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CEO Mindset & Strategy: The Proven Formula to Scale Your Business with Jason Moss

• MatthewBertram.com

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Jason Moss shares the CEO Freedom Formula, a powerful roadmap for scaling businesses through identity shifts and strategic improvements. The formula merges internal mindset work with external business strategy to help entrepreneurs break through revenue plateaus and experience sustainable growth.

• CEO Identity: changing your self-perception to match your desired business level
• The business you have is a mirror reflecting who you are as an entrepreneur
• Eliminate before you delegate to avoid building systems around unnecessary tasks
• Optimizing marketing requires balancing personal connection with scalable systems
• The three levels of entrepreneurial consciousness: willful, intellectual, and intuitive
• Success comes from making decisions as the person who's already achieved their goals
• Marketing is fundamentally about human connection, not complicated technical systems
• Personal brand and authenticity are becoming more crucial as AI-generated content proliferates

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The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

Topics covered include keyword research, content optimization, link building, local SEO, and more. The show also features interviews with industry leaders and experts who share their experiences and tips. 

Additionally, Matt shares his own experiences and strategies, as well as his own successes and failures, to help listeners learn from his experiences and apply the same principles to their businesses. The show is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners become successful online and get the most out of their digital marketing efforts.

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Speaker 1:

This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing, your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential, let's get started.

Speaker 2:

Howdy. Welcome to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, matt Bertram. Today we're going to talk about growing a business, and that's a little bit outside of my scope. Yes and no, because, well, I can help you grow their marketing, I can help generate leads, I can help make sales, but there are a lot of different components of growing a business.

Speaker 2:

Also, there's a lot of people out there that are listening, that do have their own agency, that might need some coaching, and I thought it would be a good idea to bring in a well-known personal coach, jason Moss, to talk about the CEO freedom formula and how to basically help people unlock what's going on with them so that they can scale and grow. And, as a lot of you know, I am going to be launching my own coaching program, group coaching program, and I said by the end of this month, so we're getting down to the wire here on what we need to do, and so you know we could also, jason, as one of the top coaches, treat this as a live coaching session for me, because, well, I put it all out there, I tell everybody where it's at. If they can take what I share and use it. I want them to be helpful. There is so much abundance in this world and I want everybody to win, so welcome.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you so much for having me and I appreciate it. I just want to your vulnerability and bringing people into that journey. So much of marketing today is about that. It's about storytelling, it's about sharing the uncomfortable process and journey of what you're going through. So it takes a lot of courage to do that and I really admire you and respect you for bringing your audience into that as you're walking through the journey yourself for bringing your audience into that as you're walking through the journey yourself.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you. I mean, it's all I got right, like I only know as much as I know, and this process continues to grow me every day and every experience, and I think that that authenticity is what you have to have and that's why people do business with people they know I can trust, and podcasting is a great way. Long form content is a great way for someone to connect with you on those terms. I was actually just on a call before this with a podcast listener that was asking for some marketing advice and was happy to get on the call and he's actually doing some awesome stuff and really excited for him, and I was like, hey, I'll, I'll, I'll, hire you, we can, we, I can be your guinea pig, right?

Speaker 2:

um, I'm definitely down to help people out and, um, you know, I am where I am, so I'm here, and I'm here with jason moss, so, uh, welcome well, thank you, I appreciate it well, let's start with the CEO Freedom Formula, because that's one of the ways that I kind of had connected to your stuff and I know you're well known for that and I think it would help a lot of people to hear you explain it, not I.

Speaker 3:

Yeah for sure, we can definitely dive into that. So the CEO Freedom Formula is a roadmap for scaling and growing a business formula is a roadmap for scaling and growing a business and it's a roadmap that I discovered through mentoring and coaching and working with over a thousand entrepreneurs in all different niches everyone from solopreneurs, coaches, consultants to folks running larger businesses and I discovered it mostly through a lot of trial and error. And I spent the first few years of my journey as a coach very much focused on helping people with the external aspects of their business, which was the marketing strategy, the offers, the niche, all the things that most people come to, folks like you and me thinking that they need, and those things are very important. But what I started to see was that I would give two people the same strategy and they would get very different results. And one person would take that strategy and they'd go out and they double or triple their business and one person would take the same tools and they'd end up exactly where they are today, you know, six months later, and it used to frustrate me as a coach.

Speaker 3:

I you know, for years I was like what am I missing? And what became clear to me over time and really studying the success of entrepreneurs and seeing what it was about was really this merging between the internal journey of entrepreneurship, mindset, identity, the internal side and then the external side. And so the CEO Freedom Formula is really about bringing those two things together and it's about recognizing that a business is partially about having the right strategy and partially about becoming the kind of person who can not only execute on that strategy but also to be able to really hold the level of business that we're looking to create. So that's a high level of what it is. We can definitely dive into it. But there are these three pillars or steps of the CEO freedom formula, and you can think of this again as a roadmap that you can follow to be able to grow and scale your business. So I'll let you hop in and we can dive in a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Okay, Well, let's name the pillars right, Like CEO identity, eliminate and create leverage and then optimize your marketing. So can you speak to all three of those areas for me?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 3:

So CEO identity is the first of these three steps, which I think is the most important piece.

Speaker 3:

It's the piece that people aren't talking about enough because it doesn't sell, it's not sexy, it's not something you put on a sales page and people go yes, I want to buy.

