book, Entrepreneurial You. And it was about different types of revenue streams. And one of the things she said is, "You should start by serving clients directly, because guess what? That's where you learn so much about their needs, their wants, et cetera."

And so I think we need to get rid of that shame, and you might find that you love doing it. And you might want to build that, and so I can [inaudible 01:12:15], I can think of so many people who this year I have said, "Hey, is there an opportunity for you to do that? And they have and all of a sudden they're landing coaching clients that are paying them, literally paying their bills. And I'm like, "See?" There are ways to do it, you just have to be think outside the box in a sense.

Zachary Spuckler:

Oh, so good. I can talk to you forever about this. Maybe we'll have to have a part two, but been on for an hour, which is probably the longest episode I've ever published. But I think it's so good, so needed. As we start to wrap up any final words? And where can we find out more about bomb you more about Bobby, more about your programs? Where do we go if we're like, "Yes, yes, more please."?

Bobby Klinck:

Where are you go? I mean, I'm bobbyklinck.com. If you go there to my homepage, by the way you scroll down very quickly, you're going to see my two freebies. One of them is bomb you. And the other one is my free privacy policy, so depending on what you need. Or if you need both, by the way, you can get it.

Zachary Spuckler:

You do need both.

Bobby Klinck:

Unless you already have a privacy bomb, whatever, but I'm saying you can do it. And like bomb you right now to give you a sense, as we're recording this there's one course in there called online marketing foundations, which Zach, you were asking me the question about, how do you apply traditional marketing thought to what we do? And it's not even the online space. What I think I've done is I've taken traditional marketing thought and applied it to personality brands.

I don't want to say personal brands because we're not necessarily personal brands, but we're personality brands in a sense where we are businesses driven by our personality. Even if you call yourself whatever, but not your name, we're all personal brands in that sense. So it's about how to do that. But as we're recording, as we're adding my... I reshot my legal training stuff, so we're adding online legal foundations, we're going to have a messaging course.

We're going to have a copywriting course, we're going to have a list building course. We're going to have an email course. All that stuff is going to be added. We hope by mid March, it's going to be live. Can't promise, but we're doing a tech stack overhaul at the moment. But all that's going to be added and one of the things that's different about it though, and this is weird, we're treating it like university. It's free, but when you enroll, you'll get into like... Right now, just one, but eventually two courses, the online marketing foundations and online legal foundations.

You have to the other courses, but you buy it with points that you earn by taking quizzes at the end the program.

Zachary Spuckler:

Oh, I love that.

Bobby Klinck:

Make people actually learn this stuff. It's a crazy idea, I know. And the quizzes, they're not hard. As long as you pay attention a little bit, you'll be able to pass it. But I'm saying you got to learn this stuff. And so that's what we're doing in it. Because again, and it's funny, I say this and people think I'm nuts. I'm like, "But shouldn't we want people to learn this stuff? Not just whatever?" But so that's what you're getting. You can find out all that... But if I had to give you a closing thought, at my website, you find all my stuff. We can go from there.

I got a podcast, I got all that, but my closing thought is, for most people you don't need to learn a new strategy. You need to be implementing what you already know in most cases, that's the reality for most people. Again, most listeners of this podcast, they're not brand new beginners in this space. If you are a brand new beginner, yeah, you got to learn stuff. But most people are thinking they need to spend all their time learning. And I say, "Learn a little bit, go try it and see what works. And then you can learn more. It's this weird thing.

It's almost like if you know that the Dunning–Kruger effect, it's a great chart if you don't. People are like at the beginning, "Oh, I'm sure, I know exactly what I'm doing." And then they're unsure, unsure, unsure themselves. And then they get to the real point of knowledge is, I'm pretty confident, but it's complicated. But the funny thing is the amount of time you should spend learning is very similar chart.

At the beginning, you should spend a ton of time learning because you got to figure this stuff out. Then you should spend your time implementing. And then when you get like you and me Zach, we're now at that point again, where we spend a lot of our time learning because we have teams, we implement all that. But I would say spend more time implementing and less time learning, is one of the biggest piece of advice I give everybody.

Zachary Spuckler:

I love it. Well, Bobby, thank you so much for being on the show. Absolute blast, great conversation, very excited to hear how people react to this. You guys, if you want, we will have a full transcript of this show, which fun fact is a $1.20 a minute, so you best go read it because Bobby made me stick around forever today. That's the snark coming out.

That doesn't usually come out on the show, but we'll have a full transcript of the show over at heartsoulhustle.com/145. Again, it's heartsoulhustle.com/145. We'll have a full transcript for you, we will have all of the links that have been mentioned in the show and get out there, implement. And until next time, keep hustling.

Let's Disrupt the Industry With Bobby Klinck

Connect with Bobby Klinck:

• Bobby’s Website

• Bobby on Facebook

• Bobby on Instagram

• Bobby on Pinterest

Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:

• Heart, Soul, & Hustle Podcast

• Zach on Instagram

• Funnel Gorgeous

• Create Your 90 Day Profitable Course Launch Plan

• Launch It Program

• The Ultimate Guide to Creating (and Profiting From) Your First Digital Course or Product

• The Complete 5-Day Challenge Launch Strategy