← The Vault Unlocked
The Vault Unlocked
From $3.5k Funnels to $50k+ Offers
00:47:57
Most consultants and coaches burn out not because they lack expertise, but because they undervalue it. In this episode of The Vault Unlocked, Kayvon Kay sits down with Ann Carden, a six-time business builder and seller who specializes in helping...
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Foreign.
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You're listening to the Vault Unlocked, where the real secrets of success are revealed every episode. One founder, one confession, one strategy that created income scale and unstoppable growth. The code is cracked. The Vault is open. Today I'm excited. We have Ann Carden from Million Dollar Leap. Million Dollar Leap. I want to know what the leap is and how are we doing today.
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Or more, let's just say, or more.
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I love it.
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A
Kevon, thanks so much. It's great to be here with you.
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B
Yeah, it's fantastic. I know we were talking a little bit before and I'm really excited to kind of dig in and understand more of what you're doing. So for the audience, people listening right now, just so we can get on the same page, tell us a little bit. Who is Ann? What does Ann do? How does she get to this point?
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A
Yeah. So Ann is. This is my sixth and seventh business. I've sold five previous businesses that I built. So today I mainly help professional entrepreneurs service own service based businesses that really want to play in the premium market. They want to build their business with a handful of clients, make that million dollar leap with a handful of clients. That might be 5, that might be 2, that might be 10, that might be 20. But it's a very different model from what a lot of people are out teaching and I help be doing that with them. I also have to help them look like the expert and they deserve the premium fees that they're. They're wanting. So everything from offer creation business model to scaling that and messaging, marketing, positioning, sales, all of it, I love it.
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B
And you said million dollar week, not million dollar month. You said get people doing a million dollar a week with a handful of clients in the service based business. This is why I'm excited. This is my world. This is all we, you know, this is what I've been doing for the last 10 years. So I'm excited just to really deep dive into all of this. How did you stumble upon this? Like tell you, let's take a little step. You said you sold businesses. You know, how do we get to this point? Let's just learn a little bit more about your background and history.
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A
Yes. So in my second business, it started as a fitness business. It grew into a large health club. And back then. Well, first of all, if I go back to my corporate career, I was always in a luxury market. I was in business management for high end retailers. And I would have the fur department and the cosmetic department in really high end department stores, multimillion dollar departments and I guess subconsciously I kind of gravitated to that whole luxury thing. But when I got into my second business with fitness and we started building on that, I quickly realized I wasn't making the money I wanted with just like charging like gym fees. At that time I was very small. I was just teaching fitness classes in a community hall. It was, you know, my next thing. And I realized, wow, I'm not going to make a lot of money like this. But I was also helping people with nutrition. So now I want to just say this was 25 years ago. Right. So it, nutrition and fitness and all that was not on every corner. It wasn't like it is today. And I came up with an idea for an offer that would put both of those things together and it would be like a 30 day. I called it Body Blast. It was a 30 day program and it became a million dollar offer for me way back when. And as, as my clubs grew, I always played in the premium market. So everything that I did was on the high end. We were the highest club. We, I had the doctors and the lawyers and the business people pricing. Yes. And we even had back then almost a $12,000 offer, a gym offer, which was literally unheard of. Yeah.
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B
We say back then. Are we talking like pre funnels back then? Are we talking.
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Oh my gosh, 25 years ago. Yeah, 20 years ago. Yeah. The Internet wasn't even a thing. No.
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Talking to an OG here.
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A
Oh, yeah, years ago.
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B
We're talking about someone doing offers like this was.
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Yeah.
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Paper copy. Yeah, this was, this is before Internet almost.
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I had to run ads the old fashioned way. Yes.
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Okay.
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Ads and newspaper and all. Yeah, I, I'm definitely one of the, One of the orig. Yeah. Yeah. So, but we had, we had an offer that was almost $12,000 and we sold it. And it included nutrition and fitness and some training and all of that. But that was just not even a thing back then. It was almost. And so the people that bought into that were the wealthier people. And so I learned that model when I first. So I, I built two health clubs, two weight loss centers, sold all of those. I had a business before that that actually did go global. It was a, a doll craft business. It went global before the Internet. And that happened because I was kind of running a manufacturing company out of my home. And I. That went global because I was advertising in international magazines. And so I was shipping all over the world. And so that, that was that whole thing. So five, five businesses in my last two businesses I worked with A business coach. And it was so impactful. I thought, oh my gosh, I could do this with other people. Like, I could take all of my years of experience and knowledge and everything. And, and I was really de and learning marketing. And I had been doing sales since I was a kid, so I thought I could teach other people. But when I came into the coaching space, I didn't really know anybody at that time. Again, this was almost 15 years ago. I didn't know anyone that could really teach me how to sort of build out the coaching business. So I just did what I knew to do. And I went to business owners and said, hey, let me coach you. Let me see if I can do this. And I got them incredible results. Except guess who wasn't making any money.
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Well, I know exactly who was not making money. Yep.
