Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Lauren Tickner on Starting An Online Business

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

After realizing that she did not want to work in a corporate job, Lauren Tickner decided to pursue the best business degree the U.K. had to offer. However, she learned that none of her professors had ever run their own business. She dropped out of school at 20 and focused on her online fitness coaching business, which scaled to seven figures by the time she turned 23. In this episode of YAPClassic, Lauren will teach you about the three key systems in every business, how to do permission-based marketing, and how to determine potential leads.  Lauren Tickner founded Impact School after scaling a lead generation agency and a fitness coaching company to multiple millions per year. She is on a mission to build a billion-dollar company of companies that make a positive impact on the world. Lauren was ranked as Forbes’ #1 business coach for 2021 and a Forbes Top 10 Entrepreneur in 2020. She was also named a “Marketing Genius” by the London Stock Exchange.  In this episode, Hala and Lauren will discuss:  - Why Lauren decided to become an entrepreneur  - Business is a puzzle, not a game  - How Lauren’s disabled brother Adam inspires her every day  - What is the best online business to start right now?  - What four things drive humans?  - How to pick a meaningful goal for a potential business  - Three key systems in every business  - Why some entrepreneurs eventually get stuck & can’t scale  - How Lauren defines leads  - How to determine a potential lead  - Your best ideal client is you from a few years ago  - Permission-based marketing - Using bots  - The benefits of offering free products or services  - How to open up a conversation with a potential lead  - Some of Lauren’s insider tips on growing a social media presence - And other topics… Lauren Tickner is the founder & CEO of Impact School. She started as an online fitness coach at 17 years old, which she turned into a seven-figure online business by the age of 23. Lauren’s commitment to empowering world-class companies to deliver life-changing results globally while making millions has empowered Impact School to continue to serve businesses in every single continent and every single niche imaginable. In 2022, she took YSJ, a career consulting company, from 20k/month to 620k/month consistently and she helped Smart Mentoring add an additional 150k to their monthly revenue.  Lauren resides in Dubai, where Impact School is based, despite having team members in 11 different time zones in 15+ countries.  Resources Mentioned:  Impact School: https://www.impact-school.com/  Lauren’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8qhCPBiqf3qje6CdDBjdgQ  Lauren’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurentickner/  Lauren’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurentickner/?hl=en  Lauren’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurentickner?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor  Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a free trial at shopify.com/profiting More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Join Hala's LinkedIn Masterclass - yapmedia.io/course Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. What's up, young and profitors. Today we're replaying an oldie but a goodie. My 2020 interview with the incredible Lauren Tickner. Lauren helps people start online businesses that change the world and her strategies, help clients increase their sales, save time, and she changes lives. Lauren has helped many entrepreneurs generate six and even seven figure online businesses

through her company Impact School. In fact, Lauren was ranked as the number one business coach in 2021 by Forbes. So if you wanna be young and profiting, you've gotta listen to what Lauren has to say. I'm super excited to play this interview. Lauren is one of my good friends. She is such a smart young lady.

Tune in to learn why systems and outcomes are super important when it comes to launching a business online. Learn how to do permission-based marketing, which by the way, is something that Lauren taught me about that I use every single day in my business. Lauren was the first one who taught me about permission-based marketing. So I owed the strategy to her.

I used it all the time. And also, Lauren had to start engaging conversations without sounding so salesy. Lauren is a sales and marketing master. And this episode is a gold mine, especially for all you entrepreneurs and small business owners in my audience. So let's dive in, young and profitors, without further ado, here's my conversation with Lauren

Kikner. Hey Lauren, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me. It's been a while since I last saw you in New York. I'm definitely missing the delicious food over there, but I'm excited to share a ton of value with your people. Yeah, it's been so long. I've been wanting to have you on the show for a while.

So I'm so glad that we got a chance to make it happen. And you've got so much expertise I'd love to dig into. So let's get into it. So I thought that the best way to start our conversation would be to start off from way back when you dropped out of the number one UK business school and you quit your corporate job. So I want to understand what was that thought process

like for you, where were you at in your life? Like take us back there, put us in that setting, and then help us understand how you decided to become an entrepreneur and, you know, take full control of your life. It's so funny when people ask me this, because I find that a lot of entrepreneurs, that these people who have had lemonade stands, kids, and they've just always had this vision and this desire

to build their own thing, but I was never one of those people. Every single year in high school, we used to do this entire thing where the whole school would essentially have a business building competition and I used to dread it every year because I could never think creatively and after reinvent something. And so I always used to think that an entrepreneur was an inventor and that's what I just saw these people as. And so I always had the vision of climbing my way up the corporate ladder and becoming a female CEO

of a massive financial firm. That was my vision, that was my goal. I love the idea of putting on my suit every day and then going up there and just being in this professional environment, which if you know me now and I mean you know me, you've met me, you know that I am literally the opposite of that. I mean I just do whatever I want, I wear super chill clothes and I'm just not fussy about any of those types of things which is why it's funny. But that's tracking to your original question. So I was 16 years old when I literally just started posting to social media on Instagram. When Instagram, building a personal brand on Instagram wasn't a thing. And the reason why I started posting to Instagram was because I had been through this fitness

journey. I had lost a bunch of way in a really unhealthy way and I wanted just to connect with other girls who were into weight lifting. It was as simple as that. And then as time went on, people were interested in what I was doing. And then I ended up going to work in asset management in London when I was 18. And it was kind of like I was the Hannah Montana at the time because I had this whole corporate setting where I had to be really respectable and presentable and very much okay this is what you do every single day same tasks and then I had this whole life on my phone on this app called Instagram and I had all these friends there and I was

getting invited to these fitness events and so on and so forth. And I was two different people, because when I was in my corporate job, I was so unhappy. I was doing the same thing every single day. It was meticulous, it was monotonous. And then I would go on my phone,

and I would go to these events without the people who were like me. And I didn't feel like I could find other people like me in the real world." And so it was really eye-opening. And at that point, I realized, okay, I can't go to university to do what I was planning on doing, which was going to be politics in economics, because I knew that if I did that, then I would just end up in a job just like what I was already in. And people who were working in my job, they weren't happy and I wanted to be happy.

