AP 1192: How Do I 5x My Passive Income Revenue in My Business?

AP 1192: How Do I 5x My Passive Income Revenue in My Business?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 1,192 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen in like a fly on a wall on a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. And today we're talking with Mike Lander from Piscari; that's P-I-S-C-A-R-I. He helps people learn how to negotiate and he has courses, he has consultations, he's productized some services. He's doing pretty good at diversifying. However, the one part of his business, his courses, he wants to have a little bit more income coming in from them. And so we discussed today, how not just to stay diversified but stay smart with that, but also how to lean into some of his superpowers and how to actually position his digital course so that he can generate more sales, use it as an anchor versus other things. He's in B2B again, which is a little bit different, but it's actually stuff that can relate to any product out there.

And you're going to find some amazing information. In fact, at the end of this episode, I was just relistening to the end just to catch exactly where to send you in case you want to check out Mike. You could check him out on LinkedIn, Mike Lander, as well as on Piscari, P-I-S-C-A-R-I.com. But at the very end, he says, "Wow, Pat, I have five or six takeaways that I can just implement right away." So I hope you stick around and listen to this episode, because this is about superpowers. This is about diversification, productizing and leaning into the things that make you you, “Here we go.”

Mike, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thanks so much for coming in today.

Mike Lander:
Yeah. Pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. I'm really looking forward to this. Thank you.

Pat:
Oh, I'm really excited. Why don't you give us a little bit of an intro to you Mike, and what you do?

Mike:
So what I do now is I work with B2B sales teams on their negotiation skills. So I train and coach salespeople when they're selling into big companies and they meet very difficult negotiators, often people like procurement people, so I train and help them improve their skills.

Pat:
That's really cool. What kind of experiences do you have doing that?

Mike:
If you look into my background, anyone that's listening to this and looks into my background on LinkedIn. So I'm just Mike Lander on LinkedIn. You'll see that it's a nonlinear career, and I'm now 57 and I've done all sorts, Pat. But what I've done in the last 20 years, quite a lot of it, is I was a buyer, so I used to buy at scale. So I've bought over $450 million worth of goods and services, hundreds of deals for clients, so I used to work on the buy side. What I do now is I apply all of my knowledge that I've learned on the buy side to the sell side. So companies selling into bigger companies, I teach them how to get better deals by having a more structured conversation with their clients when they're negotiating their commercial terms and their contracts.

Pat:
I love that. And that is a huge advantage over people who might be sellers, who are teaching other sellers. Well, they don't have your perspective, and I think that's really, really cool. You could do a lot with that. And so where can people go just in case people have to leave early, where can they go to learn more from you? What's your website or where can they contact you?

Mike:
Piscari.com. So P for Peter, I, S for Sugar, C-A-R-I, Piscari.com and you can find it on there. We also have a new book coming out as well, which is Higgle, H-I-G-G-L-E.piscari.com. So yeah, any of those you'll be able to find us.

Pat:
Is Higgle the name of the book?

Mike:
Yeah. So it's actually... The branding was done, my wife's a brand marketer by training. And when we were talking about this, it's a workbook, Pat. It's a... So you've had some amazing success with your books that you've written. And I've read a couple of much recently, one about superfans, which was amazing. We designed a workbook, and the workbook is, yeah, against sellers that are sat down and they're trying to negotiate with their clients, they lack structure. And so I wrote a workbook, a page by page, step by step guide to improving your negotiation and the branding person, Vicky, that came up with it, my wife. “Higgle” apparently in old language is to haggle, and it's... Yeah, my view is just that negotiations they're in many ways the opposite of just a haggle, it's a more structured approach, but Higgle's easy to pronounce. It's easy to pick up on a URL. So we picked Higgle as the name of the book, and it's a bit of fun as well.

Pat:
I like it. It caught my attention for sure. It made me think of haggle, but maybe a different version of haggle, and a combination between haggle and little like higgle or wiggle, and I know that sometimes these small little tweaks in your pitch or whatever can make a huge difference. So big ups to your wife for some really good branding there. So, Mike tell me, what's going on in the business? What can I help you with?

