AP 1153: How Do I Best Describe and Position My Business and Work to Others? What Do I Say?

AP 1153: How Do I Best Describe and Position My Business and Work to Others? What Do I Say?

Pat Flynn:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1153 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen in on a conversation, a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. We're speaking today with Jay Helms from W2Capitalist.com. And we're talking about what could be one of the most important discussion topics ever that has been discussed here on the show, and that is the idea of positioning your business, of nailing that pitch, of understanding the right words to say so other people on the other end will know exactly, not only what you're just talking about but why you're the person to listen to and follow.

This is all about positioning and messaging, and if you don't nail this, then it doesn't matter what products you have. It doesn't matter what blog post you're writing or videos you're creating. If you don't nail the messaging and the language and the positioning, all that's kind of all for nothing. So Jay, a little bit has been struggling with this. We're going to talk it through today. It's going to be a lot of fun. So here we go. Here's Jay from W2Capitalist.com.

Jay, welcome to AskPat 2.0, my friend. Thanks for coming in today.

Jay Helms:
Thank you for having me. I am honored. The pleasure's all mine, I know it. This is amazing.

Pat:
I'm stoked, and I'm sure everybody's excited to listen in on what you have going on. So why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do.

Jay:
Yeah. So Jay Helms, founder of the W2 Capitalist, W2Capitalist.com, which is one of those things where our stories very much collide. That's why I followed you is I started a side hustle. So I'm a real estate investor who just happened to enjoy what I was doing for my W2 and realizing the W2 world, I was not going to get to build the wealth that I wanted to for my family. So I started this side hustle investing in real estate. We were having a lot success with it, and then I was like, "Oh, I want to help share this. I want to help educate other people." So the W2 Capitalist was born in 2018.

Fast forward to May 1, 2020, I was laid off due to COVID. And I've been following you for a while, but now that I have a lot of free time on my hands, I've been really diving into your content and just into your community, into the SPI Pro. And I will say that when the last ... It's been over, what? Six months now, seven months. I have grown the W2 Capitalist exponentially more in the last six months than I have in the last year and a half. And I have to say a huge part is to what you've done and the content you keep putting out is just ... It just resonates with me.

I know you're from the southeast. You're from Tennessee, right, originally?

Pat:
Connecticut.

Jay:
No, no, no. So let's back up. Weren't you from Tennessee or you spent some time in Tennessee? You have family in Tennessee?

Pat:
I have friends in Tennessee, and I've been there a few times. So maybe you saw it on my social streams, and I have gone fishing there. I have indeed gone fishing there.

Jay:
All right. So that's egg on the face. That's a fail.

Pat:
Hey man, it makes us love you even more.

Jay:
But no, I mean, your story of being laid off in 2008, you were married, same here. I was laid off. I was married. We have three kids, all six and under. And it was one of those things where taking your story of inspiration of, "Alright, this is what I'm going to do." Same here. I'm done with the W2 world, and this is kind of make or break. Make it happen.

Pat:
Dude, well, congratulations on getting laid off.

Jay:
That's it. That's it.

Pat:
Literally. As you know in my story, that's the thing that started everything. Even though at the time, I didn't think it was a good thing. It was the best thing to ever happen. And way to go taking action already. What were some of the things that you've already done since the layoff to grow W2 Capitalist and your brand?

Jay:
So I have a mastermind. I have a podcast. The mastermind was, it was happening once ... It started off as as once a month or I think once every other month, every other week. I don't really remember. Now to this point, we have 22 sessions a month. They're led by various people other than me. I still lead some because I feel like I probably get more out of the mastermind sessions than I do some of the members, which it makes me feel bad for charging for it. But then I keep hearing, "Hey, you're not charging enough." Your voices was one of those voices that kept saying, "Hey, you're not charging enough. You're not charging enough." I'm almost ashamed to tell you this price. When I first started out two years ago, I was charging $25 a month.

Pat:
$25. Less than $1 a day, bro.

