Scaling Your Coaching & Courses With Josh Thomas

If you are a coach, creator, or want to build an online course this conversation is for you? In this episode of Built For The Game, Rob Cressy is joined by Josh Thomas as they deep dive into the world of coaching, and unpack the best ways to position and scale your offers, market your courses, and increase the accountability of everyone who is part of them.

Here’s the podcast version:

Connect with us:

• Rob Cressy – Instagram: @rob_cressy – LinkedIn: /cressy/ – Personal Growth & Life Optimization Program: http://www.designyourbestself.com
• Josh Thomas – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jtliterally – Website: https://iamfactorone.com/

Transcription of the podcast:

(note: what follows is an AI-generated transcript from this video. Please be mindful that the transcript may not be 100% accurate)

Welcome to Build for the Game, where we talk about the systems for winning in business, in life for the long haul so you can thrive in any situation. And I’m your coach, Rob Cressy. And joining me today is Josh Thomas, founder Factor One, a business advisory service for entrepreneurs. Josh, great to have you on the show.

Man, I’m super excited to be here. Love your energy. Let’s bring it. Josh, This episode is going to be one of the most unique that I have ever had in the best way possible, because today we’re going to be talking about three things coaching courses and accountability. And the framework for this podcast is actually the conversation you and I had a few weeks ago around courses, coaching and accountability.

And it was so good that we had to run this thing back because there’s so much value. And the world of ChatGPT and AI has really opened up the possibilities for entrepreneurs, business owners, business leaders to do more with less faster. And so many of us out there want to take our knowledge and ideas and translate them into a coaching program or a course or something that both generates revenue as well as creates positive impact in the world.

And to get this party started. I’m curious if you have some thoughts in general right out of the gate before we dive deeper into this. Here’s here’s the first thing that I’ll say to anybody that’s looking to start something. The first thing you really have to keep in mind is what do you actually want to accomplish? It’s almost like we have to have the end in mind.

If we don’t have an end in mind, don’t get in the car and start driving around because otherwise you’re just going to be wasting resources. So get really clear in what it is you actually want to accomplish first. And once you have that clarity, then, as Rob says, we can start reverse engineering that plan to figure out how we get there.

That’s what I would open up with Go. I absolutely love that. And what we’re going to do now is sort of go up and down the ladder of this creation. And let’s start with positioning, because this is something Josh Thomas I’ve looked at our notes, no joke, 20 times since our conversation, including the way that I use them in ChatGPT for refining my messaging in my offerings for the things that I want to create from the headlines to the actual offers themselves.

And you said something that was just very profound to me. People don’t want to buy another course. They don’t want to buy a coaching program. What they want is results. Unpack that. Yeah. So this is something that I started to realize a long time ago. I sold a really high end coaching program like mid five figures, and I would get on the phone and we would book calls.

We had a funnel and I would start having conversations and I had more than 5000 conversation ends with new entrepreneurs and investors who were looking to get in for the first time and they’ve been burned. They made the wrong call. They got sold into some scam. Everything has happened to them. The last thing that they want to buy is another mechanism, another program, another person’s mission or message, or now we’re getting used to, you know, my processes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

What they really want is they want the result. Okay? One of the programs that that I sold helped people buy apartment buildings. Nobody wanted to buy a coaching program. They wanted to buy an apartment building. And so what we had to do is we had to position ourselves as the best resource to get that result. And if we have a tangible result, then it becomes much easier for us to sell whatever product or program we have, because it’s not about me, it’s not about my one, two, three step process or my shiny object or anything or my even my past or my history.

It’s about, does my mechanism help you get the result that you desire? And can I show you a step by step process that my program or my product dies to mar you along this process so that you can get the result. And so any time if you’re positioning any kind of product or program, really as, as I mentioned before, the destination, what do you want to accomplish that applies also to your customer?

Can you paint a picture of what your customer wants to accomplish and can your product or your program or your mechanism help them get that result that they’re ultimately looking for? And can you relay that to them in simple terms that are not confusing? That’s not like a 12, 15, 30 minute pitch. Can you relate to them in the simplest of terms to where they say, Yeah, you know what, that is what I want and you can help me get that.

Thank you. Let’s go. Let’s move forward and let’s dive deeper into this, because one of the things that you said is, Oh, what is the thing that my people want to get out of working with me? And you said, Rob, what is the sexy result? And as I’m leveraging Chad’s CBT, I kept putting it in there. I’m giving it all this context and I’m like, What’s the sexy result?

What’s the sexy result? Because I’m creating headlines in emails and in content around all of this. And as someone who is, among other things, a knowledge worker, where you’ve you’ve got these ideas, you’ve got this knowledge, you see the results in the ways that you can transform your clients. But it doesn’t mean that it’s easy, because sometimes I chuckle on how hard it can actually be to help people where you’re like, Listen, all I want to do is help.

