BONUSODE | DON MILLER: The Business of Helping People Win

0:02Hi, I'm Michael Hyatt, and you're listening to The Double Win Show. And I want to introduce my buddy, Don Miller, who is the CEO and founder of CoachBuilder, among many other companies. I brought him on to talk about CoachBuilder. And so if you want to be a coach, if you are a coach, if you're considering being a coach, this episode's for you. And it's a bonus episode, but I got so excited about what Don's doing that I just wanted to share it with you guys. So, Don, welcome to the show. Michael, it's always great to spend time with you. Your episode on The Double Win Show was one of our most downloaded.

0:35Wow. That's exciting. Not surprising. I think you and I could start our own side podcast. That we should think about that. Health and wellness, conspiracy theories about aliens. I think we could do it. Various hair products for men in their 50s. I think it would work. They're all related. Okay, let's talk about coaching. Okay. So I'm curious, because I know you've been coaching for a long time, but why did you get into this sort of business side, and maybe I should ask you, you should define what Coach Builder is and then talk about how you got into it. Well, Coach Builder is a platform and a community of coaches.

1:10The community part is a bunch of coaches coming together to share best practices, encouragement, inspiration. And then the platform part has eight tools that help you grow a coaching business. So it helps you figure out your menu of products, helps you figure out a product ladder, helps you wireframe a website for your coaching. In fact, it is a plug and play CRM. So it emails potential clients, lead generators that secure those clients. Basically, what happened, Mike, was I created some small business frameworks that I certified coaches to use. And so all of those coaches would come to me and say, love the frameworks.

1:45My clients love it. I don't know how to get new clients or how much to charge, you know, sort of the nuts and bolts of running a successful coaching business from a business perspective, not from a delivery of value. They were all delivering great value. And then discovered that John Maxwell's coaches had the same issues and a dozen different certification companies kind of had the same problem, that they were delivering really great frameworks, but didn't know how to help their coaches get more people to engage in those frameworks through their coaching networks. And so I thought, well, there's a book in there and I should just help coaches grow their coaching business.

2:23You know, it's a problem I can solve. And so I wrote a book and then realized, wait, this is more than a book. We should get everybody in the same room to enjoy community together. And it became the coach builder platform and offering, if you will. Since then, it's kind of taken off. We have hundreds and hundreds of coaches who are growing all different kinds of coaching businesses, life coaching, mindset coaching. Some of them use my certification. Most of them use other people's certifications, which has been really fun because now I get to promote my friends' businesses and their certifications.

2:53I like mine, but let's be honest, my friends are just as good or better. So it became this community. And I just didn't realize that there was such a huge demand for it or need for it. So now we've actually taken the platform and we're incorporating artificial intelligence into it. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. The artificial intelligence tools will actually wireframe your website for you, write your emails. I'm really excited about incorporating session preparation tools. So before you go, you know, 15 minutes before your coaching call or Zoom call, you enter in some information and it gives you some talking points, remembers what you talked about last time with this client, things like that.

3:30We're incorporating those tools. They're not there yet, although we're shipping some of the AI really soon and the rest we're still building. You know, so it's kind of become this really fun project that I get to noodle on. And I also found, Mike, and I bet this is true for you, I get along with coaches. If you are a coach, life coach, mindset coach, even like physical trainers. If you are running a business as an individual, you and I just have a lot in common. And so we get to talk and I've enjoyed the community myself. It's literally my favorite thing to do. And as you know, we have over 500 certified pros at Full Focus and you're gonna be offering a version of our certification program through Coach Builder.

4:08But man, there's nothing I enjoy more than talking to other coaches because there's nothing I enjoy more than coaching. So to talk to other coaches about something we both love, you know, is fantastic experience. I've never been an athlete, but even sports coaches, I just click. I get along with, I don't know the ins and outs of football or whatever, but if you're actually in the business of helping other people win, you and I get along that way. There's just something about the way that we are wired. Affinity groups get along really well together. And the affinity Venn diagram is we're all trying to help somebody else win.

4:45You know, it's been a surprise career move for me to find yet another thing. I feel like it's the second or third thing that I've fallen in love with. And so it's been really fun. Well, the thing that's cool about coaching too, is I think for people that are maybe just a little bit past the peak of their career, you know, people that are moving into the sort of second half of life, it's a great way to take your experience and your wisdom, hard won often through adversity and being able to share it with other people so they can avoid the same mistakes. They'll make their own mistakes, but avoid the mistakes you made and really get to the destination faster.

