AP 1163: How Do I Launch My Flagship Course and Earn More Doing Less Work?

AP 1163: How Do I Launch My Flagship Course and Earn More Doing Less Work?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1163 of AskPat 2.0. Thank you so much for joining me today. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur like you. And today we're talking with Derek from GovKidMethod.com, gov like, G-O-V. What he does is he helps simplify the process for small business owners to win government contracts. There's a lot of money if you can get your business to be seen by the government and the government might pay for access to whatever it is that you offer or your products. I mean, that's huge. There's potentially millions of dollars within that. And he teaches other small businesses how to do that. But he's been doing this for a while. He's got a ton of resources, a ton of courses, and it's not quite hitting the mark yet. Cashflow, isn't really where we want it to be.

He has a YouTube channel as well, ton of resources going on. And right now at the time of this recording, he is building his flagship course. He's been on it for weeks, he's filming every single day, and it's got to work. So I coach him through that. I ask him a lot of questions. We do a lot of time traveling. You'll hear what that means in just a minute. But let's enjoy this episode. Again, thank you for coming in. This is Derek from GovKidMethod.com. I hope you enjoy it.

Derek, welcome to AskPat 2.0, thanks so much for joining us today.

Derek James:
Hey Pat, how's it going? I really appreciate the opportunity to be on with you.

Pat:
I'm excited. I'm excited to learn about you and see what I can do to help you, and I know there's a lot of people listening too. So why don't you give us a quick rundown on who you are and what it is that you do?

Derek:
Sure. So a few select folks in the audience may have heard of this, I'm not sure, I'm still getting up to speed on the awareness around this niche, but I'm what I would call and others would call a gov con coach, government contracting coach. So really the first thing I throw out there is if you've seen the movie War Dogs, War Dogs is a movie about two young guys who got into government contracting. They won a large ammunitions contract to supply the Pentagon with ammunition. They got in some trouble. I don't think the movie's 100 percent based on facts, but it's a rough story.

So my story is one of, I got into government contracting around 25, 26 in the business development and sales end. And by my 30th birthday, I'd managed to win a large number of contracts, worth a good amount of money for the small business contractor that I was working for. But then over the last two and a half years, I've branched out on my own. I left that job and I've committed my time to helping small business owners who want to get into the government contracting space to essentially sell the goods and services that they can offer to a brand new market that they may not even know exists.

Pat:
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about why we should even be paying attention to this, other than that it's new. What are the benefits of looking at governments to purchase our goods and services and whatnot, versus just our traditional B2B B2C type space?

Derek:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I don't think it would be a surprise for anybody to be reminded of the fact that the US government is the largest consumer in the world, and the US government buys everything from goods or services, parts and pieces. I mean, toothpaste, internet services, snowplowing, road salt, cyber, anything that our soldiers are going out to war, the war fighter ... Those are all supported by contractors, whether they're small businesses or large businesses. So if you're a small business owner that's listening to this, and I know we have so many here on the podcast that's probably listening, but I mean, Pat, this is your audience. I'm willing to bet a vast majority of you would be able to sell something that you offer in terms of a good or service, and the US government would buy it in some level of capacity.

And then that's just something that may be a surprise to you because you didn't even know that the Department of Veteran Affairs or the Army or the Department of Agriculture or DOT, any of these agencies could actually buy from you, but there is a process for doing so. And that's what my job is in the space, is to essentially bridge that gap. There's a lot of misinformation out there and there's a lot of lacking information and it's my job to let everybody know, hey, there's a way that you can do this, if you want to basically supplement your business with an additional customer base or just build an entire business around the US government.

Pat:
I would imagine a lot of ears are being perked up right now, potentially considering this. Before I dive into what you might need help with, where can people go to learn more about you and what you do?

Derek:
Sure, absolutely and thanks for asking. My website that I run is GovKidMethod.com. If you're on YouTube, which I think most of us are nowadays, you could also just look at my channel GovKidMethod. That's my avatar. I've got a lot of great intro videos on YouTube and my website has a lot of free courses. I've got five free courses; if anybody's interested in getting into the game, there's a lot of great resources for you there.

Pat:
Awesome. So GovKidMethod. So tell us a little bit about what you might need help with, what's on your mind these days?