I wanted to create a life of freedom and fulfillment for myself. And so I knew if I said in that job, then I would just be working my way to become just like them. And so I ended up leaving the job, changing my degree to business, on the UK's number one business degree, because I was like, okay, well, I need to have my own business.

I can't do this for the rest of my life. And after my first year, I realized that the people who were teaching me business in my business degree had never had their own businesses, and it's so funny. Because as of the week that we are recording this, this would have been the week that I would have been graduating from university. And guess what's been happening in the past two months?

My friends who were studying on my business degree alongside of me, they're coming to me asking me to help them review their business plans because they want to go into the real world to stop their businesses. They're the ones with business degrees from the UK's number one course, whereas I'm the one who dropped out of that course, whereas I'm the one who dropped out of that course, but I've actually built a business. And so again, I'm not saying that's to be like, whoa, look at me, but it's just how the system is right now. It's broken. And so here we are now. I'm grateful to be able to help others build online businesses. Super passionate about it,

and that's how we obviously came into contact through the world of forecasting. Yeah. Lauren, that's such an inspirational story. You should be so proud of yourself that you did it on your own. You didn't need formal training and you just experimented your way to success. That's amazing. So to give our listeners some context

into how successful you are, could you list off some of your major achievements and the things that you're most proud of right now? It's so funny because I'm sure you're much you are, could you list off some of your major achievements and the things that you're most proud of right now? It's so funny because I'm sure you're much the same, but I feel like I'm literally just scratching the surface. And so I do think it's important to look back upon everything that you've done, but at the same time I think it's always key to have your eye on the direction that you want to go in.

One thing that was really, really cool for me that's happened in the past six months, I would say, is that Forbes magazine featured me as one of the top 20 entrepreneurs, which was really, really cool. I think I was number eight in there. And then the same thing happened with USA Today and also Yahoo Finance. And then there's actually two more, which are currently about to be published next week for the London Stock Exchange and Bloomberg. So I'm really, really grateful for that and that's been really, really cool. And so I would say for me, they're the biggest things,

but at the end of the day, the thing that lights me up the most is my clients, right? So I can think of the job in my head, like at least 20 clients in the past three months alone who have been able to quit their full-time jobs and go full-time into their own online business. And so for me, that is the best thing ever because I just know that if I was still in a job that wasn't making me fulfilled, then I would not be a happy person. That's amazing.

And so I want to talk about your lifestyle right now. Do you have a, I know it's COVID, so maybe now you're living some more permanently, but previously to that, did you have a permanent residence or, because I see your Instagram and you're like, kind of all over the world, it seems like so. So what was your deal? Were you just a completely remote worker? Yeah, so I kind of like to travel the world, right? And so I'm not really one of these nomads, as you call it,

but I do like to move around a lot. So I kind of just live in Airbnb's. So I like to make sure that all times I find some like nice, too bad Airbnb's. So I have an office and then a bedroom so I can still remain, you know, some type of balancer. But yeah, so the answer to your question is no, I don't. I am at the point in my life where I don't see any point in buying a property because I don't know where I want to be.

And I want to buy like units of properties, right? Multi-family units rather than just a single place. Because at that point, if you start buying a property to live in, it becomes a liability, whereas I want to make sure that I turn all of my liabilities into assets so that I can be bringing in revenue. And so I don't just feel the need right now to have a permanent residency, but at the end of the day, it will be in the US as soon as I get my visa. That's awesome. And Lauren, how old are you?

23. Oh my gosh, she make me feel like I'm a failure. I'm sure there's a lot of older listeners like, what the hell did I do wrong? But you know what? Kudos to you. You're doing a great job. So when I look at your content, if you're listening on a podcast, you can't see her right now.

But she's all over Instagram and LinkedIn and YouTube. You're pretty low-key. You just mentioned it before. You're not really into wearing a lot of makeup and doing your hair and wearing a lot of clothes. Half the time you're not even wearing a bra. So tell me. So tell me, it's obviously your minimalist and it's not money that's motivating you. So what actually drives you to be so successful and like, why do you want so much money if

you're such a minimalist? You know, this question is something that kind of does my own head in sometimes because I see business as a puzzle, right? And it's just a case of clonzynie leveling up and leveling up. And the reason why I don't see it as a game, I see it as a puzzle is because everybody gets to win. And here's the thing, when it comes to what motivates me, there's kind of two things. So the first thing is just I have this innate curiosity and desire just to keep getting better and better and better. I don't know, I just, it's ingrained in

my soul. But then the other side of things is that my brothers disabled. And so I was even just talking to my mom about this earlier, we were having a conversation because I went to visit her. And we were just talking about another family member who's just kind of, you know, not really getting anywhere in life. And I was saying how I was trying to help that person and do do do do do do and that you can't help someone who doesn't want to help themselves. And then I said to my mom, I said, well, it's such a shame because I've seen Adam, my brother, my whole life, right? And I've seen someone who isn't able to do the things that for me, it's so easy to do because he's in a wheelchair. He doesn't eat, so he has a tube in his stomach

and all of that. And I was saying to her, how, let's say I'm out for a run, which is pretty rare. I'm much more of a wait stop a person, but this kind of emphasize is the point, right? I hate running. And so when I am running, the one thing that keeps me going is Adam wishes he could be doing this right now.

