How John Meese's Strategy Starts with a High-Ticket Program to Clarify Value

[00:00:00] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale of Business Podcast. My name is Hector Santhe Esteban, and I am your host. Today, our special guest is a good friend, Mr. John, me. He's a bestselling author and the founder of Sell Your Smarts and we're gonna talk about how to scale a coaching or a consulting or a really an online educational information business of any sort.

[00:00:20] Hector: So John, thanks for hanging out with us today.

[00:00:27] Hector: I expanded a little bit because I think what you talk about is, is much more than just coaching. And because I had this weird aversion to, um, like being a coach and like I, I just, I, I have this strange aversion to it, and so for the longest time I would never consider myself that, but. Whether you're a consultant or you're selling information or courses, I mean, all education is sort of this, um, you know, this umbrella that I think your expertise lends itself to.

[00:00:55] Hector: And so anyone who has some sort of, um. And so, you know, advanced knowledge, expertise that can help somebody, um, I think you can really, uh, you can really help. So what I'd love to get into, we're gonna get, what I love about your stuff is it's very tactical, but I think your, your story and, and also how and why you got into it is pretty important too.

[00:01:14] Hector: So why don't you catch us up on some of the sort of key, you know, points along the way. And then we will talk about some of the, the things that you do community and your client.

[00:03:13] Hector: You know, there's so many things and I, I don't know that I've shared this with you personally, but I really enjoy how, um, you have, uh. Enabled me to, to sort of go, uh, to, to pursue that, right? Because I've always thought that like, what, what do, what, what do I know? What, how good is it? You know what, I know if it's not like a thing, right?

[00:03:36] Hector: It's not a widget. It's not some product. It's not even, you know, and so you've really, um, what I think helped, uh, invite people to, to share that and, and to turn it into, uh, you know, something for themselves. I think what's also really interesting is we probably share the same, uh, I hate playing the same level over again, so we were of similar age and it was back in the days when, you know, video game consoles would like, you know, they would unplug or you wouldn't get to the checkpoint or you didn't have the memory card or whatever, and like having to start over.

[00:04:10] Hector: I remember just being like, fine, I'm going outside. You know, I gotta play it over. I'm gonna go to the park.

[00:05:22] Hector: What I think would be great for a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, and especially a lot of people that I work with, they are exactly that. They've been in an industry for decades, 10, 20 years, and all of that knowledge has just been accrued in their head. And, and I think a lot of them underplay that, that the, that knowledge and, and to your point, that wisdom.

[00:05:45] Hector: Uh, but then I think also. They don't necessarily see what's next. They go, well, this is how I've been doing my job and this is what's helped me close deals, or this has helped me help us do what you know, up until this point. And they think that that's all that it is. Um, what, what are they missing or what are they not seeing about, uh, those years of experience and especially maybe, maybe, you know, technology and, and the internet maybe, you know, that sort of opened up some things, but I just, I feel like a lot more people are coming online to the opportunity of utilizing and leveraging that to your, you know, your vocab wisdom, uh, for, for good, right?

[00:06:24] Hector: Whether that's your own personal gain or starting a brand or business or whatever it may be.

[00:08:02] Hector: Can I throw the counter example? 'cause I've, I always get that. But then what, what might you say to someone who goes, well, what's, what's the value if I've got all the street sparks? What's the value of booksmart?

[00:10:30] Hector: Do you, do you think that there's a, the, the large breakdown of people is in like the getting started phase where they, they miss it because they, they're not seeing, uh, they're not either not focusing on the right sort of. Audience or customer or the, the subject matter is wrong or do you think that a lot of them, they get started and then they miss it in the details and they miss it in the pricing and the offer, the packaging, obviously both are, are important.

[00:10:58] Hector: Is there, um, is there one worth focusing on more? Uh, if someone is sort of, um, you know, thinking about this.

[00:14:28] Hector: Well, John, I wish I would've known you 10 years ago.

[00:14:34] Hector: Well, well may maybe that's what, maybe that's what I needed. I needed to talk to 2025 John in 2015, uh, because I remember selling my $17 ebook and going, I'm gonna go broke because you're trying to do this. Um, so, so fantastic. Uh, and, and what I, what I really love about that model is that it, it's clear, it's, it's attainable and, um.