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No, they were making a lot of money.
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Just in case they didn't pick it up. Right. And wasn't. I was not, AKA building everyone else's brand, watching everyone else get rich. And you were getting nothing from it.
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I was getting nothing. And so it was. I was very frustrated. So I bought into a coaching organization thinking, okay, I need all the bells and whistles and I need, I need the thing. Right. They have the thing. And. And only to find out it was bringing me the wrong clients. It was bringing me low value clients. It was bringing me people that didn't. I wanted their success more than they did. So that didn't work so well. And yeah. And I, I had literally almost left that business. I thought this is. And also I was working locally with people and I thought this is not what I wanted. I, I'm not loving this. I'm not fulfilled. The people I'm working with, I can't even use my expertise because they're not ready for it. There's, you know, and so all of that happened and as a result, what I could.
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We call it energy drainers.
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Yes. Yes. And so I thought, this isn't what I wanted. And I took a step back and I said, what is wrong here? What I know how to build businesses. What is going on? What am I not doing that I know to do that I've been successful at in everything I've ever done? And it came back to premium. You're not selling premium. You're selling yourself for nothing. You're giving away your time and your expertise, your years of experience for nothing.
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Yeah. I do want to ask question because premium is all in the mind of the closer. As I say, premium is all in the mind of the of the subject. So when you say premium, I know what premium is to me in my industry, I know where your premium, I'm assuming is much different than mine. So when we say premium, what. And we say services, let's just say what do we. And we're talking about million dollar weeks here. Right? Like what are the cost or the, we're talking about ranges of some of the services that you help your clients get to.
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Well, first of all, I want to ask you what is premium in your world?
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Oh, I love it. One salesperson flip it around. Well, I, it might just from the market that I live in, we, we say Premium starts at 10. 10, 10K and above. So we're talking about 10 to 50K offers. Anything over like 100K offers, you just, we just call them, I just call them six, you know, six figure offers which are obviously premium. It was, it's interesting because I wanted to get here and we kind of got here is I was hoping to get there differently is why I love premium. And I'm sure you've learned this and with my background in sales and what we teach is it is easier, yes. To sell a $50,000 $100,000 offer than it is to sell a $2,000 offer. And most people don't get that.
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They don't get it.
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And the problem is a $2,000 offer is easier to sell than a $200 offer because a $200 buyer has $200 problems. $100,000 buyer has a hundred thousand dollar problems. And you know what they don't have is $100,000 problem. They got million dollar problems. So that's why I love premium. I was taught premium at a myself when I was younger, like stay premium. And I've always been like that. I've never ra widgets. It just, it, it's not worth it. But I love to hear your premium because I know we're talking, I'm north of six figures, I'm assuming.
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Yeah. So typically when I think of premium, the, the rock bottom side for most of my clients is going to be 25 or 30k. Yeah, 50k is going to be a pretty rinse and repeat offer for them. Six figures is going to be rinse and repeat, but even helping them get into multiple six figures. So you know, um, a client of mine closed a $413,000 client and she said, I never really thought about making a million dollars with this side of my business because. And I can tell you what we did with her. But she said, but now I realize that's like two clients. So that's what we're talking about. Yeah.
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B
And again, what is. Look, we're talking about quality of life. So not, not to make this about me, but I think it's really important. I had this problem, my own agency, so I had an agent and I shut it. I shut it down because I was burnt, burning up. I had an agency where I was bringing on more clients. And the more clients I had to bring on, I had to bring on more headaches, more health, more help, more people. And the revenue, and this is in my industry, real industry, we talk bottom line. But mine all says, you know, revenue. So my revenue was skyrocketing. My profits, profits were like plummeting. I mean, it was like there was months where we do million dollar months and I wouldn't even see a dollar.
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Yeah, right.
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And I said, this is, this is crazy. Fast forward. We do two million dollar months.
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Yeah.
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I have four clients.
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It's very different. Yes.
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And it. So I love, this is why I love premium pricing. I love all of this. I want to get, I want to hear what you did with this person. There's so much I want to unpack here. So. But I want to get back to your. So you were, you were seen, you were being a business coach and you were seeing what it was to charge low dollar.
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Yeah.
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And then you asked the big question, what, what do I know? What am I doing that I shouldn't be doing? And what am I not doing that I should be doing? And what it was, from what I'm gathering was I'm not dealing with the A players and I'm not charging a player pricing.
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Right. I actually hired an online business coach. I kind of came online at that time and I hired an online business coach. And she said, if you don't have a $50,000 offer, you can't sell it. And that was the first time I had been expecting exposed to that. I thought, what would I sell for $50,000? Like, I didn't get it. Again, this was 15 years ago and I had no idea I would be, that would be a really rinse and repeat offer for a lot of my clients. And so that opened my mind. And I'm always someone that says, when I see somebody say something like that or I'll hear somebody say, I've had a million dollar hour. I'm like, I want to know how you had a million dollar hour. Right.
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Yeah.
