Claritycast

How to get clients to trust you, simplified, with Justin Wise
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Brian Casel: Hi there, Brian Casel here. I'm the founder of Clarityflow, and I'm the host of our show here, Claritycast, where I am talking to coaches and community leaders on how they connect with clients and how they grow their coaching practice and business.

So today in one of my first interviews in this series, I'm talking to Justin Wise. He is a longtime coach and community leader. Uh, you can find all of his stuff on his website at 'justinwise.net'. And his new domain, differentcompany.io'.

So, Justin has been running a really interesting, coaching and course, programs for business owners, looking to leverage content to attract leads organically and more importantly, build trust.

So we talked a lot about that and a few interesting things from this, uh, from this interview, which we'll get into, you know, Justin's transition from, the church world, working in, in the church to, selling courses to getting into coaching, but then more recently getting into asynchronous, asynchronously delivered coaching programs.

And what was really interesting when we got into talking about that transition. Was the driver for him originally was personal for him to, to find more calm, free up his time, not be so tied to these live calls all the time. the actual outcome was that clients were getting a better outcome. They are more able to take action. And we also talked about how his style of coaching and his programs actually attract more action oriented clients and that's the really the, the key recipe for success here.

We got into a whole lot of other stuff, including, how his clients actually build trust in him over time. How to keep his marketing automation and funnels simple. How Justin deals with imposter syndrome as a coach and how that comes out in his interactions with clients and how it actually can be, uh, kind of flipped on its head to actually, uh, work in both his and his clients favor.

A lot of really interesting and insightful nuggets in this one. I hope you get a lot out of it. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Justin Wise. Enjoy.

Justin Wise, great to, uh, connect with you again. How you doing, man?

Justin Wise: Brian, thanks for the invite. Good to see you, man.

Brian Casel: good see you. You and I, uh, hung out together at Chris Lema's event down in, uh, CaboPress. Uh, in Cabo. It was called CaboPress, and uh, I got to know you a bit down there, so it was fun. Good to connect again, unfortunately, not as, uh, not as sunny and beautiful as Mexico right now, but

Justin Wise: Not as illustrious as lounging by the beach, sipping Mai Tais and,

Brian Casel: In a quote unquote business conference, right?

Justin Wise: Cavort, cavorting about.

Brian Casel: So let's just kick this off. You know, I don't wanna do the typical question, like, tell me what you and your business do today in, instead, I wanna take a, a kind of a twist on that and, and take it from the perspective of one or two of your customers, of your, or your clients. Um, maybe someone who you're working with currently, or, or recently. Like through their lens, can you tell us, you know, who, who they are and how they came across your stuff and how they are engaged with you and maybe what they're going through working with you? I.

Justin Wise: Yeah, so I got this guy, Eric. Eric just, uh, graduated our program. Program's called Clients and Content, right? And he came in, the whole premise of the program is more clients, less content. And it's based off of essentially the last 10 years of me running... launching and running, you know, both an info product agency and an age or info product business and an agency.

So Eric came in and was basically saying, Hey, I need more clients and I want to be able to create content that, you know, attracts the right people and brings them in the door. And, uh, and I want you to help me. So he did, but you know, what's a little bit different about our program is we take kind of a holistic approach, meaning, uh, Michael Hyatt said a good, good marketing makes a bad product fail faster.

Brian Casel: Mm.

Justin Wise: And I've always loved that so much because being in marketing the last 10 years, I've seen that firsthand. Where, especially in the agency, if you give someone a hundred leads, but their back end, essentially of their, their business is not optimized to handle one hundred leads, let alone convert a certain percentage of those people, forget it. It doesn't matter how good your marketing is.

So I kind of, our program, you know, at least through the lens of Eric, he's like, I want to grow my business and, and I want to, you know, attract the right people and all that kind of stuff that we can help folks with.

Brian Casel: So like he was doing sort of like generalist marketing services, consulting, but it wasn't really like a system and, he was getting clients like through like word of mouth. But there isn't like an engine that's bringing good leads to him. Was that it?

Justin Wise: Yeah, exactly. It was primarily, he runs a music school and it was primarily word of mouth and referral, and he was producing content, but I heard this somewhere, I don't remember where, but it so fits how most people approach or most business owners approach content. They use what's called the "hope method". Throw something out there and hope that it works. And it's not their fault. It's what we kind of all have learned to do. We hear these words of like, Oh, well, you got to create content and just add value. And. Uh, build your email list, but no one's really like, at least that I found, is pulling this together in a way that makes sense for the everyday business owner and also makes it achievable and doable for them.