Derek:
Sure. So I've been in the space for about two and a half years. Like I mentioned, July, 2018 is when I left my job working for a government contractor. And I said, I made this conversation with god, this promise that I talk about in some of my stories saying, "I want this to be the last job that I have. I'm fully burning my boats and dedicating myself for as long as I'm able to, to help people in this space." So for the last two and a half years, I started out like maybe a lot did, a lot of other people did, I wrote a book, self-published on Amazon. I created my first 27-video course and it didn't sell. Nobody read the book. I started backwards. So that was really my first six to nine months in just creating stuff, trying to create some awareness and generate some income too, because I totally cut off all my other income streams when I left my job.

I fell flat on my face, which I think so many of your listeners can relate to. After that though, I clued into YouTube and said, "I really need to create an audience," which looking back, I really should've did that first, but I always seem to do things backwards. So I started to grow, rather relatively quickly what I would call it, on YouTube. And we're coming up on about just under 5k subs over the last year and a half, which I'm super proud of. Thank you. I don't pay any ad money or anything like that, just 100 percent organic. I mean, every sub means so much to me because I understand the story of where they're coming from and what they're trying to do because I've been there.

So I started growing a YouTube channel and that's really where I doubled down. I don't do podcasting or anything at this point, it's where I spend all my time. And so then I basically ended up with, okay, I've got these online resources I created early on and then, okay, I've got some awareness and some engagement through this YouTube channel, but things are still not selling. So after a year and a half, I was still making no income in sales. And really what that means and what you teach so much, is I really wasn't serving in the way that I wanted. If I wasn't making the money back, that means I wasn't getting people results.

So what ended up happening was just this past Easter, right after COVID hit, it was just a really tough time and I hit my rock bottom for the time. And I said, "I've got five courses that I've created and none of them are really selling, even though I still had a growing YouTube channel and everything like that," just the conversions were not coming in. I try to learn this know, like, trust, I'm really trying to ingrain that process and basically saying these people that I think are my fans or my followers, they probably don't know me as well as I think they do. And I love their comments and I'm thinking they're at a certain place with me and maybe they're not. So I had an emotional conversation with my girlfriend on Easter, and I said, "You know what? I'm just going to take everything I've ever created for the last, at the time, year and a half, two years, I'm just going to set it all for free. And I'm just going to see what happens."

Because I wasn't making much money anyways and I said, "You know what? If this at least helps folks, it's going to have to lead to something, to a next step." Because I was hitting a wall, I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't going to keep creating online resources and growing a channel where I wasn't really serving in the way I wanted to. So that was this past Easter, and when that happened, things virtually took off. I think it was the last gap that needed to be bridged. People started enrolling, started getting results. I've helped small business owners win contracts and just all the different multi-steps involved in that process, all from the free courses. And from there, I started offering some paid downloads, just a little bit, started out with $25 and $50 options and started offering some online coaching. So things took the turn, and I know I haven't answered your question, Pat, and I'm not just going on a tangent-

Pat:
No, this is all great. This is all good.

Derek:
The context is going to pay off with what my question is going to be for you. So things started to take this turn and everything's been going very strong. It's been a great year despite COVID and some of the other challenges with this year. I just moved from Michigan to Alabama, moved across the country. I just finished my move literally a month ago, so I haven't even been doing anything. Usually I was on Smart Passive Income every day and The Income Stream everyday watching you, I haven't even been on because I've literally been moving across. So things have just been insane.

Pat:
That's alright.

Derek:
And there's going to be another payoff for that in a minute, when I get to my question too. But where I'm at right now is I'm trying to do more by doing less. I'm trying to simplify the business because I don't want to keep creating more and more courses and more and more resources. I have almost a dozen resources on my website already. It's only been a few years since I've been doing this.

So where I'm at right now is I'm trying to - I'm not trying to, I am - I am building my flagship course, I'm building what I want to be my one thing. So it's going to be big, it's been a lot of thought, I've been basically planning it and replanning it and redoing it for over a year now, just rehashing it because I knew I was going to want to do this. So I'm at the point now where I'm literally recording every day. I'm at that phase, I've been recording for about five weeks now. It's probably going to be 60 or 70 videos, a good size course. So with a flagship course, a large course, it was a few things - and you talk about all these things and that's what I want to get into, live launch vs evergreen, value-based pricing and one large course versus multiple smaller courses that each get their own individual transformation. These are three main things that I've really tripled down on to answer these questions for myself.