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So I'm always like, okay, how can I do that? Not, can I do that? A lot of People are like, how? You know, they're like, can I do that? Can I do that? Or I can't do that. They're not.
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Even if they say, can I do that? They never will because they don't have the identity to assume that they're even capable and, and worthy of such a thing.
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Right.
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We can go deep down, I'm sure you.
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Yeah. So. So when I really kind of, you know, like opened my mind and I thought, okay, I'm not, I'm not going premium. I'm not working with the best clients here. I'm not even getting to utilize my skills. That's where my expert in you brand came from. I'm like, so I was in a coaching organization and a lot of the business coaches were struggling. They were using their cookie cutter system. I was trying to use it. It wasn't working for me. That's when I took a step back and I thought, okay, Ann, are you really working around your expertise? Are you trying to use their stuff, their system, which isn't really your wheelhouse, to be honest. It's not like there wasn't value in it. But it wasn't, it wasn't my expertise.
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Your value?
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Yeah, it wasn't. So I, I said, no, you need to build around what you really know. And that when I did that and I, I really got into a market. It kind of funny though, I got into a market that I didn't have any experience in, but somebody just gave me a shot. It was a contractor, it was a roofing company. He was running a multi million dollar roofing company. And he, when we had a conversation, he goes, I believe you can help me. And, and I started working with him and then he just started referring business to me. And I ended up in the contractor trades industry for a very long time coaching. And my business just blew up. But I also was getting now paid those high dollars that I, you know, another thing. No, like get into a market where there's money, right? Yeah, but I, but it was so minimal still compared to the leaps that I was helping them make in their business. And, and not just in the money. Kayvon also changing their life, like them getting their lives back, getting hours back. I remember he was working over 100 hours a week. He was exhausted. He had no time when we got everything in place. And at that time, it wasn't really around offers and everything. I was helping him in his business.
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Yeah.
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And when we got the systems and things in place, he got his life back. He started taking mission trips. He was golfing he, and then he got, he actually got an offer to buy out his business for three, almost three times the valuation. So it was, it was crazy.
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So, so funny. It's. I've seen this so many times. You hold on, you burn out. Yeah. And then there comes a moment where the business owner of any business just takes the step back for a sec. Breeze.
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Yes.
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And just ask those better questions like how can I do this in less time with more impact. Wait and, or hire the expert and then let al do. You know, it works out.
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Yeah. And I wasn't real good at pitching myself. He didn't really know what I could do with him, but I knew that I could help him. And I just, he, he knew me enough to know that I wouldn't, you know, just take his money. Right. That I would really help him.
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So, so how do we. Okay, so now like just so I have a better understanding, who's your ideal client right now? Like who do you work with? Service based businesses. Online. Offline. What type of service?
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Mostly online, but a lot of consultants that might be doing a lot of things offline. But I want to help them bring it online as much as they can and leverage their time. So teaching them systems that can now. And also a lot of them are doing all the offline work. Maybe they're going into companies or they're, they are, you know, going into the businesses very much like I was but they haven't done anything. Just like they're not in a place to scale because they, they're trading time for money and they don't have offers in place that can help them scale and then learning how to do that online or making like bigger leverage plays. So the people I work with now are experts. They just need a different, they need to level up their game. They should be getting paid more. They should be seen as better. All the things.
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B
What type, like what type of expert are we talking? Like, like I'm, I think I have an idea. Like these are business coaches, these are leadership coaches. These are just, you know, consultants going into corporations and helping to, to make corp, you know, whatever the job is.
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I work with a lot of marketing consultants honestly and sales consultants. People that, yeah.
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People that, that interesting how the marketing consultant needs the marketing consultant.
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Yeah.
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And it's interesting because I see it all the time and it's, and I would say this, it's harder to market and sell your own product than it is other people because you get too attached. There's so many multiple facets there.
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But also I bring Things to the table that they maybe don't know or don't do. So they might have one thing that they might have something that they're selling in their agency. I think about one of my clients. This is. This was years ago, but he had, he had a media company and he was killing himself networking. He was in my local market, but. And that's how I met him. But he was killing himself out there networking, trying to. And he was piecemeal in his business. Like, he didn't have real structured offers and he was literally just. He was his wrecking his health, his marriage, like, all these things I helped him package. Now again, this was years ago. He was probably one of my first clients that I helped package a 30k offer. And then we niched him and I showed him how to sell that. Whoops. I think we froze. I'm gonna hold off. I lost you there for a minute.
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B
We lost each other there.
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Yeah.
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B
Okay, Give me one second. Okay, I'm gonna pause one second. So we were talking about the. Your client. He was in the media company. He was working out. Not working, but he was working his tail. Like, I loved what you said, you know, probably gonna lose his marriage. The kids were on the line. Everything's on the line.
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Just trying his health, everything, all of it.
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His spiritual. Probably all of it just in the gutter. And you came in and did your magic.