Jay:
Yeah. And now I'm up to $100, and I keep hearing, "Dude, you're not charging enough. There's so much value in here." I have people who are in other masterminds coming to mine because they just keep telling, "Hey, the comraderie that is not there in the other masterminds, and that's what I want out of it."

So I'm still tweaking it. Tweaking it and polishing it. The price is going to go up next year, and we're going to keep doing that. So one of the things — we had the podcast too. Getting very few downloads. I think maybe my mom and my wife are the only ones. Now I know my wife doesn't even listen to it because I went to her phone the other day and I was looking at podcasts. I was like, "You haven't downloaded or listened to anything in the last six months." I was like, "Where's the love?"

So it was mainly a hobby, and now it is a true business that we're trying to exponentially grow. I have this huge BHAG. I know I'm never going to accomplish it, but that is the motivating part of it, right?

Pat:
A big hairy audacious goal. What is it?

Jay:
Yes. So I actually have two. I don't know if I can have two. But I want to provide 300 years of generational wealth for my family. So when my great, great grandkids talk about, "Well, this is Papa Jay's money. This is how we're able to do these things." And if you think about that goal, that's a long time. I mean, the US hasn't even been around for that long, right? If I'm doing the math correctly.

Pat:
Yeah, that's kind of crazy to think about, honestly.

Jay:
Yeah. So there's that one, and then the other part is ... So that's more personal. But for the business and for the brand is I want to help one million people reduce their stress and anxiety from financially providing for their families. Whether they have a W2, and this is kind of where I wanted to pick your brain at today is I have been all over the place with my message. "Hey, you can work..." and it's been what my wife was. It was, "Hey, I work. I work at a high paying, high demanding job. I also have time to invest in real estate. I also have a family, three kids, blah, blah, blah." Now that I'm out of the W2 workforce, my message has drifted to invest so that you don't have to work. And I've had some people who are very close to me, and they're like, "Jay, your message is confusing. Where are we now?"

Pat:
And that's great feedback to hear that straight up.

Jay:
Absolutely. And it really challenged me to kind of figure out, what do I want the message to be, and then I was watching you on one of your lives and you mentioned Chris Ducker and his event that he had going on this week. I did not get to see the whole thing. The schedule didn't work out. But the first day was probably the most important day for me, and I feel like I've fine tuned that message again. But it seems like this is a recurring theme. I've heard you and other folks who talk about it takes a couple of years to really fine tune your message and find your swim lane and kind of get into it.

Pat:
Yeah.

Jay:
And I'm almost there. I'm almost there. My question is how do I know? How do I know that this is hitting home, this is resonating with everybody? It's not going to resonate with everybody, but—

Pat:
Correct. It's not going to resonate with everybody. But you'll know when you have one-on-one conversations with people, and this is what happens when I ... And this didn't happen right away either. But when I started having conversations with people who were like, "What do you do?" and I started talking, sometimes initially before my messaging was good, I would say things like, "I have online businesses, and I help people with an exam. I teach people everything from social media to a search engine optimization and stuff." And I realized that first of all, that was wrong because that's what I'm doing and what I'm showing. But what am I actually helping people get? What is the transformation? So that transformation, the benefit of all these things that I'm teaching becomes a central component of the message or should be a central component of the message because it's like, "That's what I want. Tell me how to get there now." "Oh, here's all these pieces now that you have to put together."

But number two, as I've gotten better, and for me in particular, it's a little bit difficult because I speak to different kinds of people all the time. I have a podcast. I'm a blogger. I'm an entrepreneur. In a different situation, I can kind of read who's in the audience and what I think would resonate with them, and I'll kind of reposition the message to that. But it's basically remaining the same, and what happens is you have people look at you and go, "Oh my gosh, that's what I want." And when you hear that, then you know you've got them because you've triggered something emotionally in them. You've gotten them to go past the, "Well, how do I do that," to just, "That's the vision that I'm looking for." And when you can step up as a leader and nail that messaging and nail that positioning, you're going to be able to have a crowd follow you now and be able to serve more of them.