The last one - one large course versus multiple - I've already answered that for myself, I'm all in. I feel like there's a synergy that happens when I can control the environment and not just having them pick through the courses that they want. So I'm absolutely doing one large course. Value-based pricing, I would like to ask you about and come back on because I keep bouncing all around on my prices. And then the live launch versus evergreen, I want to go live launch and I know that is not what everybody's doing right now, everybody's going for evergreen. But I can get into that a little bit if you wanted to, as to what my reasons are for doing a live launch. And I know there's been a lot of build up and a lot of contrast to get to this point, so if you want to, just for time sake, if you want to just talk about one, that's fine, or if we want to touch on a couple, I'm cool with that.

Pat:
We'll touch on them. We'll touch on them.

Derek:
Cool.

Pat:
Thank you for the background, by the way, I think it provides a lot of context here for us and to understand where you're coming from. And I think a lot of people can likely relate to the story. Even though it's different than their own, it's likely a lot of overlap too. So before I get into live launch vs evergreen, I have a lot of thoughts about that. Pricing, I definitely want to hit on. And then you've already mentioned the one course already versus multiple. And I'd love to share ... from a future customer's perspective, why is this going to be better than what you've created before? What is the thing that's going to help inform me as the upcoming customer, that this is the thing I need right now? I mean, you can have the best marketing copywriting in the world, you can live launch or evergreen, none of that stuff matters until you nail the messaging and the positioning.

Derek:
Absolutely. Okay, great. So what I would say about that is the program, the flagship program that I'm working on, this is not going to be for essentially somebody who doesn't know who I am. So the writing, the scripts, the targeting, it's not for, "Hey, I don't know you, GovKidMethod. Let me learn about you and see if I want to take this." No.

Pat:
They've already found your YouTube channel, they know and trust you already.

Derek:
And I'm even going as far as to do a bit of a vetting process saying, "Hey, you have to go through the free courses. You have to have a registered business with the website as Sam.gov, but you've got to be registered to do business with the US Federal Government before you're even allowed to take this course." Just because I want to control the success of those who enter the course. So it's massively - and I really liked this question because that's where my head's been at the last couple of weeks, as yeah, I can't position this and market it to folks who are new to the GovKidMethod world, they've got to already be in. I'm already having a lot of internal conversations with members and folks saying, "Oh, I can't wait, Derek, for this to come out," because they already know, I've already been leaving the teasers in my YouTube channel videos or when I stream on live, they're waiting for it, so this is who that's for.

Pat:
Cool. Well, that's nice too, because now you have a phased approach. "Hey, my name is GovKidMethod, or Derek. Before I can give you everything you need, I need to know that this is right for you first. So take this free course." And it provides a lot of value, they get to know, like, and trust you during that phase. And then should they be qualified then, and of course take advantage of what they have there, they can then come back to you and easily make that decision to go onto level two with you. It's very similar to my podcasting tutorials on YouTube. People find my podcasting tutorials, they don't know who I am, but they find me through there, and it's a great algorithm-based way to get found. You can build trust through the videos. And then people go, "Okay, this is exactly what I need to do. Cool. I'm going to get started. Pat's taught me some of the basics that I can do. Wow, I really love this podcasting thing, I want to go further. I have my show title, I have what I need, but I need more info. Let me invest in Pat's course now." And there's less selling that needs to happen. You'll notice that on my sales pages, they're not the super long sales pages -

Derek:
Exactly.

Pat:
They're like, "Hey, you know that this is the part of the conversation we've been having, now's your time to take it up to the next level." I like that. I like that. Tell me what the transformation is when I take this course: after I'm qualified, after I apply and I get in, for example, what is my end result?

Derek:
Okay. So I've really challenged myself to come from a problem-solution standpoint and perspective on this. So the largest problem that I've, or I should say the most, not the largest, but the most widely seen problem that I've been able to pick up through my various types of interactions, is ... I'm registered to do business with the government, and there's things called capability statements and there's a couple of hoops that you've got to go through. And then once people jump through the clearly-defined hoops, they're just left flailing. And they're like, "Well, what do I do now?" And I hear it from everybody, "Okay, I did this, this, and this." And that's what I cover in the free stuff too, because I think everybody should have access to the free stuff in order to make a decision if they want to go further, because this isn't easy stuff, it's a little bit complicated.

