How To Make $100K on YouTube with a Small Audience (Masterclass)

In this episode of the Think Media podcast, we're going to be talking about how to turn what you know into a profitable career. I was looking at data from my business and I realized that 85% of our orders were coming a year after somebody gave me their email address. The reality is people will forget that you exist if you don't remind them.

If you're already posting content on YouTube, maybe you have a smaller audience or a smaller channel size—it really doesn't matter if you have the right strategy. We're going to actually be breaking down how to do $100,000 plus per year. And really, eight practical steps for that. My guest today is Donald Miller, author of *Coach Builder* and other classics like *Building a StoryBrand*, and I'm super fired up for this conversation with Donald.

How's it going?

Wonderful. Yeah, thankful to be here. Um, so I just finished your new book, *Coach Builder*, and the big idea here is that when it comes to starting a YouTube channel, a lot of times people think about ad revenue and things like that. Oftentimes, a full-time career off of just YouTube ads might not only be a long ways out, it probably might be never for a lot of people because you're just getting pennies for your views. But so many people listen to this that are educators that are maybe have experience they don't realize they have that they could, in turn, turn into coaching or something like that. So can you give us the big idea? You really help business coaches in this book, but you expand it out to like what it could be like. You have some experience; what's the big idea and the opportunity when it comes to coaching?

The idea is knowledge is worth something because knowledge helps people make money, save money, experience less frustration. You know, just recently, I went through a little health transition, trying to figure some things out—nothing critical at all—but I realized, wow, I'd love to pay somebody 800 bucks a month to help me understand, you know, this MRI and this and all that kind of stuff. We need a concierge medicine coach, but they don't exist. And I thought, well, there you go. We have all these nurses who are underpaid who could actually be moonlighting as concierge coaches for five or six clients and probably double their salary. I had an experience with my home, you know, married with a baby, and realized, okay, I need a front gate, I need a security system, all that kind of stuff. I wish there was an a police officer or former military who could come to my house and take me through a checklist on everything I needed to do—what do I do with my weapons and, you know, how do I keep them safe from the kids and all those sorts of things. So now you have underpaid police officers and former military underutilized with their knowledge, professionalizing their wisdom and productizing it in such a way that it's helpful to the world. That's what *Coach Builder* is about. We talk a lot about business coaching because people understand business coaches, but there are so many people who have wisdom, and a lot of them, they go to YouTube and they start sharing that wisdom without realizing you can do this for advertising revenue, that's really terrific, but you can also actually create a menu of products and sell them for two, three, five, 10, $15,000 a pop and actually make a lot of money. And now your YouTube presence is promoting something that is really good for the world. That's so powerful.

I'm curious how big is the opportunity from the angle of—I think it's a new idea that people would actually pay for knowledge—right, to some like, how much can I charge? How much—they may hear numbers, "Oh, that wouldn't work for me"—but what's actually—what's actually happening out there?

Well, it's—it's—it's not a new idea in the sense that, you know, consulting firms like Accenture and KPMG have been making billions and billions and billions of dollars. The new evolution is that the average person is now able to do that, just like YouTube. I mean, you know, media was something when I grew up; it was five channels. You actually physically clicked the dial to get some other frequency, uh, and now it's just democratized. And so I think wisdom is also being democratized, and I'm—and I'm telling everybody listening, get in on it because people are now very, very much used to it. Uh, my wife works with a woman named Nicole Burke with an organization called Gardenary that she started. Her vision is to make gardening ordinary, and Nicole came over, helped us with our kitchen garden, help us know what the spring planting would be, spend a day with us. She makes a million dollars a year giving gardening advice. She has no degree in gardening; she just discovered it when she started her own garden. She realized she's got an incredible green thumb; she had so much lettuce she had to pass around in the community, and that's a great free advertising. So these ladies said, "How are you growing this lettuce? Teach me!" And she's making a million dollars a year with that knowledge now. So I—I think it's, you know, wisdom is being democratized, and but there's way—there's things that you need to do if you want to coach or consult for a living, uh, apart from just giving your advice away for free. You know, there's a system to it, and *Coach Builder* is that system.

Well, I'm excited to talk through those eight steps, at least at a high level. But in the beginning of the book, you compare two options and you say, personally, what would you rather have: a master's in business from a prestigious university versus hiring a coach? You recommended hiring a coach. Why do you say that?