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Well, I, I helped him put together a real. A 30k offer. Now, this was probably 13 years ago, so at that time that was fairly high. And it was kind of a branding offer. We niched him and his business exploded. I mean, 500%. He was making so much money. But more than that, he also got his life back. He got his health back. He got over 20 hours a week back into his life. And then it kept getting better as he was growing. So that was. So a lot of times they don't know the business side of it. A lot of marketers are great marketers, but they don't know the business side of it. I come with all of it. I come with the business, the marketing and the sales plays with. So I like to say I'm an A to Z, so I'm not really a one trick pony because I've done it all for 40 something years.
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B
So no, I love it. So I want to get into it because I know we talked a little bit before. I'm like, it's all great. I want to know how, like, what is it you do? What, like, number one, helping people create what I'm going to say on average is a $50,000 offer. Right. So is there a specific offer, you know, that works or is it more understanding the nuance of the, the client you're working with and then putting in your systems and all of that? I want to know, I want to go deep here and go like, prove, prove to the people listening, like how you do this, like, what is it you're doing? And I will add this so then I can let you riff. Is it's one thing to have the offer. How do you not convince, but get your client to believe that they're worthy of that offer? So when they're pitching and selling it, they have more conviction and the clarity. So people actually buy it and believe it.
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Yeah, that's such a great question. First of all, most of the people, when they come to me because of the marketing I have out there, they already have probably seen me or heard me and they already know in their gut, like they love what they're hearing. So I'll give you. Let's talk about the, the client that sold the $413,000 deal.
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Love it. Yeah.
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Okay. She was an agency owner, did social media. She already had a client. This is what's so crazy about this. And this, what I help people do. It's like, let's tap your warm market. The low hanging fruit, right? So I was on her podcast and she heard me talking about this and she, we get off and she said, we gotta talk. She said, I know, because one of the things I talk about is so often, Kayvon, that people are giving away their highest value. Here's an example. You are trying to land a client on the back end and you're giving away the strategy on the front end. Your strategy is your biggest value. Like, why would you give that away? That is a 50k, 100k offer just by itself. So I was talking about this and, and the other thing is I see people being the extra pair of hands. They are consultants, for example. They're trading their time for dollars and they're, they're treat, they're letting, they're letting companies treat them like an employee there. And they have a business, but they're treated like an employee in their own company, in their own business. So I talk about, are you an extra pair of hands? Is that how you're treated? Or are you a strategic partner? Are you a strategic advisor? Do people bring you in for your brain, for your knowledge, for your experience? Because you've got wisdom and strategy and things that they don't know you're looking at it with a different lens. Right? But so many people don't even think like that. And so I'm talking about this. And so she said, I want, she said, I see problems in the businesses that we're doing social media for, she said they have problems with their marketing team, with their sales team. She said, and she was really brilliant at stuff. And when she started sharing with me all the things, she said, I want to be. I love what you said about being a trusted partner, like not doing all the stuff. So she said, I want to create an offer. So we came up with a $52,000 offer for her. She went back to that. She, she wanted to actually go back and present to a client that was paying her monthly for her service.
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Can we talk about a little bit, like, what was in that all, like what would be in a fifty thousand dollar offer? Just some of the deliverables.
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All it was, was her strategy. Like it was just her brain. That was it. But the way we laid out the offer, it was so clear. They're like, we, this is what they said. We didn't even know you could do this. Yeah, we didn't even know. Yeah, we're in. Boom, invoice, right? So she gets in there and in the first 30 days, and this is part of what I teach them too. This isn't your play. Your play is, is there more on the back end? So she, so this is the rinse and repeat part, right? You can sell this over and over again. And we positioned it and all of that so they were like, yeah, we, we want this. So think about like a lead generation offer. It is that, but it's at a high, it's at a high level. It's not a $5 lead generation offer. So she gets in there and the first 30 days she starts out, she starts really showing them and she starts working with their teams. That was the other thing. She was going to work with their teams and kind of, you know, show them what was, what needed to change. Well, once she did that, they, they were so blown away by her expertise. Now I can only do this with experts and people that know what they're doing. But they were so blown away, they said, we want you to take over everything. She took over their whole. Excuse me, sorry about that, I had a frog in my throat. She took over their whole marketing thing. It turned out to be a $413,000 offer. They were already paying her a few thousand dollars a month. Now it turned into over $413,000. That's what we're talking about. Yeah. So. So she, for the year, so she said, I had no idea, you know, that I could build a million dollar business doing what I was doing. The thing is, she didn't have to give up what she was doing on the back end. She already had the team in place, she already had the agency, she had everything. But it opened the door to something transformational. That was really such a change for her agency as well. So that's, those are the kinds of things that I like to help people. It could be an IT consultant that's going in and showing people they need all these IT services and management provider services, but they're giving away the assessment and all of that on the front. So it can be different for different businesses.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And what I look at is what is your opportunity to have that? I call it a gateway, an expert gateway offer. What is your opportunity to have that? Gateway expert offer. And then I show them how they can close bigger deals on the back end with that or along with that. So, hey, even if you don't want to buy into our big thing, we can at least do this. And if you don't want to continue working with us, no worries. Well, what happens? They always want to continue with them.