So what do I do next, what do I do now is the number one question, the number one challenge. And so that is what this addresses. This is A to Z what you need to do. And it's from a business development and sales aspect, because when you're looking at types of business, you can get into legal, you can get into accounting: that is not my area of experience, that is not my forte. I come from a sales and business development background where I wrote proposals, I developed relationships, I did research on agencies to find who's buying the most of what I'm trying to sell. So that is the answer to what these folks need to be doing, but it's a lot more complicated than that. And that's what this flagship course basically will offer. What do I do? You do this. And it's A to Z, I'm very involved with hand-holding, with lots of screen-sharing, basically taking them step by step through these different things.

Pat:
Okay. Let me see if I can rephrase what you said to me in a scenario where perhaps you were presenting that to a customer. To me, I hear what this course will give me is information and the steps required to move forward. Correct?

Derek:
Yes.

Pat:
When I think about customers and what they ultimately want, people don't want to do the steps, they don't want the information ... they need it. They need it, and that's why you're showing up. But I want to challenge you to go further. What do they ultimately want? What is the whole purpose of getting this information? What is the whole purpose of signing up and getting access to the steps? What is the end result that they actually want, the return that they're hoping to get after investing in your course?

Derek:
Got it. Yep. So yeah, this course is what you need to do to win government contracts for your small business. And it's not get rich quick, it is a realistic timeline and it's why I started building some of the copy for this. It is a 365-day program. It's a program that, if you follow this, you will win government contracts for your business. Instead of basically throwing darts, guessing, this is from a tested approach, you just have to do the work, but at least you know it's going to be leading you to where you ultimately are trying to get.

Pat:
So win government contracts.

Derek:
Win government contracts.

Pat:
That's super clear to me; if you had just said that initially, I'd be like, "That's ultimately what I want." And too many - and this isn't just you, this is me, this is everybody, we start to over explain. And I think that if we can simplify ultimately what the end result is going to be for the customer - for example, Power-Up Podcasting, my podcasting course, I could explain that there are three separate phases. There's the pre-launch phase, the launch phase, and the post-launch phase. In each of these phases, I help you determine your launch plan and all this stuff. I could say all that, but that's not what people want. People want to know that at the end of this course, they're going to have their podcast, they're going to be able to get in front of new audience members and they're going to potentially be able to grow their business too and grow their influence using a podcast.

They want to know that they're going to have listeners when they launch their podcast. And that's the stuff I can promise in the course, and that's what the language is about, because that's what I know that they ultimately want. If we could snap our fingers and have the end result, that's where we need to think of. So in your messaging and your marketing, when you share this with people, when you do a webinar, when you live launch this thing - which we can now transition to those questions, I just wanted to make sure we nailed that first. Because when you live launch this thing, the center of attention, yes, will be winning government contracts, that's what this course will do. If you can't do that for them, then they deserve their money back, that's the thing. You're going to give them all the information, but that will unlock new government contracts and the ability for them to ... We can even take this one step further.

Well, why is winning government contracts important? It's more money so that their business can stay afloat, even during the pandemic. It's more money to support their family. You have to hit on those emotional parts that actually relate to the human who's on the other end. And of course, there's a line there, you don't want to say like, "This course is going to put food on your table. And if you don't take this, you're going to starve to death." We don't want to go to that extreme, but we also have to think about humans and psychologically, why do we purchase things? Why do we get access to these kinds of things? For survival purposes, for belonging to a group, for staying afloat during troubled times, it goes back to those inherent human traits. And so I just wanted to make sure we talked about that a little bit and to focus in on that.

Derek:
That's a great alignment, because like I said, I'm in the middle of recording it and I designed each - it's about 10 modules, maybe a bonus, but 10 modules. I designed each module to be one big transformation for a problem and a solution. So I'm selling myself short thinking, okay, each of these modules has one big solution and people, they don't know what solution they need, but they know what payoff they're looking for. So if I can just keep that in mind with each of the modules, and we know that the whole big one is to win a government contract, but there are bite sized pieces.

Pat:
That's important because those small wins keep them going. And for something a year long, is huge. I'm excited to talk about price point for something like this, but we'll get into that in a minute. I think live-launching, especially at the beginning, is really key because you want to have people understand that you were there with them, that they're getting access to you, that they're in this with other people. When you start to insert evergreen into this situation, you have to worry about a lot of other things and automation and systems, which can come later. But I worry when people start to automate and create systems for things they haven't even done live yet, or haven't even done themselves yet. So I think launching live first is going to be the answer to start with, whether you choose to migrate to something more evergreen later, or have a hybrid where you keep it evergreen, except once or twice a year you have a much bigger launch during certain seasons, that's going to be up to you.