Well, I mean, I don't want to throw prestigious universities under the bus—probably not a good idea. Uh, there's a lot of R&D in the in the sciences and the medical community that come out of universities. A lot of the drugs that we take that are saving lives and—and possibly not saving lives, but you know—uh, come out of the medical community. All rocket engines came out of the university system. I think when it comes to business, uh, big universities tend to do a pretty good job preparing you to be chairman of the FED, uh, but not a very good job running a small business. And so if you're—if you're wanting—if you got a mom-and-pop shop and you want to grow a business, I think shutting that down and going back to college is not an option. And I think if you did shut it down and go back to college, you wouldn't learn very much about how to grow that business. You'd learn about, you know, the future and artificial intelligence and these sorts of things, but probably not how to read a P&L statement and make good decisions. So hiring a business coach is just a better move at that point. Uh, but again, if you want to be a doctor, you need to go to school. So nothing against the university system, uh, but I—I—I think that having somebody that you can talk to on a weekly basis about the decisions that you're trying to make, who have been there a little bit before you and made the mistakes that they don't want you to make, is invaluable. When I look back on the on the hockey stick growth periods that I've had, one of the reasons for some of those hockey stick periods of growth is because of—I met a person, and the person taught me X, uh, and I can name those people. You know, I can name them. Greg Harris taught me about publishing. Doug Kim taught me about systematizing and professionalizing an operation. Governor Haslam here in Tennessee became a friend and taught me about leadership. There were people associated with those, and none of them were university professors; they were practitioners. So getting to people with experience—and you have a lot of experience in this area—and of course, we're going to go through these tips, but on page 31, you talk about how to build a $150,000 coaching business in under 24 months. And you say, what if people feel weird about asking for this kind of money for coaching? For those as we break down these steps, because I—I really want our community to lean in. You walk through a system for this, and this might seem just crazy for somebody like that hasn't broken into that yet, or maybe in their career they're making 80k, which is awesome, but even to hear a number like, "Wait, in 24 months I could be doing 150 plus," and towards the end of the book you talk about reverse engineering seven figures. I know you really break down the specific math, but like where do those—where does that money come from? Like what are the numbers? What could that look like?

Yeah. Well, first—first of all, let's deal with the the mindset of asking ourselves, are we really worth $150,000 to share information, especially information that you could probably get on YouTube or on the Internet or a book on Amazon. Um, the reality is you could probably get all the information that you need to—to make $150,000, or the person that you're selling your—your consulting services to can get everything they need for free, but they can't get it from a human being, one-on-one. They can't get it from somebody who's empathetic, who's going to listen to them and who's going to nuance that information for them. If you are a business coach, for example, you can make somebody millions and millions of dollars by teaching them something. For instance, I have a friend who—he charges $350,000 a year for his coaching. He will meet with you one hour a month. So you're getting 12 hours for $350,000. So I said, "Dan, why are you worth $350,000?" Obvious question. He said, "I'm not—I'm not worth $350,000. However, who I know is worth $350,000." Said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, if—if you want to sell your company, I probably know who's going to buy it. And if you want a chief marketing officer, I think I probably know who that is. You're buying my Rolodex." So what is that worth? If you would—would you pay somebody $350,000 to get a 2X multiple extra on your company when you probably could have got a 6X, uh, or positioning it such a way, or to know somebody who's going to be able to build that app? You know, even a YouTube strategist. I can hire somebody to be my YouTube person, but let's say that I hire my YouTube person, and then I say, "I want you to hire a Sean Canel certified coach for one year to get you going." That's going to be $1,500 a month for me to hire that coach for you. What am I getting out of that as a—as a businessman? I'm probably getting a 10X return conservatively on that $1,500 bucks, right? Because the compound interest on the knowledge that—and the mistakes that we don't have to make are worth a lot of money. So there's a lesson in there for all of us. You—what you want to charge is a small percentage of the money that you are making or saving somebody else in the business community. Now let's say it's gardening, right? Million dollars on gardening. They're not making you any money. In fact, my—I ate a tomato out of our garden last night. I'm pretty sure the cost of that tomato was $37, actually extrapolated it all out. Uh, but what you're—what somebody's buying then is peace of mind. They're buying a hobby. They're buying um, connection with their family. And then you—you need to put a dollar value on that. You know, what would you pay to have a family project that you all love? Would you pay $5,000 a year for that? Absolutely. You'd pay a lot more than that just to go to Disney World. So what a lot of people who have the wisdom don't—haven't taken the step yet to figure out the—the—the value, the commercial value of that wisdom. And what you're looking for is uh, peace of mind, better sleep, better health, uh, better self-esteem, cleaner, organized house—all of that stuff has an economic value, and you want to charge what you're worth. Now the other reason to not give this stuff away for free is that when people give away things for free, uh, they aren't valued. You know, early on in—in my career, I ran StoryBrand marketing workshops, and probably eight or 10 times somebody had a nonprofit or a friend said, "Hey, can I get in, sit in the back of the room?" And I would let them come in for free. You know, I probably had 20,000 people come through those workshops. There were eight or 10 people who were looking at their phones or skipping sessions or pacing around in the lobby on their phone while I was teaching, and every single one of them came in for free because when you don't pay for something, you actually attempt to justify in your mind—mind why that wasn't worth something, rather than feel gratitude that you got something that should cost $3,000 for free. You think, "Well, this person is going to give me $3,000 worth of gratitude." They're actually not. They're going to build a case for why they were right and not paying anything. And so you know, you want to charge 500 bucks, half price, something so that they have skin in the game and will turn around and respect that. So you know, all of that is why you should actually charge money for your—your products.