So, we have a system, you know, and the other thing too is most of the people we work with, they're not in marketing. Like that's what I do day in, day out, but the regular everyday business owner, they're doing their business. Whether it's a roofing company. We have a juice, a commercial juice manufacturing company right now. We have a music school operator. We have coaches and consultants. But their business is their business. They're not thinking about marketing. So what we want to do is make it super easy. And so for Eric, the cool part about Eric's story is like, yeah, okay. He used our, our system, built it in his business, installed it, deployed it and was able to get clients showing up who already knew liked and trusted him. But he also got an offer on his business

Brian Casel: Oh yeah.

Justin Wise: Because an acquirer, what do they want? They want something that's going to work, turnkey, out of the box. Where it's not contingent, independent on the owner. And marketing is a huge component of that. If you have a system in place that's not the owner going out and drumming up business That's tremendously valuable to an acquirer.

Brian Casel: I love it. . So, I mean, folks who are connecting with you today through, through your programs, I, I would've thought that they were, uh, more like you with your background. Like, you know, coming from the marketing agency world, they're looking to optimize their agency just like you did. But it sounds like, you know, you're, you're reaching like small business owners, coaches, uh, kind of a wide range of types of business owners.

Is that, is that right?

Justin Wise: Yeah, it just kind of happened that way where like I just find myself really resonating with and able to help the businesses that are like... You, you have to, you have to have something. Okay. And what I mean by that is you have to already have momentum, a converting offer. You have to have an established business. And no discredit to coaches and consultants, but a lot of them will get into that uh, you know, arena, and I don't want to say it's a side hustle, but it takes a while to get that machine going if you want to do it right.

So, we work really well with folks who already have an established business, they've been trying marketing, they've done everything under the sun. They're usually at a quarter million or more in revenue.

Like, I've found that's just the minimum. Because they have the time, the headspace, you know, the owner does, to think through this stuff strategically and actually work. on their business instead of being stuck in their business.

Brian Casel: Mm.

Justin Wise: Uh, whereas like coaches and consultants, they're in their business almost all the time. So, it's not that it can't work for a coaching consultant. We have coaches and consultants who come to our program all the time. It's just, it just tends to work best when you have something that people already want. You've grown your business to its limit using word of mouth and referral. And you need something extra.

That's who we're going to help the best.

Brian Casel: Yep. So, uh, what is it actually specifically that, that, a typical client like Eric would be engaging with? Right. Like they... I'll get a little bit more into like how you market and, and grow your audience and leads for your stuff, but like, how did Eric find you and then what exactly did he buy?

Is it a, is it like a course program with some coaching community? Like what are the components that that happened?

Justin Wise: Yeah, so oddly enough, we're actually changing it. You'll, you'll like this. You'll enjoy this. This was totally unprompted too, by the way. We are completely changing our program as we integrate Clarityflow more and more. I can talk about that here in a second.

Because up until about three months, well, about two and a half months ago, it was your standard coaching program format, right? You have a live call every week. You have core curriculum in a dashboard. And people attend the live calls or not, and they ask questions or don't, and go through the program. And, you know, at the time it was a six month program. And so that was fine. It was good. I've done a ton of coaching programs like that.

And the system, you know, that we use, it's four steps. It's the same system I use in my own business. It is, I follow you online. I love your content. I get your emails. How do we work together? So, I follow you online. I love your content. I get your emails. How do we work together? That's what we help install, if you will, in other, in our client's businesses is those four points.

So, we want them at the end moving their ideal prospects from point A to point 4

Brian Casel: I like it. .

Justin Wise: And everywhere in between.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Very cool. So they, so they were doing like, like I, I guess you can call it typical like group coaching, live calls once a week. They, they were getting access to a community space?

Justin Wise: Yeah. So like we use Slack, right? And Slack's good for some things, but I just was finding that the, the ability to really connect with people in a way that didn't include me or my program assistant, Cheryl, like constantly being on Slack. And, furthermore, like there's, there's many times in our program where I have to show them, like, I need to show them my screen and we would primarily use, let's say, Loom, then you got to take a loom link and copy it into Slack.

And then sometimes people would comment on the Slack message. Sometimes they comment on the Loom message

Brian Casel: Where, where, where is this like this? The conversation is getting broken up and fragmented in all these different places and

Justin Wise: Yes. And furthermore, like this was a really interesting perspective, that I did not consider because I've always done that live kind of weekly format for my coaching programs. And that's, I've done coaching programs off and on since 2016. And I had a dear client, she said to me, Oh my goodness, I'm so glad that we're moving to this new model. And the new model is, you know, a hundred percent on Clarityflow, which again, we can talk about that in a second. But she's like, I love it so much because no discredit to you, but the calls were, The calls were at a point in my week where I was in the flow of my work. So I was in the zone doing what I do, and I would have to stop that, come into my office, log onto the computer and attend the call if I wanted to get the value out of the weeks session.

And so now she's like, now I can just do it on my own time. And I'm like, yes, you can.