But I think at the start, maybe the first or second time at least, live launching, plus it's a lot easier to include scarcity and urgency during a live launch, where by a certain date, this is going to be gone or these bonuses are going to go away, and that now gives people a reason to buy now. Maybe a reason - and I don't know much about the existing courses you had, but perhaps a reason why they weren't selling is because people didn't have a reason to make a decision now.

Derek:
I didn't even launch them. I put them up one day, literally exactly what you probably should not do, is what I did. And I'm okay with that because I'm building off of that as a foundation, but I just put them up one day and they're up and I just sat back and waited for them to sell. It's like one of those things where you know intuitively you should not do that, but when you're the one business owner and you're wearing 20 different hats, as you can appreciate, and your listeners, it's like you're so geeked out about getting it built and getting it uploaded, and getting your first student enrolled, it's hard to maintain the focus you need on all the important aspects.

Pat:
For sure, and I appreciate you being open and honest about that. In some cases, just putting it up there can work because the problem is so needed a solution for, or the solution is so needed for a particular problem, that people don't care about whether it's available now or later, they want the answer now. Versus something like within your realm, first of all, it requires a ton of education and people could potentially have other means that they may be more familiar with, and the problem isn't as inherently known. It's when they start to get into your system and into your work that they realize that, wow, there's a huge opportunity here and they should take advantage of it right now.

Derek:
100 percent. Yep.

Pat:
Okay. So we talked about live launch versus evergreen. We talked about one large, mostly within regards to what this is about and who is it for and what it's going to do for them, ultimately win government contracts is the key phrase there. You said it's going to be a year long. An online course that's a year long sounds very overwhelming, just to be honest. And again, positioning is important. This to me almost sounds like a university education, if you will, or like a 12-month program versus online course.

Derek:
So what I mean by that is just I'm championing this is not get rich quick. This is not, you're going to do this for three months and you're going to win a government contract. You could, I mean, it'll probably take you a month to get through all the modules and everything, but it's a year long to implement and tutor businesses is what I mean by that. My intention was to market this as a one-year program because you go through the course but then you engage into a Facebook community, an exclusive community for only students that are going through this together, classmates, and you go through basically the different seasons of the government fiscal calendar. And this is part of why I wanted to do a live launch is because the government fiscal year ends at the end of September, contracts are essentially nowhere to be found from October to December. Well, what do I do now? And then June, July, August, and September, they have gotten a lot of their budgets, a lot of the funding has come through for the contracting officers and contracts are just being made and awarded hand over fist.

So what do you do during these different seasons is important and it's important that you don't just sit on your hands when times are slow, because you're going to starve if you're a business owner. There's a time for building relationships and checking procurement forecast and doing your research, sharpening your saw, and then when it's time to hunt and it's hunting season, you've got to go out and hunt. And so that's part of why I wanted to do a live launch, so that I could control basically starting at the slow season and we can ramp up together and go throughout. And that's where I'm coming from with a year long, because every month, every quarter truly is different and requires doing different business development activities. And that's really what I hammer down to in this program, is the different activities that you do at different times throughout the year, and it really is a whole year.

Pat:
Yeah. I mean, to me, if you were to position this as an online course that will take a year, I'm out.

Derek:
I appreciate that.

Pat:
You know what I mean?

Derek:
I do.

Pat:
An online course, I want to be done as soon as possible. But the way you just said it was so key, it's almost obvious that if I want the end result to win government contracts, I need to do it with you because you know these things that I don't. And I think that what might make sense is to call it something else, but it just has an online course component within it to guide people through the curriculum. You know what I mean? So if this is a win government contracts accelerator program, a one-year program where you and I work closely together, your course material is within this platform that you can use, and we're going to go through that week by week or month by month, because there's seasons. In September government contracts - everything that you just said there was perfect. And if you ended it with, now purchase my 12 month online course, that's heavy to me, versus come and get this, I don't even know what the word is right now off the top of my head.

Derek:
I think it's what I've been struggling with because I've been not even been saying the word course around anybody around me. I'm like, 'Nope, we say program around here." Because I don't want it to be thought of as a course because there's more to it than the self study component.