So strong. And let's get into these steps. And so Step One is create a menu of products and services to sell your clients. Break this down a little bit.

Yeah. So if you're—if you've got a job and you want to start coaching and you're dreaming about that, let's start—don't leave your job yet. What I want you to do is actually create a menu of products of the things that you can sell. You know, for instance, let's say you're a marketing executive somewhere or—you know, something like that. You could actually sell a one-day marketing strategy session for $7,500. We're going to go into a business, and you're going to help—you're going to look at their ex-current marketing strategy, and you're going to improve that. You—you want to have that be a deliverable product. I like creating a keynote deck and a workbook, so you're clicking through the keynote and they're filling out the workbook as you go along. That would be a product that you could sell for $7,500. A lot of coaches—well, honestly, that's cheap. $15, $20,000, we sell them for $20,000. M. So you know, and also if you create the keynote deck and the workbook, I can charge $20,000 for somebody else coming in. We have three or four facilitators who go do that. So you know, it's—it's just really smart to create those frameworks. Um, but the menu of products, what it does is it gives you confidence that you have something that you can sell. If you are selling just coaching—if you say, "I'm quitting my job and I'm going to become a coach. Would you like to be a client? I can coach you"—that's like walking into a restaurant and saying, "What—what are you known for? What are your specials?" And they say, "Protein. Protein is—we're really known for our protein. We make really great protein." Yeah, that is a true statement, but it's unhelpful in terms of helping me give you money. Yes. If you say, "Listen, I am biased. We have the best cheeseburger in the city of Nashville. It is the best," guess what I'm ordering? In the form of a cheeseburger, because I know what that is. That, I think, is the number one mistake people make when they get into coaching is they just sell their coaching. And I think that's fine; you can end up selling your coaching, but let's start with a six-month mastermind in which we overhaul your leadership. Let's start with a 12-month elite mastermind—demographic are only people who make more than $10 million. Let's start, you know—so you want to actually come up with something specific that has a start date, an end date, a deliverable, and a price. And when you have three of those and you really dial them in and you know how you're going to deliver them, you are ready to start a coaching business. I still don't recommend leaving your day job yet because there's another step, Step Two, but you are ready to start a coaching business. And here's the other thing, Sean, you can actually say, "Well, if I need to make $175,000 to match the salary that I had in my day job, I know exactly how many of each products I need to sell in order to do it." And in coaching, it's a black box, and you're going to feel stressed, you're going to have trouble going to sleep. I know I need to sell seven of these, 12 of these, and four of these, and now I can say, "Okay, how do I do it?" Which is getting into Step Two.

Would you recommend when you—seven of these, four of these, 12 of these—also that maybe you have low, medium, and high in terms of your menu, too?

Yeah, it's always great to have sort of an entry-level product. In fact, one of the steps in the book is to have a ladder of products, and the—the—the whole bottom of the ladder is actually free. And I realized I said, "Don't charge nothing," but nothing is actually free. Some of them are in exchange for an email address. You're going to get this PDF, and then I'm going to send you these free nurture emails that are just autom—they don't cost me any time. And then I'm probably going to invite you to a webinar. Well, by this time, I've given you enough value, and there's time plus contact where we've created a bond a little bit, even if we've never met. It's all digital, uh, and now you're willing to buy my $275 product, at which point is still digital. I've not put any skin in the game, but by the time that you and I are in a room together, we're probably at about five grand. Yeah, and that's really where my time started to come into play. I'm giving you time. Bottom price is five grand. Y. There's some automated digital products in there, there's some automated digital lead generators, those sorts of things, but you know, starting from zero all the way up to $50,000 would be that ladder of products. I think that's a good clarity point, too, because if you say, "We're going to put really high-value, free content on YouTube," yes, and content that can get people results in advance, start implementing, "Wow, that was helpful." In one sense, this idea of a lead magnet for email—some people call them freebies, premiums—YouTube is a step in front of that or—or in a way, a similar step. It's—let me give you an example. Uh, I wrote a book called *Hero on a Mission*, and it's basically the description or the—the step-by-step instructions for a morning ritual that clears a busy mind and helps you stay on track and kind of plan your life. We created some software around that, *Hero on a Mission* software, where you can go in and—and spend 15 minutes on a daily ritual, uh, you know, you fill out some questions, "What am I grateful for?" You look at your calendar of events, my primary task, those sorts of things. And we put the book out, you know, it gets us 15 people a day signing up for the software. We did a YouTube video, and it gets us a hundred people a day signing up for the software. So that's more powerful than a book, and the book was a bestseller, you know. So yes, YouTube is a great strategy to lead people to your lead generator, which captures their email address and so forth and so on. And then let's go ahead and monetize that. The software is free; nobody has to pay for it, but we would actually email you and say, "Would you like to spend 275 bucks and watch the on-demand course?" Well, first we're going to say, "You want to buy the book?" You like 20 bucks. Then the on-demand course is $275. "Would you like to hire a coach to spend a year taking you through this system?" Well, that coach paid me $10,000 to be certified to be that coach. So you can see how the monetization of the YouTube video can work in ways that are just beyond advertising, and it requires you scaling up a little bit of a coaching business.