And it’s like, No, I’m good. So I’m sitting there. I’m like, Sexy results. Sexy results, sexy result in for me. Those two words just resonated so much with me because it’s a laser focus and a simplicity that says, What’s the sexy result that we’re going after? That we can help deliver for our clients? Yeah. And the other thing that I’ll share about that is sexy results.

Sometimes you’re you’re dealing with usually there’s there’s multiple avatars out there and you may have your own, but there’s typically at least two. There is the kind of the opportunity seeker and then there is the analyst. And those guys need to be sold to differently. They need different messages, they need different sets of details and information. They may even have different time frames.

But the analytical guy, you may run into a lot of those. The analytical guy needs concrete stuff. If you’re selling something gooey that doesn’t have a concrete outcome, How do I know if you have a $10,000 product? How do I know if I give you $10,000? Then I’m going to get my $10,000 back in the form of an ROI.

How do I know that? Can you paint that picture for me very clearly? Because if you can, that in itself could be a sexy result. Give me this money. I’ll give you the money back and I’ll give you the result that you desire. That’s sexy. Okay. That means that I am getting my result for free. Painless. It doesn’t cost me anything.

If I can create a result like that. Now we’re talking. Now, how do you do that if you’re selling something that’s intangible? First of all, go back to what they want. What do you want to accomplish? Let’s measure it. Let’s make it specific. Do you have a financial goal? Are you looking to create $10,000 a month in passive income?

Are you looking to take your business from, you know, $20,000 a month to $100,000 a month or whatever it may be? Let’s nail down that destination and then let me show you how my program or my product or my mechanism can get you to that result reliably and quickly and with the least amount of pain and effort possible.

And oh, by the way, you’ll see 100% ROI. That’s a sexy result because you’re focusing on what is it that they actually want, and then you’re building a plan around how to help them get there using your service. Love that. So there’s some phraseology you used around coaching in course. Is that resonated with me. You said, Rob, when someone thinks about coaching, they hear immediate reaction.

Is this is an expense. And when someone hears cause their immediate reaction is this is going to take away time from me. And one of the challenges that I experience on a regular basis is I’m an outlier. When I sign up for a coaching program, I am the number one student in it. I am all in. I’m there to get the transformation.

I’m doing it for a specific reason because I have a growth mindset and I want to learn the thing. And the same is true with courses. But I’ve also experienced as someone who is a course creator and a coach, what it is like to be the provider of these things. And one of the biggest challenges is actually the lack of accountability or the lack of follow through or all in commitment for the people in the transformation.

They love it on day one. They’ll even pay a good amount of money for this. And then once that happens, we just see this slope going downhill. And I’m curious from your perspective, if you can unpack a little bit more on the framing for these people, because there are a lot of coaches and course creators listening and watching right now who this might be hitting them like a ton of bricks, being like, wait a second, my entire service offering is based around things that people do not want and I get it and I feel it and I like the framing that you have, But it doesn’t mean that it’s easy to comprehend that you as

a coach is seen as an expense in your course, is seen as a time commitment. And both of those things are not things that people want it. Sorry, sorry to bust your bubble. You know, but look, here’s the thing. The reason that people think that coaching is an expense and that courses are a time suck is because that’s the experience that they’ve had in the past.

It doesn’t mean that you are, but it also doesn’t mean that you aren’t. Okay? So you just have to understand that’s what people are feeling when you hear when you hear coaching, I’m going to coach you. I’m going to be a life coach. Do I have do I get a hat in a whistle? What does that mean when you’re coaching somebody?

Like you have to understand that means one thing to you. Maybe you’ve invested a lot of money into coaches and into your education and into your business, but you’re talking to your end users who probably have not made that investment yet or they’ve made that investment, and it hasn’t turned out for them either because they didn’t implement it or they had a bad experience.

So just keep in mind, coach equals expensed course equals time suck. How many courses have you bought in the past where you get on there and there’s a guy that’s like, All right, guys. Yeah. Hey man, you know, we’re going to have a good time today. And let me get you let me tell you a little bit about when I was six years old and like, my dad wouldn’t get me some ice cream and then you’re like, frickin 20 minutes into this thing and you haven’t learned nothing.

It’s like a two hour session just to get three nuggets out of it. That’s a time suck. I don’t want to have anything to do with that. So if you got a course, I don’t know if you’re a good teacher. I don’t know if you keep a good pace that matches my needs. I don’t know that right now.

And so it sounds like that’s a lot of time. So let’s not focus on your course. Let’s not focus on your coaching. I don’t know you, Right? I don’t know if you’re going to be providing value. Are you? I don’t know your experience. I don’t know if you’re even going to have good advice for me. What I know is I need to get a specific result and I’m not getting it.

And that’s creating pain for me. If you can help me understand why I’m in pain and show me a solution to that pain and you can help me implement that solution. Take my money. I don’t care if you ever said the word coach. I don’t care if you have the greatest course in the world. Maybe I look at it, maybe I watch module one.