Mike:
Yeah. So the context is that it's going well. So it's a successful business. I own it. I do all of the training and coaching currently. In the past I've run some quite big businesses and I've sold them. I've restructured them. I've raised money. I've really, really badly made them go wrong by my own errors and then I've fixed them. And what I do now is it's just me, been going for two or three years. And if I look at my income streams, so I've got training and coaching as an income stream and that's a productized solution. So I've learned having listened to you Pat for many years, you need to productize your offering. Many consultants suffer from project-based income and you’re at the whim of the next project that comes up, and it's feast or famine, as we used to say. So I've productized that solution. So that's working really well.

Pat:
So that means here is what you get for this price, these are the deliverables by this date, that's what you're paying for, right?

Mike:
Correct. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's... I think the skill here is, Pat, is that... especially in my market, people want to feel special. Clients want to feel special, when that specialness comes from access to experts, people like you and me that know our domain really well, but also they want things tailored. So what I've done is I've taken this training and coaching, I've productized it but then I tailor it to the client's environment. So for example, if they're selling IT services into pharmaceuticals companies, I know about IT services. I know a bit about pharmaceutical. So we build some scenarios into the training, which are just for them and what that does is, it standardizes the product, which makes it easy for me to replicate, but it also makes it more tailored to their environment, which makes them feel absolutely like it's not just an out-of-the-box solution.

Pat:
I love that. So how much percentage of the material would you say is the same for each client? And then how much is personalized if you were to give it a percentage?

Mike:
I'd say 75% is standard, 25% personalized. So a reasonable chunk is personalized.

Pat:
That's huge. If anybody's listening to this and you are at the whims of client-to-client customization for every single person, can you imagine if 75% of the work that you do for every client was just automated, right? That's huge. So thank you for bringing that up, but I apologize for interrupting.

Mike:
Yeah, no, it's fine. And also something that... So that's going really well. Sales are growing nicely. I've been reliant upon inbound, like most of us reliant on inbound marketing and on word of mouth and referrals, and that only gets you so far. So I'm now starting an outbound campaign. So that looks like it's going quite well. But of course, what I want to do is diversify my income streams, so that I've got it diversified, I've got some of the productized training income, I've got some high-value consulting project-based income, but I also want some passive income. And as we both know, and I've learned a lot from what you've said, there is actually no such thing as pure passive income, or very rarely pure passive income. You've always got to nurture and maintain what you've got, but I've got an online course. So the online course, which is around how to negotiate with procurement people.

So it's very niche, it's basically around B2B salespeople, quite new in their career, selling into big companies for the first time. And currently I sold about $2,000 worth of the courses of the online courses, and it sells for about $500. And I want to get to the lofty goal of $10,000 per month of sales, but I have no clue, no clue how to get there. I have an email subscriber base of 300, which is relatively active, but a good, strong LinkedIn profile. So yeah. So my question is around just, I'd like to walk away with three to five practical tips that would help me start to grow that online revenue in a meaningful way with people that get loads of value out of the course that become hopefully one day superfans of what I do.

Pat:
Yeah. Beautiful and well-thought-out question, Mike. I want to thank you. And I do have some ideas, but before I propose these ideas, do you mind if I just poke around a little bit, ask some, and maybe you might be able to come up with these ideas yourself too?

Mike:
Absolutely.

Pat:
The question is, well, we know the course succeeds in helping and serving that audience, right? Are you confident that what it is that you're offering in the course does what it promises to do?

Mike:
I was thinking before this, and I got a couple of messages from Jess as well, and is the course proven? So if I look at the content of that course, and I look at the case studies I've got from my... It was born out of the training. So I took the training course that I'd done, the tailored one that I do and I turned that into a online course, very similar content, but of course you don't get access to me. It's not tailored at all. And the content in there is all around foundation skills that you would need potentially to go on to the bigger training course that I run later.

So I've got good evidence that the content of the online course definitely delivers value to people that take it. The four people that have bought it, absolutely I've got very good feedback from them saying... What they said is it opened up things I never knew about because my unique thing... So you said before, Pat, interesting that I'm an ex-buyer, now advising sellers. When I ask all my clients, what's the three things that make a big difference about what I do? One of the biggest things is they say you see things as a buyer, and that makes the world of difference. And that online course I've embedded into it all of my buyer thinking into that course.