Brian Casel: Man, I'm, I'm, so, I, I love it when people hit on the, on that exact point, because I, I've experienced this obviously, like every day I use our own product. Uh, this is not to promote the product, but this is more just about asynchronous in general.

Justin Wise: Yeah,

Brian Casel: Moving from live calls to a format where you, where you have space in between the messages is so, it's so much more than just the convenience of it.

It's like, like my teammates and I, or people that I'm working with, instead of getting on a call and, and, and I might have a question like, Hey, how are we gonna handle this? The person on the other end, if we're on a live, they would, they would have to have an answer right now, like they're on the spot. They have to blurt out whatever comes to mind right now. But instead, if I can ask the question, then later when they have time or tomorrow after they have a night to sleep on it or take some notes or do some research and then come back to me. Now they have so much more to contribute. You know, just more space to, to have a, a more productive conversation. And like you said, like, like if you're in the middle of a day, you don't wanna just like cut everything out, you know, cut yourself outta the flow, right? So I love it.

Justin Wise: Yeah, to go along with that point, we, we had a gentleman, I don't know, he's probably in the program now, six months ago. And he, at the end, I mean, this is completely candid, this is total, total candor. But he's like, at the end, yeah, I was kind of, I asked him, I said, you know, what did you think? What was your experience like? And he said, well, I was kind of bummed. And I was like, well, what do you mean? He goes, well, I attended every call. And I still don't feel like I'm any further ahead than I was when I started. And I thought, huh, that's really interesting, because you could see it in the attendance. He was there, we take, you know, we, we, we track this. He was at every call. But then when I dug in further, I was like, okay, well, you've attended every call, but like your modules, you haven't touched them. And like the stuff that we talked about on the call, I don't, unless I'm totally missing it, I don't see it being implemented anywhere on your, your social channels, your email list, like I don't see it anywhere. And so it's kind of that, uh, you know, untraining people to think, well, it butts and seats time. That's what's valuable. No, it's not.

Brian Casel: Right,

Justin Wise: What's valuable is you take the information and you apply it. I'm here to help you. If you get stuck, that's the whole point of the coaching program. But the end goal is not showing up to a Zoom call once a week. That's not the end goal.

goal

Brian Casel: How are you doing that? Like how are you structuring the, like bridging the gap between delivering content, giving, giving them the, the, the training and the concepts with actually training them to, to take action or helping them take their own lead and take action and implement. Like how do you bridge the gap between like content and actual coaching?

Justin Wise: Probably the best thing we've ever done is give people, immediately when they join, we do, we do three things. One, we book an onboarding call. That onboarding call is there to basically chart a custom path. So,

Brian Casel: And that's one-to-one for each person or, okay.

Justin Wise: That's live. So we do that live, that's now a live, that's the only live component of our coaching program.

Brian Casel: Hmm. Okay.

Justin Wise: So, we do a one onboarding call, and... I will ask, I will take them through our onboarding process and basically we chart a path and we have about 50 modules in our members, uh, portal. And based on where they want to go, what they have, you know, in terms of assets already, and just kind of their runway, take that into consideration, then basically prescribe, Okay. I want you hitting module, the Power Pitch module, your Founder Story module, your Instant Attention module, and you know, the Newsletter module, and I want those to be accomplished in the next 30 days.

We also have a generic kind of 30 day blueprint. So the second they join, they know step by step what they need to be doing in those first 30 days to maximize their opportunities.

Brian Casel: And that'll be like different for each person, right? Like somebody might come in with, they're already pretty solid in one area, but they, these, these are the gaps that this person has. So you'll point them to those modules.

Justin Wise: Yeah. so like those four areas I was telling you about earlier, the um, I follow you online, I love your content, I get your emails, how do we work together? I almost look at those as like tracks. So it's identifying where is this person, where do they have the biggest challenge in their business? Do they need, uh, to beef up their social presence?

Do they need to keep a consistent content rhythm? Do they need to, to move their social followers from, you know, these channels to an email list? Or, are they having problems on the conversion side? And then you can kind of say, okay, based on what you have at the ready and where you want to get to, here's where I'm going to point you.

Um, and the coaching platform is there for when you get stuck. And I have people in our program that I hear from daily. I have people in our program that I hear from weekly. And I have one guy that will get a hold of me like once a month.

Brian Casel: Nice.

Justin Wise: And that's all he needs.

Brian Casel: Yeah. I mean, everyone kind of takes action and gets value in in different ways. I love it. Um, yeah.

Justin Wise: One quick thing, what this has allowed me to do, so I know this isn't solely around Clarityflow, but I love Clarityflow. It's totally opened up a whole new world, and I'll tell you what, like, I don't know how the mathematics on this work, but every client is getting more interaction with me personally. But I am less busy. I don't know how it works. And furthermore, we're seeing better results for clients.