5:20It's why when I go fly fishing, I never go without a guide because I want to get in the fish. And there's too many variables for me to kind of master it when I go a couple times a year versus somebody that's out on the water several times a week. You know, We all get to this age where you have expertise, experience, wisdom that you referred to, and it's being wasted, maybe. You're having coffee with people sharing a bit of wisdom. But as soon as you sort of professionalize that process, it's really funny. If you offer it for free, you got three people a year who really appreciate you, and they may write you a thank you card.

5:57As soon as you actually turn it into processes, products, and charge for it, you got a wait list. Yes. People all of a sudden, you have identified yourself and put a shingle on the outside of your building saying, I coach you in whatever area that is. So it's been really fun to help people in their 40s, 50s, 60s have that realization. I have a friend whose name is Scott, and he was a pastor of a very large church, decided that it was probably time for him to semi-retire and had a great parting with his church. and I went to him and I said, okay, can we get together? And we got together and I said, listen, Don has a wonderful plan for your life.

6:38Can I lay it out for you? He said, sure. I said, I know you're going to take a year off. I know you want it to be sort of a sabbatical. I know you're trying to figure out what to do next. If you got a group of men together, men specifically, leaders of companies and organizations, people who have succeeded in some way and charge them$10 ,000 a piece to meet once a month, I will join that community and pay 10 grand. After a lot of thought and careful consideration, he did it. And he now has 35 people meeting once a month. We happened to meet at a little event space I built behind my house. And I am getting more out of that community than I have.

7:20Maybe there's another community of men that I'm a part of and some other sort of author communities. I feel like it's the third thing that I'm a part of in terms of a community that has been very rewarding and life-giving to me. It happened because he decided to coach. He decided to take a year and instead of being a practitioner, coach others. And it's been really, really terrific. So I think there are a lot of people out there who don't realize that this is an opportunity for them. And so for me to help them realize that and also give them a playbook on how to get it started and make sure that they don't miss anything in terms of their paycheck and their ability to pay their mortgage.

7:59That's been a really life-giving opportunity for me. Well, you know, if my math is right, and it's always dangerous to do math on a podcast, but if my math is right, he's making$350 ,000 a year. I don't know what he was making as a pastor, but I guess that this is probably more. I don't know because I actually said that. I said, imagine you're making, and he kind of was elusive about the answer. I think more because it's just not why he did it. Yeah. He didn't care about that. But at the same time, I think$10 ,000 is probably about the least you can charge to a group of high impact people and actually have them take it seriously.

8:31So, you know, he's got to charge that much in order for people to actually show up and know that this is something we're all taking seriously and none of us are going to skip, you know, that's about the lowest. So I would imagine there's other reasons, but yes. In fact, I just interviewed two pastors for a YouTube video on the Coach Builder YouTube channel, two pastors flew into town to have a conversation. One is nine months in to having resigned from their church and started a coaching business. He had a church in Buffalo, New York, and he's nine months in. He's already made more than he made in his highest year ever as a pastor in nine months.

9:04Another is five years in, and I believe Pete told me this year he will probably double what he ever made in his highest paying year, and he was at a megachurch. Revenue-wise and security-wise, it's a fairly safe mood if you're a person of a certain age with a certain amount of wisdom and skills. Well, the cool thing is he's probably having a greater transformation. I mean, being a pastor is a very noble profession. Not taking away from that at all. Yeah. But I think it's okay to say that one of them told me off camera his family is grateful that he made the transition. Wow. I mean, you can imagine just being a pastor's wife and the stress and anxiety of that and all that comes with it.

9:43Yeah, it seems like a pretty good life move to me. And you still get to shepherd people. You still get to love people and change people's lives and transform lives. Love that. You just don't have to deal with somebody who gave$80 to the offering 12 years ago, and so they think they own the church. You don't have to deal with that person. Nothing ever happens, but I want to talk about the book just a little bit because I read the book right after it came out. In fact, I pre-ordered it, so I got it the day that it came out. And I was reading through that, and I literally had to slow myself down because I was getting so many nuggets out of each chapter that I was just like, I got to process this.

10:18This is mind-blowing. But it really does solve a problem that most coaches I know have, which is, how in the world do I build this business? and the whole community that you've built and the coach builder system really biggie sizes that because it takes everything you teach in the book and puts it into practice in a way that automates it and makes it easier to do. Yeah, and I feel like that's what's been missing. That's what has been missing from, you know, the market, if you will, is a plug and play system you can use to actually build a successful coaching business. I'm sure you've dealt with this too.

10:51You write a book, people read the book, but they don't execute on what's in the book. And so what I did with Coach Builder is I built a platform that helps you execute and keeps kind of a checklist of how far you've gone in that execution. So you always have something to go back to. If you want to build your business, you're on step three. So go back and build step three. A lot of people get through a couple steps, and they've already got a wait list, and they don't need the revenue, so they don't finish executing. But all eight steps are there. Talk about the email sequences, because I think this is the daunting part for a lot of people, the thought of building funnels or follow-up emails.