Step Two is generate and manage a list of potential clients. Yes. Who are you going to sell your products to? And a lot of people start with clients, and I would say start with products because until you know what products you're going to sell, you don't know who you're going to sell them to. So basically, what you want to do is you want to take a list of the problems that your products solve and then make another list of the potential people who you know who could actually use the solution to that problem, and then write an email and send it to them and sell them that. That's before you even get into a CRM. Then once I get into a CRM, I want a lead generator that's providing emails to that CRM and automating the division of those three products and the three things that I'm going to sell people. But most coaches—for instance, a guy I know named Chad who actually helps run my company—the reason Chad is with my company is he sent an email—he left uh, another—not competitor—a friend of mine who does something similar, left their business, sent out one email to a small list of contacts that he had that said, uh, "Here's what I did for Mike, and here's what I can do in the marketplace. I'm going to be doing some consulting and hire me if you want, teach you kind of what we did over here." I hired him immediately, paid him a lot of money, enjoyed the relationship so much that I bought him out of his own consulting firm, and he gets an enormous amount of money being on my leadership team now from one email. But—but let me tell you what he did in that email: he described the problems that he solved at his previous company and said, "If you have those problems, I can help you solve them." That's the—and by the way, in the book, there's formulas for writing emails, and we have now put inside of a—a—a server, artificial intelligence informed by StoryBrand that will help you write that sales letter. So you know, there's just so many ways to—to do it, uh, but you need a menu of products, and then you need a list of people that you can sell those products to. And ultimately, if you really want to grow a coaching firm, you need a CRM managing leads, selling those products.

And can you define CRM for listeners?

It's just customer relationship management software. Uh, Salesforce, HubSpot—basically, you want to—you want to system where you've—you've created emails that are automated, and when you stick an email address in there, it's going to send the first one, and then five days later it's going to send the second one, and five days later, three days later, two days later, you set it up to send the third one, and now you're building trust in an automated email system.

And I love this thing you hit in the book here: How do you launch your coaching business? You tell people you're a coach over and over, especially if you're trying to change your identity in their mind. Yes. So listeners are probably thinking about that, like, "Wait a minute, like to step into this thing of 'I'm a coach,' how do I become a coach? How will people know I'm a coach?" This is even kind of a branding and positioning, messaging thing. Speak to that mindset of someone that is leaning into this identity and building up that brand and maybe the right mindset, too, of establishing a brand because you say, "Tell people over and over," right?

Yeah. You know, I remember when I first—my—when I wrote my first book, I was at a book signing, signing my book, and one of the—the lady came up and said, "Hey, what is it like to be a writer?" And I just looked at her, I said, "Well, I'm not a writer." And she—she just looked at me very confused because I'm signing my book. Identity often lags behind action, and you've got to get there. And so the only way that you can have the identity of a coach is actually if you coach. So a lot of the—the people get blocked 'cause, "Well, I'm not a coach; I'm this…" You need probably three really successful engagements as a coach before your identity will even begin to catch up. So the first thing is you're going to have to jump before you swim. Hey, we're about to get back into the podcast in just a second, but I have a question for you: Do you want to grow your personal brand this year? Do you need more leads and sales in your business? If the answer is yes, then right now is the best time to go all in on YouTube. Today's podcast is brought to you by thinkmasterclass.com, where you can get on-demand access to a one-hour deep dive training revealing how to start and grow a profitable YouTube channel this year. For a limited time, you can get access to this on-demand class entirely for free, where you will learn the three biggest mistakes that people make when starting a YouTube channel, the new rules and changes that have been happening on YouTube and how you can use them to create an unfair advantage, and the exact strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 350,000 organic views every single day. The data is clear: 70% of viewers claim that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands. So don't wait any longer to start growing your brand and business with YouTube. Just go to thinkmasterclass.com to get access to this no-fluff, highly tactical free on-demand training. That's thinkmasterclass.com.

Right. It's like standing on the edge of the pool and saying, "Well, I'm not swimming." It's 'cause you're not in the pool. Yeah. Yes, you will swim really fast, especially if you're in the deep end. So I encourage you to jump in and start coaching, but also to tell people that "I now coach people through X." And you're going to have to kind of memorize a line because it's not going to feel true even though it is true—you are actually coaching somebody. So I wouldn't be too self-deprecating about it. I think that's going to cost you in your career, but you want to jump in and—and begin—your action will follow. I mean, your—your identity will follow action. We've got to get in there, start coaching, call ourselves a coach, put together a coaching website, begin promoting yourself. In 12 months, you're not going to have that problem anymore.