So, again, I don't know how the mathematics, it's probably quantum mathematics or something like that. It's like Schrodinger's cats, Schrodinger's coaching program or something. Um, but so far people, it takes the right client to, and this is the other thing I'm learning, is like you, you have to have the right client to be comfortable with this type of coaching program.

Because if you have a client that, you know, like the gentleman I was saying earlier where they're, they're, they're, uh, evaluation spectrum for success is I show up to a call and magically things will just happen in my business. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, cool. Come to the call. But what we're finding that people that really resonate, they're already action takers.

They're just like, just tell me what to do and I'll go do it. And so that really aligns well with not only, you know, the coaching program we have itself, but also our philosophy as a business. It's like, I don't want to have to, like, entrepreneurship's hard enough to make it harder on yourself. No one's going to come along and magically, like, wave a wand and just do this stuff for you. You're in this coaching program, so I can show you exactly what to do. But I can't, I can't do it for you.

Brian Casel: you know, this was actually, I wanted to get into sort of your operations a little bit later, but I'll get into it now. You know, this move that you've been making currently from the, the live format, the live weekly calls, the, the Slack community, and now, you know, you're, you're all asynchronous. Um, they're, you know, you and your clients are using Clarityflow.

Was the driver for that more about freeing up your time and maybe bringing more calm into your life in, in running this type of business? Or was it more about- this is a better way to drive results for your clients because like you were saying, like the async aspect, they can still have the interaction with you, but they're, what they really want, want to do is take action.

Like which one was the one that like, sort of drove you to start to make this change and, and how you deliver your program?

Justin Wise: That's a great question. It's probably

Brian Casel: Hmm.

Justin Wise: 51 49. 51% personal. So, again, this is another Michael Hyatt quote, "Start in the way you wish to continue." So I had a friend, uh, we're in kind of a mastermind together. He said to me, he goes, What does the successful version of this look like, meaning your coaching program, and do you want it?

Brian Casel: Hmm.

Justin Wise: And so I thought to myself, man, that's a great question. So let's extrapolate a little bit. Let's say I have 100 clients in the coaching program. And they all show, let's say 50% of them show up every week to a coaching call. 50 people on a one hour call? Ooh, that doesn't work. It just doesn't compute. And...

Not only that, I know inevitably what would happen, because, you know, one thing we did make available to clients was, Hey, we have this group coaching call, but I can also, me, me, Justin, I can do one on one calls with you as needed. And so I started to see that the more clients we got, the bigger the group calls got, the more one on one requests started to pile in.

And I just thought, this is not sustainable. I'm going to have to hire multiple coaches. And not that that's bad or wrong, but I've done that before. And I just, I wasn't ready to do that again. And so, that's when I started looking for alternate solutions. Uh, all the way from, I'm just going to shut this coaching program down. To, we're just going to move entirely to one on one. And then, asynchronous was kind of that, that really happy medium.

Um, and so yeah, it was, it was totally personal and just looking at, Okay, vision wise, where is this business going to be in 10 years? Okay, now let's extrapolate backwards five years. Okay, one year. And, you know, I don't want to grow this massive team of coaches, so what's the solution? There's got to be a solution. That was kind of the impetus to move towards that. And then when we started doing it, I started to see, like, we've had two people graduate in the last month, and they've both said, this is the greatest coaching program I've ever been in.

Brian Casel: Huh,

Justin Wise: I was like, Whoa! That's a big deal!

Brian Casel: a bold statement.

Justin Wise: And two people independent of each other? They had no idea that the other person said it, but that to me is, is, it's not a humble brag. It's an indicator. It's a, it's a signal amongst the noise to say, okay, what we're doing here is working and it's manageable for me and I can build a team around this model easier than I can around, you know, hiring multiple coaches.

Brian Casel: Yeah. I love it. Actually, I wanted to ask you, so like what does your team look like right now?

Justin Wise: It's me and my VA.

Brian Casel: Nice. I.

Justin Wise: Lean and mean. I'm starting to, you know, plan into the future and, uh, That, that won't be possible forever. But I don't foresee a need. I mean, this could easily be, so this coaching program we started at, uh, November of last year. Um, and you know, I don't see it foresee a need of hiring anybody full time, at least until quarter four of this year. Maybe even to quarter one of next year.

Brian Casel: Nice

Justin Wise: Um, it'll take a little bit more time or,

Brian Casel: Process-wise there's a lot of like ...there's a lot of moving parts, but not all of them require you on camera talking to someone. But you can still deliver a lot of, of you without you clicking the buttons and hitting reply all the time. Right? Like that's where the having your library of content, your modules that somebody

Justin Wise: Oh, dude,

Brian Casel: can like point clients to, like, you don't have to be the matchmaker on all that stuff, but when there's like a really unique question or a need for some new modules to be created, that's where Justin comes in.