[00:15:00] Hector: And I don't wanna say it's easy because by no means is, is is it easy? But it is simple. It's like recipe, right? It's like, it's like baking, you know, bread or making a cake. It's like, you know, there's, there's plenty of places to go wrong and it's bound to, you know, end up a Pinterest fail. And also if you follow these guidelines, like you're more than likely to, you know, be successful.

[00:15:20] Hector: And I, I think that that's really important.

[00:16:59] Hector: One of the things that I think is pretty, probably pretty typical for people is they're going, yeah, but I like, yeah, but I'm, I do this, or I'm in this industry or like I am, whatever. Are there examples of people who are maybe, maybe might fit that what, what a lot of people might say doesn't fit this mold and they were sort of able to make it.

[00:19:51] Hector: Yeah, it was probably worth noting at the beginning, uh, because, and I'm sad that I didn't, but the, the idea of, you know, the curse of knowledge, right? Is this idea of the, you know, that we don't value what we know and we just think that everybody knows. But I think to your point, you know, you really mentioned that there is somebody right now who needs it more, more than ever before.

[00:20:12] Hector: For us, it's just like, to us it's common knowledge. Right? Or common sense. We might even think it. And, and to them it, it's life changing sort of.

[00:21:29] Hector: I'm curious about the paths. Like, okay, so, uh, or the evolution and if there is, you know, okay, so if this group coaching program is phase one, is there a phase two, is there a phase three? Is it just bigger, more, uh, or how do you see it, uh, it progressing or evolving for these people once they've kind of got past this initial.

[00:25:28] Hector: I'm gonna try and somehow send this through the, the portals to my younger self. Say, li, listen to this because I, I made the mistake of, you know, exactly that. Trying to scale a, a continuity membership program and running all.

[00:26:02] Hector: One of the other things that I've, that's been interesting sort of being in and around the information space is seeing the progression. And, you know, back, back 10 years ago when I got into it, it was like you said, all about the eBooks. And uh, then, then sort of, you know, maybe five years ago, uh, I saw a lot of the course creators, um, creating SaaS products and software sort of tools, uh, expanding.

[00:26:29] Hector: And then now AI has sort of evolved and, you know, even our, our good friend, you know, there's, there's dust in ai, right? You know, or there's Hermo AI or whatever it is. And so. I think maybe, uh, I'd love to just get your insights on how the, um, the evolution of the, the medium itself is sort of evolving and, and if, if you think that it is changing or, or iterating or, and, and how someone might be prepared for that so that way they don't look up, you know, in three or six months ago, this is, this is what John told me to do, but not knowing that was kind of, you know, going somewhere else.

[00:27:36] Hector: You that one? Yeah.

[00:31:41] Hector: Not much. Not a lot. Small, small, small, uh, shifts. Um, John, I've got two questions for you. Uh, the first, uh, two more. Um, the first is if people want to find out more about you, uh, any of the books, any of the things that you're involved with, where's the best place for people?

[00:32:51] Hector: Amazing. We'll link that up in the show notes as always for you all. And my last question for you, John, is, in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling?

[00:33:43] John: Oh, it's my pleasure. This is my jam. I love talking about this stuff. So happy to be here and happy to help.

[00:35:05] John: Yeah, sure. Happy to. Um. Yeah. So these days, I mean, everything really stems from our families. Like we've made our family team mission, like even our kids know it. That is to steward wisdom. Like that's what we, that's how we make decisions about where we're gonna spend our time. The steward wisdom, and we define that as to collect, protect, and multiply knowledge plus experience, right?

[00:35:24] John: That's how we combine, that's how we define that. So to Steward wisdom. So my core business, cellular Smarts is just an extension of that, of saying that the reality is the world is filled with billions of people who have spent decades acquiring wisdom in their field of expertise. Whether that's, uh, helping people become healthier, wealthier, happier, uh, to produce podcasts.

[00:35:42] John: Pick a random example, um, and whatever that is, right? So whatever those, those reasons are that they've spent all this time doing this, what most people do is it best they share that in one-to-one interactions with a handful of clients or team members. Or family members or friends. And then at some point they either are forcibly retired by death or they choose to retire and their wisdom just kind of fades and dies with them.