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B
Yeah. So do you do like you get to do audits, like mini audits?
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A
Some, some do, yeah. So depending again, you know, I think about one of my clients was wanting to be in the manufacturing space and he, he had, he was brilliant in manufacturing and had such a huge background in that internationally. And so we put together one of these kind of offers for him to go in and do an initial assessment. I don't even remember what the positioning was any, but how he could basically make them more profitable and more efficient and through efficiency. So he could go in and assess. But then, hey, you want help putting all this in place? And that's, that's really kind of the play. So there's, there's three ways. Either something they're not charging for, that they could be. It is something that they are. I just lost my train of thought. Something they're not charging for. Something that could be a brand new offer for them.
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B
Yeah. A new opportunity that they have a.
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A
New opportunity, or an advisory, like a strategic advisory offer where they're going in and they're basically looking with an extra set of eyes to design a roadmap for them or a blueprint or showing them where the gaps are and all that kind of thing. So those are kind of the three ways I Help people implement this.
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B
What would, what would be your core genius? Now I know we can say, hey, premium offers, but within that, what would you say your core genius is? Is.
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A
I have this way of being able to see the value that people can bring to the market. I just, in a conversation with them, I'm like, oh my gosh. I, that's how I, a lot of times get these people, they'll hear me talking and I'll say, you know what? And I'll just talk to them like, what's your expertise? And this and that. And they'll start talking and I'm like, you are, whoa. You are leaving so much money on the table. Like, it just, it's so obvious to me, but I think it just comes from many years.
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B
Yeah.
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Of experience and doing. But you know the interesting thing, Kayvon, I've done this with plumbing companies, I've done this with auto repair shops. I've either bundled them or I've always found ways for them to get bigger plays, for them to get bigger financial leaps with less.
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B
I, I see the core genius being your ability to see the millions of dollars consultants are leaving on the table and the ability to create offers because you've used the word offer a lot and be able to create offers to go after those millions of dollars that they don't even see. I saw that as you were speaking. That's why I asked. I said, I think I figured out, like everyone has a core genius and you can see the opportunity that lies there.
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A
Now the other side of that is I'm very creative in how I help them put those offers together. I call them million dollar offers. And because I'm very. So that when they actually present it to the client, it's like such a no brainer for the client that they almost would feel stupid saying no.
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B
Yeah. Doing, you know, offers that they feel stupid for saying no. Alex Ramosi, you know, says that. So the other side too, we talked about, okay, you can create this million dollar offer, you know, $50,000 offer. But you said you also help them live up to that offer, show that they're worthy of that offer. So I'm going to assume that we're talking more branding, a little bit positioning, market positioning and brand. Is that correct?
- [28:30]
A
Yes. So often again when they come to me, they kind of know they, that they feel like they should be doing more, they should be playing in the more premium. Like they love what they're hearing. So that those are, that's the first thing I look at. I am not about convincing People, it's like you have to kind of know in your gut, oh, I deserve to make more, just like I did back. Back when I'm like, this isn't working for me, right? So they know that when they come to me, they just don't know how to put the pieces together. But when I. When we create the offer and we kind of come up with the price, and that might be six figures, it might be a couple hundred thousand right out of the gate. There always is this, wow, this sounds amazing, but can I. So I have a few different ways that I'll work with clients on that, but one way is I literally will walk them through why they can. So I'll give you an example. I kind of use this on another podcast today, but not to repeat myself, but it's just one person I'm thinking of. He had a PhD. He was amazing in leadership, in the leadership space. But he had kind of a background with colleges and universities and all of that. And he came to me, wanted something higher. I don't remember what is his highest thing had been like 15,000 or something. I said, okay, we put everything together. I said, let's make this like a 60k front end offer. He said, that sounds really amazing, and I would love to do that, but I just. Can I do that? You know? So I said, okay, let's just break this down. So this is what I take my clients through. How many years did it take you of schooling to get your PhD and where you are right now? And he told me, how much money did that cost you? You know, hundreds of thousands. Right? How many years did you work in your industry, learning what you've learned, blah, blah, blah. And he tells me all this, and I said, so tell me about a result that you've gotten from some of your past clients. And he said, well, one guy, you know, he was only making 100,000 a year. He was in a job. And then I actually helped him triple his income by what I was helping him do. And. And I said, okay. And I said, that's. That's a pretty good play, don't you think? And I said, so if we're targeting universities, specifically tech teams, that's who we were targeting, because we. We do that too, like the target. We're targeting universities and tech teams. I said, do they have budgets for someone like you? And he goes, yeah. I said, so what would make you think you couldn't sell a $60,000 upfront offer? All the money, all the years, all. All the results that you've already gotten for people. And so when I take them through that process and I just, I'm really just shining a light on their brilliance already. That's all I'm doing. I'm like holding a mirror up to them.