Speaker 3:

But the truth is and I've learned this myself as someone who has been building online businesses for close to 20 years now there were periods in my own journey where it would feel like I would really want to scale, like I would be making six figures and I want to get to multiple six or seven, and I would have the desire to do it and I would go out and I'd find the right strategy and I'd hire the mentors. But it would feel like I would take one step forward and two steps back and maybe I'd have a really great month revenue wise, but then, two months or three months later, I'd be right back where I was and what I realized, after years of kind of being in this holding pattern, was that what I was trying to do was I was trying to build my next level of business from the previous self that got me to where I was.

Speaker 3:

In other words, it was like I was trying to build a seven-figure business from a six-figure identity. And the beautiful thing about business is that the business that you have right now is a perfect reflection of who you are, the clients you serve, the problems you have, the level of revenue that you create. It's a mirror. So most entrepreneurs sure, I mean most entrepreneurs spend the majority of their time trying to fix and change the outside. It's like you wake up in the morning one day and you go in the bathroom. You look at yourself in the mirror and you're like I don't really like what I see. So you grab a rag and you start cleaning your mirror and you're like, well, maybe the problem is the mirror. I'm like, no, no, no, the problem is not the mirror. The mirror is just showing you a reflection of you. So if you want what is in the mirror to change, you have to change yourself.

Speaker 3:

So what CEO identity is is it's taking this inside out view of business growth. And instead of asking the question first, what needs to change in the business, the question becomes who I need to become in order to hold this next level of revenue or this next stage, or this next chapter. And so one very specific question I'll ask folks and I live in this question every day is so, for example, you say, let's say you want to build a seven-figure business, it's okay. Well, how would a seven-figure business owner show up today and you can ask that question every morning as like a centering exercise? What decisions would a seven-figure business owner make? How would a seven-figure business owner make? How would a seven-figure business owner approach the copy on the sales page? How would a seven-figure business owner lead this sales call? And you start living in that identity and making decisions from that identity and that is what changes the outside and that's what CEO identity is about.

Speaker 2:

So let me add to that. So I actually just read this book on the subconscious mind. It's like one of those 1950s, 1960 books that has the real meat in it that everybody's kind of watered down over time. And when I hear you talk, what I can hear going on in some people's heads and maybe it's gone on in my head in the past because, like you said, it's very hard to explain but if you're in, in what is it? Um, uh, the law of attraction, all that kind of stuff, like I think it. I think it dances around that.

Speaker 2:

But what it's saying is, if you're in that mindset and you're trying to solve the next level of problems, you're going to act differently than what you're trying to solve right now. And and I, I a hundred percent agree with that mirror concept. And also I was, I read this whole book cover to cover, highlighted it up, underlined stuff the subconscious mind is nine tenths of the individual. So actually when we're awake it's just grabbing new stimuli and processing. So when we go back to sleep it helps to build that identity. So live like we're living what our subconscious mind is driving, okay, and really what we're doing is we're just collecting all the stimuli to process who we are and and it changes your level of thinking.

Speaker 2:

When you talked about centering, if you know who you are and how you're thinking, you solve problems in a different way, right, like you look at things in that next level of thinking of where you need to be, not where you're at, and so putting yourself around the right kind of mentors, the right kind of mastermind groups, the right kind of people that have that kind of thinking, helps you.

Speaker 2:

You know, quote unquote operate on that wavelength, right, and the more you can stay on that wavelength, the more you're going to continue to grow into that identity, because you know the whole like, attract, like, and we can go down that rabbit hole. But it is so powerful and I think it it is underserved, and a lot of people that become uber successful they know that that's the most important thing, where they need to spend their time and what they need to focus on is getting that right and whether it's the mantras, the prayers, whatever it is that they're doing to set that tonality, to help you accelerate in the direction you want to go, and also understanding where do you want to go. That's why I like creating goals and listing goals. Now you're orienting all your actions and behaviors to moving towards that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that you said that and I love that. What's the name of the book, by the way?

Speaker 2:

I'll dig it up after this. We can grab it. But it's old school and it was russell brunson, okay, I went to one of his conferences and he's super big on mindset and so, uh, one of the speakers was talking about it and I always like to like write down that stuff and I have a collection of books and I I used to read like a book a day before I had kids, um now, and I also didn't used to drink coffee either, and those have kind of reversed. So not a book a day, sorry, a book a week I used to read about a book a day.

Speaker 3:

No, that's Tai Lopez, I'm not.

Speaker 2:

Tai Lopez. But no, I used to read about a book a week. My wife now actually got really upset. I was always carrying around a book and I'll try to optimize in between, like anytime we waited to read something and I would highlight it up and then I would reread that stuff and I could reference where it was in the book Right, but I couldn't remember what it said, and then I would like go use it as a dictionary in that regard.

Speaker 2:

And my first book, Build your Brand Mania, which was all about personal branding but I was doing SEO but I saw kind of where the market was going is really a compilation of probably 300 books that I've written and I was kind of putting together a lot of those nuggets and, as it was applying to my life, incorporating that into it subconscious mind piece, I've realized how important also that temperament is when you're going into a call, when you're coming out of a call, the things that take energy, the clients that take energy.