[00:36:06] John: And the rest of us are left just, I mean, in the dark grasping and trying to recreate the wheel from scratch. And it just like drives me crazy. I mean, I don, I don't like doing the same thing like twice, uh, and have it like start over from scratch every time I like building off of things. And there's so many people that have so much experience.

[00:36:23] John: So like you're listening to this, you know, if you've got, you've got at least a decade of experience in some field of your life, right? And so my core business is focused on helping you take that and to build a business around that. So to sell your smarts without losing your soul or your Saturdays. And so, um, that's been a lot of fun.

[00:36:38] John: I've done that for about 12 years now. Uh, when I started it was just more about just like how to blog and how to make money blogging, but that world has changed a lot. So yes, over time that's included courses and membership sites and podcasts and YouTube. These days, a lot of my focuses are on group coaching, but the core theme of online education is.

[00:37:49] John: Oh

[00:37:54] John: yeah.

[00:38:00] John: You're giving me, you're giving me some trauma flashbacks right now. I remember we had on the Nintendo Entertainment System, on the NES, we had a McDonald's game that, you know, Vanessa was on the sake of Genesis, whichever that one that was on it was a McDonald's video game, which sounds like a dumb idea, but it was actually really, really fun.

[00:38:17] John: And you had like, you could play as like grimace and you're trying to like get, I don't even remember the character's name, but. There was no safes. And so yes, we did. That was a game where like, I remember we got really close to finish the game one time, and then somebody tripped over the court and it was just, just this traumatic experience.

[00:38:32] John: I'm like, we have to start over. But yeah, so like, life is like that. I mean, as a, it boggles my mind that like, as a, so like as a son, as a father, as an entrepreneur, um, as a, like, as a husband, like all these different roles I play in my life, there's no like instruction manual, right? Like, and so a lot of my.

[00:38:51] John: Focus of my own life has been trying to like find the instruction manual or if there isn't one to learn how to write it. And so even my books are actually, usually they're like the missing manual to some part of business that I feel like someone else should have written it, but they didn't. So I wrote it and so that's worked out pretty well.

[00:39:15] John: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:08] John: Yeah.

[00:40:12] John: Yeah. So I mean, the, the first thing, it all comes down to usefulness, candidly, right? So there are plenty of people that say like, okay, I have wisdom now. I just wanna like. Vomit it all over the internet and hope it helps somebody and like that's not what I'm talking about. Right? Like there are people that come candidly like that come to the conclusion, they're like, oh, I have all this wisdom, I wanna share it.

[00:40:28] John: And they just kind of share everything. And like as much as there's a good like desire under the hood there to like help people, that's, you have to do this extra work of figuring out where is what I know you useful to solving a real problem. Like who are the real people that have a real problem that I have the real solution to?

[00:40:45] John: Right? That's like the core of, that's honestly just like the core of any business, but specifically an online education business. You have to get even more, uh, clear on that because that's all you got. That's all you got is a re you know, you're helping real people solve a real problem with some sort of real, uh, solution.

[00:41:00] John: So one of the things that I first recommend is usually to take a wisdom inventory, um, because I'll just define wisdom a little bit further here. Um, wisdom is both knowledge and experience. And so what a lot of people have is a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience. We're looking for those overlap.

[00:41:14] John: And so lemme explain what this means. If you have a lot of knowledge about something, but you have not done it. You have what? You have book smarts. If you have a lot of experience about something, but you haven't studied yet, you have street smarts. Wisdom is where you have both done it and studied it.

[00:41:29] John: Right? You have both knowledge and experience. And so that is like a unique overlap, right? And so there's, there's we, part of this also comes from me, from my college experience where I had all this professors who are teaching me these things that they've never done. And that was really frustrating, right?

[00:41:41] John: Because I was like, well, what about this? They're like, well, I don't know. I've never been outside the classroom. You're like, well, that's not useful, right? Please.

[00:41:59] John: Yeah. I think in this case it's your ability to understand not just that something worked, but why it worked. Because for example, there's actually a lot of books and a lot of podcasts that are just somebody sharing their street sports. So like, I did this thing, I ran this, uh, I was on TikTok and the first six months after it was in the US and I went viral and I'm massively successful and if you buy my program, it can be like me.