Maybe I sit through them like minute six in the third video, and that’s all I need. I don’t care. I don’t need to watch all 17 videos or all 6 hours of whatever footage. What I need is the result, right? Same thing with coaching. I don’t need to talk to you every Tuesday at 2 p.m.. I need to talk to you however much I need to talk to you to get the result.

And if we focus on whatever support you need to get a result, not only are you going to create better results for your customers, but you’re also going to say something that they’re not used to hearing at the front end and you’re going to sound completely different than everybody else. But because what you’re saying now is we’re an implementation service, we’re an advisory service, we’re going to help you get the result that you desire.

And by following a specific process as opposed to I got a coaching program that sounds expensive or Hey, take my course. I don’t have time for that. Thanks. Oh, by the way, I heard that you’re experiencing this problem and you probably have this frustration and you’ve probably been burned before by coaches and you probably wasted a bunch of time on courses and you spent a bunch of money on that.

This isn’t any of that. Let me show you why we’re different now. They’re paying attention. I love all of this. And let’s drill down even one layer deeper, because I believe one of the things that this really challenged me on is around specificity. So among other things, we run a chat getting a consulting and strategy company where on the service level we help business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, creators leverage CBT for business growth.

But all those words to me were just super hollow and empty, certainly as it relates to talking with you, because I’m like, What’s the sex? The result of the sexy result is business growth, and I’m just like, Man, that’s just not it yet. And, and I knew in your in in my loins it’s like you want to learn how to leverage chat and CBT.

But once again I’m like that’s not the sexy result. Like you’re not saying I want to learn even though it’s a new thing and it’s out there in the world. So I keep just peeling back this onion, like drilling down these sexy results and sexy results. And one of the things that came out of this process on our end, which really helped was around the target demographic and who you’re speaking to in the service offering that you have.

And for the lack of a better term, we can still continue to use coaching in courses in our converse fashion, even though we all know that’s not the thing that we’re selling. But for the purpose of this, you are a coach or you have a course or some combination of that, and now we’re going to recreate the packaging.

And one of the light bulb things for me is actually there’s two of them. Number one, we had we had a course that was actually delivering great transformation with our coaching for our clients. And after talking with you, I was like, There’s no way I’m selling. And this is of course, that’s just not happening. I’m no longer in that game, I’m no longer in the course game.

And I rebranded what we do and we called it the Chad CBT Creator’s Toolkit because in my mind I’m hearing you being like, course equals time suck. And I’m like, That’s right, I don’t want that. So how can I deliver this transformation without this having a being a time suck? And the first thing was actually just when the world would call it tool kit becomes a resource that includes tools, strategies and various tips and things that you can use.

It’s got a world class prompt library, it’s got videos, it’s got various PDFs. Well, now, well, now we’re cooking with something different. But even then I’m sitting there and I’m like, This can be even better in Josh the next. Do you go ahead different though? Do you see the difference between Take my Course or buy my tool kit?

A tool kit sounds useful. A tool kit sounds like I can I can visual lies. I’ve got a toolbox in my garage right now. I can visualize. I bring my toolbox with me and I can pull out a wrench or a screwdriver. And I have something available for any job that I might need to do in that moment.

I get that I understand what a tool kit is. A tool kit has inherent value. My grandpa taught me that my grandpa didn’t teach me to go and take a course. He said, Son, make sure that you have an organized toolbox that so that you’re ready for any job like we already have that trained in our brains. Yeah, absolutely loving.

That’s exactly my train of thought. And it even got us as we speak. This is real time. We were talking about this about an hour ago before this call on. All right, what can we create within the tool kit to help them even get better results in all of this? And Josh, as we’re just peeling down this onion so we’re running Facebook ads for this is a way to start getting more people into the tool kit, to start experiencing the transformation, the results that we can deliver, to find the right people who say, you know what, I’m about this life.

I want to dive deeper. We can help them. They can be partners, word of mouth, you name it. But a little light bulb went off for us and we’re like, you know what? The demographic that we’re speaking to. Yes, we are entrepreneurs. Yes, we’re creators. Yes, we’re business leaders. But once again, it just felt so hollow to me.

And it’s a it’s a see of openness where you can help so many people and yes, entrepreneurs and creators is specific. But, you know, it was even more specific that Josh coaches and we sat there more like the Chad CBT coaches tool kit, and we’re like, man, we’re coaches. We know the pain points that coaches have. And in my mind I’m sitting there and there you are and you’re like, Rob Sexy result.

Rob Sexy result. And I’m like, All right, what is that pain point that they’re they’re challenged with? Well, coaches, they’re creating blog posts, newsletters, social media content on top, of course, material. They’ve got current clients. They’re looking for new ones. They’re looking to maintain their business. At the same time, they’re still looking to be forward thinking and grow their business.

And how in the world do they have time to figure out all of this stuff? And that’s when we’re like, Oh, we get all of that. We can help you double your content in half the time with our coaches tool kit, which Josh brings me to the next thing for you around. The sexy result is your ability to turn something objective objectively tangible and measurable.