And so given that we have the ability to actually go ahead, like if you can listen to this conversation right now and make sense of it, you can go out there and make things happen, right? And so if you have the ability to do so, then in my opinion, you're doing the world to just service by not doing it. And so with that said, for me, it's just a case of,

well, I want to be able to generate as much money as possible, because in the long term, I want to be able to have a charity, but I know exactly what that money's going towards. Because right now, I don't feel confident putting my money towards most of the charities. There's one in particular in the UK that I do a lot of stuff with because I know the person who is the founder and all of that. Other than that, I mean, I don't know where that money's

going, I don't trust it, so I want to be the one who gets to control that because I want to make a meaningful difference in the world of epilepsy and or families with disabled children. And so I think having that deeper reason why it's going to be the thing that keeps you going. Because without that, yeah, money can get you salted, but it's not going to keep you in the game. Oh, that's so powerful. I didn't really, I knew about your brother, but I didn't know that that was like one of your driving factors. That's so interesting. And you know, it's so nice that you have like this clear purpose that drives you. And that's so great for the world too. I didn't realize that you had such a beautiful mission behind all of this.

That's amazing. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So let's get into the meat of today's conversation. You are an online business guru, a coaching guru as well. I think that you're sort of a genius at this. I want to start off with trying to understand, what do you think is like the best type of online business

that a person could start today, whether it's the business model or whether it's the industry and something that's very lucrative right now or popular right now to start in terms of online businesses? Yeah, so for some background, I am very much one of those people who has tried everything, right, whether it's trading, whether it's e-commerce, drop shipping, coaching, consulting, courses, e-books, podcasting, YouTube, being an influencer,

I have done it all. And so this is a great question for me. There is a thing. When it comes to the best business model for you to start right now, or to start generating revenue, I truly believe that the best thing to do is a service, an online service, and something that you're selling for a high price point. Because think about it this way. You can have a really complicated business with a little product,

with an entire flow of inventory and just the whole supply side and this massive supply chain. You can have that, and that's going to be typically involved if you're selling products. But then if you're selling services, all you really need is you and then the client. And then the interaction is going to be the financial exchange and you delivering the service. And so when it comes to actually getting started, if you're able to think about your existing experience, right, or your existing knowledge, so maybe your whole life, you've been working in HR or you've been working in marketing, well, what can you do? Well, at that point, you could go ahead and coach or consult other people on how to manage HR in that business, or if you've had an experience in HR in a particular industry, you could be a career coach, right?

For people who want to go into that industry or work their way up that industry. Similarly, if you've had experience in marketing, then you could do the marketing for businesses, pick a specific niche, whatever it is, whatever you're interested in. That's the cool thing about having your own business. If you're interested in makeup, or if you're interested in stocks and shares, you could do the marketing for businesses and whatever industry is that you have that interest in. And then from that, then it's a case of figuring out, okay, what is the outcome that my specific customer wants to get to? So maybe if you decide to be a career coach, is that they want to get a job that pays 50 grand a year in this specific city,

whatever. And then it's a case of reverse engineering that process to communicate how your future clients are able to get to that outcome. And then from there, in order to get started, what I say to my clients at impact school is what you're going to do is you're going to find five to ten people, right? And you're going to work with them closely until they get the outcome. But here's the thing, if people don't pay, they don't pay attention. So what you're going to do is you're going to work with them. Let's say in the future, you want to be charging, I don't know, 3K for something.

Slash it in half, give it to them for 1.5. Work with them, get feedback, implement that feedback so that you get the confidence, because confidence comes with success. And then if you're getting success with people, you're going to be more confident. If you're more confident, then you're going to get more clients in the future. So work with those people, get that feedback from them, implement it and then once you've

implemented that feedback then you're going to have a really solid offering. And so in my opinion that's the best place to start because I have lost thousands in doing e-commerce and I lost that money before I even had that money to lose. I've been scammed and it's just you're relying on other people. Whereas when you start, it makes sense to build something of your own that doesn't rely on anybody else. And then get clients results, sell it for a high price point because then you need fewer clients and less complicated marketing funnels

and all of this stuff. It's just the case of having a one-to-one conversation with someone explaining the outcome that you're gonna take them to, and then you can get the deal. I want to dig deeper into the outcomes piece so that people really understand this. I think this is a really important part.

How do we figure out what outcome we want to bring people to, or can you give some examples to kind of drive that point home? Absolutely. So there's really four key areas of business that sell, okay? So the first is health, right? So this is maybe weight loss or this is maybe muscle gain or reversing diabetes. Then there's wealth, okay? So that's simple. Make money or save money or understand your finances. Then there's relationships, so find lasting love or raise your kids, parenting

and all that type of stuff, self-love, whatever. And then there's power. Okay, so this can kind of, this is one of the areas that can sell. So this one I'm a little bit, um, about because I think it kind of feeds into all of the others at the end of the day. So these are basically the four things that people are motivated and driven by. Okay. Right. And so with that said, I think that you need to firstly make sure that your outcome ties into one of these four things. Okay. So is it going to help make someone healthier, wealthier, or improve their relationships, or make them feel like they're more powerful? Because that's going to ultimately be why they buy. So then from there, let's take an example from each of these industries.

So let's take health, first of all. Well, the outcome could be helping someone lose 20 pounds of fat, right, over a three month period, whatever. So an example in the wealth space could be what we do at Impact School, right? Helping our clients get their first 10 high ticket clients so high paying clients online. The one for relationships could be find your life partner or prevent a divorce, something like that.

So whatever the outcome is, it has to be very, very clear because you'll find so many people. In fact, let's take another example with the wealth one, right? Yeah, let's say you help people generate leads using LinkedIn. Okay, you're a LinkedIn expert. A lot of people will just say, I'll help your marketing on LinkedIn or I'll help you increase your traffic with LinkedIn. But that's not really very, very clear. Instead, it could be something along the lines

of I help online coaches generate an extra 10 sales calls per day using LinkedIn. That's very, very clear and tangible. As an online coach, if someone's reading that, they're going to be like, wow, this really speaks to me. The outcome has to be something that your ideal client, they read it and they're like, wow, I mean, this is exactly what I've been looking for.