[00:42:20] John: But when you actually start digging into it, you realize they actually don't dunno why they were successful. They just like happened to like land on a viral moment at the right time. And that's just not useful, right? So when we're talking about knowledge transfer, we really are talking about wisdom transfer.

[00:42:32] John: You have to have both. Right? But on the flip side of that, there's plenty of podcasts and business books that are just an idea that somebody had and they wrote a whole book on it, and hit a whole course on a book that, on an idea they've never tried, right? There's so much of this out there. Um, you'll start to see it now where you're like, wait a minute, is that just book smarts or is that just street smarts?

[00:42:49] John: Where there's books and there's podcasts and there's courses on, in, on both of those categories. What you see is like the, the few who are really excellent at genuinely transforming lives, um, which is honestly the core of the longevity of your business, right? Anybody can start a business and hit a viral moment and make a buck, you know, in a short term.

[00:43:07] John: But to really build a business that's gonna last for a long period of time, that's gonna thrive, that's gonna be resilient. You have to have both lived experience and also an an example of or, and also understand why that works. Now, the examples I gave just now are like money making or things like that, but the same thing's true in health, right?

[00:43:24] John: If you sit down with a, with a personal trainer and he's like, all right, I'm gonna teach you how to get rock hard abs, and you look down at his dad bod, you know you're gonna have some questions. You're gonna be like, I'm not sure you're qualified. Right? What you want is like, you want your teacher to be a role model for you, um, of something that you're aspiring for in that category.

[00:43:43] John: If I sit down with my financial planner and I say, Hey, I've got some debt I wanna get rid of. Can you help me come up with a plan? I'm just like, drowning in this debt over here. And the financial planner's like, oh man, me too. Run, get a different financial planner, right? Like, it doesn't matter if they got a degree in finance, if they're not actually living it out, then that's not who you need to learn from.

[00:44:01] John: Um, so that, that's really the core premise of everything I do. You know? And then we get into like what products, what price points, like sales and marketing. But I think it has to start with understanding why. Um, or we're just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

[00:44:41] John: Yeah.

[00:44:52] John: Yes, so I love this question. Um. I got for a few years to be at the seat of running a membership cycle platform university where we had over a hundred thousand subscribers. We had over 5,000 paying customers who were all smart professionals. Most of 'em were making six figures in their day job, um, or their poor business as a therapist or an attorney or, um, uh.

[00:45:15] John: I guess those are two examples that came to mind. But, you know, like, or, or an author or a coach or a leader or an executive or, or, or just whatever their role was, they were already clearly smart people who, who've spent a lot of time in their field. And we were guided through the process of how to build an online education business.

[00:45:29] John: This is back in 2017. And what I found was crazy to me was we were teaching them tactics that we knew worked. Um, but out of the thousands of paying customers, we had dozens of case studies of people who succeeded. Now, the dozens of case studies looked nice, but I knew the math and I was like, this is, this is, there's bad math here, right?

[00:45:48] John: The vast majority of people are coming in here and they're not succeeding. And so I started studying that and what I discovered was that the vast majority of people who start an online education business were like, all right, I wanna teach. The reason why they fail is what I call death by a thousand eBooks.

[00:46:03] John: So they start outta the gate. Maybe they have a good idea, maybe they have a bad idea of what they think their topic is about what they're gonna talk about and teach online. But they start. By selling the lowest price product. So you start by selling a $17 ebook or a $97 course, and that's their first product.

[00:46:18] John: It kind of makes sense, right? You're like, I'm new to this business model. I'm gonna start with the lowest price thing. But at this point in your business, you have the smallest size audience you will ever have, and you're selling the product that requires the most amount of sales to be financially viable.

[00:46:33] John: And so what happens is. The vast majority of people either go broke or burn out and give up before they reach a point where they're making significant income from what they're doing. And these other, the thing, if I sell you an ebook for $17, that sort of, kind of maybe helps you with something in your life, you might pay $17 for it.

[00:46:51] John: You might not read it, you might not put it into practice, but I can get away with having a really kind of like a murky message at $17. So the flip side of that is if we come outta the gate and say, okay, step one. Your step one is your goal is to get five clients to pay you $2,000 in a group coaching program where you're gonna help them over 60 days.