11:25It's so easy. So basically, we give you plug and play lead generators that you can put out there on the internet. You can advertise them on your social media. You can email people and say, hey, you should download this thing. Those capture email addresses. Obviously, you have their email address. You've already got it. But by the way, in our platform, that lead generator is created for you. So five reasons you should hire a coach, things like that. There are several of them. If somebody downloads that lead generator, it triggers an automatic email campaign that reminds them week after week that you are a coach and you are available to be hired as a coach.

12:02That is the number one way I grew my business. Michael, I assume it's the number one way you grew your business. However, if somebody is growing an individual coaching business, they don't know how to use a CRM. They don't know how to write those emails. They don't know what sort of lead generators people actually download. And they don't want to watch a bunch of YouTube videos and then go figure out what CRM to use. So we actually partnered with Keep out of Phoenix, Arizona,$100 million CRM company. And they created a CRM, a white-labeled CRM for us that is specifically for coaches. Super easy to use.

12:32Lead generators are already there. Emails are already there. I would say 20 minutes fiddling around with it, you know how to use it. That system is actually worth millions of dollars in top-line revenue, mainly because nobody hires a coach when you sell them on coaching. People hire a coach when they have a problem that they know a coach can help them solve. That's the only time they're ever going to hire a coach. So the chances of you running into somebody at the supermarket and having a problem that day are very low. The chance of you running into a supermarket and having somebody hear about your lead generator because you told them, or if you just text this number, you can get this lead generator, capturing their email address, emailing them every week, and four months later, they have have that problem and are reminded you are very, very high.

13:21So the longer you keep, to use your part of the world, your fishing analogy, the longer you've got a hook in the water, the more likely you already catch a fish. And the idea of you walking up to a creek and dropping a hook in the water and picking it up and catching a fish is almost zero. So you got to have those hooks in the water at all times. And that's what an automated CRM and email campaign can do. Every coach should have one, one, to build your coaching business. And two, as soon as you do it and build your coaching business, you now have a process that you can take any business owner through to help them build their business because they need to be doing that too.

13:54So I'm assuming that those emails can be modified too. So in other words, you give them a starter template, but I can make it my own with my own phraseology or whatever. Well, and we also have an AI tool inside the Coach Builder platform that allows you to sort of bullet point or put a bunch of stuff in on what you want that email to say, and it will actually write the email for you. Then you can cut and paste that and put it into your CRM. That's very cool. Okay. So if somebody wanted to get started with Coach Builder, what's that process look like? All you need to do is go to coachbuilder.com slash double win.

14:23If you're listening to this podcast, we have some bonuses for you there. We also have an offer for you for just, if you happen to be one of Michael Hyatt's existing coaches, you get a great discount on the Coach Builder platform so that you can use the platform to grow your Michael Hyatt coaching business. So all of that is available at coachbuilder.com. and those bonuses are available at coachbuilder.com slash double win. From there, here's what happens. You actually fill out an application. We just want to make sure that you've got the experience necessary to actually be a pretty good coach and offer value.

14:53And then you get on the phone with one of our team members and they just sort of walk you through what the Coach Builder program looks like, what the costs are, what the opportunities are, and those sorts of things. Every quarter, we're including a new certification. So every three months, a new, usually New York Times bestselling business author or mindset offer or life coach aligned author will hit the platform. So you can get all sorts of certifications inside the program too. Those are optional. Didn't you tell me, but you're kind of hoping this would be like the Netflix of coaching or something?

15:26The amazon.com of coaching certification. That's right. Well, you know, we announced what the coach builder platform was and what it would help people do. We were hoping 200 people would apply in the first 48 hours that we announced. That was our goal. 1 ,900 potential coaches applied. So we knew at that point, oh, this is a big in-demand thing that coaches really need help growing their coaching business. And so we were excited about that. And also your full focus certification is going in. Now this is different than the actual Michael Hyatt certification, which is much more robust. This is just people coaching others on how to use the full focus planner.

16:03And so we have a, a keynote deck that you can take clients through a workbook. You can take clients through to get them introduced to the full focus planner and your certification. We are extremely proud to announce is the first certification we're putting into the platform other than mine. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's the first and we're, we're doubling it with another certification that I'm not allowed to talk about yet because we haven't announced it to the public, but his certification aligns with a book that is currently on the New York Times bestsellers list. I think I know who you're talking about.