- [31:15]
B
So you just key word is a mirror. A lot of my stuff is this deep reflection. I call it the mirror method, which is the reflection of yourself. And you can't outsell your identity. You can out earn your identity and you can out consult your identity. So it's interesting because there's a couple things that popped up for me. I, I know people, consultants that play that small game thinking they can't do it. They lose deals because.
- [31:41]
A
Yeah, because you repel the best people.
- [31:43]
B
Yes, because they're like people want to see a 90,000, $150,000 and you go to them with a 20,000 thinking it's so out of their budget. So you, you really help navigate that journey.
- [31:54]
A
I do. And I really care about position themselves. Yeah. I, I could even tell you another story too going along with what you just said. But as far as positioning themselves, I put them in a category of one. So when we create their offer, there's nothing else like it out there. It has a different message, it has a different name. We always name their offer, it always has a proprietary name. Just like my expert in you, My million Dollar Leap Body Blast. You know, build a million dollar brand around that. So I always teach them to name that. And this is a great play for people too that are listening. Name it where it like shows the result. It there you can clearly see that there's something in it. Like expert in you even tells people it's about you and your expertise. Right. Million Dollar Leap, that's pretty clear. So when we create their offers, it's always branded around the results that they are able to get their clients and what the clients would be wanting. That's the other piece of it too. But you were asking, you were saying something about, you know, clients and they repel people. So a quick story. I was working with a client and she, she had gone down the funnel route and she had done the 3,500$90 day thing and she was working with clients that weren't a fit and she was frustrated and she got found me on LinkedIn and she reached out and she said she had binge watched a lot of stuff and she said I want to work with you, I know you can help me. And so I start unpacking what her brilliance is. And she was phenomenal in sales. Had Done massive sales. She knew how to. She could pick apart webinars and teach people what they're doing wrong with their webinars and their sales teams. I'm like, that's your play. So we put together, we start to put together the offer. This was our first call we had. Didn't even have the offer completely together, but when I started saying, that's your play and this is what you could be doing. And she goes, oh my gosh, I know who I could sell this to. And she reaches out to somebody on LinkedIn that was in her network and she goes, hey, I'm gonna start doing this, you know.
- [33:57]
B
Yeah.
- [33:58]
A
And they were actually a client from a company she had worked with before. And so they knew her and she said, I'm gonna start doing this, you know, as a consulting thing. And they said, let's get on a call. She gets on a call with them, she comes back and she says, I get an email from her and she said, okay, this is what I'm going to help him do. And I'm going to charge him $10,000, which was three times more than she had ever charged. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, you're not going to charge him 10,000. That's a 50,000. Like, I knew I couldn't get her to a hundred, but I said, that's a fifty thousand dollar deal to start. You start with them at fifty. And she goes, really? Like, we're, you know, we're on this quick call. Yes. No, this is, this is worth 50,000. If you fix one or two things in their webinar. Do you know the kind of money they're going to make?
- [34:42]
B
A hundred.
- [34:43]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so she goes, okay, so she puts together the proposal, goes back, they're like, yeah, well, that turned into over six figures. Like she, that ended up being a bigger play for her too. But that's exactly, that was a perfect example. And here's what she said. And she says this in a video testimonial. And if I would have charged them the 10, they wouldn't have taken me seriously and they would have run. And I said, that's exactly right.
- [35:10]
B
So, yeah, and, and if they're not willing to spend the 10, if they're not willing to spend the 20, they're.
- [35:15]
A
Not the right, they're not the right fit.
- [35:16]
B
Yeah, that's the hard. No, but, but, but the right fit. Yeah, I've turned, I just turned down a 20k offer the other day.
- [35:24]
A
I turned people down.
- [35:26]
B
They're willing to spend 20 grand with me. And I know, like, yeah, I like, no, you were. They were going to. I could just tell because the way they're asking about the contract and I'm.
- [35:35]
A
Like, yeah, big red flag, right?
- [35:37]
B
Red, red flag.
- [35:39]
A
Yeah. You know, it's interesting when clients come to me, they're not sitting there picking apart like, okay, how are we gonna do everything?
- [35:44]
B
And no, that's what I said.
- [35:46]
A
No, they're, they're like, okay, and just tell me how I work with you and what, what's the investment of that? Like, and then, then when I send them the agreement, I'm like, we're gonna get on this many calls. But that, like, I go over that after they say yes, I, they say yes before I ever say, okay, this is how we're gonna do it and personally work together. Yeah. So.
- [36:05]
B
So what does it do? You gotta be what, you know, what kind of investment does someone need to be around to be able to even start having a conversation with you?
- [36:14]
A
Yeah, so. So, I mean, typically my lowest offer is going to be around 25. And then it goes up from there. And it just depends on what they need and how long they want to work with me and what we're trying to accomplish. But 25 is the low end with most of my clients. And you know, the thing is, I also help people make money typically pretty fast. So even if I help them get one 50,000, like if they're paying me 50 because they want to bring in six figure clients, even if they get one client right. They're going to double their money. So I look at that and I look at their. But I only take on people that I really feel they have something that I can work with and I really believe I can get them the results. And I feel like they're in the right mindset for that as well.