[00:47:11] John: We have just raised the stakes, and so now you have to solve a problem that's worth solving for a premium, right? And you have to go directly to those people and talk to them. Not just send emails or post things on LinkedIn, but actually talk to humans to find out where's the pain that they're feeling right now that you can help them with.

[00:47:27] John: And that is a shortcut to getting so clear in where your value is, of how you can help people. And also a shortcut to generating massive, not only impact, but also massive income. And so that's what I do now, is I help people build sold out group coaching programs because that is the bridge where it's like, if you can do that, now all of a sudden we get to the point where you're earning $10,000 per month, group coaching 90 minutes per week.

[00:47:48] John: Well, yeah, now you could go create books, membership sites, courses from a place of abundance. 'cause you have clarity on where you're seeing the impact you're having in people's lives. And on top of that. Uh, beyond that, you're also on not just having an impact on their lives, but you're also making good money and allows you to buy back your time for whatever else you've been doing.

[00:48:04] John: So that's really the core of my business now, but it took about a decade for me to figure that out.

[00:48:15] John: Well, 10 years ago, I didn't know what I know now, so, but I mean,

[00:48:23] John: yeah.

[00:48:30] John: Yes.

[00:48:40] John: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:47] John: No. Yes.

[00:49:04] John: Exactly. Yeah. Well, and I should say there are some people who've done it the hard way, right? There are some people who did figure out how to make it past that line where they build a business out the back of $17 eBooks, then $50 courses, then eventually like a $50 month membership. And what I found now is also like I also get a joy of working with those people where now I'll get to come in and somebody's like, Sean Block's a good example.

[00:49:25] John: His business was doing $600,000 a year when we started working together, and he'd been building his business online for over a decade. And so he is making money off of memberships and courses. But I taught him this principle and he is like, wait, are you think this the hard way? I'm like, I mean, yeah, but let's just see.

[00:49:38] John: Right. So we crafted a group coaching program, introduced it to the exact same audience. And he did, uh, he had six sold out cohorts back to back outta the gate. And so he immediately did over six figures that he added to the business in the first nine months that he was running this business model. Um, I take it back.

[00:49:56] John: No, it was, I remember him saying he crossed a hundred thousand dollars in the first six months, um, of this, of adding this to his business, like just a hundred thousand dollars just from group coaching. Um, and so like what's been fun now is I've found that like if someone's kind of in this transition of going from.

[00:50:10] John: I have wisdom in my field, but now I'm trying to build this on online education business. A sold out group coaching program is the way to go. But if you've already built a group coaching or not even a group coaching business, if you built an online education business, you're already doing good money. Uh, you know, then if we tack on a sold out group coaching program, it has this additive effect.

[00:50:25] John: And so sold Coach Club has become like my core program where I spend the most of my time just helping people do that. Um, let's, let's create the sales and marketing machine to scale up that program. Um, so now I've got clients who do over seven figures like Dustin Reman, who introduced us. I mean, he does over seven figures from following that playbook.

[00:50:50] John: Yeah.

[00:51:04] John: Oh sure. I mean it, it's, let me think. I've got, I mean, at this point, I've got a couple hundred sold out coaches in my community, so we can pick a niche and kind of find somebody in that category. But one of my news clients that's just in the process of selling out his first program right now. His was focused on, um, helping, uh, his name is Chris and he's focused on helping people build healthy, how do I say this?

[00:51:26] John: Lead healthy families. He's helping, he's trying to help dads lead healthy families. It's one of those things where it's like, at first glance, you're like, I mean, that's a good idea, but like, I don't know if I pay off, off, off the top of your head. You're like, I don't know if I pay for a coaching program for that.

[00:51:38] John: But what we're looking for in any offer, we're not looking for a hundred percent of your market to buy a premium product. Right. What we're looking for is. You know, so once you get to the point where you have an audience, uh, and or if you have an audience already, we're looking at that email list and we're saying, okay, if this is your target client, within that broad group of your target client, there's this target client bullseye, which is that in or 10% of someone who right now in their life today, they need you more than they've ever needed you before.

[00:52:07] John: And you can have a massive impact on their life. You can help them radically change something in their, and then you can invite them to work with you. So I've seen people do this for fitness programs. I've seen people do this for, um, I have one of my clients, Monique, she's in France and she's a vocal coach.