This is going to solve my problems. I'm going to be able to finally sleep at night so I don't need to think about this. So that's why the outcome is so key. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree

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New episodes drop Mondays and Thursdays. Find the millionaire university podcast on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And how can you kind of uncover what the big problems are in your field or industry? Like how can you determine that your problem is actually in demand that you're trying to solve? Exactly. So I think that this is where a lot of people go around because they'll just kind of guess. And here's a great example. So when I was at university for my my short stint that which is around 18 months in the end, I noticed in the first year that so many people gained so much weight and

because I was the fitness girl, right? People would come to me saying, hey Lauren, like I'm getting so much weight, oh my gosh, I need to lose weight now, but I also still want to go out clubbing, right? Because I'm a student and I just want to be doing these things. And so I spent three months building out this program, which was going to be called University meets fitness, and it was essentially designed so that from the September until the August, they would have a workout plan and nutrition plan, did it, everything. And so I spent so much time building it, the three months. And then what ended up happening was I launched it and nobody bought it. So I just wasted three months of my time on something that people didn't want, because

it wasn't clear enough and it just wasn't a good product and market much. So with that said, this is why I think it's so important, just to think, okay, what are a few different outcomes I could take clients to? And then just start trying to sell to people. Now I know that that sounds kind of crazy, but at the end of the day, you're going to get your best feedback from having conversations with people, right? And so it's just having one-on-one conversations. And the biggest thing to remember is that people will say, yeah, I really want that.

I really need that. Sounds like a great idea, but unless they speak with their credit card, it's not a good idea. So you have to essentially validate your idea by getting people to pay for it. And so I think it's a case of understanding the market that you're going into, but not spending so much time on market research, because you can research so much,

but at the end of the day, the best answer is going to come from having those one-to-one conversations with people. Just like putting out so many feelers, seeing what's sticks, seeing what people actually pay for. I think that's really smart. Another key thing that you always talk about is systems, right? Can you tell us why it's so important to have a system and how we would be able to start developing our system

so that we could start our online business? So there's really three key areas where I think you need systems, right? The first is going to be to attract potential clients. So this is essentially marketing, right? Getting attention. Then from there, it's going to be, okay, how do I turn this attention into money? How do I turn these, this level of interest into customers? And then the third area is going to be, okay, delivering results to these clients. So how can I actually fulfill on what I sold in a systematic way?

Because if you don't have systems, then what's going to end up happening is you become a slave to your business. You basically just fill yourself a job. And so with systems, you're able to leverage your time. You're able to get out of doing all of the nitty gritty what, so that you can focus on scaling, so that you can focus on growing. A lot of people say it allows you to work on your business

instead of in your business. And I think it's really, really true, because at the end of the day, if you're constantly focusing on doing the intricate details, then what's gonna happen is this. And I see this so often with people who come to us saying, Lauren, I'm stuck, I'm at this sticking point,

I can't grow my business anymore. And what's happening is this. They are stuck between this hamster wheel of making sales versus fulfilling on what they've sold. And so what happens is they will do a launch, right? They'll launch new program, new enrollment, new cohort, open car, everybody join now. And they'll be focusing on marketing sales, sales calls, all of this stuff. And they get a boliter clients join, hopefully. And then that's fulfilling on delivering those results and

getting people their success and so on and so forth. And while they're doing all of the work with the client, what's happening in the marketing and sales side? Nothing. Okay. And so they have this inconsistent and unpredictable stream of revenue coming in or not coming in, right? For that matter.

And so this is hugely problematic because at the end of the day, what you want to happen is have a method to get that attention always every single day like I mentioned, so that then you're able to consistently convert people into new clients and then deliver them results in a time-leveraged way. So what we do with our clients, for example, I think the first system to nail down really is the opposite of one of what a lot of people think, okay? You might think the first system to nail down really is the opposite of one of what a lot of people think, okay? You might think the first system to nail down is bringing the leads, but actually I would argue that the first system that you should

nail down is the clientful film it because that's what people are paying for. They're paying to get results. And so if you can nail down a system of fulfillment, then you know that even if you got hit by a bus, your clients are still going to get results anyways. So what we do with our clients, for example, in the service-based industry, is when they figured out that outcome and reverse engineered it, they essentially create an online course that gets them from where they are now to where they want to beat that outcome. And then that online course is essentially the path, but then in order to ensure that they get to the outcome, because we found that on average,

people only complete 28 to 33% of an online course, right? And so people need coaching alongside of that online course to actually get to the outcome. So you can see here how there's actually a system in place, to get them to the result. But then people also need personal help. And this is outside of the system, but you can do it in a systematic manner. And that personal help is consulting essentially.

And so what you can do along in the middle of your course is have specific things that people submit for review and for help with. And then you go ahead, you review that, you could send them like a loom video with loom.com, really, really cool piece of chrome software. It's so easy to use, yeah. Exactly, and clients are like, wow, I got my personal help and it just motivates them to keep coming back for more. And so while I know that was kind of a bit of a long answer to your question, what I'm getting at is that when you have systems, sometimes people think, oh, but I shouldn't be creating cookie cutters for programs or all, but all of my clients need different levels of help and they need all bespoke projects and such.

But your business isn't going to be scalable if you're doing that. When you focus on one outcome, guess what happens? All of your clients are coming to you for that one thing, so you can create that system. And also, all of your posts on social media, all of your marketing is built around that one outcome. So you don't have to spend time bending over backwards for each and every client. Instead, what you're doing is taking everyone to this one

place so you can have the confidence and certainty and knowing that you're going to get results. So yeah, systems everything. Amazing, amazing advice. I think you broke down so many great things. It's so important to make sure that our processes are repeatable and scalable. That's the key to being able to grow a business without killing yourself and spreading yourself to thin.

So I really appreciate that advice. So I want to touch on leads and lead generation. You touched on it a bit. I want to dig deeper into that. So first of all, I know you have a very unique definition of what a lead is. So what is a lead to you? Everybody has sort of a different definition. Yeah, so in my opinion, a lead is someone who is ready to buy, right? It's not just an email or it's not just a phone number or a name or a list. It's actually a potential customer who is literally at the point whereby they're ready to invest

in whatever outcome it is that you're taking people to. And so I think this is why so many people go wrong because they get excited by, oh my gosh, I have a thousand leads from this new program that I launched or this new ebook that I'm running or whatever, but out of those leads, I mean, are they actually leads? Like, are they serious about it? Yeah. And so there's the whole Eugene Schwartz five stages of awareness. If you guys listening haven't heard of that, then just go tie up and on Google Eugene Schwartz five stages of awareness after you're finished listening here. And if your prospect is one of those people who is kind of just slightly aware that they have a problem, then they're not about to buy, right?