Speaker 2:

The one thing that I'm finding out and that I would recommend to people is the Pareto law of the 80-20 rule is absolutely incredibly true and there's maybe one client that's taken up all your time but it's not where your time should be going and you've got to be able to get to a place and empower yourself in the business to say I don't need that business, there's better business out there for me. I need to let that go. And then that kind of leads into your next pillar of eliminate and leverage. Like I used to always say, automate, delegate, eliminate and a guy that used to work for me definitely taught me that, and we're big on the automation phase at this point in time at our agency. But I would love to hear your definition from you in your own words of eliminate and leverage.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was a beautiful segue into that. And I think the first thing, to your point on Prado's principle, the truth is, at least when I look at what and I've mentored so many entrepreneurs what I see is pretty common in almost every entrepreneur out there is, when we look at their business, probably 50 to 60% or more of what they're doing in this moment just doesn't need to be done, and it's a very common trap, and I've fallen into this many times too, and I still, every few months, I'll go through an exercise where I'll just look at everything that I'm doing and it's just amazing to see how much clutter and how much complexity just builds up over time because there's this constant pull towards more in a business. There's this constant temptation to add more, add more channels, add more complexity, funnels, marketing, and so the first thing I think that becomes really important in this stage of the process is just to cut away the things that are either not producing results or, to your point, are the 20% of the 80%, the things that are only producing a small amount of revenue but are taking up and silently sucking the time. This is simplification, it's cutting down the offer structures, it's reducing complexity and bloat around marketing channels. You really don't need to be in 10 different places at once. It's choosing okay, what are the two, three, four strategic channels that I can show up on that are going to generate the most revenue in return? So it's eliminate first, and I think the biggest mistake folks make here and I've made this mistake too is we jump to automation and delegation before we eliminate. So we end up building team Like.

Speaker 3:

I'll give you a great example of this A couple months ago.

Speaker 3:

So we have a YouTube channel and I published a lot of YouTube content and I had this idea and I've been paying video editors for years to edit our videos, because my basic assumption was okay, if we can create videos that are really flashy and really cut well and they have high retention time, youtube's going to want to show them to more people.

Speaker 3:

So I was paying thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to these video editors. And then I had someone on my team who I hired to actually review all of the edits from this video editor, and so I had two team members that I was hiring to do all this work and I never stepped back and asked myself the question is it actually true that highly edited videos are performing better than if I were to just record an uncut video and post it to my channel. So I did a little experiment and I recorded a couple of videos that were just me, like this, talking on the camera, with no editing, just uncut, and I posted them to the channel and what I found was the retention time was not only exactly the same, it was actually better on the uncut videos. They got more visibility, people watched them for longer. So here was all this unnecessary complexity in the business, all this team, because I had jumped to delegation instead of just stepping back and asking myself does this even need to be done in the first place?

Speaker 2:

I totally agree with that. I would we like to, as business owners, I think throw money at stuff and have it solve the problem, without really understanding or hiring somebody to do something that I think it's really important to. Ok. So, if you have all these channels right, and even if it's for get really good at one, good at one, okay, and then scale up, like you need to really understand that channel and how the algorithm works and how it responds and what's going on, because you can't base your assumptions on data that you don't know. Right, and you're looking at your business from the perspective or your marketing from the perspective of the, from the best seat. Right, like you know the most potentially right If you're the one that right, like you know the most potentially right If you're the one that's the, the, the principle on whatever you're doing. And so, um, I have many times I like okay, I'll give you an example. So we need to.

Speaker 2:

This is an audio first podcast. I'm not big. We've done 700, 800, uh podcasts and they're all on iTunes, okay. Or we're not big on YouTube. I need to get big on YouTube, but we have been recording the videos, even going back a long ways when I used to. I used to be a lot younger and I would always have a stick for every podcast we do. I had like a chicken on my head at one point, like a chicken hat, like all kinds of crazy stuff, right, and I would be in that persona and had a co-host uh that that founded the agency I'm at and, uh, you know, ppc doctor and I was like the PPC doctor and I would respond everything in that persona and it was hilarious for me, like I don't I don't know what everybody else thought, but I totally enjoyed it and it was a ton of fun and um, but we have all these videos and I uh hired a uh offshore team and and put a bunch of stuff together and started having to cut stuff and they make great cuts Okay, they make great cuts, and it looked flashy and everything, but the content was like the other day I read a book and that was it Like and that was what was cut, like you know what I mean.

Speaker 2:

And so it was like the the strategy piece needs to come from you and you need to provide that direction and you need to train the people to do that, because if you outsource your brand or your business or whatever to somebody else. Right, like, I think even on social media I've done this. I think it's a disservice to the business to have somebody else do your social media before you do it. I think you got to sweep the floor, you got to you know, you know clean, take out the trash, do all the stuff, know how to do it, create an SOP and then give it to somebody to do it. And yeah, it might take longer, but you like you got to tone out the noise, like you said, and do something right first and get that down and then train that in the next person and hand that off. And always think, simplify the complexity, like just you know. Like, like I was saying, automate, delegate, eliminate. But if you don't train that person right, that person's coming at everything from a different perspective and you've outsourced your company or your brand to somebody else.

Speaker 2:

And I can tell you, when we as an agency, when we work with clients, we really need that client involvement and what we find a lot of times is those clients don't. They've maybe got away from their core values, right, like it's maybe on their website, but they don't live them anymore, or the company's grown too much and the brand has changed and so like, I think, getting that alignment going even back to the first point, understanding that alignment of who you are and what you want to communicate to the world, because you could just communicate trash out there and just create a bunch of pollution of noise of what's going out there. There are people doing that and it's getting a lot noisier with AI generated content and so there's like a trust recession and people are trying to figure out like who do I trust? And I think, jason, to your point, they knew it was all you right and they wanted to connect with you. And I've seen tests where it just it depends who you're speaking to right and it depends like who that target speaking to Right and it's it spends like who that target persona is and and how you do it.