[00:52:19] John: Um, and so she developed something for people that wanna, you know, kind of upgrade their singings, you know, so wanna kind of launch their professional singing career. Um, I've got people who train, uh, like Melissa, one of my clients, she has a program to help busy moms and dads, uh, start their own bookkeeping business.

[00:52:35] John: They can quit their day jobs, spend more time with their kids. So it's like she's teaching you bookkeeping, right? Like how to actually like invoice a client how to do bookkeeping in one hour a week for, for a business owner. But she's really teaching you something bigger. She's identified. That's like, yeah, I mean, Hector, you and I could take a bookkeeping class right now and might not be that valuable to us, right?

[00:52:53] John: It would probably be like you, you know, something where it's like, I don't really want to do that actually. Um, but she's found, hey, there are these families who are at this point where they're not spending as much time with their kids as they want. Both mom and dad are working full time. And if they can take, go through this program, they can learn how to create their own bookkeeping business where they only need a dozen clients to pay their bills and then they can quit their day job.

[00:53:14] John: Right? Like that's a massive transformation. Taking that skill where she's been like running a bookkeeping agency and been a bookkeeper for this point for 15 years, that's easy for her to teach, but for them, that's life changing, right? And so that's what we're looking for is like, what's that point?

[00:53:27] John: What's that inflection point where your skill completely transform someone's life or their health, or their career or their relationships?

[00:53:55] John: Yeah.

[00:54:04] John: Exactly. So that's what we gotta look for, right? And so that's why I like that, you know, everyone's probably heard about having a target client, right? That's not a new idea, but saying, okay, but if it is a target, right? Like if it is like a dart target board target, like there's a bullseye. Now you're gonna have some people that come along that aren't the bullseye, right?

[00:54:19] John: They might be close, you can still serve them. But if you hyperfocus on the bullseye in creating a transformational group coaching program just for those people, then you're going, you're, you're gonna become so much more magnetic to them. You're gonna track them. They're gonna say, oh my gosh, you see me, you see exactly what I need, I can help you.

[00:54:35] John: Um, and so that's kind of what we're looking for. Um, so yeah, people, I've seen coaches build businesses. There's primarily three markets, right? There's health. Wealth and relationships. Those are the primarily three markets, but those are pretty broad, right? So wealth includes personal finance, but it also includes your career or your business, right?

[00:54:53] John: There's a lot of stuff that's in there. Um, and with health, you could focus on physical health or mental health or, and with relationships, you could focus on your friendships or your spouse or your future spouse or your kids. These are the three primary categories where people buy educational programs.

[00:55:24] John: Yeah.

[00:55:33] John: I'm so glad you asked. 'cause after all, we're here talking you about how to scale, right? And group coaching, if you're involved with it, does have some built-in skill limits. Now the leverage is good, right? For a group coaching program. But there are some, there are some limits to how much you can scale that with your involvement in it.

[00:55:47] John: Um. And so, yeah, so what I found, and this comes from when I was a fractional CMO or I was working behind the scenes in online education businesses that were doing between two and $20 million a year in revenue. Um, also got to peak behind the scenes of a couple online education businesses doing a hundred, a hundred million dollars in revenue.

[00:56:04] John: But I didn't spend as much time with them. Um, but what I found was that at the core of each of these businesses that were successful at scale, there were really three core products that everything was built around. Um, when you look at the numbers. And so there's the, one of them is a flagship product.

[00:56:18] John: Now a flagship product's a category, a group coaching program is a type of flagship product. Sometimes a flagship product is a premium conference or an event or a treat. For one company I worked with, it was a cruise they did every year, but it's some sort of like you're gonna in, it's where you invest the most, where a few super fans invest the most to work closely with you.

[00:56:37] John: Um, and that was a common theme. Incidentally, a couple companies I worked with, I found out, wait a minute, you don't have a flexor product. You just have these other two I'll talk about in a second. And then we added a flagship product. It's a dramatic increase in their whole overall revenue. It was just like, it was just like a missing piece.

[00:56:51] John: So ultimately you want all three of these, but the order matters, right? So I recommend the you build a flagship product first at the core of your business. I think the simplest flagship product to create is a sold out group coaching program. So that's what I teach now. The second product is a gateway product.

