AP 1159: How do I Effectively Coach and Monetize My Brand & Run a Virtual Event?

AP 1159: How do I Effectively Coach and Monetize My Brand & Run a Virtual Event?

Pat Flynn:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1159 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. And today we're talking with Aaron LeBauer who is a physical therapist who teaches other physical therapists, right? This was his profession, now he's helping others do it and become more efficient with it and whatnot. We do discuss about a lot of things related to becoming more efficient in the business, monetizing the business better, as well as potentially how might one create a virtual event, right?

As we all know, here in early 2021 at the time of this recording, the pandemic, it's still going on. People are still not able to go out to real in-person conferences. So virtual conferences have become the answer at least for right now. And it's always been around, but even more so now it's important than ever to think about it at least. And Aaron wants to think about it and discuss it as well. So we're going to talk about those things and more today in this episode. Thanks. Sit back. Relax. Here is Aaron LeBauer. Here we go.

Hey, Aaron. What's up? Welcome to AskPat. Thanks for being here, my friend.

Aaron LeBauer:
Hey, Pat. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm honored to be here.

Pat:
I appreciate it. And I'm excited to dig in. So why don't we start with having you tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do.

Aaron:
Yeah. I've got a couple different hats that I wear, a husband and a father. But number one thing I do is I'm a physical therapist who helps other passionate physical therapists scale their time, income, and impact.

Pat:
Cool. So you're a PT that helps other PTs. Love it.

Aaron:
Mm-hmm.

Pat:
Where can we go find more about your business? Where's the URL and all that stuff?

Aaron:
Yes. The number one place is aaronlebauer.com. And that's A-A-R-O-N L-E-B like boy, A-U-E-R.

Pat:
Very cool. How long have you been online doing that?

Aaron:
I've been doing that for about seven, eight years. I've owned a business for about a little over 20 years, 21 years. I started as a massage therapist, then became a physical therapist. And then I realized no one was going to employ me to do what I wanted to do as a physical therapist, so I had to start my own business and I did it without insurance companies, which everyone thought was crazy. And then I started sharing how I did it and now I'm a business coach.

Pat:
That's cool. So coaching is a part of your business model. Now, are there any other things that are helping to run the business and generate an income?

Aaron:
Yes. There's a couple of different ones. I've got a clinic, so that's mostly patient care, a little bit of retail sales. And I have my coaching business where I have a mastermind program, I have an online course and I have a couple other products and services. One of my first downloads that I've put out seven years ago and didn't expect to continue selling, sold 125 of them last year without trying. So I've got a lot of moving parts, but the number one thing is I want to help inspire other people to do what they're meant to do and own a business and become unemployable, you know?

Pat:
That helps, man. I love it. As far as the clinic, is that still run in person and you're seeing people in real time?

Aaron:
Yeah. And the funny thing is, COVID had the biggest impact on that than anything else. And I spend about... Prior to this year, I'd spend about two to three hours in that business. This year, I've spent more time this year than in the prior five years. And it pretty much runs on its own and we're really waiting for people to get comfortable, taking care of themselves again, rather than worried about everything that's been going on in the world. And I have another physical therapist who works for me, a clinic manager, myself, and my wife who own it. And we've been therapists, but pretty much out of the business now.

Pat:
Cool. Awesome. So it sounds like things are moving. So where can I help? What's on your mind?

Aaron:
I think that the number one thing that I'd love to get your input on was there's a lot of things that rely on Aaron LeBauer to generate revenue. So we've got the clinic and a little bit like — I've got that so that I'm not treating patients. We've got the coaching business, but I run the mastermind group and it requires me, and I've got staff and systems. What I'd like to know and what I'm trying to figure out is what's the alternate parallel service or product or some continuity service or product that come out of my brain? It's something that my customers need, but doesn't require me to show up every day to deliver the product and service. Does that make sense what I'm talking about?

Pat:
Yeah, totally. So we're talking about scaling the business, but not necessarily overloading you or adding more to it. But essentially we want to remove you from those processes as much as possible. There's a few things that come to mind that relate to this. There was a person who I interviewed once. His name is Brian Casel and he had a business actually that... He was a web design agent. And so every client that came in, he had to come in and go very specific with each and every individual and it just took so much time. And of course, he charged for that, but it was a lot of his time. So instead, what he noticed was that there were a few specific kinds of clients that kept coming to him, for example, restaurants. And there was another couple of other niches that would come over.