16:36I think so too. We'll talk offline. Well, it's very exciting. And I really wish you every success because I think, and the reason I wanted to have you on is I think that this is like the missing piece of the puzzle. This is the thing that most coaches struggle with. They've got the coaching part of it down. They're offering value. They're transforming lives. But they just need more people in their system, and they're not quite sure how to do it. And they didn't get into this business to become a marketing whiz. That's the friction you've taken away. I'll tell you what, though. If you take the eight steps to build a coaching business, if you actually take the steps in the book, I think you know more about building anybody's business than anybody coming out of Harvard business.

17:18I really do. It's not just the book. if you do the thing that you need to do, the eight things to build your own coaching business. You know how to build a car wash business. You know how to get people to go to a dentist. You know how to build a marketing list for a restaurant. You can actually take the value that you've personally experienced it and teach other people to do it for a fee. Yeah, very cool. Well, I had a blast shooting the videos and doing it with you guys. You've got such a first-class team. So, okay, again, if you guys are interested in this and want to check it out, Go to coachbuilder.com slash double win.

17:54And there's some special bonuses that Don has there. Anything you want to say, final word? Well, I do want to ask you something. If somebody gets certified in the full focus certification on the Coach Builder platform, what are they going to be teaching their coaching clients? I know, but how are those coaches going to be able to change lives because they got your certification? Yeah, I think that regardless of what kind of coach you are, the thing you're trying to do is help the client get clarity about what they want. That's number one. And that's kind of under the umbrella of goal achievement.

18:25And then number two, assess exactly where they are today and then build a plan using a system to get there. But the missing piece for most of the coaches I know is they don't have a way for the client to execute against that plan. And the thing the Full Focus Planner does, it's a tool that we actually built for our own clients to help them get what we call the double win, winning at work and succeeding at life. So there's the daily plan, there's the weekly plan, there's the quarterly plan, there's the annual plan, and all that's baked into the planner, but you've got to be able to teach your clients how to use it and hold them accountable, but they will get faster, better results if they're using the planner than if you're just trying to freewheel it and hope they follow through on what they committed to do.

19:08You know, you don't realize, Michael, I use Full Focus Planner. I've got one on my bedside table. I've got two of them actually, because I've got the bigger one. There's a bigger, there's an eight and a half by 11 and then a smaller one. I was with a group of guys recently and somebody asked me to read my obituary because that's a part of the process is sort of writing your obituary. It's an imaginative exercise helping you figure out what you want to do with your life. And I kind of read it. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. And a number of guys contacted me later or one of them came up to me in the room and said, how in the world you've gotten most of that done already?

19:41How in the world have you done this? And it helped me realize that waking up every day and reading your plan and making some notes on how you're executing that plan is basically focusing and knowing what to say no to because you have a plan sounds so simple, but it's the actual key to having an incredibly impactful life without going crazy and without going off the rails. And the reason we built it as a physical planner is because, first of all, we're super techie. You know, I'm into tech in a big way, but I found myself lost in the tech. You know, I'm overwhelmed by the tech sometimes and I lose focus.

20:24And the thing about pulling it out of that digital distraction environment is that it gives you a chance to really focus on what matters most and make sure that you execute. Again, we call it the daily big three every day and don't just get lost and come to the end of the day and go, man, I know I was going between a lot of different apps and a lot of different windows. I'm not quite sure what I accomplished. But when you've got it in your full focus planner and when your clients have it in their full focus planner, it's going to help them stay focused, really concentrate their power and achieve their goals.

20:52Well, you know, I could geek out on this. I know we don't have a lot of time, but another thing they were amazed at is every day between four and five o 'clock, I'm home. I'm present with my family. My phone is nowhere near me. That is also the case all weekend, Saturday and Sunday. I'm home. And they're looking around going, wait, you built a company. You write bestselling books. How are you doing that? And the reality is I'm doing it all before 11 a.m. Because I know my priorities. I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm not doing so many of the things that you're doing that you don't realize you're even saying yes to things that you should be saying no to.

21:29And honestly, you shouldn't even hear about those opportunities. Everything is about full focus. Everything is about full focus. If you are focused, you know what to say no to. My wife and daughter like me. My bills are paid. My team respects me. I'm not perfect. I've eaten too many Reese's peanut butter cups to say I'm perfect. But I will say, my gosh, the process really works. It was on my dream list when I dreamed up Coach Builder to have full focus. I thought it would take a year for me to go to you and say, look, this is what we've done for other thought leaders. But I was so honored when you first heard it.

22:05You said, my people are going to love this. We got to do it. We want to partner with you. So I'm very, very grateful. Well, thank you. You're one of my dearest friends. And it's a blast together. And I, man, I hope it goes gangbusters. So again, coachbuilder.com. Slash double win. Thanks, Don. Thank you.

22:26Thank you.