So instead of you’re going to learn Chad’s CBT, it becomes we’re going to double your content in half of the time. Now all of a sudden we’ve got some metrics that we can put something around to drill down in this result in. And then the sexy result there, we’re going to double your content in half the time so you can sexy result, so you can sexy benefit, so you can whatever we’re going to give you this result so you can get this benefit.

And that’s the the the one thing that most of us kind of missed when we’re adding we’re listing all of the we’re bolting out all of the cool features of our course or our tool kit or whatever. So what what does that what does that do for me? Well, we’re going to double your content in half the time so you can what Rob Oh, one second here.

So right there we go. Just doing some production stuff on the back end. Okay, So you can do more of what you love. And I know that’s a very something, it’s a something because ultimately what you want to do is you want to coach, you want to create in here in content. I don’t want to be sitting here marketing stuff.

I don’t want to be sitting here on sales calls. I want to make transformations. I want to make an impact. That’s what I want to be doing as a coach. I want to be helping people create results. That’s what I’m all about. And if that if you can show me double, you can double your content in half the time so you can do what you actually love and maximize your impact.

All right, take my money. Now we’re talking And Josh, what I’m loving about this conversation is we’re peeling back this onion. We’re peeling back this onion. And you start from, you know what? I want to create a course or I want to coach to make money and create impact at the same time. And look how specific we are getting on all of this in so often on a journey.

And I know that I’ve felt this, that if you’re not creating the results that you would like, or at least the level that you would like, you sit there and you just keep asking yourself, you’re like, What am I not doing right? What am I not doing right? I’m putting in the action. I know I’m great at what I do.

And sometimes this is that like one degree turn where you reframe it instead of being like, This is the best course in the world. If you comes, let’s double your content in half the time so you can do more of what you love and not be marketing all day. And all that is is reframing of something. And it is both super simple and also super challenging.

If you’re not a part of a conversation like you and I are having right now. Yeah, there’s always a difference between something being really simple and being easy to do is simple to understand. It’s not necessarily easy to do it. There was a Steven Tyler, who is the lead singer for Aerosmith. He always walks around and like these weird clothes, and I kind of he’s kind of dressed like an old woman, you know, half the time.

But he was famously quoted as saying, you know, it costs a lot of money to look this cheap. And in the same thing happens here, it takes a lot of time to make something look easy. If you think about an athlete or a musician that performs seamlessly and effortlessly, they’re in the gym at 4:00 in the morning, shooting, shooting the ball.

They’re in the practice room until 10:00 at night practicing that one passage just to get it right so that they can get up there and make it look really easy. And you as an entrepreneur, you have to go shed the wood and put in the time to take whatever amazing, cool, complex concept that it is that you’re developing in and squeeze it down to like fourth grade English so that you’re speaking to my lizard brain and you trigger all of these fight or flight mechanisms that make me say, I better follow this guy or I’m going to be left alone in the savanna and the saber tooth tiger is going to get me.

I mean, like that’s really what you have to do in order to grab somebody and get them to convert is you have to trigger all of those thoughts that make things ape simple so that they can say, yes, this is absolutely what I need. It’s crucial to my survival. All right. So here’s the next level of this, and it becomes pricing in value ladder where you say, how do I get someone into my world?

A.K.A data capture? And then what is my sequence for nurture, know, love and trust? What are the various ways to get someone into my world and keep moving up to the higher level and one of the the feedbacks that you gave us around our program is that our chat CBT cohort is $749 to be a part of it for the first month.

And you said, Rob, you know what, You’re sort of in no man’s land. You’re in the middle. It’s you could be 197 or two, 97 or you could be 2500 bucks or three grand. And for a lot of people who are new to both coaching in air quotes, course creation, that you sit there and there might be just one offer of this is how I do things.

But let’s talk about pricing strategy in value ladder or because I think it’s going to provide a lot of value to people because there is going to be a lot of entrance into the course and coach market. And I say this in a good way because Chad, CBT has given us the ability to do to do more with less faster and what previously would have taken a year to build a coaching program and of course to deliver the transformation for your clients, that can be done in less than a month.

It can be done in a week, it can be done in a day. Now. So now your ability to impact more people is possible, but also understanding the mechanisms of how do I get people into my world, how do I price what I do and what does that look like? Yeah, So I mean, that’s a big onion to peel back.

Rob So but what I can tell you is there’s, there’s a lot of science, there’s a lot of theories. I’ve been around a long time, I’ve been surrounded by marketers for more than a decade. There’s a concept of what’s called the Ascension model. And the Ascension model basically says, Let me give somebody an easy entry into my funnel, a few dollars, and then they’re going to implement that, and then they’re going to move up to the next thing and the next thing, the next thing, and then eventually they’re buying the most expensive thing from me, like kind of like this linear ascension.