Speaker 2:

Um, uh, but the thing that that I know about what you said is it is you and because it's you, the people that have that have gained that trust of of who you are and know I can trust. You want that, want that content like straight from the horse's mouth, unedited from you, and I guess the data tells the story that they saw that maybe I love that. Okay, let's talk about optimizing marketing. How do you look at optimizing marketing and how do you approach it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I love so much of what you just said, by the way. I mean, there's so much wisdom in there. There's just two pieces I want to touch on before.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, do it, do it Absolutely Highlight back to your, to your listeners.

Speaker 3:

I think there's a. What you spoke to is the difference between delegating and abdicating, and I think there's a really important distinction there.

Speaker 3:

Delegating is I know how to do something myself. We've been able to create success internally and this is no longer the highest leverage use of our time. So we're going to build an empowered team to be able to take this thing off my plate so I can move up the value ladder. Abdication is I don't understand this, I haven't been able to figure it out and I'm looking for somebody else to save me from something that I haven't figured out how to master myself. And that is a really important distinction. Delegation useful as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2:

Abdication can get you in a lot of trouble, so I love what you just said there because it's so, so spot on. Yeah, I mean I, I, yeah, I get in trouble at home. I'm like, uh, somebody else can mow the lawn Right, or like I know how to mow the lawn and I know what is done right, if it's good or not. You've got to know what good looks like, and I think that's really important. But getting to the point where you're creating the most value like how are you saying it up the value ladder I think is super important and I think that I've seen a lot of companies come to us and I've, I've I've done it personally. Like I'll look in the mirror and admit it. Like there are, like digital marketing, if we talk about as we get into optimizing marketing. I'm not an expert at everything, okay, like I can't. Like there are people out there that are fantastic at email automation. Like I can touch it, I can go pretty deep. I understand the concepts. I actually think there's an old training that I was doing on it online, but there are people that know so much more than me about that. Like I'm really good and deep in certain areas and and so I I try to bring people around me that that have that experience. But I can tell you in the past, if there's a problem and I've seen it with a lot of entrepreneurs or business owners they they have a problem in their business and they just want to. They just want you to fix it. They just want to pay you to fix it and make the problem go away with. Not understanding that we're treating potentially symptoms of, like you're saying, of the root issue. Right, it's like, are you really delegating it or are you abdicating it? Like what do you actually want to happen? What is the problem of why your customer service is doing xyz? Is it because what, like, is it like? I mean, I'm not saying it's a bad product, like, but like you know, like what is the symptom of whatever it is that you're doing to cause these things to happen? You got to know what those are and I think knowing what good looks like and then delegating that out is where it starts and, you know, finding an expert to help assess that. So I think people also want to move quickly. Right, they want to. I need this fixed. I need it fixed now.

Speaker 2:

And if you don't diagnose what that issue with the audit or some kind of workshop or strategy work and you just jump into well, I just need to hire another agency to do my marketing right, because that's what we get. We get a lot of calls. People are calling hey, this other agency doesn't. Well, what are you doing? What was their current strategy? What was happening? And if they're talking about SEO, I'm like I don't even see any indication online of a digital footprint that SEO is happening. Is that truly what they're doing? They're doing so I'm like can you explain to me, in your ad campaign or whatever it was, what is happening to understand? Can we pick it up and carry it forward? Do we have to start over? But I found a lot of businesses just advocate their marketing and then they go this is not working. And then they're like picking up another agency and I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's figure out what's happening first and then figure out the right strategy, and that strategy might be more of the same. It might be more of the less.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you one quick story. Sorry, this is a great conversation. I'm looking in the mirror here myself is I had a client that was a big plumbing company and they came to me for a PPC audit and they brought in their in-person agency and actually a third-party agency and the owner. And we sat down and we were doing a PPC audit and halfway through the audit like it was an in-person audit and I was like you really need to rank SEO wise for Plummer Houston because you're in position seven and that's where all your traffic's going to come, and what you're spending on ads, like you just need to focus on that. And everybody's like, oh yeah, we need to do that.

Speaker 2:

I was like, well then, why don't you just do that? And and that that actually turned into a opportunity for us, that that was how much is it going to cost? And he like wanted a number and so it was like kind of a pay for performance deal, but. And we hit it, but it's, we looked at where he was spending his money. And even I have another client right now that's spending money on paid ads and the PPC score is getting so high. I'm like we need to do billboards, like I'm like we need to do billboards, like you're spending enough, like we need to get that brand out there and get through the noise and this industry's oversaturated and you got to change. Like you can't do more of the same. Um, so go ahead. Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just, uh, I'm, I'm flowing here on, uh, I, I'm, I'm thinking out loud, so I love it I I love it and, and I think, diagnosing the root problem.