Justin Wise: Exactly. And the templates feature, by the way, holy cow. I did this experiment. Okay, I don't know if you, I did this experiment. I was like, I'm going to do 20 free consulting sessions. And I wanted to test the limits of Clarityflow with this. So we can talk about this if you want.

Brian Casel: We're, probably gonna produce a bunch of bug reports on this one, but that's okay.

Justin Wise: No, no, it was more, it was more, it wasn't so much like the technical aspects, it was more just like, what can I do with this platform? And so we did an intake survey. You know, we had people, 20 people respond within hours, right? So sent it out to email list, 20 people responded. We took those 20 people. We gave them their private channel on Clarityflow.

They had to do an inboarding survey and that inboarding survey was basically just like, you know, you go to the doctor. They say, okay, what's your weight? What's your height, blood pressure, heartbeat, all that kind of stuff. That's what we asked, but from a business perspective, so revenue, what are your challenges?

What have you tried to remedy those challenges? Dah, dah, So I had all that information in front of me. And they fell into like three categories. So, and all those categories, by the way, fit very nicely in my, my continuum of I follow you online, I love your content, I get your emails, how do we work together? And so what I did was, was I created three separate responses. And there was only the first three, no one really had the conversion problem, so it was just the first three. And I separated those folks into buckets, recorded each one live, save those as templates, and then basically said, okay, the people who fit into these categories, I'm going to respond with this templated response.

And so it was amazing to watch. Like, holy cow, I just helped 20 people in probably 90 minutes and the response is coming back from people and I had no intention of doing this, but we actually ended up converting two of those 20 people into our full coaching program. Um,

Brian Casel: It 'cause it's like the, it's still the right advice for the right question,

Justin Wise: Yes,

Brian Casel: Just giving the same answer 20 times, which happens all the time with coaches.

Justin Wise: yes. And I did have a little bit of like gut check with that because I was like, is this, is this okay?

Brian Casel: Right.

Justin Wise: I was like, of course it's okay. They have the same problem. It doesn't matter that you're not sitting there re recording it every single time when you're going to say the same thing.

Brian Casel: I love it.

Justin Wise: And I just thought to myself, man, you could, you could do a lot with that type of business model.

Brian Casel: For sure, for sure. Super exciting, man. I, I mean, you know, at some point I, I even want to like, get you back on here at some point and, and talk more about like how you're actually structuring your programs and, uh, and, and stuff on, on Clarityflow. But I do wanna like kind of get it into your, into your personal story a little bit. Get the backstory.

Um, You mentioned that you've been running coaching programs since 2016. I know that you have, you know, previously worked on, uh, marketing agencies, um, Like what is your background and when did you, what were you doing in the years before you ever even started coaching in any form?

And what was the thing that sort of like led you to say like, Hey, maybe I can start coaching someone.

Justin Wise: Uh, I was tired of being broke.

Brian Casel: Hmm.

Justin Wise: So, uh, real quick, my history, I guess, my professional work history. I graduated college 2003 and very promptly went and started working at a church in my area and was 95% of the way, uh, to be an ordained Lutheran pastor.

Brian Casel: wow.

Justin Wise: So I worked at a church for almost 10 years. And I thought that was going to be my career. And then, uh, my wife got pregnant by me.

Brian Casel: It's good to hear

Justin Wise: Well, you never know anymore. Anyway, first kid was on the way. And it was like, oh wow, so, so what you're saying is, this is what I'm going to be making as a pastor. Like, give or take 10 grand. Forever. Like, this is it. Yeah, yeah, this

Brian Casel: is it.

Not a lot of growth opportunity in that path.

Justin Wise: No, hardly any. And so, that was like super depressing. And I realized, this isn't gonna change, so I have two options. One, I can bitch and moan about it, and just accept my fate. Or two, I can do something different. And so, at my church at the time, I was actually doing digital marketing. Now, we didn't call it that. Cause you can't say marketing in church, it's a dirty word, but that's what it was building websites or just our social media, building our email list.

And so I created my first online course and around digital marketing launched it. And within 12 months of launching that course was making it a month, what I used to make in a year. And so it was like, you know, a total mind job to realize that that was even possible. Uh, and so long story short, it just kind of built and grew from there and, um,

Brian Casel: How did you start to like get your early audience, like how, how did people start finding you in the early days?

Justin Wise: well, so like back in the, this would have been like 2006 ish, you know, social media was, was still in its infancy. I mean, 2006, Twitter

Brian Casel: even a thing then. Yeah.

Justin Wise: Yeah. it was hardly a thing at all.

Brian Casel: Yeah.

Justin Wise: And so we were experimenting with some of that stuff at our church, which was not only profound, certainly for kind of the commercial or business world, but it was, it was definitely, it was unheard of really in the church world.

Brian Casel: Mm-hmm.