And so I think it's a case of in your marketing, so many people try to focus their marketing on people who aren't even necessarily ready to commit to getting to the outcome that they want. So it just makes so much more sense to focus on those people who aren't ready. So let me give you an example. For us, we post to social media and in our ads and stuff, very solution-aware type of messaging. So what I mean by that is, instead of saying, you need to have an online coaching or consulting business, I don't say that, right? Because it's going to cost me so much money to convince someone that they need an online coaching or consulting business to then show them

how to do it and to then tell them that I have the solution. That's so much effort. I'm going to have to spend money on all of these different areas in my ads if I'm doing paid staff and then if it's organic, then I'm just putting out a pretty soft message. Whereas if I'm just to focus on the people who are like, okay, so you've tried sales schools, you've tried selling free e-books, you've tried building a website and nothing's getting you high paying clients, here's what you need instead, then I can talk to the problems that people are having who are already trying to actually, you know, make it happen. Those people who are serious, they're already looking for the solution, they're already

frustrated as hell because they aren't getting the results. And so, yeah, in my opinion, a lead is someone who is at that more, the more seasoned, I guess that's how I'd put it. It's like they're actually ready to buy. They know their problem and they're ready to buy. Yeah, simple. So in terms of trying to figure out who your lead, potential leads would be, how do you go about determining who is a lead and ready to buy versus

who is somebody you shouldn't waste your time on in terms of if you wanted to start a conversation with them? That is such a great question. And I think that it really does obviously depend upon what it is that your outcome is. So essentially I would say that there should be kind of a specific start point and a specific end point. So you know what your outcome is but then also kind of what is the start point. So I'll give a couple of examples from each

of those industries that we mentioned earlier. We'll do health, wealth and relationships. Let's just say your outcome is like I said earlier, helping someone lose 30 pounds of fat. Their start point right now could either be that they literally sit on the couch or they're stuffing their face and they already are just super unhealthy. And they just kind of enjoy watching TV, right? That's a really bad potential clients go for. The reason being is because you're going to have to convince them that they're unhealthy, and then you're going to have to take them

along that whole process. Instead, a better ideal client will be someone that has been told by their doctor that if they don't lose weight right now, then they're gonna have a hard start within the next two to three years, okay? Or it would be somebody who is about to get married, right? Who now wants to lose fat? So those are two very different things though, let me tell you. So they're two very different potential clients, because one of them is about to have a hard start and one of them is about to have a heart attack

and one of them is about to get married. They have two different motivating forces. So what does that mean? Well, that means that your marketing is going to be so different because what you would write in your headline or make a pull class episode or a YouTube video about for the woman who's about to get married, it could be your personal story as to how you felt fat on your wedding day, right? That's gonna hit deep. Whereas for the guy that's about to have a heart attack, well, you could make a piece of content

on how to reduce the risk of a heart attack. It's simple, right? They're very, very different pieces of content. One of them's gonna attract the idol client that you want, one of them isn't. Even though them is going to attract the ideal client that you want. One of them isn't even though you're taking both these people to the same outcome. So then when it comes to the wealth side of things, let's say the example with the LinkedIn, where you're helping online coaches, generate 10 new sales calls per day using LinkedIn.

Well, right now, maybe you could be realizing that what you're gonna be going for is, as I said, those online coaches, why online coaches? Well, I don't know, you just chose that niche and you liked it. It doesn't really matter. Right, I think people overthink these things. You might work with a few online coaches and hate it and realize, oh, these silly online coaches,

I don't like working with them. And then you might decide that you wanna work with real estate agents. It doesn't matter. But at the end of the day that you want to work with real estate agents. It doesn't matter. But at the end of the day, you need to know those people inside out. And so for me, when I was a fitness coach, I loved helping women lose weight while simultaneously becoming stronger with physical amends because that's what I had been through. So I think usually your best ideal client is you just a few years ago.

And so that's quite an easy way to nail it down. Yeah, because you can just think, where was I and how did I overcome it? And how did I feel? It really is about those feelings because people buy due to emotions, not because of logic for the most part. You know, there are some people who, and I think I'm probably one of these people who does buy many from logic, but that's only because I see through all of it. But it's because I understand the psychology of things.

But most people don't and at the end of the day, that's for most things. But for other things, I definitely buy because of emotion we all do, you know, if you're, here's a great example, like a couple months ago I was feeling really lonely with the whole coronavirus stuff, I buy an audiobook about finding love. So it's like I buy the audiobook based on my feelings, you know what I mean? And so it's like people, people do add based out of how they're feeling at that time. And so if you have been in that person's shoes before, then you're gonna be able to connect with that really, really easily.

So I wanna talk about a phrase that you coined, it's permission-based relationship marketing. Now, a lot of people focus on content generation. They kind of are spinning on the hamster wheel, creating social media posts, that for social media posts. And they're expecting people to actually reach out to them where I know and you both know that you really need to be proactive if you're trying to get clients.

So can you talk to us about the importance of permission-based relationship marketing and what that is and how we can use it? Yeah, so the reason why I realized this was because I, at one point, had so many followers in the fitness industry and guess what? I would make some Instagram stories and I would literally get no clients. And I was like, what is happening here? I have tens of thousands of followers, but no one's wanting to buy from me. And it just made no sense. And for sure, I would get some inquiries,

but what I then started doing is every single day we're applying to all of the comments and every comment that I had, I would DM them. I would send them a direct message on Instagram. And what ended up happening was I would be having these conversations with people because they'd commented on my posts

so I knew they were interested. And essentially that comment and the fact that they were following me implied to me in my head, OK, I have that permission to message them. They aren't going to feel like I'm spamming them if I message them at this point. Unlike those really long LinkedIn messages that people still seem to think is OK to send,

which is really not. OK, no one's reading that. No one cares. So instead, I would just reply back in my normal tonality, like, hey, Natalie, thank you so much for the comment. Really, really appreciate you. Just would love to know what you're hoping to achieve through consuming my content.