And instead of going deep with each and every individual, he went deep into that niche and said, okay, here's what this niche needs. So people who have a restaurant, here are the three things that you can get from me. And they're already halfway built, I just need to add your stuff on top of it. And you can get it much sooner and I'm not even involved in the process because the team does most of the work to fill in those gaps. Right? And here's the solution for this. So he has now a business called Productize where it's taking a service-based thing that you have and perhaps productizing it. And I want to know what that sparks for you potentially.

Aaron:
That's interesting because one of the things that I've noticed is when I'm teaching people how to run their business, it's to teach them how to do email marketing, because that's been really effective for me. But it's the technology or that big hump of getting started that seems to be getting a lot of people. And so, one of the things that I do is I teach people how to do it. An idea I've had recently was well, what if we get people started on it? So we use active campaign and a bunch of other systems, but they have a system where you can white label it. I can load in my emails and get people started and hand it off to them. I was thinking about something like that. Is that something similar to what you're saying, where I take this thing that I usually teach, but I can make it into a product, then sell it as a service and we preload it and they run with it?

Pat:
Yes. Either that, or even as an add-on because... Let me know if this is true. That's going to save them time and it's going to save you time. Right?

Aaron:
Mm-hmm.

Pat:
And that is something you could either charge for, or just know that that's baked into the thing so that you aren't baked into the thing anymore. And that's just one example. Email marketing is just one small component of a much larger whole, and there's likely other things that are involved with that, from accounting and finances that could be taken care by a system or software and/or another person. That's the other thing about. This is like a good exercise to do and we're not going to have time to do this today so you might want to do this later, it's to like, map out all the things where you have a hand in right now. That cannot happen unless Aaron is involved in them.

And then you start to prioritize them. Okay. Which actually of these things do require me and only me and nobody else can do it? And you're probably going to find out that a very few amount of those things are actually true. And I found out the same thing in 2014 when I was mapping out the exact same thing. And then I started to get comfortable with either not doing those things anymore at all, because sometimes you map these things out and you're like, okay, I don't even... Like, why is this even here? Right? So I can remove that. That's case number one.

Case number two is, okay, why am I even working on this? There's a software that does this for me, or for them , kind of like what we just talked about. Okay. That's solved. And then number three would be, well, a human still has to be involved, but that human doesn't have to be me. And so might there be somebody on the team that I could recruit or somebody that perhaps we can hire and invest in to take care of that for them? And then, of course, fourth tier is: Okay, this is mine and I have to do this. And that way you can stay in your zone of genius, you can enjoy things more, and you're not, it's not wasting time, but you're just not allocating your time in places your time shouldn't be spent.

Aaron:
Right. Absolutely. What are some of the systems that you've set up like that, that have been the most valuable to you which were easier, so easy for you you didn't really, like looking back you're like, that was easy. I should have done that first.

Pat:
Yeah. Honestly, it was number one, handing off email and answering inquiries and stuff. 98 percent of the emails that come in, I don't even need to see ever. And that removed hours of time. Another thing that helped was finding somebody and getting comfortable. And part of it's a mental thing. Some of this stuff you're going to have to take a leap a little bit and let go of even though you don't want to. If you know you have to, then that'll help. But if you want to be the CEO of your company, the CEO of the company is probably not going to do some of the stuff that you actually do have a hand in and that could often be handed off to somebody else. But editing my podcast and getting involved in that, I'm completely hands-off now. When it comes to the community, like at SPI Pro, it's actually being managed mostly by my team by now.

And I do pop in every once in a while, but it's growing and thriving. When I thought initially when I wanted to create a community that I would have to be in there every day for five hours, replying to every single comment, the team is doing most of that for me. So that's an example of humans stepping up to have people feel like they're being responded to and listen to which they are. And then I come in at every once in a while, I'm not gone. But twice a month I do an ask me anything and then a challenge that I lead - this month I'm leading the book club in there. So my time is still spent, but it's spent in containers within that, not across the whole board because the team's managing some of those other things. So those are just a few examples. And that's a great question.

Another example of scaling up is to go from one to one, to one to many, right? And so if you are doing one-on-one client work, perhaps instead of one-on-one client work, there is one to many, those many being a certain type of people who have a very specific set of problems. And yeah, maybe you do still need to show up. But instead of 30 calls, you're doing one call for 30 people and then can field the questions afterwards that do pertain to each of them, but likely you're able to answer most of those people's questions versus individually answering most of those people's questions.

