2098 – Innovative Client Attraction Strategies for Service-Based Businesses with Profit Ladder’s Jay Melone

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1:05With us right now, it's Jay Malone. Jay, you are the founder and CEO of Profit Ladder, where you also serve as a profit engineer. Your website is profitladder.net. Jay, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh. Good to be here. Yes, for sure. Well, give us an overview of what Profit Ladder is. What do you do? Um, so 15 years ago, I started a consulting business and I was selling high ticket services and really struggled to get in front of my clients. So it was an 18 to 20, 24 month slog of lots of prospecting and pitching and sending proposals that often went ghosted, all the fun stuff.

1:46Um, and so it took me a while, but some of us, Jay, as you're describing that are already getting that yucky feeling in our tummy. I mean, a lot of us, I think, are hearing that and going, well, I think that's what you're just supposed to do. But then there are those of us who hear that and like, oh, God, I don't want to go back to those days. Yeah, no, it's true. And you just follow the playbook that you see everybody else following, which is I just got to pound the pavement and just do all the things and be on all the social channels until, you know, like burnout hits you over the head and you don't know what where it came from.

2:19Yeah. And Jay, part of that too, I think is engaging in activity that feels uncomfortable, particularly when we look at the way that we've been told to market or sell. And that runs contrary to maybe the way that we would want to be invited to do business. Right. And so because you've got this, this we're out of alignment, right, with this integrity in how we want to be treated in the world. So doing that, that that really can learn to burn. I don't mean to interrupt you here, but I just want to make sure that somebody doesn't take casually what you just said, because that knocks out, in my opinion, a lot of very good professionals.

3:05Yeah. No, agreed. It's you follow the playbook that you see other people doing. And a lot of it, like a lot of the books on how to market and sell are all about really hustling hard and fanatical prospecting and making all the all the calls. And it took me my sort of like falling into my own pitfalls to realize that there's another way to do it. but it took me so long and, you know, like reinventing the wheel when it comes to marketing and selling the services that you offer, you feel like kind of fish out of water. So it took me quite a while for, to discover that there's a different way to build a business and to attract the right people that you actually want to work with, as opposed to chasing people that don't really want or need what you're selling.

3:55All right. So everyone listening right now, We've all pulled up our chairs. We want to know what are the secrets. So if you could share with us maybe your thesis and, you know, kind of some of the most important steps that might improve, you know, again, as business professionals, how we're showing up if our goal is to serve and connect with others, particularly clients. What's working today, Jay? Yeah. So, you know, for the, for at least the service-based business owners that are, that are tuning in, the way I think about it is building a reverse flywheel. So you, you have an offer, you have a service that you do, you feel good about it.

4:38It helps people solve a very specific problem. You have an avatar in mind that you can really help, but to, to educate them and persuade them and to convince them that you're the person worth working with is you can either do that manually, which is what we talked about. And for some people, that's going to work well. For me, what I discovered is that I could take parts of my work and chunk it out into formats that allow them to do it on their own. So for example, for a long time, I was doing product strategy work for large corporates. And I had these innovation frameworks that I used in the work I did.

5:15And so what I did is I extracted them from me having to show up and do them. And I packaged them into these toolkits where I taught the framework. And then I gave the customer all the resources and tools and frameworks and templates that I used to show up and do my job. And now instead of paying me 30, 40,$50 ,000 to work with you over several months, you could have access to all of my stuff for 200 bucks, 300 bucks, but you don't get me, but you have all of my expertise packaged, have at it, you get as far as you can get with it. And then when you want to bring me in, now you have access. You've seen how I work.

5:56You've seen my methods. You've learned about the expertise that I have. And for some of those folks, they're going to say, you know what? I really appreciated this toolkit. Jay clearly knows what he's talking about. when the next project comes. And I don't quite trust myself to do the stuff that he does for a living. I'm going to call Jay. He's now my go-to expert because he gave me all of these things. He minimized my time to value and he got me going in the right direction. Yeah. Okay. So if we're thinking about customer personas, right? Because what you described obviously is going to appeal to some people.

6:31Other people might look at that offer and say, well, I have no interest in DIY. I don't have the bandwidth for that. I don't want to do that work. I don't want to become an expert in it. Right. So, so people then sort or they'll sort themselves based on. So I think what you're suggesting here is like, let's say that you're a consultant or you're a coach and you could, and correct me if I'm wrong here. So you could have a site where you just talk about your high level services and then just call it a day. Right. And then the other option might be like, hey, you might not be ready to talk to me.

7:05You might not be ready to talk about coaching or you certainly may not be ready to make an investment there. Or at least that's what you feel right now at your stage in your journey with me. So here's a little, I mean, it's kind of a taste, right? So they can at least earn a lot more proximity with you while they're gaining value, a much smaller risk for them. Is that kind of how I've described it? Does that sound accurate? Yeah. Yeah. The metric that I like to keep in mind when I'm kind of like stepping back from my premium offer to a thing that I can get into my customer's hands is time to value.