So let me know that. Just get the conversation going. And then from there, essentially, we have a conversation back and forth that like, okay, this is really cool. This person is just interested in helping me. And then you get them on the phone. And then you speak to them on the phone. And if it's a good fit, then you enroll them into whatever it is that you're selling. And so I think that it's just such a nice way to build a business. And people tell me all the time, but

yellow and that's not scalable. But the fact of the matter is that it's very scalable. Because if you're building systems in all areas of your business, including this, and building teams around everything that you're doing, you're going to be able to scale this, going to be no problems with that. And so I think so often people try to run before they can walk. And so if you haven't maxed it out totally and utterly,

then you should not be trying to say, OK, this isn't scalable so I shouldn't do it now. Do what works right now. And that's the power of being small as well. You can do it. I wanna drive this point home to my listeners, and I can relate to this. I have a podcast, right?

And my goal isn't necessarily gets clients. My goal with my podcast is to get downloads. I wanna be the biggest podcast in my self-development world. So I have a big following on LinkedIn, and I get hundreds of comments on my posts. And honestly, I wouldn't say that any of my followers on LinkedIn actually go listen to my podcasts on their own. They love to listen to my social media posts, but to take them actually to go

download and listen to my podcast, that takes me personally messaging them every single time. I always get the response back saying, Hala, I see your post all the time. I actually never listen to your podcast. Thanks so much for sharing it. I love it. I'm hooked now. I listen every day, right? And so it's almost like you need to go that extra mile and basically give them like no

friction to actually get to your product. And you need to tell them that, you see them, you hear them and give them that, and that one-to-one connection has so much ROI, I paid money on ads, I paid money on so many different things, and my number one way to get people to download my product is by messaging people. And so, again, I get the same comment, like, how does that scale? How can you message every single person? It's because I know that 90% of the time they're actually going to listen and become a subscriber, and to me that time is worth it. It's worth more than spending time on more social media posts. I'd rather have less social media posts and more one-to-one communication than more social media posts. So yeah, I couldn't agree more. And

here's the thing, right? People don't owe you anything, right? That is of course the power of reciprocity, right? That's one of Robert Childini's principles of persuasion and influence, but here's the thing, the world owes you nothing. And I think that that's something that can be quite hard to hear when you put so much time, energy, and effort into your content. Because yeah, you're putting that message out to help people. But there's no reason why they're gonna consume it, right? There's no reason why they should then go ahead and comment and all it or engage with it.

You have to be the one who essentially creates the direction for your business. You can't rely on people just coming to you. And just as you alluded to, any paid ads that we run, we run it all into messenger, right? Because then from there, then we can essentially amplify our paid traffic with organic, the permission-based relationship marketing. And once we started doing that, it just changed the game. Because at the end of the day, if someone ups in to one of our

free trainings, it's cool. Great, They're going to get a ton of value. Are they going to go through it if we spur them on to? But for the most part, the reason why I'm running those free trainings is to get them into messenger. And so our open rates on there are above 95%. Kick through rates are above 40%. And just to give you some perspective, like a good open rate on an email is like 30% and click through like 5 to 10%.

So this has totally changed the game. And we don't do it in a massive bought or anything because I hate that stuff. It doesn't scale. It has to be, okay, one message from a bought and then from there, let's move into like humans' human. But I'm going on a tangent here just because like I'm obsessed with marketing. So I'll let you take it back to. Yeah, I think this is great information. This is exactly

like where I wanted to go. So you mentioned that your paid ads go directly to messenger. I actually, you might have seen a message for me. I was researching you yesterday. And I was listening to your podcast and it was like, go to like, I forgot the website. It was like Lawrence free coaching.com. Lawrence free course. Yeah. And I go there and I expect that I was like okay cool I'm gonna take our course and learn more about what I'm gonna do my research. I go there and it pops me into messenger. So how does that work? I never knew that you could have a URL that goes into a DM on Facebook like

how does that work? Yes so we use a tool called Manisha, and that essentially, you can build a link, and when someone clicks that link, they get an automatic message. So I literally have it very clear, like, hey, this is a bot message. If you reply, we'll deliver it to Lauren, but this is a bot, right? Because I'm not gonna pretend like it's not,

because it'll be this yet. And so from there, what we do is we just take that URL and then in SiteGround, we just create a forwarding link so that when someone goes to Lauren'sfreakores.com, then it will take them into messenger, right, as a reader acts. From that, yeah, the automatic message gets sent, what people get further information

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I'm like, tell me more. Okay, so let's talk about freebies. So we're on the topic of the free course. What's your reasoning for putting out a free course? Like what's that funnel like with journey or you're trying to take people through when you put out something free? For sure. So let me just say one thing for us, okay? If you're not already

generating like, I don't know, 10k, for example, from your online business, then I do not think that any of this stuff is required. I think that instead what you should be doing is having those one-on-one conversations, getting people on the phone and closing them for a package that's at the very least 1.5K. Okay, that's where you should be starting. Then from there, in order to scale, once you've already validated your offer,

okay, once you've validated what you're doing, and you know that it's something that people want, then build systems around it. So, you don't want to build systems around something that you don't know if you're going to scale it. It's just just waste of time to do that. So once you know that you're ready to scale, then it's like, okay, cool, let's create a freebie. Why do you want a freebie? Well, in the past, it was to get people on

your email list. As I just mentioned, it really isn't that for me anymore. Cool. Yeah, I'm going to get people on my email list. It's very, very valuable to have an email list because you own that the software doesn't own it. But at the end of the day,, I'm gonna go at people on my email list. It's very, very valuable to have an email list because you own the software, doesn't own it. But at the end of the day, what I'm doing now is leading with messenger. So leading with getting people on my messenger list and the reason being is because then I can literally

send a blast to all of them at one time if I wanted. There's now some rules and regulations behind the whole thing which means that you can't just do it like you used to be able to, but you can just pay for it, right? You just pay like you'd pay for Facebook ads, but it's going generally into their inbox that they'll get like a text from you. It's so cool.