I’ve never been a huge fan or believer in that just because I have witnessed it happening in so many different ways. I have seen people buy a $7 product from us and then buy the 27 and buy the 97, etc., etc., etc. I’ve seen that, but more times than not, when I see somebody that has purchased a 30, 40, $50,000 consulting package or something for a mass, they’ve never spent any money with us at all.

I actually I had one guy that I, I saw this was I was working with a consulting company at the time, and I sold $150,000 of consulting to a guy who’d never done any business with us at all. He had a big pain and we had the solution to that pain. And I told him how much it costs and he wanted to put like a third of it on his Amex, which drove the boss a little bit crazy.

But hey, you know, he wanted to get those points and that’s what it took. You know, so pricing kind of coming back to that. We don’t necessarily want to a price based on the Ascension model, buy this, then buy this, then buy this. But what we want to do is we want to price based on where somebody is in the funnel, where somebody is in that know like and trust factor.

If I don’t know you, but you present a solid offer to me, I’ll toss you a few dollars just to see what’s up seven and $27. I’m not going to think about that if it’s crap. Well, shit, You know, I’ve spent more than that on two drinks. It’s fine, you know? So if you don’t know somebody, but you want to monetize, you want to convince them to buy something from you, low ticket under 100 bucks.

Under 50 bucks. Really? And you’re going to get their attention. It’s a no brainer. I don’t have to think about this. I’m just going to go ahead and do it. Moving up to that next year, a couple of hundred bucks. All right. I’ll spend a couple of hundred bucks if I don’t know you, but it better be really good and I better it better be a clear message that’s going to solve a specific problem that I have.

And I’m in enough pain to give you a couple of hundred bucks even I don’t know you all right? Now, once I know you, though, then we can move up into the next tier, which, you know, used to be ten years ago, like a thousand bucks was was like that’s how much programs went for. And then we pushed the envelope.

We got up to 2000 bucks. I think right now some people are getting away with more. But I think right now, as far as without having to talk to a salesperson, $3,000 is is kind of the limit. You might be able to go a little bit higher than that, but somewhere between two and $3,000 is kind of like that upper suite zone sweet spot of what you can actually sell a course or a program for through automation, online, digital kind of, you know, auto webinar or even a live webinar without having to talk to a salesperson.

Once you get past that, you really the your best bet and people may argue with me on this, but your best bet is to put people through a book, a call funnel, get them on the phone, triage them, take them through discovery process, find out if they’re qualified, if they’re right there, and then you’ve gone through all of that, then you can make an offer to them that’s five $10,000, something like that.

If you’re going north of $10,000 again, it has to be a big pain. And you have to be you have to be providing a significant solution that is going to create a high dollar result. And you can draw a straight line between them investing whatever it is that they invest with you and a tangible result that they believe is possible.

There’s a whole other set of things about decision making beliefs and checkboxes and everything that you have to go through as far as getting on a sales call and getting ten, 20, 30, $50,000 out of somebody on a single call, there’s actually eight of those decision making beliefs that you have to go through before you can even make an offer.

But once you’ve checked off those eight, then making the offer is, you know, a couple of minutes, answer some questions and you get to finds. And so that’s where that’s where I would kind of put those pricing tiers. So give a no brainer. Like, all right, I don’t know, you, but I’ll give this a shot. Some 50 bucks a tool or an attractive solution to a real problem, a couple of hundred bucks, an online training program that doesn’t require a salesperson 2 to $3000.

It’s cool if if you want to go north of that, like five, 10,000 or more, that’s probably going to be a book, a call funnel. And if you’re north of ten K, like 20, 30, 40 K, then you’re really have to be providing a transformational solution that has a straight line, tangible, believable process to a positive ROI. And I can dive deeper into a lot of that stuff if you want.

But that’s, that would be my, my overview kind of based on my experience. I love that you’re a few more minutes for a few more questions. I got all the time in the world for you, buddy. Fantastic. One of the things that I think people might be wondering about right now, you’d mentioned previously you did 5000 calls. So you hear the how did you do 5000 calls?

We’re talking about the offer or the position, meaning the pricing, the value ladder, if we have it or not. But someone who’s just starting out or who’s seasoned out this as a coach or a course career goes, wait a second, how in the world to just do this? So can you give us a Cliff notes on this system?

Because a lot of times I think what people miss is it may not have been is hard, you know, just sitting there, just pounding, pounding. But there’s a system behind everything that you do because system scale. And I find this is probably the number one area where most people lack is they don’t have scalable systems and all that they do.

Yeah. And so to to clarify, when I said 5000 calls, I did 5000 calls for one offer. So I’ve actually the if I were to take my full count, it’s probably closer to 10,000 sales calls that I’ve taken over the last decade. It’s it’s lot I’ve had a lot of conversations and I should probably get the exact number.