7:47So to hire me takes a little bit of time. We have to align our schedules. Maybe you have to sign a contract, maybe you have to make a deposit, then you have to figure out when all the things can start and you got to get your team involved. So if I can take elements of that work and chunk it down into pieces that you can buy online or download online and immediately start using yourself. So I've considerably minimized your risk of hiring me. Maybe I'm the wrong person. So spending 10, 20,$30 ,000 on the wrong person isn't a great idea. Good, good, good to know. It's good to know. So if we're being empathic to who they are, this is great for them so we can help them from making a mistake because, you know, you may not be the right person for them.

8:33And that's ultimately kind of up to them. So, but they won't, they won't ever know that until they're able to spend the requisite time with you to come to that conclusion. So now we're kind of, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be, but I love this. I love this topic, right? So we're kind of laying out a path for them that's going to lead to an outcome. And for those of us who are the service providers, Jay, you might get some people say, well, wait a minute, I might lose a big client that's just going to buy my stuff at$200 or whatever, and then they don't want to upgrade with me. But I think what I hear you saying, and this is what I'm saying, that's a good thing.

9:16Exactly. You get the right people leaning in and the other people that just want to do it themselves. If you've charged a couple hundred bucks, that's what you got from them. And that's what the relationship will be. But now if you still help them solve that problem, maybe they still become advocates of what you're doing. I didn't hire Jay, but I used his toolkit. Maybe you could talk with him about the service that he offers behind it. and like so when you're charging for this thing too you're almost creating a vehicle that is for profit marketing you're putting your tools in your customers hands they're evaluating it which is way more effective case studies testimonials they're all good stuff but it's really hard for that prospective person to know to really see what it's going to be like to work with you they can come to your webinar but they won't know that it's for them and that they were able to take your stuff and apply it to the things that they're trying to do.

10:09So you really do solve both your clients and your problems at the same time. And now you've also got this new stream of revenue coming in. Yeah. And, you know, to someone who's listening to our conversation, and I do hear this a lot, and I'd like your take on this. You did not use the word e-course to describe these resources that you make available. And my speculation is that's a little bit intentional because we're, it sounds, my guess is based on looking at your website, it's more than just, you know, you're going to slap eight videos and charge a couple hundred dollars for it. Yeah. You know, it really depends what you're trying to do.

10:50So I love to have these live and in-person sessions. I like to like package content. I like to give swipe files of templates and worksheets, whatever it is that lets the person try the expertise that I have, try it themselves and try to apply it to the work that they're trying to do. Whatever the format is, sometimes it's an email-based course. The online course space definitely has, there's a dirty, there's sort of like a dirty feeling to it because there's a lot of snake oil. There's a lot of crap out there. So I try to, when I work with clients, I try to really help them keep in mind the highest value you can give to your clients in the shortest amount of time.

11:34Yeah. Well, okay. So let's say that someone has been working as a leadership consultant and they're like, wow, you know, this might actually be helpful for me. Like, what are the elements to starting to put something like this together? Like, how do we know, you know, what to put into this toolkit or this resource guide, or, you know, how do we know what to price it. Can you give us maybe some best practices around this? Yeah. So this is this reverse flywheel that I think about. So right at the point where your prospective client is ready to hire you, what I try to do is take a couple steps back from that.

12:11So where are they at? What are the problems that they're stuck on right before they realize that they need to hire you for the bigger problem or the next problem? Or what are some of the goals that they're trying to get to that they're stuck on. So this is where your offer can simplify that process. It can solve some of their earlier problems, their smaller problems. So sometimes a course is great for that. Sometimes an ebook, a piece of content, some templates that they do on their own. And the prices in there, I try to keep them as low ticket as possible. This isn't about what I try to stress to the people I work with.

12:48The passive revenue is there, semi-passive passive revenue is there. The biggest upswing that you're looking for is this sort of automated sales funnel that you can create. And if you get greedy and charge too much for those gateway sort of entry offers, you're going to lose people. You also lose friction. That's not the purpose of, it's not like, it's kind of like a book, right? Your purpose, I mean, generally for most of us, right? You're not going to make a bunch of money on this course. Exactly. It's almost like you're basically just treating this as really a service to the guests to help them make a better decision.

13:25So we're going to give them as much value as we can. I'm sorry, I'm taking over here, but I'm excited about this. I like it. And I've seen some iterations of this, but I'm sorry, Jay, let me let you continue. No, no, no. You're spot on. And I think the other thing that I try to stress to people is you're taking it a couple steps back. You're removing yourself from the process so that you can go and serve your clients, do deeper work, do higher quality work, work with bigger clients, whatever it is. But what you're doing is you're taking time away from things that you would have otherwise spent continually prospecting, marketing, selling that work.