And so from that, the reason for the freebie is to obviously get that customer information. So yeah, an email address is cool. I get both, right now. A lot of it's been from organic traffic, but we're running ads right now and it's costing us $6.50 cent to get someone's email address and their name on the list, right? And their phone number because we collect all three. And just so you know, like that's unheard of because we're getting really high quality traffic. And so anyway, I don't know how deep you wanna go

on the marketing side, but here's the thing. What we then do with those people is, when they come into Messenger, what I'll do is I'll send a voice note about after, and that voice note helps them realize, okay, cool, Lauren's actually online. For me, while thousands of people are coming in all the time, it's like

10 seconds of my day, it's literally nothing like it doesn't really take much. And then from there, what you can also do is you then are able to, in the future, within 24 hours, send them an automatic message. So what will then do, because they've opted into something, it's send them another automatic message, like, hey, go check out the podcast or whatever happens to be. I don't really like the automation stuff, it's just a bit, it's risky, okay. But anyway, so by tomorrow we were saying, it's like, okay, cool. So you get people on messenger,

then you get them to enter that email, then an automatic email can get sent out to them. So you're coming at them from all angles, basically. And so it just allows you to build that relationship. And if they go through your free program, cool, that's great. But at the end of the day, the more powerful thing is to have that conversation one-to-one. And also on that topic, I think another thing when it comes to all of this is that so many people think that giving out a free e-book or giving out a free... I've done it all in the past myself, by the way way and I still have some of these things up.

But what I've found in the past eight to 12 months is that if you really, really want to get the best results, doing a free program that lasts for like five days and then taking it away from people is the most powerful thing. The reason being is because they really get to have an experience of what it's like to be a client of yours, you get to deliver so much value while also revealing why they need your help. And so people tend to get better results as well. I mean, from some of our free programs, people, one of my clients generated in a five day program that we did seven grand, she generated, and then she became a client because she was like, down, this is good. And so it just allows you to give that high ticket experience.

That's why I like doing free courses. Thank you so much for taking that marketing deep dive. I appreciated it. Some people probably went way above their heads, but I think that's awesome. Going back to the basics a little bit, let's just talk about how to open up a conversation. You gave an example before where you actually gave a compliment

and then you gave like an open-ended question Could you tell us more about that and and how why that's a tactic that works well in terms of starting the conversation So I'm sure all of our listeners here have been on LinkedIn or even Facebook and they've received a message like Hey Lauren Tickner your content is really really cool And I would like to tell you about my new video that you can watch and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's this massive chunk of text. Honestly, I, it's kind of like reminds me of being in English lessons at school reading some massive like paragraph. I don't even know, but it's just not attractive, right? Yeah.

It's just, it's kind of like you're in a bar, right? In New York, let's just say, and you're single, right? And you'll start at the bar, and someone just walks up to you and is like, hey, do you want to come home with me? Like, no one's, it's just not cool. Right? And sad you want to go up to someone, you want to say like, hey, I really like your dress. Whatever, you know, give them a compliment. hey, I really like your dress. Whatever. You

know, give them a compliment. Hey, I really like your dress. Are you from it? I don't know. I'm not a guy trying to pick up a guy on the bar, but like, you know what I'm saying? So the best thing to do is give them a compliment and ask them a question. And it's funny. I had never even really thought about it from like the dating perspective as well, but it kind of is like the same thing, right? And so I'll give you an example. Like what I may say to you is like, hey Hala, I've seen your podcast pop up all over my feed. We'd love to know when you got started with it, right? I may say something like that. And I probably said your name with such an English accent, and then I just realized I was like,

that sounded so British, which cracked me up. But anyway, so it's like a question like that. So for me, what I'll do is I'll be on social media, I'll be looking at like a hashtag, for example, online coaching, or maybe at home workout, because we have a lot of clients who are personal trainers. So if I go on at home workout, I'm finding all of these personal trainers right now. So what I'll do is I'll just watch their stories or just send them a message saying,

hey, your feed popped up on my explore page. What you're doing in the fitness industry is so important right now. So I'm really grateful for you. How long have you been a personal trainer? Or how long have you been an online coach? Something like that. And so it's just like compliment question, boom. And then you just move on. And keep messaging like 50 people a day on Instagram, LinkedIn, you can do 100.

And I know that like getting people on the phone, especially if it's something high ticket, like nobody is going to spend 3K online without ever talking to someone or whatever your price point is. So how can you tell if somebody's ready to actually have a phone conversation? So we have kind of a quite a long phased process that we go through, but it really is a case of asking questions, ask questions, questions, questions. And I think then one thing that's really simple that anyone can do and obviously, questions, questions, and I think then one thing that's really simple that anyone can do and obviously again, some people take this so literally and they become

that family person again. What you can do is once you've been thinking of this person back and forth for quite a long time and you're like, okay, I think that, interested, but I'm not too sure. Just say to them, so on a scale of one to ten with 10 being, this sounds pretty much like, well, I need, where would you say, you're up. And then if they say ten, then it's like, okay, cool, let's get them on the phone. It doesn't need to be complicated. I think, you know, that whole scale of one to ten thing, that's called temp checking, like temperature checking. And so you're essentially checking where they are at on the temperature scale of warmth, right? If they're 10, they're piping hot, ready to go,

if they're one, then they're cold, they're not a good lead. And so that's what that's sort of what we do. I think what we say is kind of a narrative of some of my head, it's like on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being this start, you know, I don't know, it depends, because what we'll do is we'll say, on a scale of one to ten, how ready are you to, and then whatever they mentioned that goal was, right, because we asked them what that goal was in the conversation. And then we say, 10 is, I'll do anything, as long as it stops me from, and then in the blank there, I'll say, whatever they said their struggle was. So we kind of like insert whatever they've exactly said.