Pat:
Perfect. As a question, 1.5, since you brought it up, is that known to the people who are... for example, on the sales page that you are coming from the buyer perspective, is that a big part of the positioning?

Mike:
I think it's in there definitely, it is. I talk about me being a buyer, me having done a lot of deals in the past, passing on that knowledge. Is it front and center? Not sure. So I'd need to check that, so good point. Yes.

Pat:
I'm just trying to make the connection to something that your audience tells you is a major reason why they follow you and they love your stuff. And even just the way you responded to that, being maybe not quite sure, leads me to believe that it's not as big as it needs to be yet on the front-facing part of the website or the landing page. So that's realization maybe practical step number one, but to move on to the second part of that first question, the reason why I brought that up is just like, "Hey, do you believe in this? Is this actually proven to work?" Is because the number one reason why people don't do well with sales is because they actually aren't selling it. They're putting it out there, they're linking to it, but they're not selling it.

And you know more than anybody being a buyer and helping people sell, you need to put it in front of people and let them know about it. And so a big reason why people don't do that is because they're actually a little scared on the inside about what they're teaching. They don't actually believe in what they're selling, and you already check that box. So I'm not worried about that anymore, but what I'm worried about or maybe want to ask about is, well, knowing as a seller you got to get in front of people and start a conversation, what are you doing right now to start conversations with people that could potentially lead into this course?

Mike:
And I think this is at the heart of it Pat, is that... And I don't think I'm alone, I might be, is that that 300 email subscribers that I've got, if you dug into that and you really went into the nitty gritty, over the last 18 months there are people that I have, rightfully subscribed onto my list. They are in Europe, GDPR compliant, but I'm not active with them. I don't email them every fortnight. I don't engage in conversations with them. Is that really 300 people that are very active? No, not really, Pat. I think that's one of the problems. Secondly, I do a lot of posting on LinkedIn, so, but all my LinkedIn posts are around the articles I write. I write an article in a media magazine called The Drum, which is quite a big media platform if you're in the marketing world.

So I write a monthly column for that. So often posting about that. I'm posting about negotiation challenges that people face. I'm not posting about the online course, because I think... Well, I want to promote the productized training course and the content in there, but I'm not pointing or signposting to the online course because something's happened, Pat, which you might be able to help me with. I spent a year thinking, "Well, of course everyone would just want to buy the online course and view it and download the downloadables at their leisure and it's a great way of learning." And what I found was, entrepreneurs that are leading their businesses haven't got time. So the only people that really want to do the online training for my kind of course, and all four people that have bought it seem to be very similar are people that are salespeople.

They're not entrepreneurs, they're salespeople; they're relatively just selling. And this is a really great way for them to learn about how do you sell to a big company when you meet these procurement people? And it was really weird trying to, yeah, having... going on that journey of realizing an entrepreneur doesn't have time to look at the online course or look at the materials or download the checklist, their salespeople might but they're not interested. I think that's part of the targeting as well because a lot of my audiences for the big productized training course, the people that buy that are chief execs, owners, and chief commercial officers, sales directors. So you can see that it's a different audience for the big productized training course than it is for the online course. And that's part the problem, I think.

Pat:
So what do you think you should do?

Mike:
Oh, my word. It's good question, Pat. So I think what I need to do is I need to find communities where there are lots of salespeople that are relatively new to the selling business who are looking for knowledge, and they're looking for an advisor. I always think about the story of, you meet someone, the hero, and they're going on a journey and they meet a guide, and I really am the guide, that hero. I'm the guide. I need to meet lots of people who I can see as heroes and help them on their journey by being the expert guide, but they need to be salespeople, relatively new to selling that sit in a community. And I don't think broadcasting on LinkedIn does that. I just don't think it does. I think it needs to be a specific target audience that I need to get in front of, I think.

Pat:
All those things that I said earlier that I had ideas about, you're hitting a nail on the head or hammer on the head, whatever the expression is. You're saying all the things that I want you to say, from the idea of broadcasting. Let's even break down that word, right? Broadcast, broad. Do we want to be broad? No, we want to be targeted. We want to be specific. We want to interact and not just cast something out, cast even that word itself makes us feel like we're fishing for something.

Mike:
We're casting a net, which is very wide. Yeah.