Justin Wise: And so, so naturally people started asking questions like. You would get invites. I got invites to, like, speak at conferences. These are church or faith based conferences. And, you know, I remember, like okay, cool. Well, these people seem to be receptive to this message. So, like, when I'm not speaking on stage, how do I stay connected with them?

And so I took a webinar, a $39 webinar, on building an email list, and just started having people join my email list. And so by the time I launched my first course, I had an email list of like 2000 people. And so so most of that early audience was entirely faith based, ministries, churches, nonprofits

Brian Casel: Like, like live events, conferences, getting your name out there and then bringing those people onto an email list where you can get back to their inbox instead of just seeing you once and then maybe never seeing you again. Now they hear from you. And then that, that was the early group.

Justin Wise: Totally and I didn't even know you were supposed to sell to people on your email list because I didn't have anything to sell. I had no product for years.

Brian Casel: Yeah.

Justin Wise: And so, so building up that goodwill for, you know, that social capital for two plus years made my launch just go bigger than anybody had anticipated.

Brian Casel: Okay. So like, kind of fast forward, you know, a few years. So you started there like go, going from the church to selling online courses, so info products. When did actual coaching, like, like talking to clients and working one-on-one or in like live group coaching sessions? Like when did that come into play for you?

Justin Wise: That was an extension of like, you know, when you have a course, there's three types of, well, there's lots of types of people, but for our purposes here, there's three types of people. There are the people who are going to take that course material. They're going to do everything that is in the course and they will succeed. There are people who are going to see the material and they're gonna be like, this is great info, but I'm never gonna do this myself. Can I just hire you to do it for me?

And then there's people in the middle, right? So they, they're, they know themselves well enough to know, like, I need accountability. I need the real time kind of contextualization of this material, but I don't want to pay someone to do it for me. I want to do it myself. That's where coaching comes in.

And so that first program I had, you know, people who said, Hey, just do this for me. That's where our agency started. Then I had people say, I just need a little bit more, like I just need a little more encouragement. I need a little more like customization for my business on this material that you presented in the course. And so that's where the kind of the coaching aspect came in and I started again, all this was by accident. I had no idea how to do any of this stuff and it was just, okay, cool. Well. Let's just like meet. Let's meet and I'll show you exactly how to do it. And then you run into the time issue, right? Where you run out of time.

Brian Casel: Mm-hmm.

Justin Wise: And then you look at, oh, wow, group coaching. That's a thing. So then you start exploring group coaching. And that's kind of where I was hanging out really for the last, like I said, since 2016. Um, until it started really hitting my stride with kind of the asynchronous side of things.

Brian Casel: So it's been, you know, several years since you're like really committed to coaching and courses as your business, your, your career path. What has sort of evolved, I mean we've talked about like the formats of coaching and, and the different tools and things, but like, especially from the way that you market and brand yourself and also like the funnels that attract your ideal clients. What are some of the, like what's your main strategy on that today and how has that kind of changed over the last, I don't know, 5, 7, 8 years?

Justin Wise: I mean the main philosophy is kind of what I've been harping on, I call it the content machine and it's amazing to me that I've had you know, I used to be really deep into like marketing automation and speaking at marketing automation conferences and having these really complicated complex nurture sequences and tags and separate funnels and all this kind of stuff and you realize like, I don't know if anyone's experienced this, you just need one Marketing automation snag to make you deeply regret all of your life decisions up to that point.

Brian Casel: I've had more than one myself,

Justin Wise: Yes!

Brian Casel: that's for sure.

Justin Wise: Like, one tag gets misapplied somewhere, somehow, and it sets off this mousetrap forged in the fires of hell. And, uh, you know, like, like you said, that's happened more than once. And so finally, I was just like, okay, what really is a, is a funnel about? Funnel is about moving people from no to like, to trust, to convert.

Okay, cool. How do I do that in the simplest way possible? And lo and behold, the simpler, the better. And simple actually is responsible now for two, six, multi six figure courses and a seven figure agency. And so I haven't really looked back on this overly complicated, you know, marketing methodology that says you have to automate all these certain pieces.

It's really kind of simple where you focus on not just creating content, but content that, uh, I stole this from Taki Moore. He calls it the four forces. Content that centers on the fears, dreams, frustrations, and wants of your core audience and flushing everything else. Nothing else matters. So as long as you're creating content that addresses one of those four components, you will gain people's trust, which is the prerequisite for a conversion opportunity.

Brian Casel: I mean, that was a, that's a key question I was actually gonna ask kind of throughout this interview, and I'm, I'm glad that you just hit on it naturally. And, and for a coach, the, the trust factor has to be, you know, really through the roof. 'Cause it's like, I, it's not just buying a product off the shelf. And it's not a software tool, it's not a book.

It's, it's, I I wanna spend time with Justin. I want to pick Justin's brain. I want to, I want, I want Justin to at least give me the concepts or the coaching to implement major changes in my business. Like I need a high level of trust for me to consider that. Right.