So we use their language, because using that language is so powerful and long-sing. Okay, I would suggest that everybody rewind this and listen to it again like the last 10 minutes because she gave so much information. If you have an online business and you're trying to secure more leads, there were so many gems in this conversation in regards to how you should open up a conversation, how you

know who your leads actually are. What are the types of things that you should be doing? Some awesome tools really advanced marketing. So definitely rewind this if you're interested. And then check out Lauren's content online. And if you're interested, please reach out to her in terms of her coaching. She's amazing. I'm going to do it myself, honestly, but just when I have a little bit of more time. So, Lauren, I want to end this with some quick fire questions. And basically, in addition to your

expertise on online coaching and all that, you are also like really good at building social media channels and building your presence on Instagram. You have like 130 something followers. YouTube, you've grown it to like over 30k subscribers. Your podcast is doing well. You're growing a following on LinkedIn now too. So let's start off with Instagram. Instagram is something I struggle with. For some reason, I just like I popped off on Twitter way back when I popped off on LinkedIn. I never popped off on Instagram. I don't know why. So tell me like what would you say is like the key way to like grow a following on Instagram right now. Like what are your tips there? Honestly right now, if I was starting I'm from scratch. This is kind of controversial. I probably wouldn't even

bother on Instagram. Yeah. I think that growing on Instagram now is really hard. I grew when it was much easier, and I would say now, focus on TikTok and LinkedIn instead. So I just got started on TikTok. I don't know how I feel about it. I kind of feel like a grandma trying to use a mobile phone for the first time,

but it seems to be quite cool. So you're still so young, you're even a little bit fine. Yeah, but I still feel, you know, there's a lot of kids on that, but at the same time, there's a lot of people who are, you know, in their early teens, early 20s, I'm saying that's my age, but there's a lot of people who are on the platform, they're who are looking to actually learn more personal development stuff and that's what I think is cool. And so I am just kind of on there trying to figure it out. But yeah, Instagram, honestly, if I was starting again from scratch now, I really feel that in the next 12 months, we're going to see Instagram falling off. I really believe

it. I think that TikTok is just crazy right now, same with LinkedIn. So I don't think I'd focus my efforts there. Yeah, I mean, that's the approach that I was taking and even recently, I'm like, let me try Instagram again and see if I can get some traction, but it just always seems like a waste of time for me. I just get so much more traction on LinkedIn's, so much easier and it's just seems so much more natural. I feel like I've just really unlocked it

and then Instagram's just like an uphill battle all the time. How about YouTube? I see that you're doing great on YouTube. My YouTube actually, I've just started focusing on it and it's really starting to grow like pretty damn fast now and I'm very excited. What is your strategy with YouTube? What are some tips to grow your subscribers? Like, what do you do there? YouTube is the goal of social media, right? Because here's the thing, you post the YouTube video and people type in Google, the title, right? Or people type in to, like, how to grow an online coaching business.

I literally have this video that may and might exploit from films together, which is every single day getting hundreds more views. And the cool thing is, was it driving traffic to, it's driving traffic to my business. It's great because these videos, you made them one time and just forever more, they're getting more and more views. It's like a podcast, right? But whereas a podcast, what ends up happening is it's like, it's not a searchable yet. I think in the future it will be, but right now, not so much. YouTube is amazing because you put all the effort into the content

and then consistently you're getting more and more views on it. True. If you have a cool to action in the video, then people are going to keep clicking that link. And so I just think that when it comes to YouTube, you have to really find your style. For me, it's a bit of a weird one because I started out, as I mentioned, in the fitness industry and I was like a fitness blogger, started out, as I mentioned in the fitness industry, and I was like a fitness blogger, right? I posted like, Dan the live videos all the time, so my audience wants to see vlogs, but

at the same time, I know that we generate the most revenue when we do like, high information videos. So at the moment, I'm just trying to redefine myself on YouTube, and it's been quite interesting, like, I can tell you, but I think it's a case of just realizing, like, okay, what is my Ido client want reverse engineering and essentially making videos about that? Very cool. All right. So the last question I ask is what is your secret to profiting in life? I think it really is a case of making sure that everything that you're doing is fulfilling to you. Because I think that money is a byproduct of value,

and when you're sharing value with people, then you're gonna feel fulfilled. And so I think if you're leading with trying to always make money, money, money, then, you know, it just isn't gonna be the thing that allows you to continue to have as much success as you want. And so for me, when I think about the word profiting, it's like, okay, I want to make sure that I'm fulfilled. I want to make sure that I have freedom.

And I'd say that my two core values. So it's creating a life of freedom, I'm fulfilling for yourself. I love that. I love that. Okay. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? Yeah. So, impact school podcasts, I guess, because you guys are podcast listeners. If anyone doesn't know what I'm saying, I'm saying podcast. It was so funny. I was in America.

I was itchy in the States, and I was saying the word podcast, and people were like, and I was like, yeah, then the girl who works with me, she was like she sang podcast and then everyone was like oh yeah it's called impact school that's the best place and then whatever social media platform you like the best just type in Lauren Tegna and you will be able to find me there and send me a message saying that you came from this show because I would love to be able to connect if you connect with me on LinkedIn just make sure to write it in a little request thingy so that I know that you've come from here. And yeah, I would love to have a chat.

Awesome, Lauren. Thanks so much. I think you provided so much value around starting an online business and also growing social media channels. I really appreciated the conversation. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you and I'm excited

to get all of your stuff going. Yeah, me too. Thanks, Lauren. Awesome. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and happiness guinea pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood.

Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule.

Choose a one-word theme for the year, or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself, where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer, morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever, and every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Ever notice what happens when your home is beautifully organized?

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