We just finished the election here in the US. What does every good politician have? They have their messaging down pat because that is how they get followers. And they have to be like layman's terms. They have to be ... you've seen it and you get it. You don't have to think at all. And of course, what do these politicians have? They have dozens and dozens of people who are Harvard writers who are doing this for them and making it up on the fly, and if something happens in the world, then they come up with some other phrase that really makes an impact on people. And oftentimes we hear these sound bites everywhere, and those are the things that get picked up. But we don't have dozens of writers and copywriters at our disposal.

But what we do have is the ability to, as a good entrepreneur, to put ourselves out there, test and see what works and see what doesn't. And the more that I have just put myself out there to have conversation, just like you're putting yourself out here today ... I'm halfway wanting to ask you to just pitch me on your idea right now and have you just ramble as much as you want or nail it on the first try. I don't know. This is why in SPI Pro, I don't know if you saw the challenge in October 2020, was the 60 second pitch challenge. This challenge was outside a lot of people's comfort zone. But I heard so much feedback from people saying, "This forced me to nail my messaging, and to get it under 60 seconds with a video where it was just one take. Now I have my messaging. And now I've been able to impact more people."

So you almost have to be forced to. So I don't want to put you on the spot right now. I mean, you kind of gave us an idea of what you do. But maybe I can challenge you to come back in six months and just, we're going to start the show with Jay and his pitch on what you do.

Jay:
I would love to come back. I did not see that challenge. October was an extremely busy month for us, but I'm going to go back and grab it for sure because it's something that I need to do. I almost at times get exhausted from doing it because I almost ... I'm like, "Man, is that really the message I want out there?" But what you just said is you basically, you've got to test, tweak, polish, and just keep going over and over and over again.

Pat:
You test it. You won't know. Even when it's perfect, you won't know until you try it.

Jay:
Yeah. Here's one thing I'm struggling with too, is you have your overall brand statement, your personal brand statement.

Pat:
Your mission.

Jay:
Mission. But does it matter if you have a podcast or a YouTube channel or like, say the products or services that I offer, there's a mastermind, and I actually started a coaching business because of you and the live that you did about that. Matter of fact, the day that you did that live, I was like, "I'm doing it. I don't care. I'm going to do it."

Pat:
No way.

Jay:
And I had two people sign up that day from that live. But yeah, I don't know. I just get exhausted trying to find the right message. Am I overthinking this? Am I overanalyzing it? Because the mastermind is built for a certain type of folk, and I've got my filtration systems in place. It's doing very well. The coaching business is still kind of new to me. I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm still trying to figure out who the right person is to get into that. I don't feel like the messages are the same.

Pat:
They don't have to be the same, but for your own sanity so you don't have two separate things, you want to have some sort of congruency. Whether you get coaching with me, whether you join the mastermind, whether you take an online course, whether you listen to my podcast, either way, at the end of it all, XYZ is the connector. And then of course each of those individual things can be like ... Well, the mastermind. For those of you who want to feel a connection and have a support group so that ... XYZ. Or the podcast. For those of you who want to get education on the go so that ... XYZ. Or the course for the specific transformations you can offer within the course so that overall, brand mission ... XYZ, ehatever that XYZ is. So they're connected, but you're right, they're separate. If you look at the—

Jay:
That's good stuff right there.

Pat:
Thank you. If you look at the sales page for SPI Pro, you could probably get some good inspiration for your membership and how we use specific language. We did a lot of research on that, especially with relation to our audience. And your audience is different, but also the same in a way. You can kind of pull inspiration from that. So that's at SmartPassiveIncome.com/pro. And how we made it community centric, a safe place, all these kinds of things that we put in there are very purposeful. But it's almost like Tesla:
"accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy." That's their mission, and then they have, of course, their car brand to do that. But they also have energy and solar roof, and then they also have all these other components that each in and of itself ... The car itself is the best performing vehicle and the safest vehicle out there, but it's also a part of their mission and their overall plan for accelerating to everything I just said. Anyway ...

Jay:
Yeah, it makes total sense. Matter of fact, on my white board earlier, I had mastermind, community, podcast, and all had different mission statements for them. I just erased it. I was like, "No, they should all support the overall mission." Right?