Speaker 3:

as albert einstein the one said, if you gave me an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 50 minutes just defining what the problem actually is and 10 minutes solving it, whereas most as entrepreneurs is like we want to. We want to jump to solutions before we even understand the problem. So you mentioned optimizing your marketing. This is the third piece of the CEO freedom formula, because I think for most entrepreneurs, marketing is the biggest bottleneck. So when we look at what it actually takes to scale a business, it's how do we get more leads in the door? How do we make the most of those leads? This is obviously what you do every day. So there's a couple different pieces that I look at in this, and I think, at its core, what it's about is this tension and this balance between leverage and intimacy in terms of marketing. I like it, which I've been thinking a lot, quite a bit, about lately in the conversation around AI, leading a lot of workshops around this and talking about how AI is changing marketing. I'm sure this is something you've been talking a lot about too, and so we have a world where anyone can go into chat, gpt, churn out content at scale and what's the thing that's going to stand out? It's personal brand, it's storytelling, it's vulnerability, which is one of the reasons why I so deeply appreciate how you've been bringing yourself into the narrative in this podcast, because people want to do business with people they know, like and trust, and so the more we can bring ourselves to the table in marketing, the more and the deeper those connections are going to be. So the days of just having this faceless company where you can just churn out generic how to tips content, those days are behind us and the types of businesses that are able to integrate intimacy strategically and to me intimacy means it's a combination of bringing you fully into your marketing. So, rather than having this faceless personal thing or impersonal thing, it's bringing the personal brand fully to the forefront of the business and letting people connect first with who you are as a primary touch point, and also conversation and community, and there's aspects of personal one-to-one type stuff that doesn't scale that I think can really provide a lot of differentiation in your marketing. So this could be texting people one-to-one and reaching out to them and in a very non-leveraged way like that, the part of you that's going to be like, well, I shouldn't be doing this because it doesn't scale, like doing more things. That don't scale is is. I've been having a lot of conversations about that. So that's on the intimacy side of things, and I think it's looking at how we can strategically integrate intimacy into the marketing model. And, on the other hand hand, it's leverage, which is how do we basically make it so that you can communicate with more people at once without being in the weeds?

Speaker 3:

And this is the tension between these two things is really what marketing is about. You know when I first got started as a business coach and what most people do when they first start their businesses. A lot of what drives the initial sales is intimacy. It's networking. What drives the initial sales is intimacy, it's networking. It's having one-to-one conversations over the DMs. It's all the stuff that people tell you you're crazy to do when you're scaling a business because it doesn't scale. So that stuff's important. We don't want to lose that. But it's being able to integrate more leveraged forms of communication so that you can scale your impact and your reach through things like content, through things like being able to communicate one to many instead of one to one, and being able to find the right balance and tension between those two things is, I think, really what it, what it, what optimizing marketing is about.

Speaker 2:

I love that, the intimacy piece and the personalization with the leverage. I mean, I I am fearful that we're moving to a world where you're going to ask chat GBT to send me a pizza, right, and like you want them to say, send me a Domino's pizza, you know, or whatever, and and Gary, gary Vaynerchuk has been talking a lot about this Like you have to build that brand right or it's going to change, right? I think everything's changing. I think the people also ask things to know. The enriched search in Google is something I deal a lot with and I think those things are really, really important, but they don't even have to go to your website to get those answers, okay, they can just get in the AI overviews, right, and I think, I think it's something like 41% of traffic's down today, okay. So, like, if they're referencing, you want a citation that you, your name or your company, provided that information, right, because now you can't track that, you don't even know that people are looking at it and so there, there's a lot of that you have to do uh with with, uh with your marketing.

Speaker 2:

I, I think that that personalization piece I think people try to over optimize that to your point because, like, look at LinkedIn, linkedin's really noisy and like the automations and the personalizations getting smarter, but it's it's getting to the point where the one to many needs to happen. But there needs to be some authenticity to it, right, and you need to make sure it's good. I think good marketing is what needs to happen. I think the pendulum is swinging like fast marketing, like get it out there, get get in front of it, optimize for it, but, but you can't optimize something that's not good, right, or you need to get back to the core, and that's why I love your ceo freedom format and why it it resonated with me when I heard it is it's bringing you back to the center. You're really focused on.

Speaker 2:

Uh, what do you need to do in that right frame of mind? And and I and I love that I think that personalization and the automation, it's that, it's that balance. And I love that word tension. I think it really speaks to what people are doing. So let's transition the conversation outside of that. And why don't you share some case studies or things that I know? You've helped a lot of different kind of coaches and there's kind of different people that are your target persona. Let's speak to those people that are listening on some of the things you've done and maybe share with them how you've helped them.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for sure I mean. So I work mostly with coaches, consultants and service providers that are running online businesses, folks who are around that six figure mark and scaling, I think. A client, megan, that I worked with a while back. Megan, when I first met her, she was running a successful agency, actually as a virtual assistant agency, and she was running a coaching business in addition to that, like on the side, and was working like 80 hours a week. Her coaching business was not generating much revenue and she had been on like a hundred. Her coaching business was not generating much revenue and she had been on like 100 sales calls, I think at that point and nothing was. It was like what am I doing here? She hired some coaches. Things weren't fully landing for her. We worked together for about a year, first in a group program that I was running a while back that we are no longer actually running, and then she transitioned into one-to-one with me and there were a couple of different areas we worked on.

Speaker 3:

I think the first piece was from a marketing perspective. A lot of it was to your point on authenticity. It's like how do we communicate in a way that feels human? I think so much of. Maybe you can relate to this, but so much of my journey through marketing has been unlearning all of these weird ways of like things that marketers say you have to do online, like when you're, when you're speaking to people. It's like I, I I try to remember this when I communicate. I ask myself this question all the time how would I say this If I were talking to you in person? That's the question that I use to guide everything that I create, every email I write, every sales page I create.

Speaker 3:

And so one of the things we did was we looked at her marketing and we looked at all the weird salesy stuff that you would see in some script online type of communication but that it was pulling her away from having authentic, real dialogue with her audience and with her people. And so we shifted that piece. That really dramatically changed things for her. And then, in addition to that, we moved her into a more leveraged way, to the point around how do we create more leverage?