Pat:
Exactly. Exactly. So this big realization that, man, it's actually salespeople and beginner salespeople who need this course more than the execs who... That's who I'm serving, that's who likely has the dollars to spend for the higher level of productized coaching. And there is a conversation also we can have about, okay, well, what else could you offer them? Is there a super high-end one-on-one or group thing that you could do beyond the productized thing that costs way more? So now that you have this realization, okay, these are salespeople. I want to ask you two questions. The first question, and we've already touched on this but I'm just going to ask you blatantly, why would salespeople listen to you?

Mike:
Because... and I think this gets again to the heart of it is, the reason they'll listen to me is because I'm the person they're about to face. So when they're going into these big companies, you're going to meet me. So you need find out what I'm like.

Pat:
And so, okay, perfect. That's, that's the... I'm getting goosebumps, because that's the exact answer I wanted. The second part of the question is where do those salespeople exist, that you can get in front of and teach them all this stuff? Because that's how you get them interested and that's how, when they go, "I want to learn more from you, Mike." What could they get? "Oh, well, download my free lead magnet, come join me on this webinar and I'll teach you some more stuff." And that... because you have now a conversation and the initial relationship-building moment elsewhere, whether that's... Actually, I don't even want to say it. I want to have you say it first as far as where, but that's what will then lead people to the course, that's the missing component. So where do these people exist, do you think?

Mike:
I looked at... a while ago, but I've not really delved into it much. I think back in the day when we could, sales conferences. Who goes to sales conferences? Sales directors don't, on the whole; they send their salespeople, and they send their salespeople for motivational speeches from inspiring people, and also for content to find out new things that will help them sell more deals, and convert more deals than they've already got and to build that pipeline. So salespeople on the whole go to sales conferences. And so I thought in the past, what about pitching at sales conferences? I haven't spoken at conferences. I've done lots of podcasts on other people's shows. I've done loads of webinars on other people's platforms. So I've got some credentials, but I've not got conference speaking credentials, and that's one thing I was thinking, how am I going to break into that? So, yeah, that was one thing I was thinking about.

Pat:
Yeah. That's definitely not higher level, but there's a lot more friction to get into that. I think there's a lot more low-hanging fruit that you could potentially take advantage of. You had already mentioned podcasts, you had mentioned maybe hosting webinars for other people, JV partnerships or things like that. But now we have this new thing that is going to be front facing within all that positioning which is, "I am the buyer. Let me tell you what you need to tell me when you meet somebody like me." And that perhaps didn't exist the last time you did a podcast or a webinar.

But you had mentioned events, and I think that's interesting because all these events are looking for these salespeople too, just like you are. And so it might be interesting to go into, for example, Salesforce, or whatever other events that might happen or even software, HubSpot-Perfect. And go, "Well, where are they going to find people? What podcasts are they on? What keywords are they using to find people, what communities are they getting involved with? Where are they advertising?" That's where you could go and advertise yourself too. They're doing the work already; you can just follow their lead.

Mike:
Good idea. Very good idea. Can I ask you a question Pat around... It's a really interesting question that I thought about before, and you've touched on it there. What's your view about advertising versus organic in the very early stages of trying to grow a product like an online course? Should you find out first of all where the market is, how they respond, what their hot buttons are and then advertise? Or do you advertise first to find out what works and then pull fuel on the fire?

Pat:
I think advertising is a way to speed up awareness. If I were you, I would run advertisements to things that would initiate a conversation, not necessarily to the course, and then follow up with some, for example, remarketing campaigns to people who have watched a video of yours or who have attended a webinar, and you verified that they're interested in learning more about that topic, then you hit them up again in a follow-up sequence or retargeting ads that then go, "Hey, by the way, this course is available now. For you it's only available for this long, at this price, and here's what you get because I know you're interested in it, and here it is."

And all while building your email list at the same time too. So I wouldn't advertise straight away just to your course, but I think it can be important, but I think that... I haven't done much advertising because I've always been all in on relationships and that, although I do know I am leaving a little bit on the table by not doing it, and I could speed things up, but I'm in this for the long game. I know you are too, but if you want to see some results and information faster in terms of what's working, what's not, advertising can definitely help you. So I'm up for it.

Mike:
Okay. Makes sense. And in terms of the platforms, it's hard because as you say you've gone all out on relationships and it's worked really well for you, but the platforms that might work for me, do you think Facebook is still a viable platform for advertising?