[00:57:06] John: Now that's the 17 ebook. So now you get to do that once you've got a sold out gochi program. Now you can go to the Gateway product, gateway products, and you can have multiple of these. They're designed not to create cash, but to create customers. Once someone buys a product from you, they're five times more likely to buy something else.

[00:57:23] John: It's a great way to turn somebody from just an interested bystander into someone who's a customer in your business, and then to enroll them into your other programs. Um, gateway products take a lot of forms. Sometimes they're eBooks, sometimes they're courses, sometimes they're workshops, um, and sometimes their cheat sheets or PDFs or, um, framing programs of any kind.

[00:57:41] John: The key is they're a painless price that solves a simple, painful problem. And so every single one of my books is a gateway product. Nonfiction books are typically gateway products, and we don't always call them that, but that's what they're right. You buy a book to learn about somebody's worldview, to solve a problem, to get to know them.

[00:57:59] John: And then now, when I talk to somebody who's interested in joining my group coaching program, sometimes they've read all three of my books, sometimes multiple times, right? And so that's just like this massive shortcut to trust. Where I make a couple books, a couple bucks on each book sale, that's not gonna pay my mortgage.

[00:58:16] John: Um, but I make enough money there that allows me to continue to do that, just to, to enroll people into the other stuff that I do. And so Gateway Products is a second account, and then the third is a subscription product. Now, a lot of times this is a membership product, like a community or a mastermind. A mastermind.

[00:58:33] John: If it's a kind of like a higher ticket, a membership, if it's a, or a community, if it's a lower ticket. A lower price. Um, you typically want one or the other depending upon your niche. But a membership product, the recurring revenue is awesome. So a lot of times people kind of come outta the gate and they're like, I want a membership product.

[00:58:47] John: I want recurring revenue. Of course we want money that's gonna automatically show up. However, outta the three products, they're actually the most difficult to scale. And I say that having run will, having started multiple six figure memberships and run seven figure memberships, where they are the most difficult product category to scale.

[00:59:03] John: And so you wanna do them third and last. Um. Yeah, so flag your product and then gateway product, and then membership product.

[00:59:29] John: Yeah. Memberships, they start upside down, right? The same way it can be upside down in a house where you owe more than it's worth. Memberships always start upside down day one. You owe the full experience even if you have one member. Um, and so that's why it's like you have to get to a certain level where the math makes sense, and that's hard to do on.

[01:00:21] John: Yeah.

[01:00:49] John: Yeah. I'm so glad you asked that. And I'm also glad when even when you asked me, you said, could you share your insights with me? Which is a spoiler alert for my answer to the question, by the way. Um, so my background before I got into entrepreneurship is I used to be a super nerd. I'm still pretty nerdy, but I wor, I used for to work for an economics research lab.

[01:01:06] John: Um, so, um, I mean that's kind of like up there on the nerd totem. I think, uh, I was a homeschool kid who went to college and worked for an economics research lab. Like I feel like there's like, there's like very few echelons that go higher than that in terms of the nerd totem. Um, yeah. Um, yeah, but, uh, so I, you know, in 2020 I was reading economic memos when a lot of other people were distracted by other things, which I was also distracted by my own problems in 2020.

[01:01:32] John: But the World Economic Forum came out with announcement that I think a lot of people ignored. That was a mistake, which is that the age of information is over. Now, Hector, our entire lives have been in the age of information. The age of information started in the eighties where you had the rise of just the introduction of technology, like computers and on the internet that changed how the world works because before, before the of information, or even at the beginning of the age of information, there was something you needed or wanting to know.

[01:02:01] John: It was sitting on a piece of paper in a locked desk drawer of some guy in Wichita, Kansas, and that's it. You were never, ever in your life gonna see that piece of information that you wanted. And there's a lot of information that just wasn't written down. What happened is, um, as computers internet started to spread, we had this phenomenon started where people started sharing information back and forth, and information became so valuable of like you could actually change your community or change your industry or change your business based on learning a new piece of information.

[01:02:28] John: And that, that started at the early part of the age of information. But over time, what happened is the volume of information started to get so overwhelming that we reached a point where we spend the majority of our time ignoring information. So right now, while we're here having this conversation, we're ignoring emails, text messages, news headlines, um, you know, new Wikipedia articles, some new course somebody just came out with five minutes ago.