Speaker 3:

She was doing mostly one-to-one coaching at that time. She launched a group program. We transitioned into a more leveraged way of delivery around her offer so she could serve more clients without spending more of her time. She went from that place to making over $260,000 a year in sales in about a little over a year. So this was like 20X growth or something, and she actually cut her hours in half while doing that. And this is one of the reasons why I love this formula, because it's not just about business growth, but it's how do we do this in a way that's sustainable, in a way that allows you to enjoy your life and not feel like you're working 80 hours a week? So that's one example of many clients we've worked with, but hopefully should be cool to hear what's possible for folks who are listening.

Speaker 2:

I think that that's dead on. I came from the sales side of the business, right, so I was always like a salesperson and I have absolutely seen that when you speak to like through your copy to another person, right, like you're not just putting kind of marketing speak, but you think of like okay, you know I'm writing this for Matt or I'm writing this for Jason, like this is who I'm trying to reach and imagine that as you're writing it and like you know, when you read copy on a website, you're like they're talking to me, right, this person's talking to me and it's resonating with me and I feel connected to whatever it is that's being said. That's the difference and that's the magic right is that's being said. That's the difference and that's the magic right Of the internet is you can reach all these people through that aspect of it. And the other point that you made on the group coaching, like I, I just don't think that it's feasible from a you know hourly rate that that people could, like I'm watching the group coaching to help the people that can't afford our services, right, and so, um, not create like another revenue stream in that regard, but like our goal is to help one million businesses grow, right, that's like, oh, through, through, wow, internet marketing. That was like like our goal 26 years ago, right, and, and so that's why we started the podcast is to, to, to help people and to, to share stuff with people.

Speaker 2:

And you know, there's a big gap there between people listening Right To what we're saying but then, like, how does apply to me, uh, and how does it apply to my, my situation? Um, and then like, done for you, services, sort of thing is like the other end of it. So I have, I have this big gap there, that that that I would. I think there's a need there and I'd like to fill that for for, uh, my audience, um, for you listening, y'all are my audience.

Speaker 2:

See, I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to j, you, I'm talking to Jason and I'm talking in general and it's not connecting. You see how important that is. Like you got to talk to who you're speaking to, right, and so we got it'd be great, jason, to have another like camera facing, like, like another, like a group of people watching. You know, like I feel like it's very hard to do video recordings, like you're talking about YouTube, when you don't have somebody else on the other line, Like I can talk to you and we can have a conversation, but when I'm just talking to like a cold microphone and trying to speak to somebody, that that is something. When people start getting into creating content that they don't prepare you for, that you have that's a learned skill right there it is.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, I always imagine, like the camera's, a specific person and I just in my mind, I just picture a person that I'm speaking to, because it's true, you're always having the beautiful thing about even podcasts is like this is a, this is a small tweak that will actually create a lot more intimacy. Sometimes folks in content they'll say they'll say you all, or it's like we're talking a room.

Speaker 3:

I'm like no, no, no, you. It's like cause when you think about the person listening to this podcast right now. You're listening to this Like I'm speaking to you directly. It's one person. You and I are having a conversation Like there's one person on the other side of the line. So there's a certain level of intimacy around being able to communicate in that way, through a sales page or an email. It's a one-to-one connection with somebody else and it changes the way a message is perceived when it's not directed to a room but it's directed to an individual.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh, that's awesome. I love this wisdom. So you got another case study you want to share of like somebody you helped and like kind of walk through that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm thinking of a client, zach, actually. So Zach is a super successful mindset coach, working with like high, high performance athletes and folks who are like CEOs, folks who are like definitely top of the game. I met him when, when and I think he'd be okay with me saying this I love you, zach, if you're listening. So Zach, I would say, was probably in a very like willful stage of business, and when I say willful I mean more like grind hustle kind of doing and doing everything like, and oftentimes what I feel like I'm doing with entrepreneurs is how can we transition out of that willful way?

Speaker 2:

of operating David Goggins. David Goggins.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3:

First it's the transition from willful to intellectual, which is more of a strategic way of operating it's working smarter rather than working harder and then, on a deeper level, it's actually strategic to intuitive, which is a more intuitively way of running a business, where it's not so intellectual, it's more like what feels aligned in this moment, what offer feels right to be expressed in the world.

Speaker 3:

So there are these moves that entrepreneurs will often make from willful to intellectual to intuitive as entrepreneurs progress and grow, and so a lot of what we did on an internal level was making that shift. Externally, what happened was the business forexed in revenue over the course of about a year and he started. What he would say is he started working with much more aligned clients, like folks that he would really enjoy working with on a lot deeper level, and part of that was just folks being able to experience his energy more, because he wasn't so much in the grind that he was just pumping content out, and there's a different energy to content that's expressed and created from that deeper place that tends to magnetize clients differently and attract clients differently. So we definitely go into that on a deeper level, but those were some of the shifts that we helped out.

Speaker 2:

Could you go into those four areas a little bit more? I thought that was great. I would love to learn more about those kind of four areas and what someone might be thinking in each one of those areas and how to make that step.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I'll say first, I've been working with a mentor of mine his name's Scott Oldford for the last few years. This is his framework, so I wanna give full credit to him. But he talks about the three levels of consciousness there's willful, intellectual and intuitive. There's so many applications for this in marketing and sales. It's been one of the most useful things I've ever discovered. So the basic premise I think to start is we have these three different ways of operating. You can think of them as and different people are in different lanes, and so understanding where your ideal clients are is one piece of this, which is like you know, when I was in sales maybe you can relate to this because I'm a former director of sales we used to do the DISC profile test.