So strong. And Step Three is create a compelling website that attracts your ideal clients. And in this chapter, you do touch on your sales pitch or your elevator pitch, which you kind of just mentioned, like maybe that's a—"I solve X problem," or what is that?

Yeah. Well, let's go through—we can go through all the parts of a website, but I just want to give you the part that needs to be at the top. Yeah. And the part that needs to be at the top is uh, identify the problem that you solve as a coach and position your coaching product as the resolution of that problem. You know, for instance, you would say, uh, "A lot of people dream of being a really good uh, cook. Um, I leverage my 10 years of experience in uh, you know, fine-dining kitchens to teach you how to cook six amazing dishes of your choice." I'm—I mean, I literally—I just made that up, and I'm like, "Where is that person? I will pay the money now." Now imagine that's $2,500, and you get six different interactions where—and you know you're going to videotape that interaction and put it on YouTube. Well, I just videotaped me with a client who's paying me $2,500 with their—POS permission—putting it on YouTube. You know how many clients are going to be wanting the same experience? Yeah. I literally just started a—a—a business. Chefs don't make any money. You know, my friend Annie Little ran Jo here in Nashville, and they—you know, sadly, the neighborhood that he was in became very, very popular, and they tripled his rent. He had to shut down his restaurant. Jeez. And he's getting older, and he doesn't want to work in a kitchen anymore. It's a—it's a—it's a young man's game; it's a young woman's game. I literally just—Andy, if you're watching this, is—you could do this, and you could do it—you could work four months out of the year and make three times what you made as a chef, leveraging your experience. I will—but what's the key? The key isn't, "I will teach you how to cook." M. A lot of people will teach how to cook. "I will teach you to make six meals that blow people's minds," so you always have a go-to. And we'll do it in six sessions. And you know what? When we're done, we're gonna eat it. Yeah, that's the best part, by the way. Andy, I'll show up for that and work the camera as long as I get a bite, man. I love that. That's amazing. Okay. So you—you want to create a website, and we'll keep it moving. And of course, you break down all the step-by-step of the—that top is the problem you solve and the products that you sell to solve it. Problem you solve and products. So solve. Make sure your website says that. And so then Step Four—once you have that set up—write automated sales emails that land clients while you sleep. And eventually, that can be your CRM is what's sending those automated emails. And as a reminder, we—have a couple email-based um, tips on email marketing on the Think Media podcast, and we'll link other show notes and resources as well as *Coach Builder*. I hope by now you can see it's an essential book to grab. I just finished it; absolutely love it. We actually have email in that book that you can cut and paste, and then I've written 52 emails that any coach can use to convince people that you're a coach. Also, use that—that's so priceless and more than you know, $20 or whatever the book is on Amazon. So um, but what are the biggest mistakes people make when writing emails and following up?

Well, the biggest mistake is they don't do it. Yeah. So that—that's the—that's by far—that's 95% of it. Yeah. I remember when I was a young publisher, I—I accidentally gped my way into the president of a publishing company in my 20s, and I would—this is pre—it wasn't pre-email, but people didn't do email marketing. We were actually sending snail mail, and the company became the fastest-growing publishing company in our sector, and the boss—the—the sort of absentee owner—came in and just said, "How—how are you doing this? What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, I'm taking the 20% of our clients who are giving us 80% of our revenue, and I'm just writing them a letter every—every week. And it's, you know, going to their desk." And he said, "Don, the last letter you wrote was literally—was about you going camping. It had nothing to do with publishing." And I said, "Oh, I know. That's because nobody's reading them. All they're doing is they're seeing our logo and they're putting it in the trash can." And he said, "How in the world is that growing the company?" He said, "Because they're not forgetting us." You've got to send something out week after week after week with your name or your—your logo, the name of your company, the name of your brand. I get text messages once a day from Hank's Belts. Hank's Belts. Yeah, by the way, I'm not sponsored by Hank's Belts, although send me a free belt. I'm giving you some promo here. Uh, you know, I—I bought a belt for my father-in-law for Christmas, and great belts, and they started texting me all the time. Yeah, well, I don't need a belt. You buy one belt; I've got five belts. And then I realized, you know what? I actually don't have a black dress belt. And so I bought a black dress belt. And then I realized, well, I could actually get this other guy belt—this is kind of a cool belt. I got another belt as a gift. Then they're having a 40% off sale on belts. I don't need that—that'll be a great email. 40% off on a belt you don't need will sell, by the way. That's free, uh, and I ended up looking around. I'm like, "I don't need this belt, but I really…" 40% off, it's only 100 bucks, 60 bucks. You know, they got another—I know $400 or $500 out of me because they reminded me they exist. And the reality is people will forget that you don't exist—they will forget that you exist if you don't remind them. And so that's the importance of getting those emails out. The actual email copy is not as important as you think; it's the "Hey, I exist. Hey, I exist. Hey, I exist," because people don't buy from you when you email them; they buy from you when they have the problem that your email offers a solution to. And the reality is for six months out of the year they don't have that problem, and one week after six months they do, and if you don't send them an email in that window you're not going to sell anything. So it's a percentage game, and you want to be in touch with people all the time.