I bet I can find it if I look. But yeah, I’ve taken about 10,000 sales calls over the last several years and I would not be able to do that if I had to be the cook and the distributor and the front of house staff and also the server and also the manager, and also run the books. Like think about a restaurant.

It would be total insanity for you to open up a restaurant and be a one man show. It doesn’t like that’s a nonstarter. Nobody would even allow you to do that. And so why would you run your coaching business that way if you could, and open a restaurant and serve a burger and fries as a one man show?

Why would you run something so complex and involved as a coaching company without having a little bit of help? And so the first thing that we have to do is we have to understand what is the highest and best skill that you have and how can we maximize your calendar and your schedule so that you’re doing the most of that and the least of all of other things?

And so for me, my highest and best skill is being on the phone and talking to entrepreneurs, either helping them get clarity on what kind of decision they wanted to make as far as working with us or not, or actually delivering the result of what I had promised them. And they gave me money for. Okay. And so I need to be doing one of those two things and almost nothing else unless it really, really requires my high level input.

And so how do I do that? The first way that I do that is I have to break down every single process sales. Let’s take a look at sales. What do I have to do to create sales? I have to talk to a qualified person who is interested in what I have and I have to talk to them live in real time, and then I have to walk them through a process.

So let’s the process by itself, once they answer the phone, I have to take them through a process that’s been proven and vetted over many, many, many years. Many calls. I probably didn’t come up with or invent most of it. I just go and invest in myself and I get information and strategies from other people, and then I go and refine it on my own over time.

And I’m happy to share any of those with anybody who wants to reach out to me on my socials at JT. Literally, you’re welcome to reach out to me. I’ll share anything I want, anything you want on that. But the process, when somebody gets on the phone, I’m taking them through discovery. I’m them, I’m nailing them down and I’m transitioning into the pitch.

The pitch takes less than 5 minutes usually, and then I transition into questions and then I ask them, you know, Hey, how does this feel? And then I make the offer and we overcome objections and we close. Are we don’t that’s the process that happens on the call and that’s all up to me. Everything happens before we get on.

The call has everything to do with my systems, my processes and my people. Because what has to happen in order for me to get a qualified prospect who’s interested in the solution, that I have to answer the phone at a specific time. That’s convenient to me, That’s a lot. Somebody has got to go out and find that person and get them like get their attention and say, Hey, are you struggling with this problem?

And they’re like, Yeah, how do you know? Well, I’ve got a solution for you. Let me make let me invest some quarters into this machine and start building our relationship. All right? You seem like a cool guy. And this is all my marketing. This is all my systems and automation. They get into my funnel I start providing more value and information and education for them, and they’re like, All right, Josh is all right.

And then I make an offer and says, Hey, would you like help with this? I can hold your hand and walk you through and provide this solution that I know you need. Like, Yeah, let’s do it. All right, here’s a link. Schedule a call. That’s what has to happen in order for me to get that person on so that I can just do my job.

And then once I get them closed, I need a system for delivery, which, again, I can’t be the person, like reaching out, scheduling calls and all that stuff. That’s not a good use of my time. The best use of my time is is helping them make a decision or delivering the thing that I promised. Everything else needs to be delegated or outsourced or automated or tied or aid or whatever else that you can do so that you are maximizing the value of your time and minimizing this $10 an hour task.

And I’ll end with this. Just keep in mind every time this is my my friend Travis Jenkins, who owned four construction companies, and I think he sold them all, but he was he was worth a ton of money at some point. He taught me a really important lesson. And when he was growing his construction companies, he would go and he would check on the job and his employees, like the drywall was crooked and all this stuff, and he’d get really pissed off.

It’s like, Oh yeah, get out of the way, I’ll do it myself. And he had to stop himself and he had to say, Look, Travis, every time you pick up this hammer, you’re losing money because you’re not supposed to be swinging a hammer. That’s a $10 an hour job. You’re supposed to be running and growing. This business put systems in place that helps your employees swing the hammer better.

That’s a better use of your time in swinging the hammer and just getting it done real quick because you’re here and you’re the best. Keep that in mind when you’re going your day. If you perform a $10 an hour task, you’re worth $10 an hour. Get those off your plate and you’re worth more than $10 an hour. Absolutely.

Love that. There’s so much just goodness in there. But what I hear is systems and processes. We’re just stacking those in the in the beginning, in the middle, at the end, everything is a series of systems and processes, which is actually one of the things that really excites me about Chad. CBT is the ability to speed up our ability to create systems and processes, transcribe them, create lume videos, give them to our virtual assistants or our team members.

Josh, last question for you. And this is all around accountability and accountability. This is something that for me is a hallmark of who I am. I think back to when I read Extreme Ownership Jacoby’s book for the first time in that really set my foundation as a leader that everything is on me. And of course, this is also to get to that point, you need to be self aware and understand that you’re in charge of every single aspect of your life.