Aaron:
Yeah. I've got that. So that's why we're doing it with my mastermind group is we do group calls and group retreats and that's working really well. And that's where I've seen there... I know that whether they're with me for a year or two or three or more or less, but most of them would be with me forever, my idea is how can I... I want this service product or service that I can create that's helpful for people when we're working together and beyond that so that... Because I know they have other needs other than hanging out with me all day long. I've scaled that part where I've scaled the coaching part and I'm trying to figure out what's that piece I can do? I still need to be present three times a month on a group call and three times a year. What's that next thing?

And so, I've seen a lot of people with these products, whether it's like a recruit - like vitamins, nutrients, and supplements, which I'm not necessarily going to sell, but that, or some kind of app or something like that. I'm just trying to figure out what that is and whether it's worth my time or not. It's just in my head. And so that thing that's landed for me was what's the number one problem for people in getting over the hump and marketing? And I agree with you. I think it's outsourcing this stuff to other people too. So I've got a good team member to help me with that. Is there any pitfalls that you can think of for, let's say I create something like that, that I should look out for?

Pat:
Yeah. Hiring other people is a big step. Right? And the cool thing about that is when you help your clients learn how to do that, you're literally changing their lives. You're helping them just like I'm helping you right now. Get more time back, be able to focus more and spend their time where they should be. So there's a huge why here and that's the most important thing that you know the why, you know what this can unlock for people because that's what you're selling. You're not selling the fact that they're going to build a team. That's just the means to what it is that you're actually selling, which is more time and less stress and all that sort of stuff. So the worry would be, in my opinion, just consider all the other questions that they're going to have once you pitch this and you talk about it. It's like, okay, well where do I find these people?

Okay. Now it's like, okay, I got to be able to answer that question so you better have a good recommendation, right? And that way they're not left hanging or go into something and then regret it because they hired the wrong person. So by considering what questions they are going to ask, you're able to have those answers ready for them. And I think that what you could potentially do is experiment with something. Maybe take one or two of your students and just go, hey guys. You guys have been star students. I wanted to give you some insight on some stuff that I'm thinking of doing. I'm not sure if it's going to work yet, but if you're up to it, I'd love to help you hire some team members, but we can be open and honest with each other along the way.

If it's not working for you, you let me know and I'm going to go extra hard to make sure it is going to work for you. In that way, for everybody else, we can together create something that works. And you get a little bit of additional access to me along the way. And that way, you're actually not guessing. You're actually in real time making this thing with somebody who is actually a part of your client base already.

Aaron:
Right. Awesome. So like a beta program. I was like, hey, we're thinking about doing this. If you're interested, we'll work together with you on creating this thing.

Pat:
Yes, exactly. And it could be a public beta where you announce this and you just get five really excited people to invest in it at a much cheaper price to work with you for four weeks to make this happen. That way you see the idea that this thing is coming out and people who are like, "I don't know, we'll see if it works first." Then they get these testimonials from these people who you did work with, they're stoked on it and then now they're in. Or you work with the five people and it's just like not working out. At least it was contained, but then you can just let people know we tried this, it didn't work, but I'm always here to help you. Here's the next thing we're going to try. A little bit risky because if it doesn't work, it might be like, well, its sort of backtracking a little bit. But you could also do it private.

Like I said, you can reach out to a few of your students and go, hey, I want to give you something special and take you in on something that I'm doing. And if it works, awesome. If not, just know that it might not, but I'd love to work with you in this. And then if it does work, then you can announce with people: Hey guys, for the last four weeks, I've taken a few of our students here and here's what they unlocked for themselves and here's where they're at now. And if this is something you're interested in, I've developed a way to share this with you in a way that's not going to have you spend hours on a call with me. It's already there because I've already had these calls. Right? You can almost record these things with those beta students. And that essentially creates the service, of course, too, which is cool.

Aaron:
Yeah. That's really awesome. That's a great idea.

Pat:
One thing that we're doing at SPI, because we have our courses, right? And our most prominent course is our podcasting course. Something we're trying this year and by the time people are listening to this, they would have already gone down. So it'd be interesting to see how it went. But in addition to launching our courses, we are offering what's called a bootcamp for anybody who wants direct access to my team and I to go a little bit further and have more of a X week structure to learning that stuff versus here's the online course, go. Some people like working in that case, but other people need some guidance and help. And it's obviously going to be a little bit more expensive.