Pat:
Yeah.

Jay:
That's exactly what you just very beautifully put because now I understand. Because I know you're a big Tesla fan when you grew up in Tennessee.

Pat:
I'm a little bit of a fan boy.

Jay:
I can't believe I did that, but yeah, it makes total sense. It makes total sense. I haven't thought about that. So thank you for clearing the water.

Pat:
Let me just put you on the spot. If I were to ask you what is the one or two words that really sums up all the different components of the things that you have, what's the one consistent thing between all of them? What would it be?

Jay:
One or two words?

Pat:
Yeah, yeah or a sentence, doesn't matter.

Jay:
So I'm going to cheat. Can I cheat? Can I look at my cheat sheet here?

Pat:
You can cheat.

Jay:
This is the Chris Ducker bootcamp thing I just went through. I want to be known as the guy who helped you remove the stress and anxiety of financially providing for your family.

Pat:
So less financial stress.

Jay:
Yeah.

Pat:
Okay, so the online courses, I can see a vision of every single one of those in their own special way will help you reduce financial stress. This mastermind group, no matter what we talk about, no matter what we do, the ultimate mission here is to come together so that we can reduce financial stress. Less stress, more ... I don't know. I'm just trying to make up something ...

Jay:
No. Thesaurus is my best friend because my vocabulary is very limited. So when you said one or two words, I was like, "Oh, man. How much time do I have?" Not very much.

Pat:
Sometimes you can think of it also as like a tagline. One thing that I've been purposefully trying and experimenting on my YouTube channel, and it's actually made its way onto the podcast. And it's more of like the Pat Flynn ... Because now we're an organization with multiple team members and we have this overall brand mission. And each of those team members have very specific superpowers that lend to helping dreamers achieve their goals. But for me in particular, I've been experimenting with this phrase of "help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too." And that's just become something that as I've said it more and more, I start realizing that everything I'm doing is either one of those three things, and then ultimately it's so that you can have sort of more freedom with your time and get to do more of what you want. So that messaging, again, didn't come right away, and it was one that I was like, "Well, let me just try this and see what happens." It just kind of stuck.

You're kind of in that position where you're just like, you know what, you're not sure yet. But keep trying, and you know what else you could do? You could potentially even utilize, because you have an audience already, you could have even some guidance from your students and your members. If you were to ask your members a question like, "If you were to sum up W2 Capitalist in one sentence and why you're here and what it's going to achieve for you, what would it be?" And then now you're hearing language directly from your people. One or two of them combined might just be like, "Okay. That's a home run or grand slam."

Jay:
Yeah. No, that's great. How long did it take you to get your phrase?

Pat:
A couple hours of literally just thesaurus, post-it notes, looking at other people's taglines and trying to see, "Okay. I like this structure." A lot of internal thinking of like, "Okay. What am I actually helping people do? What's the thing that's consistent throughout all of my different pieces of content?" I've also tried other things like, "Helping you make content creation easier and more fun." And I tried that for a while too, but then I'm like, "Okay. Well that's just one piece of the puzzle. There's more to it." So I kind of walked away from that one. But again, I tried it, and I just kind of see how people resonate. Because every time now I go on a YouTube channel of somebody's who's growing really, really good and they have that tagline, I'm like, "Yes, you're so good." And they say it every time. You'll get there. You'll get there.

Jay:
Yeah. Yeah. I know you're a fan of Post-it Notes. So I want to show you this.

Pat:
Oh yeah. I see it.

Jay:
All right.

Pat:
I see a big white board in the back with some Post-it Notes on it.

Jay:
Yes. So I am writing a book because of, again, something you've done, and that's my start. And it's up there because my kids would come in and the first version is on the floor, like all the Post-it Notes end up on the floor.

Pat:
That's why it's so high. Okay.

Jay:
That's why it's so high. Yeah. They're not climbers typically. All right. So just keep going, keep going. Did you ever have this aha moment? You're like, "Oh, this is it." Because I know you said it was a couple of hours sitting down with a thesaurus or whatnot. But there was years that led up to that point, right?