Pat:
Good. Okay. Because the way you said it earlier, when we came on was, the online course. And so that's great that you haven't been really saying that to anybody else. I would explore just different, other programs that people have that are available for six months to a year, to see what this is like. And for me, I called mine my accelerator programs, some people call masterminds, you can have a government contract mastermind and that feels very inside circle, or maybe it's called the government contract inside circle. That, to me, screams value, it screams accessibility, it screams this is stuff that not everybody's going to get and so therefore I want to be a part of it.

Derek:
The number one requested thing, on that exact note that you just said, in terms of the language and the things that they are saying, is mentorship. "Derek, do you have any sort of mentoring thing?"

Pat:
Oh bro, there it is.

Derek:
I just don't want there to be a let down, if you can understand, because I can't be there for these people 24 hours a day, seven days a week, I won't make it through my first year. So learning where to set the boundaries because like you said, this is my first live launch going through this, just need to feel it out. I wouldn't want people to be let down, thinking I was getting mentorship with Derek and he's just got office hours once a week or something. I don't know. I think you can appreciate where I'm coming from, but that is the phrase that has been used probably a hundred times.

Pat:
I would use that word, but I would set clear expectations upfront about exactly what that means. I mean, I offer office hours every week for my students and they think I'm crazy that I'm giving it away for free on top of my online courses. And so just for once a week, I think it's just how you define what mentorship is. When I think of people who have mentors who are in my circles, they only talk to their mentors once a quarter because they're getting guidance to help steer them in the right direction and then they go back to work and make their decisions and then they have access to other material.

Derek:
They're probably ecstatic about that, once a quarter, too.

Pat:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Because you can't get access to them otherwise, or usually, and nobody can get this kind of access to you. Plus you've dumped a lot of this stuff in your brain into this amazing curriculum, that's going to do a lot of that legwork for them, so it is a mentorship. How many years have you been doing this? You said since 2018, you've been on your own and been doing government work for years beforehand?

Derek:
2013 was when I got involved, yep.

Pat:
So this is seven years of your education, your experience, the mistakes that you made, the wins that you've had, put into not only a curriculum, but a weekly office hour, where once a week you can get on with Derek ... that's huge value. How much money would a person have to pay to have seven years of experience? Five years of college costs over a hundred thousand dollars in some places, and this is specialized and it can get the money back. When they win these government contracts, they're getting this money back and that's the beauty of what it is that you're teaching. Whenever you teach ways to make more money, it's much more clear that what it is that you're paying for is an investment. And so I want to know, to finish the conversation off -

Derek:
Yeah, I'm going the same place you're going.

Pat:
What's the price point going to be?

Derek:
I'm bouncing and it's a big bounce.

Pat:
I'm scared to hear where you're bouncing.

Derek:
You should be. No, I started out around a $5,000 price point.

Pat:
Okay. That's much better than I was ... I thought you were going to say $99 or something crazy.

Derek:
I thought you're thinking I was going to be way high.

Pat:
I think you're still low with $5,000, but I think for first group -

Derek:
Because I'm coming down to like, one K now. Every week I keep selling myself shorter and shorter and shorter.

Pat:
Okay, tell me this. I join your program, I win to government contract. I know it varies, but how much money could I make from a government contract? What could that contract look like?

Derek:
Yeah, I mean, it's -

Pat:
I mean, I've watched that movie, so I know ...

Derek:
Contracts range from micro purchases, credit card purchases to $5,000 up to infinity. So let's talk realistic terms, $100,000 contract is on the lower side of things. Again, we're not talking about profit yet, but a $100,000 contract to do the service, up to probably, $750. So $100 to $750 K is probably a realistic, good-sized first contract, whereas your profit margins can be anywhere from 5 to 15 percent, realistically.

Pat:
Mm-hmm. And you're only charging $5,000? Wouldn't people gladly trade $5,000 to make $100,000? Probably. But I know that this is a first time thing, and I think that what you need is to have one person - and probably more will come in - do this with you and you're going to see firsthand what it is that actually you are doing for them. And it's going to be such a huge discount you're offering. I mean, it almost feels like stealing, even at that price. For a whole year, I mean, if you divide that, let me just do - and again, beta students, champion members, first-timers, you're offering them a little discount that helps get them in, locks them in at the lowest price ever. But $5,000, that's $400 a month, that's $100 a week for something that is, to me, worth far, far more. I mean, some of us pay $100 a week for things that we probably shouldn't be paying for, like loads of coffee or whatever.