14:01And so there's a temptation then to, if I'm going to give that stuff and I'm going to package it and it's going to be a couple hundred dollars, then I'm going to hold things back. I'm going to make this thing. It's a 10 out of 10. When you work with me, I'm going to make it a seven out of 10. And I think that's a major pitfall. I heard you say a couple of things that make me know that you align with this, Josh. It's like, give them your best stuff. You're not going to lose the right customers who want to work with you. So I try to give away my best stuff. I try to make it feel like the metric, sort of the subconscious metric I have is how the hell did Jay give me all of this stuff for free or for a couple hundred dollars?

14:42Like he, it must be, there must be so much more beyond it. If I go to hire him, I want that person to feel like they got 10 times the value. Yeah. Why do you, why do you, you know, it sounds like the price point for this, you, you, you've mentioned a couple hundred dollars as opposed to like$7 or whatever, right? Yeah. Well, there's something that maybe there is a$5 thing that you can come up with, a template, something very simple. But if you're stepping back from a premium offer, it's not about making it feel cheap. It's about making it feel more accessible, affordable enough that they know if they're going to step into working with you and spend five or six figures, the jump is there.

15:28I think it's like psychologically getting somebody to spend a couple hundred dollars. They're much more willing to spend$10 ,000 on you. I love this. Okay. So Jay, tell me about how you work with people. Tell me about your company and when people engage with you, obviously, I would imagine at Profit Ladder, you've got your own kind of tiers of engagement. Give us the lay of the land. Yep. So right now I'm working one-on-one with all of my clients and I step them through this process. We start with the work that they love doing and we work it through until we've identified the sort of like this wedge offer that will start to turn their flywheel.

16:09And we go through a set of one-on-one conversations with them. And then I wind up leaving them with a customized launch plan. So I can take everything that we've identified in that work together and bring that offer to life. And I'm actually about to announce a free training where I'm basically opening up my playbook to everybody that wants to try this on themselves, try this for themselves. It'll be a little bit different in the sense that we don't do the one-on-one together, but you'll be in a community of other people that are excited to start to – the term that I talk a lot about is productizing.

16:44So taking that service that you do and turning it into a productized offer that starts to spin that flywheel. Yeah. I'm sorry, Jay, I should have asked this earlier because we kind of touched on this, but the scope of, you know, again, this, what do you call it? What's the term for this? What do you call it? Productizing. I mean, sorry, productizing, but like when you put all of your resources and worksheets and workbooks and all that together in a thing, right, that you're going to sell for a couple of hundred dollars, do you want to set kind of some finite limits on what's included in there?

17:21Or, you know, do you not want to make a mistake where like, let's say you have a repository of like 30, 40, 50 videos or something like that. My concern would be that someone might buy that and say, well, I haven't even gotten close to scratching the surface of this. So they never take that next step because they don't complete what was included in that smaller package. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a really good point. Um, there's a temptation. So the work I do, um, in the consulting work would take six months. So the package six month worth of work into a course, you're, you're killing them. So just chunk that thing down into something that someone on their own with limited expertise compared to what you have can finish in a weekend or a week long, something like this.

18:08So three to five modules, you know, and so like, I have a way of breaking down the sort of like big arc, the sort of the outcome that you're trying to have this person achieve by the end of getting through your content. And then you can break down the milestones within there. And then the lessons within that thing, until you have something that somebody can get through in a handful of hours. And it's still like gets them to a finish line that they feel good about. And now they're ready to sort of take that next step. But if you try to send them on a mission where they're going to have to spend months getting through your stuff without access to you, it's probably going to overwhelm them.

18:44Yeah. Okay. Well, Jay, to our friend that's been listening here, let's give them some stuff to do because I suspect that you've got some good resources available. Let's lay out next steps for our friend. Yeah. So I have a guide that Josh, I'll give it to you. You can hand it out. It takes you through five steps so that you can identify, really get familiar with productizing and step back from your premium offer until you have what I call a wedge offer that starts to spin that flywheel. So there's five steps that anyone can do on their own. It's really like identifying the right service that you want to turn into a productized offer and then breaking it down into the North star of what that thing will do for your, for the end customer, where they're going to be by the end of it, breaking that down and outlining the course material, and then ultimately building that and shipping it and launching it.

19:36So there's five simple steps that I take them through. It's a step-by-step breakdown guide that they can do over the course of a day or a weekend. And that is, go ahead and share the URL for that. uh well you go to profit ladder.net obviously yeah um i'll share if it makes sense i'll share put it in the show notes the direct link yep it's a google doc uh make a copy of it have at it use it yourself of course if you get stuck and you want my help i can jump in and we can do it together brilliant brilliant profit ladder.net is the website uh jay malone obviously you're the founder, CEO, and again, the profit engineer.

20:19Jay, great conversation. Thank you so much for this. Thanks, Josh.

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