Justin Wise: yes, Yeah. Brian, uh, Clark, who was also at CaboPress, dropped this bomb on me, I think this was two years ago now, and I have not stopped thinking about it since. I'm paraphrasing it here, but he essentially said, um, Authority activates skill, which equals influence. So, your skills are activated by authority. Skills plus authority equals influence. And when he said that, it just clicked because I thought to myself, man, there's so many business owners who are marketing based off their skills. When that's not what's missing, meaning they're emphasizing their skills. Now, do you still need to do that? Yes, that's where you demonstrate credibility.

But if you don't have authority and authority primarily comes from trust, you won't ever be influential and influential is what you need for your marketing to be effective. It's why two people can say the same thing in the same niche in the same industry, but one person says it and it totally resonates, the other person says the same thing, maybe even says it better and it falls flat.

Brian Casel: Yeah, I feel like there, like this sort of thing is like the kind of thing where there's a lot of like buzzwords flying around, but, but it, there is a lot of truth to it. And like, the thing that I take away is that like, trust, a lot of it is built through just honesty and being vulnerable and telling stories and these are the things that humans actually connect with.

You know, there, there's gonna be the, the, like you said, like, like, demonstrating skill, demonstrating results, you know, having like technical abilities. All that is, is almost a given and you can just see it on the surface with, with anyone. But seeing them on YouTube, hearing them on a podcast, meeting them at a conference, you know, that's what actually builds the, the trust, I think, you know.

Justin Wise: That vulnerability is so key, especially now where, I don't know what your feeds are like, but mine, it's just an endless stream of like how to's and, you know, tips and all this kind of stuff. And I just, I can't do it anymore. And the stuff that resonates with me the most is like people who just show me their personality. Like, that is killer. I want more of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have the skill and you've demonstrated credibility and all that kind of stuff. But the fact, like, one of my buddies, Eddie. Eddie, he talks about watermelon. Like, two out of every three posts he talks about watermelon. I don't know if it's code for anything, I've never asked him, but the dude really likes watermelon.

And, uh, I love that because that's the type of content that makes you realize like, okay, yeah, he's a qualified and skilled copywriter. But he's just a normal guy, like, who just really digs watermelon.

Brian Casel: Top 10 Watermelon Eating Tips and

Justin Wise: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's interesting to me.

Brian Casel: Total dude, me too. I mean, . Really, 'cause you know, like I'm, my feeds are, I see the same marketing stuff. I get a lot of software stuff, startup founder stuff. But honestly, what I'm even more interested in is like, what television shows is that person watching right now? Or like, what, you know, what, what music is that person into? You know, like we're humans too. We're not just creating social feeds all the time. Right. Um, I love it.

All right, the last question here, I'm almost a little nervous to ask it, but I wanna ask like, all, all coaches about this and that's, and that's, IM like, imposter syndrome, right?

Mmm

Because I think that if, if you're going to present yourself as a, as a coach, as a leader, um, you're helping people make change. How do you think about just the, the whole idea of imposter syndrome and it's like, you know, um, you, you have to have your, your stuff together and all figured out and, or at least present it that way. Or, or do you? Like, how do you, you know, if, if other clients are going to trust you with their business, um, how do you sort of take on that responsibility?

Justin Wise: My imposter shows up in kind of a weird way. And, uh, I didn't realize this until I started seeing a therapist. But, like, I would get really bummed out when, you know, somebody would, uh, try something... Let's say they would try an experiment that we have in the program. And it would not work out for them. And then they would get bummed out and inevitably it would be like, Oh my gosh, I'm not good at this. I don't know what I'm doing. They didn't see results. And so that's my fault. Right? And in some cases, yeah. Okay, sure. Some cases, you know, I'm not, I certainly don't have a perfect batting record as a coach and I've failed certain clients at certain times. But what I'm starting to realize is that I have to, I have to set people up with And give them the tools that I know work. I know that they work because I've used them myself and I've used them with dozens, maybe hundreds at this point of other clients. So for me, the issue is settled that I know that these do work. And the reality of it is like, you know, it's almost like a savior complex. You have to be able to, you know, in marketing we tell our clients you have to attach to the process, detach from the outcomes.

Attach to the process, detach from the outcomes. Uh, doesn't mean you ignore the outcomes. It just means as much as possible. You emotionally detach from any sort of pre conceived, you know, it has to be this way or it's a failure outcome.

Brian Casel: Right.

Justin Wise: And when I take that approach with clients, that really helps me tremendously.

Right? Because with marketing, it's so, there's so many levers to pull and there's so many buttons to push. And. You can't control all of those as a coach in another person's business. You just can't. As much as I want to sometimes you just can't.

Brian Casel: Mm-hmm.