Pat:
Here's going to be your number one platform. It's not Facebook, in my opinion. Facebook people aren't on there to learn how to sell more. We have to do a good job of stopping people from doing what they were there to do in the first place, and then move them somewhere else, which is hard. And you need good copy. You need to spend a lot of money to figure out what works. I think... and you had mentioned this in the beginning, your book is going to be the perfect way to potentially lead people into sales of your course, of all your programs in fact, but the book... You have to think about it, people on Amazon, and Amazon has its own advertising platform in fact, that you could use on top of the book.

People are on there looking to buy things already. They're looking for the direct solution for the questions that they're asking. So if you can figure out the keywords or the other competitor books that you can get in front of first with your ads, then you can have a direct line of sales to the exact person that you might want, who is on a platform looking to buy and actually invest into their future.

Mike:
Interesting. So I thought that the... Although I wrote the book and designed the book out of a passion, which I think is the best place to start where you don't expect sales. I always thought of the book of being an upmarket lead magnet. It sells at a price‑it's about $100 for the workbook, because there's great content in there. Yeah, it's really about getting that in front of the right audience, because that starts the conversation about if you're interested in this, then there's more online courses and the training program, et cetera. So yeah, I think I'm going to start focusing more and more on... I don't know if this is your experience as well, Pat, is people need to start to taste what it's like to work with you before they go all in, 11 to 15 touch points before someone's going to go all in and spend maybe $500, and that $100 start point feels like a good start point.

Pat:
Yeah. And you can play around with that price, so you can move it around, but what's nice about your course and your book is people who can't afford you at the productized level, "Well, hey, I have this course for you. Oh, you can't afford that. Well, hey, I have this book for you." Right? So you can get people at all levels, and if they really, really want this and you really convince them that this is the thing they need to learn, they're going to work with you in some way in the level that they can. And then hopefully the lower-level items can lead into the bigger-level items, and there's your diversity.

All right. Man, we uncovered a lot there, Mike, for you. Thank you for working with me on that because that was all you. That was all you, but I'm just... like you said, and as you are to your students such the guide here. So Mike, where can people go to follow up and find out more info from you?

Mike:
I think best thing is find me on LinkedIn, so Mike Lander, L-A-N-D-E-R on LinkedIn or just go to Piscari.com, P-I-S-C-A-R-I.com. And you can contact me from there. And Pat, thanks ever so much. I've got down here, five points, six points that I can follow up on, which is exactly what I wanted. So, thank you. It's been really valuable. So, thank you. It's been really great.

Pat:
Yeah, no problem. You're welcome, and make sure, everybody, to check out Higgle when it's available. All right. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you.

Mike:
Thank you.

Pat:
Awesome. That was an epic conversation. Mike, thank you so much for that. I think that's going to be very valuable for a lot of other people listening. And again, if you want to follow up with Mike specifically, you can find him on LinkedIn, that's Mike Lander, L-A-N-D-E-R, or you can check him out on his website, his B2B website to help you negotiate, again his unique angle being, he was once the buyer that you are selling to. And that's so, oh, cool. That's so cool. So you can find him at Piscari, P-I-S-C-A-R-I.com. And Mike, thank you again for coming in today.

And thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you for that. Make sure you hit that subscribe button if you haven't already because we have another... actually what's really cool, I'm looking at the calendar right now. Next week we have another “Where Are They Now?” episode, as we often do at the end of each month, but then to finish off all of November, we're actually doing, “Where Are They Now?” episodes in all of November as well. They're so popular, we're going to bring some people back, who've been on this year, who've been on in previous years, to check in with them and see how they're doing and see how much progress they have made since the last time they've been on the show. What actions did they take? What actions did they not take? What has happened? Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss that, because we have a lot of great stuff coming up.

So thank you again. I appreciate you, been reading the reviews that have been coming in, just stellar, absolutely motivating for me because it's... what is it? 10:30 PM at night. The AskPats are an additional thing on top of the other things that are a must-have. AskPat's not like a must-do podcast, but I feel like I must do it because I know it provides you a lot of value. Till then, keep rocking it. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and we'll see you in the next one. Cheers, peace out, and as always, team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.