So anyway, I'm just trying to challenge you and I think you have all the pieces there and I hope this has been helpful for you, but I think that that price point is okay to start with. I do feel like ultimately it is low, but for a first go around with a certain number of students, or maybe the first 10 people who get in, or the first five people, can get it at 5,000 and then the price goes up after that to add a little bit more scarcity or urgency. But that positioning that we talked about this entire chat, plus if you have any stories you can share about how you've helped people, those two things combined, when you can share - because that's proof, it's proof that Derek's stuff actually works. If you've ever helped anybody or have supported people, surface those stories in your webinar and in your copy and your conversations and your videos, and just say like, "We're going deep with this mentorship program, the win government contracts mentorship program ..." Holy crap.

Derek:
That is the intention. That's the intention heads on, yeah.

Pat:
Good.

Derek:
It's coming in, and all of your listeners can relate to this because it is not easy to grow into this. When I started doing coaching calls, my first price point was $25 for an hour, and that's just because I tend to sell myself short. I'm up to $100 for an hour before I cut those off, and I've been doing some reflecting and if I open them back up - and I may not, because I may just double down everything into the new program, but if I do, it will be $500 for the session, but it's taken me two years to work up to that. And so this helps me a lot because it's not easy because you do truly want to help the end user and you don't want money to come in the way. But I know value-based pricing is a thing and it's just you have to be respectful and treat yourself the way that, like you said, everything I've learned in the last seven years, you can't just discredit that. I mean, that's larger than me. That's my experience and it is what it is. So I appreciate that.

Pat:
Yeah. You're welcome. And I like you increasing your one-on-ones to $500, because $500 times 10 is $5,000. So by getting into the program, you're saving $1,000 on just the monthly calls. If you only did monthly calls versus weekly, the value is huge there. I mean, even if you charged $1,000 an hour, this now anchors the fact that your mentorship program gives you way more access and a course, it almost is like stealing at that point. And this is where, when you start to have these one-on-ones and these coaching programs in that price juxtapositioned, versus the mentorship program and these group coaching things, it just starts to make sense. And people see that and they compare and they go, "Wow, okay. This mentorship program is the way to go, for sure. I can't afford Derek one-on-one, but this completely makes sense to take advantage of right now, it's such a good deal." And I still think it's a great deal at $5,000, and I'm excited to hear what the audience thinks too.

But anyway, thank you for allowing us to break it down a little bit and to build you back up and for being vulnerable here today. I'm here to help and you've helped so many other people by allowing us to share this too. So one more time, where can people go to hear more from you and keep track of how everything's going?

Derek:
Thank you so much, Pat. People can go to GovKidMethod.com or you can find me on YouTube at GovKidMethod.

Pat:
Awesome. And do you mind if we perhaps follow up with you maybe later in the year to see how things are going?

Derek:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking for mid to end of January to launch this thing, so it's coming up pretty quick. So I could give you an update on how the new program's going.

Pat:
Would love to hear it and I'm sure everybody would too. Derek, this is awesome. Thank you so much and best of luck.

Derek:
Thanks Pat. Appreciate it. You too.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that coaching call with Derek. Again, you can find him at GovKidMethod.com. Derek, thank you so, so much for just coming on the show and being very honest and open about what it is you're doing. I think it's going to be very helpful for a lot of people. And I cannot wait to invite you back on the show at some point in the future to see what you've done with this information and how you took those leaps like we talked about. So great job. Thanks again. I appreciate you.

And I appreciate you, the listener. If you are listening to this show and you're like, "Man, I would love to get coached by Pat here as well." You can, potentially, if you go to AskPat.com, you can actually apply right there on that page and I might get back to you. It's not guaranteed, but the guarantee is if you don't try, it won't happen. So we're always looking for new, interesting stories and people to help. So again, that's AskPat.com. And make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite app to download and get AskPat whenever it comes your way because we got a lot of great stuff coming your way into the future. And thank you again for listening to episode 1163. That's a lot of episodes. We're helping a lot of people and we always want to help more and hopefully this has been helpful to you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Take care. We'll see you next week. And as always, Team Flynn for the win. Peace out.