Justin Wise: So you have to attach.. You have to say I'm gonna walk this person through my process that I know works and I'm going to well, I'm going to detach from the results and what you give energy to grows, right?

So if a client comes back and they're bummed out and I feed into that energy.. Meaning they're they're bummed out at me and I feed into that energy that grows the problem But if I can take a step back and say, Okay cool let's look at this objectively like a science experiment and see what didn't work and we try it again maybe a different variation a different channel or phrase or word or

Brian Casel: And that's where the best learnings happen, right? Like that's, it's almost like even more valuable when, when you're coaching someone and they go through an experiment and it didn't work. Now you're uncovering an opportunity to find like some new data point about their clients or something that they wouldn't have had before.

Right? So, you know, you're, you're still coaching them down a path that is helpful, you know?

Justin Wise: And the right clients see that.

Brian Casel: Mm-hmm.

Justin Wise: and this is where you know I know we open the conversation with like I've just started saying internally 250k minimum is what a person needs to be at for them to even really be thinking about a marketing coaching program.

Brian Casel: Mm-hmm.

Justin Wise: Like that's minimum. Right, because they're not in the, I need this to work.

Brian Casel: This better work. Yeah. Like that's a, that's a bad place.

Justin Wise: Where they're handing you their, their last crumpled, damp dollar. And they're like, please, please make this work. No, no, no. That's, that is disaster red flag territory, don't want it.

Brian Casel: Mm-hmm.

Justin Wise: The right clients see that, they're like, oh cool. Like I had a client one time, Adrienne. She was fantastic. We tried this experiment on her, one of her social media feeds. It totally bombed. Tried the exact same thing to her email list and it just crushed. She was like, Wow, that's amazing. I didn't know that was going to happen. This is so cool. And I was like. You're my people. Like, that's what I love to hear.

Brian Casel: Nice, nice. Um, as we kind of, you know, wrap this up, what are you most excited about right now? And, uh, you know what, really, like, what's something, I mean, we might even open up a whole can of worms here, but like what what, what is something that you're just really excited about right now that you don't normally get a chance to talk to, uh, with your clients or with your audience?

Justin Wise: I'm reading a book right now called, um, '10x Is Easier Than 2x' by Dan Sullivan and, um, Ben Hardy and, uh, you know, the premise of the book is in the title, right? Going 10x is easier than going 2x. 2x is a function of, so let's say I said to you, Hey Brian, my goal for the next year is to double my revenue. That's 2x. Whereas a 10x goal would be, I want to 10x my revenue.

Now, there's nuances to the book and there's context that I'm leaving out here, but essentially the point isn't to actually 10x your revenue. The point is to say, if I'm going to 10x my revenue, what needs to be true about me and my business for that to happen? And you start answering questions and entertaining ideas that would not be possible if you were just focused on 2x'ing your business.

So this is where like, asynchronous is a part of that 10x goal. Because I can 10x that. Um, you know, thinking through the type of client that we work best with. That's another 10x, uh, you know, opportunity. Thinking through, okay, if, what is, what is Justin at 10x, what does he spend his day doing? You know, what, what are his activities look like? How often, how long is he working? What's he working on during those hours? And then starting to do those things now.

So whether or not, you know, I hit 10x in a year or not or whatever, that's not actually the point. The point is to become the type of person who can build a business like that. And that's got me really excited and, you know, thinking through like, what does my business need to look like for that to be possible? Because I've done it once and people listening to this, They I guarantee you've had at least one 10x transformation in your business So you know you're you're able to do it and the book just kind of talks about, you know, the mechanics and the nuances and the context and the step by step on how to do that.

Brian Casel: I love it. Yeah, we'll get everything linked up. Uh, speaking of that, I mean, where can folks connect with you on social media and your, your business? I know it's a Different Company... Is it io?

Justin Wise: Yeah DifferentCompany.io

Brian Casel: There

Justin Wise: you go .

It's probably the easiest place to go or you can always hit up my website JustinWise. net.

Brian Casel: Alright, we will get everything linked up. Justin, uh, it was great to connect with you again. Uh, so many interesting nuggets. We're gonna, we're gonna release this thing in full, but we're also gonna kind of, you know, chop it up into the, into the key parts of the interview. So, um, yeah, really excited to, to get this out there.

A lot of good stuff. Thanks so much.

Justin Wise: Thanks for the invite man.

Brian Casel: All right.

Brian Casel: So that wraps up today's episode of Claritycast. I hope you were able to get a few nuggets of clarity to help you grow your coaching business. You can watch the videos of these conversations on our YouTube channel. Like, and subscribe to us there. And I'd really appreciate if you'd give the Claritycast podcast a five star review in iTunes, that really helps us reach more folks like you.

Today's episode was brought to you by our product, Clarityflow. Try it for free at clarityflow.com or you can book a free demo and consultation call to see how you can grow your coaching business on Clarityflow. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you next time.

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