And then you also need a growth mindset that says, Hey, I’m not stuck here, I can make everything better. Then you understand that, all right, Everything in my world, I can make better. And when you come from this place, boom, you can build a rocket ship. But the challenge that coaches and course creators often face, you know what, high performers as well, because none of us have 100% accountability in anything.

We have systems and processes to improve the results that we have in to shrink our dispersion for how far off of center that we get. But accountability is something that is challenging for a lot of people because accountability is oftentimes about self accountability, your ability to audit yourself. So you know that when you are getting off center, you’ve got a trigger or a mechanism that says yo, you’re getting off center.

Let’s get back to where you want to go in accountability. If we’re hearing everything that Josh is saying, it’s systems and processes and it’s results. But to get to that accountability is so important because I heard a stat that was like the average course has success rate of only 3% completion. But what it is turned into a cohort meaning there is a live component to it.

The success rate moved up 75%. And as someone who is a course creator, I’ve experienced that as well. And you sit there and you’re like, I will do everything I can possible to help you get the results. And then people just don’t show up after they give the money and it’s a very frustrating thing. And you’d said, Rob, there’s a thing called the 85% rule where go and actually, Josh I’m going to allow you to unpack the 85% rule, but we’re going to end on this accountability in getting better results for your clients.

Yeah. So, so first of all, thank you for that. So accountability there’s there’s three different ways. There’s three different points, if you will, if you made a triangle, there’s three different points of accountability. Most of us are only aware of like one, maybe two. And so accountability really is three points. There’s internal accountability, there’s external accountability, and then there’s time based accountability.

And what I mean by that is internal. That’s your personal integrity. I said, I’m going to do this and I’m going to follow through for me, for my own personal integrity. Now, relying on that, you have about a 25% chance of following through because things happen. You forget it’s not a priority. Whatever I’m going to do, I’m going to go to Greece.

All right, cool. My chances of going to grease are about 25%, which means if I say I’m going to grease every year for the next four years, I’ll probably go one those years. Now, then there’s external accountability, which means I’m accountable. Somebody else. Rob, I’m going to take a trip to Greece. I’m going to take you with me now.

My chances of going to Greece goes up significantly, but it’s not 100%. It’s actually according to science, it’s about 65%. So that’s where time based accountability comes in. Rob, you and I were going to Greece and we’re going to sit down tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. and we’re going to plan out our agenda and we’re going to buy the tickets.

Now that I’ve put a deadline on it where we’re going to take a specific action, my chances of following through and taking that trip to Greece is 95%. According to science, you’re almost guaranteed to perform the task. You said you were going to perform. If you have all three points of that accountability in place, most of us will only do one.

Some of us will do two. Hey, I need an accountability part. Hey, man, will you hold me accountable? Make sure I do this stuff? Yeah, sure, buddy. It’s not enough. It’s good. That’s not enough. You have to put a specific, tight timeframe on it to make sure that it actually gets done in a specific time, and then your chances are almost guaranteed.

That’s accountability. That’s what we do in factor one. By the way, it’s the one thing that’s been missing from most entrepreneurs. You don’t necessarily need more information or education or training. We’ve got that if you need it. But what you really need is you need clear goals, you need the systems to execute those goals, and then you need the accountability to make sure that you follow through and get the work done.

That’s what factor one really is. That’s why I built it. Now, as far as the 85% rule, this one was really fascinating. I do a ton of research on productivity and I’m always looking for like the next thing. And the 85% rule basically says a bunch of scientists got together and they were observing people performing certain tasks and they found that when they when they made the test too easy, they’re their test group was not performing very well.

Like they weren’t putting in much effort. They weren’t learning a whole lot. And then when they made the test too hard, too many people were failing and they didn’t didn’t get an idea of what success looked like. And they got discouraged and they would just give up and stop trying. And so think about in school, when you were taking a class, it was super easy.

Did you learn anything in that class? Probably not. If you were taking a class that was super hard. I remember I got into my first year of college. They thought I could take calculus and I got into calculus and like, I don’t know what the hell this is. And so I just like, stop trying because I couldn’t learn anything.

I was failing so much. And so there’s apparently this sweet spot of failure where if you’re failing 15% of the time, which means you’re succeeding 85% of the time, A solid B if you’re thinking about a class, if you’re getting a solid B in a class that is your optimal point of progress and learning because it’s just challenging enough to keep you working.

But it’s not too hard too, where you get discouraged. And so how do we apply that to being an entrepreneur? The way that we apply that to being an entrepreneur is are you waiting until everything’s just right and you got all your ducks in a row and you know everything that’s going to happen before you start? Because if you doing that, you’re doing yourself a big disservice because that last 15% you’re supposed to figure out as you go, which means that just spinning your wheels, once you pass that 85% also, you definitely shouldn’t start something that you know absolutely nothing about because that could lead to higher level risks and quick failures.

You can lose a lot of money and piss a lot of people off and lawsuits and all that other stuff. And so what you want to do is you want to do enough research to where if I started this thing the day, I’m going to get about four out of every five decisions, right? And I’m probably going to mess something up here and there, but I can recover quickly because of all of the other wins and successes that I’ve had.