[01:02:51] John: We're ignoring massive amounts of information just to have this conversation. And so what happened is, I mean, it's supply and demand, right? When there's an abundance of supply, the value goes down. And so 15 years ago, or even 10 years ago. A lot of courses, a lot of online education businesses were focused on selling information.

[01:03:08] John: They were even called information products, or information product businesses, or information business, right? That's what you're doing. So you would sell a course. You're like, Hey, this course has 32 videos. You've got 72 page PDF, uh, we've got all these tips and tricks, because you were selling information, you were just packaging it.

[01:03:23] John: Well, what happened is when the age of innovation ended, all of that became useless. I can ask Chacha to create me a 72 page PDF right now in two minutes. That doesn't give it any value. And there's probably actually a lot of good information in that PF, but I'm not gonna read it. Even before Chatt PT took off back in 2020, I started writing about how we were shifting to the age of insight.

[01:03:44] John: This is why your question's really in interesting that you said. I love your insights on, um, so the age of immigration is over. Age of insight has begun. This is like if you were running a shop in the stone Age and you're working with like your stone chisel over here and the guy next door opens a shop and he is got bronze tools 'cause the bronze age has become gun and you're in a business immediately.

[01:04:03] John: It doesn't matter whether you like bronze tools or not. The Stone Age is over. The Bronze Age has begun. Same exact thing is going on here. The age of innovation is over, and so many people are still trying to sell information because they don't recognize that, and that's not what you're selling. What you're selling is insight.

[01:04:17] John: Insight is information that has been filtered through the lens of a trusted expert to give you not a hundred possible or a thousand possible answers to your question, but one answer you can trust. Now in 2020 and 2021 and 2022, I was writing about this saying, Hey, there's this massive demand for experts, massive demand.

[01:04:38] John: Because as a globe, we've decided I don't want a hundred thousand answers. I want one answer I can trust, and I need somebody I can trust in every had in my life. I need someone I can trust to give for marriage advice. I need someone I can trust for parenting advice. I need someone I can trust for financial advice.

[01:04:50] John: All these categories, there's massive demand. There's not enough people stepping up to the plate. What happens when you have massive demand and not enough supply innovation? That's why artificial insight or AI has taken off is because there's such a demand for people to gimme one answer I can trust and I don't have enough people in my life that I trust in each category, but chat BT can gimme an answer.

[01:05:13] John: I trust decently well in every category, and so it's a placeholder until I have someone I can trust. So that's what shifted me.

[01:05:26] John: Yeah. Just the world.

[01:05:34] John: Yeah.

[01:05:44] John: Yeah. I, so my latest book Serve to Sell exactly how to sell premium programs with one free coaching call. It is a critical skill. For what I'm talking about, I'm being, being able to talk to humans, right? Have a real life conversation with somebody. Ask them questions, deliver insight, and then ultimately enroll them into some sort of premium program, even if your pickup doesn't exist yet.

[01:06:03] John: So that book, um, has made people money. I mean, which I love it. It's, you know, yes, it's sold a lot of copies. It's made me a little bit of money. But more importantly, a lot of people have taken that and use that to build their whole business. And I wanna give it to you for free. So yes, if you want to, you can go on Amazon and buy it.

[01:06:16] John: But if you go to Mees, that's my last name, M-E-E-S-E.

[01:06:22] John: Slash scale, you can get a free copy of the book. So that's what I'd like to say is the best place to start. Um, I hope you find that useful, but uh, I'll also email you some free resources to go along with it so you can apply right away.

[01:06:43] John: Empathy, the reason why people fail to scale. It's because they lose touch with the humans on the other side of the business. And I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen. I've seen hugely successful entrepreneurs forget about the humans. 'cause they start thinking about numbers to the point where they forget that a hundred thousand subscribers or a million subscribers is a million human beings.

[01:07:04] John: And then they start making business decisions without taking those humans into account and they lose touch with them and they suddenly wonder, why does nothing work? Because they're outta touch. Empathy is an entrepreneur's superpower of put yourself. Position mentally. Just close your eyes and put yourself in the shoes of your target client.

[01:07:21] John: Think what they think, feel what they feel, and then use that to run your business.