Speaker 2:

Have you ever done that before? Yeah, oh, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3:

So for anyone who doesn't know DISC, it's basically it's this personality profile and it would show you there are these different ways that people are wired. And I remember when I went through this for the first time, I had this big aha moment because I realized not everybody communicates the same way that I do and if I want to meet people where they are, I can't be like the hard driving because I'm a high d. That was. That's the way I'm okay, I'm a.

Speaker 2:

I I'm a high eye. Yeah, okay it makes sense.

Speaker 3:

You're say you were a former salesperson. Yeah, so I I kind of have like a DI uh background and and my partner is wired very differently. She, she's a very low D and so sometimes we we'll get in conflict because I can be a little bit too direct and she, she is more of an S, so she likes to be communicated with more softness and more gentleness. So this is an extension of that. There are these three different modes of operating, you could say. And so there's willful, intellectual and intuitive.

Speaker 3:

Willful is someone who is more in that grind get it done, make it happen. Energy. There's a real emphasis on like hard work and hustle. I would say, above all else, it's the. I would say where Gary Vee was like maybe five plus years ago, you know the kind of like celebration of the grind and the hustle, it was emphasizing hard work above, above really thinking strategically. It's the person that's going to go out and make like 200 sales calls and they're just be like I'm just going to put in the work and do whatever it takes yeah, crush it.

Speaker 3:

That's a. That's a word that you'll hear from folks in that, in that energy, and none of these are wrong. There's just different ways of modes of operating. So willful is is is one of the three. Intellectual is the second. This is the person who's thinking in systems and strategy. They're more likely to step back and say, okay, how can I work smarter rather than working harder. They're the type of business owner that's going to really architect things with their mind. They're going to think things through. They're going to want case studies and lots of facts and information. They're the person that's going to ask you 5,000 questions on a sales call because they're trying to understand it all.

Speaker 3:

They want to learn how it all works. They're very intellectually oriented. So that's intellectual. And then there's intuitive, and this is the person who does things because they feel right. This is the person who lives from a deeper place of intuition, of inner wisdom. They're less intellectual, they're more likely to say things like I know it's right when it feels good, and they're the person who's going to tune in more so to energy and how a conversation feels, and they're less likely to respond to things like case studies and more likely to respond to the energy of a conversation and the energy of a piece of content. And so we've got these three different levels willful, intellectual and intuitive. You could build a business from all three.

Speaker 3:

There are challenges that you'll experience in all of them and also, I think, one useful thing, is. You might ask yourself where are my ideal clients, you know? Am I working with people who are primarily willful? If so, your sales page is going to need to include things like deadline timers and countdown timers and more external scarcity and urgency to get somebody to commit, because that's what that person needs to see. You show that stuff to an intuitive person. They're like as soon as I see a countdown timer.

Speaker 3:

I'm like screw this, this is not for me. So. So there's a, there's a lot of nuance here in terms of understanding who your people are, being able to tailor your message, and also on a personal level. I think it's understanding how you're wired and and being able, over time, to move move from generally, from willful, to intellectual, and then from intellectual to a more intuitive way of operating in the business.

Speaker 2:

I think that's so good. Thank you so much for sharing that. Before we start to wrap up, I would love to hear from you You've worked with so many different entrepreneurs out there of so many different kinds of businesses. You probably see some kind of patterns right, and like, when you're coming in to assess these different business owners, you can kind of categorize them, and maybe it is in the categories that you just mentioned and maybe there's like another framework that you use to layer on top of that. But, like, what are the problems that most people have when they come in? And is there quick fixes like that we could leave somebody with something actionable on, like here's how you could solve this Right, and I can tell, uh, jason, you're just such a a deeper person that, um, there's, there's so much underneath there and people need that kind of help and and a lot of people are trying to self-diagnose a lot of this stuff I think there's kind of the do-it-yourselfers and there's the done for you, and then there's the like collaborative component.

Speaker 2:

You know, I'm trying to understand, even for myself, like okay, like I am clearly have procrastinated, if that's the word, to not do this, to not start this, and I guess you know I actually have done. I've coached two agencies so far that were just kind of beaten down my door and they're like hey, I want you to coach us. And I didn't really have an offer or framework and I was like you could just buy some hours and just like a CMO kind of infractional deal. And it turned into like an eight month. They kept asking me stuff but I didn't have any kind of methodology I was following. I just would show up and they would ask me questions and they were like how do we deal with this and how do I deal with that? And I just have, like I guess, a lot of experience because I've done everything wrong to know the right way to do it. I think, or at least like the thing that tends to work for me and then I can explain to people this is how I do it thing that tends to work for me, and then I can explain to people this is how I do it.

Speaker 2:

But like I didn't really have a goal of like where we were trying to go or where we were trying to follow. I was just kind of like what are your issues? And then I was very you know it wasn't transactional, but it was transactional in my thinking of like. Like, when my wife comes to me, like she doesn't want me to solve the problem, like I'm transactually I want to solve it. She wants to just hear me talk and like, think about it and like all this stuff right, like I'm just like here's the answer right or, but is that answer right for them? And you know, being more thoughtful and there's a lot of like growth that's happened even personally through those experiences. But like, how do you help people? Right, like, what does that look like and what are those common symptoms when people come to you? And maybe there's some quick, quick fixes for people that are listening.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, there's so much there. I mean part of me as a coach. I'm like I just want to dive in right now and ask 10,000 questions. If we were in a coaching conversation I would do that. I don't think we have the time to do that today, but I believe that decisions and beliefs and actions in a business start with who we are and who we believe ourselves to be. So, for example, let's just make it super practical.