So strong. And—I think about all the text messages that I get—Reef sandals—and you—you don't unsubscribe. I don't unsubscribe. And I'm paying attention. And then when the sale hits, that always—always gets my attention. I'll look over, and I get sandals I don't need. Or your flip-flop falls apart, and now you need it, and they text you right then. Fourth of July is coming out. That's the artificial intelligence we need. When the flip-flop falls apart, email Sean. Yes. Um, so Step Five is create a marketing funnel and a product ladder. We talked about that a little earlier. Yeah. So just define at a high level before Step Six—what is, though, a marketing funnel? If you were kitchen-

Somebody gave me their email address, and I realized, "Oh, these are quantity-time buyers." 85% of buyers are quantity-time, meaning if you're not emailing me every week for a year, you're going to lose the order. Wow, that's a profound insight. This is a master class, and I'm really appreciating you breaking this down.

Before we go to step six, you also say, "Build a product ladder," and we touched on that. The product ladder might be a way to engage free, lower-ticket. Yeah, half of your—half of the things that you create are actually free, but they're also not demanding your time. So it—and when I say free, they're giving you their email address, which I put the economic value of an email address at about $35. In other words, the psychological money that I'm giving you when I give you my email address is $35. I will part with my email address about as willingly as I'll part with $35. So let's not think that this isn't a sacrifice on the part of our customer.

Yeah, absolutely. And then it can go up, and if they're getting your time, that could be higher ticket, which brings us to step six: Set realistic business goals and accomplish them. What types of goals should we set, and how do we know if they're realistic? I give you several categories of goals to set for your coaching business in the book, but let me give you two that are really important. The first is the most important, and that is lag measure or lead measure goals. Lead measure goals are: How many people downloaded my free PDF? How many people watched my YouTube videos? Or better, how many YouTube videos did I create? Quality YouTube videos did I create? If I want to build a coaching business, I'm just going to let the money take care of itself. What I'm actually going to measure are the number of lunches that I have with potential clients, the number of email acquisitions that I get, the number of emails that I've written to put into my CRM. Those are the goals that I'm going to establish in order to get my business started. The money will take care of itself. If you do things that lead to orders, you'll get orders later. Don't worry about the orders; it's just—it's kind of like everything else in life. If you want to lose weight, don't set a goal to lose weight; set a goal to get up every morning and go for—and get 10,000 steps. Right, and also set a goal to eat less than 2,200 calories. If you just do that, the weight will take care of itself. I think it was Brian Walsh who wrote a book after winning so many Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers: The score takes care of itself. Never think about the score; think about the process it takes to win. Then set goals within that process, and you're going to be just fine.