One of the best ways to do that is to wrap yourself around with accountable entity to make sure that you’re actually executing. Because as human beings, we don’t like to take risks because risks are perceived as threats in our brains. And so that accountability will help us rewire our brains and say, all right, I know I’m going to have to take a risk.

I’m only about like 85% ready for this, but I’m going to hit the gas anyway because I told Rob that I was going to have some results for him by Saturday, too. And so that’s where the 85% rule could could change everything for you, because if you’re waiting for 100%, you’ll never get there. You probably hit 85 pretty quick and you can go ahead and start figuring out the rest of it as you go.

Yeah, there’s a great quote that I heard that is really resonating with me right now. Be wrong fast. And so often we see not having all the answers being wrong. Air quotes failure as a bad thing, but as entrepreneurs and coaches and creators, the faster that we can shift the work and learn it, iterate, the better your version two, three and four can be.

And in Josh, this was a masterclass of goodness for coaches, creators and entrepreneurs. And clearly your your knowledge and your your willingness to be a go giver shines. And it’s something that’s why I wanted to bring you on, because there’s so much value both for me, but as well as everybody else who is listening and watching right now working.

Everybody connect with you and find out more about what you’ve got going on. Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things. First of all, my social is at JT, literally, please feel free to hook up with me there. Send me a message on Facebook messenger. I’m on there, I’m figuring out Instagram, but it’s a little bit harder for me because I’m too old or something.

And then if you’re interested in if you are a service based entrepreneur, which means that you have a coaching program or you sell a course or an agency of some sort factor, one is built specifically for you, especially if you’re under $2 million in revenue. What we do is we help build the right goals for you. We help build those systems so that you can implement those goals effectively.

And then we surround you with one on one accountability and unlimited support to make sure that you accomplish those goals within a 90 day period. And we do guarantee results. So basically, we’re going to we’re going to help set up a goal for you and we’re going to guarantee that you hit that goal in 90 days or or you don’t pay.

We’re just going to refund you. We don’t want to keep your money if we can’t produce results. So if you’re interested in that, you can go to I and factor one dot com because you are factor one for your own success. And that’s what the entire business is built around, taking personal responsibility for the results that you produce in your life, in your career.

I am factor one dotcom. And then one last thing. I also have a free weekly panel discussion called the BYOB Lunch Club. We bring on expert entrepreneurs. Every week we talk about a specific business topic. You can learn more about that and sign up for free at BYOB Lunch Club Bcom. So just a quick review here. I’m on Social at JT.

Literally, if you are a service based business under $2 million and you’re looking to get to the next level and you need guaranteed results and you want to make sure you don’t get it wrong and you and you want to surround yourself with all the help and support that you need to get there. And in something I’ve said with you has resonated with you because you’re going to be working with me and my team.

You can go to I am factor one dotcom. Absolutely love it. Low pro tip for everybody. Always listen for the process. When I hear Josh giving his pitch in call to action, I hear it formulaic early on, hitting the beats going back re saying the action items for where people can do it. And so often when you are doing podcasts are jumping on other things and you ask, Oh, working, everybody connect.

A lot of people are like, Oh, I didn’t know you’re going to ask that. No, Boom, Josh out in here. So take note of that. This is just one of a number of gold nuggets that was in this episode, and I would love to hear from you. What resonated with you? What stood out to you? Where did you feel something inside of you where there is some judgment or some resistance based on where you are right now in your process and what you heard here?

You can hit me up on all social media platforms at Rob. Question You know what hit both Josh and I up because a crazy thing happens when you do. We will respond back to you and I’ll say this real quick, that the only reason that you and I are doing this thing right now is because you asked a question on social media.

And I answered your question, and then we ended up talking for like an hour and a half and workshopping it. And the only reason that we did that is because we took a moment to say, Hey, man, I think I can help you out. And you said, Hey, man, I think I’ll accept your help. And and that’s how this relationship was born.

And so think about that. If you’re watching this, you want to connect with people and just connect with them and say, What’s up? Show up with value. Don’t try to pitch them your coaching program or your course or whatever. Just talk to them and the rest will work itself out. And this is the game behind the game. Me being willing to ask the question.

Josh Thomas. Being willing to answer the question and say, if you want to jump on the call, I then was like, Let’s do this. You and I had not spoken in person as of two weeks ago, slid into the DMS we love. We jumped on a Facebook message thing right there. And naturally for me, the best thing that I could do to deepen this relationship and provide value at the same time is let’s get Josh Thomas on my podcast, share his knowledge with my audience to help him in his business.

And it also brings Josh Thomas and I closer together because this is another hour of him and I talking together and the crazy thing happens. Imagine if you were connected to Josh and I and what could happen if you’re in our orbit where we’re connecting, we’re trading messages, seeing who we can introduce each other to. This is the game behind the game.