Speaker 3:

One common challenge that a lot of folks will come to me with around that six figure level is they feel like they're stretched too thin because they're handling everything themselves and they're operating in a way that actually was really useful when they first started their business, because they had to get scrappy and figure things out, but now they're juggling too many plates, they've got their hand in 10,000 different things and that way of operating is no longer sustainable to help them break through to that next level.

Speaker 3:

And so you could look at the business externally. You could say, okay, well, you need to get better at delegating and you can need to get better at it, and so many coaches or mentors or business strategists will do that and some people will be able to make that shift, but it's the identity that's creating those behaviors, and so if that person sees themselves as a six figure entrepreneur, well, they're going to hang on to control and even if they know intellectually that they need to delegate, they're not going to do it Because their identity is telling them well, it doesn't make sense for me to do this, or I don't have the money to do it, or I want to hang on to control so I can maintain the level of quality and the standards that I have.

Speaker 3:

But if you just ask that person, if you just say I want you to wake up every single morning and I want you to tell yourself I am now a seven-figure entrepreneur, I lead my day as a seven-figure entrepreneur, I make decisions as a seven figure entrepreneur, I lead my day as a seven figure entrepreneur, I make decisions as a seven figure entrepreneur. And you just do that for five minutes every single morning. You just close your eyes and you visualize what it's like to move through your day as a seven figure entrepreneur. Does a seven figure entrepreneur not have a team? Does a seven figure entrepreneur hang on to 10,000 different things? Does a seven figure entrepreneur not delegate? No, all those things will naturally fix themselves if that person is just living from the identity of the seven figure entrepreneur.

Speaker 3:

So in business it's like we look for the point of highest leverage. It's like, okay, what's the lead domino that's going to knock down 10,000 other dominoes? If I can just press that one domino down, you can spend all day trying to fix things in the land of strategy, but if you just give somebody a new identity, those things will sort themselves out. So, to make it practical, I would ask yourself whoever's listening, like wherever you are in your business okay, what's my next level? Where do I want to be next? And then, who's the person who has already created that success? And every single day, spend five minutes imagining what it's like to be that person, and you'll find that the strategy the external, things will sort themselves out.

Speaker 2:

Man see, guys, you need to go check out Jason's stuff. You can tell he's just a good dude, he's polished, he knows what he's talking about, he's got some great frameworks. No-transcript, just something we've already talked about today.

Speaker 3:

Um, but just in kind of like short form, tell me, tell me what's one unknown secret of internet marketing I would say for me, the more I've I've been doing this and I I mean I've been doing internet marketing for about 20 years now the less I see it as internet marketing and the more I see it as just human connection. That I used to see it as there's something I need to do to set up funnels and create these systems and things. Now I just see it as this is just a simple act of connecting with another human being. And how do I do that using this medium?

Speaker 3:

It's like if I wanted to have a conversation with you, matt, I could call you up on the phone, I could send you a text message, I could shoot you an email or I could say, hey, let's go out to coffee.

Speaker 3:

And it'd still be the same conversation. There's some nuances around how I might frame that. I might use some emojis if I'm sending you a text, but at the end of the day, the substance of that conversation is not going to change. And so I think the big secret of internet marketing is, the less that you see it as internet marketing, the more that you realize what you're actually doing, which is marketing, is just a means to an end. It's just how are we facilitating these connections and building trust and relationships with people? The more that I see it as this very human process, the simpler it becomes, the more these tools start to feel less like these big, complicated systems that I don't understand and more as just these tools, just like a phone or just like an email or just like a text. It's the same thing. It's human connection, and I think that's the big unspoken secret to internet marketing.

Speaker 2:

I love that. I couldn't say it better myself. Guys, jason Moss, jason, if people want to find out more about you know you big on YouTube where else can they find you? Where can they connect with you and just have that genuine connection? Because I think you really come from a really centered place and I think that that could benefit a lot of people.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity again to get to share with your audience. There's a couple of places you can connect with me on a deeper level. I would say go to Jason Mosscom. Jasonmosscom, that's our hub and you can link. There's a link to our YouTube channel where I post tons of free trainings and resources. There's a free guide there, our seven figure scaling guide, which is super useful. It actually walks through the CEO freedom formula in a lot more detail, so you can go check that out if you want to learn more about that and shoot me a message. Let me know what resonated with you. I'd love to hear from you. I love getting to connect with people one-to-one.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Well, everybody, that's Jason Moss. Thank you for listening to the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I'm your host, matt Bertram. If you want to grow your business with the largest, most valuable, powerful I don't even know how to say this anymore tool on the planet, okay, the internet. Everything's changing. Algorithms are everywhere. You got to optimize everywhere, reach people across the board. We help you build those. In the level two of what Jason was talking about the funnels, the strategies, the digital PR, the SEO, all that stuff. We have a great team. We've been doing it for a long time and if you have questions about that and want to learn more about how it applies to your business, reach out to EWR for more revenue in your business. Again, I am your host, matt Bertram. Until the next time, bye-bye for now.

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