Pat:
Of course. Yeah. You're right. You're right. No. There was no-

Jay:
No aha moment.

Pat:
No. In this case, there ... Sometimes there is when there's different things coming up, like I'm trying to come up with a tagline for a course or a name for a course, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh. Power-Up Podcasting. That'd be great because you power on your business," whatever. In this case for just the brand and the general feel of what I want people to know about me, especially in the first 10 seconds after they hear me, it wasn't an aha moment. And I think sometimes we just kind of wait for that and it never comes. And we're sort of like, "Give me a sign. Give me a sign this is the one." It never came, but it became what I ... When I started to say it and I started to understand that this is what represented kind of what I do, I started to become more confident in it, and as a result, people started to resonate with it back. Again, it was never an aha sort of moment, but it's become what I've made it.

Jay:
Gotcha. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense.

Pat:
Cool.

Jay:
So I got to get to work. Number one, I got to break the thesaurus out. Here's what I need to do, I need to go back and do the October challenge in SPI Pro and then I feel like I can then narrow that down.

Pat:
Actually, that's great because in that video that I played to help everybody in there with the challenge, it gives you a structure for how to actually do the pitch. So the first part is going to be something that resonates with the person who's watching, either a question to ask or just diving into a story that relates. And then the middle part is actually, "What is the solution? What is this here? What's this ultimately going to do?" And you're going to do well with the last part, which is how does this tie into your overall mission? We know what you're overall mission is, and that's actually where a lot of the students in there were struggling. It's like, "Oh, what's the bigger reason? What's the bigger why here?" You have that already. You have very clear goals. So I think with that in mind, you just need to nail the first two parts and now there can be this almost movement to — not just to support you but to support all the people that you're going to have come across your brand.

Jay:
Love it. Okay. Going to log in after this conversation and ... Actually, I'm going to go check on my son first because mom had to run errands. So I'm with the kids, and they have been very quiet. So it's been ...

Pat:
Yeah. I'll let you get back to it, and Jay, thank you so much for coming in. Where can people go to find your podcast, your website, all the other things you have going on?

Jay:
Yeah, best place is W2Capitalist.com. Links to everywhere from there. Yup. Pat, thank you.

Pat:
Thanks so much. Thank you as well.

Jay:
Thank you for everything you do.

Pat:
My pleasure.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that conversation and coaching call with Jay. And I hope this was helpful for you as well. We did mention SPI Pro a couple times. So I'll drop a link right now for it in case you're interested in applying. As you can tell, there's some fun challenges that happen there, some great communication and networking between entrepreneurs, just like you. And if you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/pro, you can check out the application for that community. And we let people in in waves every quarter. So you can get on that waitlist and check it out and join Jay, myself, and hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are there to support each other. And I would love to invite you in.

Again, that's SmartPassiveIncome.com/pro.

Now once again, if you want to check out Jay and what he's got going on W2Capitalist.com. Thank you, Jay, for coming on, being vulnerable and sharing with us because not only am I here to help you but I'm here to help others through your case study. So thank you so much. Look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

And thank you, the listener, for joining me today wherever you're at in the world. I want to say thank you for your time. It means the world to me. Say hello to me on ... Where do I want you to say hello? Instagram or on Twitter, that's where I'm most active these days @PatFlynn. That was a very awkward pause. @PatFlynn on those channels, and just say hello. Let me know that you're there listening. Love to say hi back. And let me know what you learned from this episode and if you're going to take that challenge too. And just work on your positioning and your messaging because that's super key.

So anyway, thank you so much for today. I appreciate you. Make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already. Appreciate all the reviews that have already been coming in this year. It means the world. Just a couple minutes to say something honest about the show goes a long way, and it helps others understand what they're getting into when they start listening to the show too.

I appreciate you so much. Take care. Hit subscribe because we got some great stuff coming your way next week, and you're not going to want to miss it. So cheers, take care. All the best. Team Flynn for the win. Peace out.