Step seven: Build or join a community to help you grow yourself and your business. Yeah, there are eight steps to build a coaching business; that one's the most important. Being in a community of other coaches is a greater predictor of success than whether or not you have a CRM, a website, a menu of products, a product ladder. All of that is secondary to being in a community of other coaches. But here's why: Why? Because if you're in a community of other coaches, you're going to build a CRM of products; all of that's going to happen, but it's going to happen because we tend to behave like the tribe that we are hanging out with. It is the number one predictor of success. So if you can find—and all you need to do is find other people in your area who are coaching and buy them breakfast once a month. You know, I remember, you know, Brendan Burchard. Yeah, Brendan used to live in Portland, Oregon, and Brendan had a condo that he didn't live in; it was a condo that he furnished that he used maybe once a week. He would—he would get a group of guys together for breakfast in the morning; he would pay for breakfast, then we would go up into his condo, and he would just say, "What'd you learn this week?" And he created a mastermind; it was all free; we were all learning an incredible amount, but it was actually genius of him to create a community of content creators. This was 25 years ago. You know how he's—I mean, I don't know, he's got—got to be worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and he put together a community. I was amazed in researching that chapter that it always struck me as odd because I've been a big fan of psychology that so many—you know, fathers and mothers of modern psychology came out of Vienna in the 20s through the 50s. So they were all in Vienna, 20s to 50s, and like an idiot, I thought, "Oh, well, that must be—there must have been something in the water." Those were the smartest psychologists. That's not true; there were smart psychologists in Australia, there were smart psychologists in the United States, of course, there were smart psychologists in South Africa. What made Austria different was two things: the university system and the coffee shops. They were meeting with each other, and they were threatened by each other; they competed with each other; they learned from each other; they disagreed with each other. Right, Alfred Adler is going to disagree with Sigmund Freud. I—I don't think I'm mistaken to say my favorite psychologist, Viktor Frankl, spent a day with Sigmund Freud, and you know, Sigmund Freud launches this thing, and Adler completely disagrees, and Frankl says, "It's not pleasure; it's meaning," and you know, and all of a sudden there's a midrash taking place that launches the fathers of modern psychology. Think about this: In tennis, I'm a big tennis fan. Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic are the top three winningest tennis players in—on the male circuit of all time. They actually accomplished—but by the way, like Pete Sampras has won like nine Grand Slams, then it's 20 for Federer, I believe 21 or something like that for—I'm going to butcher this—for Nadal, and then Novak I believe is right now at 23 or 24, and I hope he gets one more because then he passes Margaret Court as the greatest tennis player of all time, undisputed. And I like Novak. They all did it at the same time. I think now think about that: the scarcity of the actual Grand Slams available while they're doing it at the same time. So Pete won it with no competition. The greatest players of all time, the three of them are playing at the—in the exact same season, competing at the exact same tournaments. Wow. But I think you removed two of those, and the number one players probably got 10 because it was the competition that forced those three guys. Saying winning is scarce right now; a Grand Slam victory is scarce because those two powerhouses are trying to take it from me, and they all upped their game. If you want to be a seven-figure business coach, get in a room every week with somebody else who's competing with you, and you're going to do just fine. You're going to feel—you're going to lose sleep over that, and hopefully it's a—those guys all love each other.

Yeah, massive respect, and I feel the same way about Michael Hyatt and Dave Ramsey and Patrick Bet-David and yeah, John Gordon and Henry Cloud. I have dinner with these guys. I'd love to have dinner with Patrick; I haven't met Patrick yet. Yeah, but we sit and we—we talk about what we're doing and what we're sharing and what we're writing and all that kind of stuff, and I leave dinner with Henry Cloud—first of all, I think Henry Cloud is a savant; I will never be as intelligent as Henry Cloud—but I leave so inspired in wanting to do more and wanting to write better. So it's the community; I think is the greatest predictor of success.

Such a strong point. And as we land the plane, and I have one of my favorite chapters actually came after the eight steps, but step eight is then: Navigate the nuances of the client-coach relationship. And you say, "Master the soft skills of client coaching." Break this down. Listen, the frameworks that we teach, the CRM that you use, the lead generators—those are very helpful to you to build a coaching business, and some of those are helpful to get your client results. Their life will be changed by a human being, and I think this is the part that—in the book—that the coaches probably need the least because they're actually good at it; it's why they're in it; they want to change lives. I want to be the guide that helps the hero win. I'm leveraging that transition in my life to do that, but I wanted to put it in the book to be able to say, "Don't leave your heart behind." At the end of the day, your economic objectives are not going to be fulfilling, even if you hit them. You're not going to—you know, on your dying breath, you're not going to say, "If only I would have charged more." What you are going to say is, "If only I would have been a better listener; if only I would have been more compassionate toward the people that I work with; if only I would have empathized more; if only, gosh, if I would have said such and such, they might not have made that critical mistake, and I should have called them," and so I didn't. I wanted to end the book on that note.

So powerful! And our director of coaching now, Think Media, Brian, we are geeking out over that chapter. Yeah, and like even—you know, a couple of the things you put—you said, "Create your own top 10 list, but never assume you know the client's problem; never assume the client understood your coaching; never break a client's trust." And just this side makes sense. Well, what you're saying now are all the mistakes that I've made. I'm realizing now that all I did was tell you what I don't do. What I just did—oh, it's so powerful! And those kinds of things. And I love that you also talked about—you broke down percentages; you said I think it was about what 10% or 20% is the frameworks and is the information. Yeah, what 40 or 60% is—is the listening; it's the connection; is the connection and—human being in the trenches with me; someone in the trenches with that—maybe processes and listens because we want to sound smart and have the coolest information. Yeah, but it sounds like the transformation is this kind of—this EQ soft skills side of things. Yeah, it's—it's the—it's the sugar that makes the medicine go down. Right? I will listen to somebody and take their advice if I—if I know that they understand my problem and they're for me, and they can give me the best solution in the world, and I won't do it unless I know that that person is on my side.

That's so powerful! Well, I have one question as we end, but I want to encourage—if you want more on this, *Coach Builder* is the book, and then we'll link that up in the show notes, and um, you can check that out. Anything else you want to—mention before I ask you one final question? Yeah, there's—there's one of the biggest questions that we get; in fact, you asked it almost to start the interview was, "What do I charge for my services?" So we created a coaches pricing guide at coachbuilder.com; there's a little button that says—I think it's top right—"Get the pricing guide"; you can download that for free.