- [36:57]
B
We're ready to grow. What was coming up for me, I wanted to mention this is it sounded like the way you're speaking, hey, they will come to me when. And it's like people, you don't, people don't find Ann and finds you when you're ready.
- [37:15]
A
Probably that's probably true.
- [37:17]
B
That's what I was coming to me because I had a, I had, I had a consultant once and I said, how come I never heard this guy like this guy, wow, this guy's a weapon. And I remember the guy saying, he's like, you don't go finding Scott.
- [37:28]
A
Yeah.
- [37:28]
B
Finds you when you're ready.
- [37:30]
A
I mean, I'm out there. But yeah, they.
- [37:32]
B
And And I feel like that, that, you know, people know because you're saying they watch your video, they come to you, they know. They already know what they're going to get into. They already know what they, what you're about. They, they don't need the proof. They don't need to think about it. They're either in or they're out. And I'm going to waste your time because you position yourself with premium all around positioning. I'm not looking for this.
- [37:53]
A
It's about being bold. I'm not afraid to. I just shared my pricing. Right. I'm not afraid because I don't want 5k clients coming to me that isn't, I don't even have anything for that now. Maybe at some point I'll create a course or something. I just haven't gone down that route. It doesn't light me up. I do what lights me up in my business. This is my sixth and seventh business. So if it doesn't light me up, I'm not. Right. Yeah.
- [38:16]
B
So what's the vision here? Where, where does, where does Ann go from here? And what, like, what are you like wanting to build? What's the legacy play?
- [38:23]
A
Yeah. So first of all, I'm getting, I'm old.
- [38:29]
B
Just for everyone who's listening and is not old, she doesn't look a day past 35. Just so.
- [38:33]
A
All right. Okay. So. So a couple things. First, I really want to, I, I'm really going all in on Million Dollar Leap, which is around helping people create a 50k plus rinse and repeat offer and then helping them put the systems in place to build that. So a Million Dollar Leap with a handful of clients and it might be 50k but it's been 75 for some of my clients. It might be six figures for another. But I'm saying 50k and up. Okay. So that's my next big offer. And the way I'm doing that, I'm actually going to collapse time and do that with them in about 60 to 90 days. So it's not even going to be a long play with them because those are the kind of results I've been able to help people get pretty quickly. So if they're already an expert, they've already been doing things, it's much, it's much easier to get them faster results than if they're starting from nothing.
- [39:28]
B
Yeah, yeah. They already have a little bit momentum.
- [39:30]
A
Yeah, yeah. So that's my big thing. And then the other side is I'm building up my agency because at some point that will pro. I'll probably want to sell that like I've sold my other businesses. So. Yeah, two things.
- [39:41]
B
So the million dollar leap within 90 days you work with and.
- [39:45]
A
Well, I'm not promising that, I can't promise that. Right. But I, they get the systems, they'll have what they need to go. And, and do you know, they'll have the offers, the revenue model, the, the marketing systems.
- [40:00]
B
Within 90 days you'll be positioned and set up to implement the million dollar plan, which is $50,000 rinse and repeat offer. And at that point you only need a handful of clients in a year to make your million dollars.
- [40:15]
A
That's it.
- [40:16]
B
And as a result, you get your life back, you get your time back, you get your sanity back and you're not running around doing a million things. And one of the biggest keys you said, which I love, is you're not ending up being an employee of the company.
- [40:27]
A
Right.
- [40:28]
B
The strategic partner. And they view you as the strategic partner and they trust and like you. And when you give them recommendations, they don't push back, they say yes and implement. So not only do you have less clients to deal with, you have better, higher end clients who trust in everything you're saying implement, which gets you more results, which ends up being the flywheel that gets you more clients because you're helping them get better results in less time. Because all I know is this, and I learned this hard in my agency, I used to say this, didn't listen. In order to be effective you gotta be selective, AKA client selection is everything.
- [41:09]
A
Yeah.
- [41:09]
B
The wrong client can destroy your company, can bring down the entire house.
- [41:14]
A
Yeah. And you know the other thing too that we really didn't talk about, but I do want to put this out there. I also work with experts that want to get into consulting or coaching. They're coming. A lot of them are already, I work a lot of my clients now. They're already running businesses. But now they want to step into coaching and consulting other people to teach the success that they've had. Very much like I did. And so they are also these high end clients because they don't have to start out at the bottom just because coaching or consulting is new for them. They're still teaching people what they know and what they've learned. And so I, that's why I start them out premium. So we start them out at really high end offers as well. So maybe, or maybe they're coming from corporate, from a C suite. We start them out at 200k plus offers. Yeah.