Beautiful. So we'll make sure to link to that and everything else as—as well as Donald Miller's socials. Um, and check out the previous episode was one of the favorites for many of the Think Media podcast community; we'll link that up in the show notes as well, which was based on one of your other books, *How to Grow Your Small Business*. Both I think will go down in Think Media podcast history as just essential episodes. And so thank you for your time today. But one of the things that really stood out to me was you wrote a chapter on the personal costs involving building a seven-figure coaching business, and I'm actually just curious on your take on this because what I loved about this is kind of like—maybe setting a trajectory and having self-awareness. I think you've really delivered on the promise today of, "Oh wow, it's practical to do six figures without a big audience," 'cause if you're coaching a handful of people—that you—clients—yeah, six—it's wild to consider that while—that being possible for those building YouTube channels listening to this. But I feel like with the entrepreneur gurus out there and viral TikToks of maybe a little bit of smoke and mirrors, a lot of people are flexing on social media, and this idea of being a million-dollar business owner just as—like thrown around like it's common.

Mhm. Thrown around like—almost—I think that sometimes in social media you get into comparison like, "If I'm not doing seven figures…" And I love that you took it from a place of, "Count the cost of even doing that." I tried to talk you out of it. Yeah, I like this. So break this—the beginning of the chapter—it's something like, "How to Grow a Seven-Figure Coaching Business." I spend the first two to three pages literally trying to talk you out of it, and then I say, "If you don't care and you have—because you have no choice," yeah, I—you know, I have a seven-figure coaching business; it's not 'cause I want one; I have no choice; I'm just wired that way; it's just in me. So it—I'm going to be miserable if I don't do it, and so now what I have to do is figure out how to mitigate the damage of that on my family, on my health, on my life. And what I say to you is like—it—none of it's going to satisfy—the money is not going to satisfy you; it's just not going to—especially if it costs you as a father, as a mother, as a husband, as a—as a wife, if it costs you that as a friend—and uh, none of that's worth it. So let's mitigate some of that damage because you have to do it; I understand; I'm with you. I'm like you: Let's mitigate some of that damage, and now let me show you how to do it. Yes. So there—so because I—you know, Sean, you and I have sat with people—I sat on my front porch with a gentleman who's built an eight-figure coaching business—uh, not very long ago—and you know, super popular guy, people really loved him, and you know—and was not surprised when I read in the news that he had passed away of an overdose. I wasn't surprised at all, uh, because it's just a hard grind to do it. And so I—so it's also very enjoyable, extremely fulfilling, but it's just like any sort of drug; it can take you. And so I wanted to start the chapter just by saying, "This is not the normal self-help book; you matter more as a person than any of your accomplishments," and I think at the end of our lives the accomplishments just aren't going to matter; what's going to matter are the relationships. So I wanted to start that chapter there and then say, "Okay, now if you are with me, um, then you're actually the right person; if you enjoyed that, sure, you're the right person; let's keep going and let's figure out how to do this," but I didn't want to say, "It's great; yeah, it's going to be amazing; it's—by the way, it's going to fix you." Remember that stuff that your dad said? It's going to become untrue when you make a lot of money. Yeah, that's not going to happen. So I—I started the chapter that way.

Well, and I appreciate that because I do think that you got to know why you're doing it; you got to—self-awareness is a superpower. What do you—reverse engineering from? But I definitely think we need a message on social media where I know a lot of people are underpaid, or they—there's definitely a lifestyle change between 60 grand and 150 grand. Yeah, but—but how—how big—and that's what the stats have shown us too—at a certain point, I think it's—I think the numbers now—I mean, inflation has adjusted everything—around 250, 275—that the studies have proven you can't get any happier or—or—or the money is not going to be a factor in getting you happier yet—we—and that's for a family, by the way, yeah, for your entire household—yet on social media again, there can be so much comparison—I think wrong messaging. So I just really appreciate that. I love that you're anchoring it in self-awareness: If it's that mission, if it's that drive, it's that—and then how do you do it in a healthy way? And I really respect that about you with your values for family and caring for your team, and it seems to be the sustainable pace you're building into your culture and all that stuff you're doing. But um, I want to encourage listeners—so great to pick up the book because this is a path you can architect for yourself, and you give people a map to build the coaching business that is best for you and your family—that's not based on what anybody else is doing, but your race and your pace.

Yeah. Yeah, I hope everybody has the coaching career of their dreams. You know. Yes. I mean, I think as long as we're changing lives, we're going to be very, very fulfilled in our career. Donald Miller, thank you so much. My pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast and are ready for some deep-dive YouTube strategy, just go to thinkmasterclass.com to get access to my one-hour on-demand YouTube strategy class. You'll be looking over my shoulder as I share my best tips, and you can watch it on demand right now at thinkmasterclass.com.