- [41:59]
B
And you help them with the. Like, if someone's coming to you. So they're the. They're an expert in their field, but they're now at the point where they're like, I want to go on my own right there. They want to be able to bring their expertise to other companies, let's say. So they don't have the website, they don't have the podcast. They don't. They don't even have any marketing really. But they have one thing that the company needs is their actual expertise. How do you get them positioned in a way and do all of that in such a short period of time so that when they are reaching out to these companies and. Or doing the sales process, they're being positioned as that expert. And, you know, and if someone looks at them, they can go find them and it's. And it's all set up.
- [42:38]
A
Yeah, we actually do a really kind of a crunch program with them. So first thing, I'll help. So when we talk, when I help them launch, like an expert pod, so I help them build an expert platform, and we try to do that really quick. So we'll do that. LinkedIn is the. Is typically the place because that's typically where their clients are going to be. We get them positioned right on LinkedIn, even if they have to get a website built. And I have a team that can build that, you know, for them and all of that. But I get them into a strategy that will. That will build their visibility, build their credibility and their expertise. At the same time, it can be bringing them clients, where it can be getting them into conversations with clients. So it might be speaking, it might be running a virtual event, it might be launching a live show or a podcast, and they're actually inviting their perfect clients to be a guest on their podcast. And then I show them how to turn that into a call.
- [43:29]
B
Is that how you use your podcast?
- [43:31]
A
Yes. Yes. So I use it two ways. I get great referral partners from it, and I've built incredible partnerships, and I use it. I use it also to interview people that could be clients. But I also am very selective of the podcast. I guessed on because, same thing, I'm either looking for referral partners or I'm looking for somebody that might want my services. So, yeah, we're very strategic about it.
- [43:56]
B
I love it. So give me the pitch, because this is the Pitch Me show, and we're coming to the end. And I love to hear your pitch because there's so much you do. And I. And I've been thinking like, oh, I can't wait to hear it. If you were in the, you know, the typical. If we're in the elevator and someone goes, and what is it you do? What do you typically say?
- [44:15]
A
I help people who are really experts at what they do, level up their business and get into the top 1% and play like, work with premium really high end clients and build a million dollar or beyond business with just a handful of clients.
- [44:34]
B
How do you think you did there?
- [44:37]
A
Well, you could probably fix me a.
- [44:38]
B
Little bit, but I think we can and we're going to fix you a little bit here. Okay, so that's great. But everyone talks like that, that and it's, you know, okay, I help, I help, I help. I'm big fan of did you know? Or as a result of. And so I'm a big fan of what we call as a wow statement. So what is a wow statement in your industry? I'm sure you know some wow statements, meaning, did you know 92% of most coaches and consultants charge less than, you know, $10,000 a year and something like that. Right. So you get that. Whoa. So did you know that most consultants burn out within the first three years of consultancy because they charge low dollars and deal with headache clients? What I do, or as a result of what we do is we show them how to charge premium pricing with premium offers so they get their time, energy back and make more profits.
- [45:36]
A
I love it. Or we could say most of them, you know, 6%. Only 6% make more than six figures.
- [45:41]
B
Okay, perfect.
- [45:42]
A
Yeah.
- [45:43]
B
Okay, perfect. That's even known. Did you know that? That only 6%. Do we even have an idea of how many? Like, you know, I don't even know how many. Like, say, like there's probably millions, but.
- [45:54]
A
Like, well, I mean the coaching and consulting industry just hit over a trillion dollars and only. Okay, yeah, okay, so here we go.
- [46:02]
B
This is a wow statement. Did you know that the coaching and service industry just hit a trillion? Would you say? Trillion?
- [46:08]
A
Over a trillion.
- [46:09]
B
Over a trillion dollars. And only 6% of the population makes over six figures.
- [46:17]
A
Over a hundred thousand, which is over.
- [46:19]
B
A hundred, you're right. And over a hundred thousand dollars a year. What I do is I show coaches and consultants how to charge premium pricing with premium offers so they can be in the other 97, you know, in the top 6%. Right. And then the question goes, well, how do you do that? And that's how you open up the conversation. Because when someone goes, how do you do that? You got them, you got their trigger. Where can people find you? This is. This is so fast. I almost feel like we need to do another one. We didn't have enough time here, but.
- [46:50]
A
Hi, I'm in. I love it. This is fun.
- [46:53]
B
Yeah. And how do. How can someone find you if they were like, I know this. This is what I needed to hear. Ann is going to solve my problem.
- [47:00]
A
Yeah. You can go to my website@annelcarden.com and you can book a call there or you can check. You can get my books, my bookstore on Amazon. And yeah, all my stuff's there, so you can. And my podcast. Everything's there. So just hit up my website. Also, I love to connect with people on LinkedIn and on social, so reach out to me. I'm very friendly and I will talk to you.
- [47:23]
B
I love it. Well, and I want to say again, thanks so much for being a guest here with Pitch Me. And that is another episode.
- [47:29]
A
Thank you. My pleasure.
- [47:32]
B
And that was another episode of the Vault Unlocked, where proven builders, real strategies, and unstoppable growth happens. Subscribe now. The next unlock could be your success. The code is cracked. The Vault is open.