But in fact, it's not going to take that much more additional time from me. A lot of my team, they're coaches and they're going to be great at motivating and keeping people going through and holding people accountable. And again, this is another example of some of my team members stepping up to directly help people in a way that's going to help us make more money, but also help people actually get the result faster and better. So that's scaling the outcome without necessarily scaling me.

Aaron:
All right. With your team members, is there certain things that... I'm assuming they are mostly virtual these days, but probably were before. Is there a way that you're helping motivate them and also compensate them that maybe is a little different or unique just based on not having like a... We don't have traditional businesses where we're in an office building and cubicles. Right?

Pat:
Yeah.

Aaron:
Is there anything that you're doing that's unique to help keep people motivated and moving forward and crushing it?

Pat:
Yeah. That in and of itself, the fact that we're not in an office, the way we framed it is that is a reward. That the fact that you have the freedom to work wherever you want as long as you get your work done, we don't care where you do it. And if you get 40 hours of work done in 32 hours, then great, take the rest of the time off. Just get the work done. And that's pretty cool. But in terms of motivation, they're very much mission-driven like I am. So they have the reason to move forward and that's for the audience. They're very much - and they were hired for that as well. They knew how important the audience was to me, and every team member that's on cares just as much, if not more than I do. And then also we do offer raises and there's performance reviews and things like that within the team.

I have my chief operating officer, the one in charge of most of those things. So I'm not even sitting in on those conversations often, it's my integrator, Matt, who's doing most of that work and really the liaison for the team in communication and whatnot. And then one thing that's really important, and something that we're actually doing more of this year, is we have meetings on the leadership team and we call out those who are in the team who've done really excellent work. And our goal this year is to reach out to those people individually on our team more often, because I've been doing that before, but to do it even more purposefully I think, just sometimes - and I remember when I was at work in an architecture firm, I just wanted a thank you. I just wanted recognition. That is oftentimes more valuable emotionally than a small bonus at the end of the year or what have you. Right?

Aaron:
Yeah. That's so important. Giving someone recognition is really awesome. It feels really good. I don't get it as much being the head. I get it occasionally. I'll get it from people who I've helped. It's not like someone's saying, "good job here."

Pat:
Yeah. The other thing that's been really good with the team is to literally give them responsibility. Like, hey, this is your thing. You own this and this is why it's important. You get to be the final decision maker there so long as it fulfills the captain's orders. I don't care how you do it. This is yours. And what happens is it's not as much intimidation versus inspiration for them to go forward and actually create something amazing. And all the team members with the things that they are involved in, we'll get to a point sometimes where some of them create PowerPoint presentations to pitch an idea to us because they believe in it so much because it came from them. Right? Versus just doing what I tell them. It's like, here are the orders, you make the plan. That's so powerful. And then they feel more connected, they feel more tied into it, they they'll often work overtime to make sure those things are better, even though we don't want them to. It's pretty cool.

Aaron:
That's cool. I just had to type that out. It's like, basically you said here are the orders, you make the plan. Is like you saying, here's the result, I want you figure out how we're going to get there?

Pat:
Exactly. I'm trying to remember the exact story. But I think... somebody was talking about, there was like a war back in the day and there was a company who was trying to infiltrate this base or something, I don't remember the exact story. But they had plans like, okay, here are the 10 steps to infiltrate this thing. And all the time they would do this it would fail. They would get to step three and it would just fall apart. And then of course, the plan is only as good as the things going the exact way you want it to and it never does, versus the general started to say, you know what? Forget the plan, this is the goal. I don't care how you get there, just get there. And all the people under him would then feel more motivated because they would have the responsibility of making the plan versus, okay, let's just do these 10 things the general said to do. Right? So that's essentially it and more ownership is involved, more connection, more inspiration, motivation when that happens.

Aaron:
Yeah. That's awesome. That's great. I can see how I can apply that because I think I've done that by default a couple of times where like, hey, I want this to happen. Can you do it? And it's just like people will show up and my team members say, hey, let's do it like this. Great idea. And I think I need to do more of that more intentionally because it's very empowering, because I've had jobs where people just micromanage you and take the power out of you and you're like I'm just going to do what you said.

Pat:
Right. Aaron, imagine if you went to one of your team members just personally and you're just like, hey, Jesse. I didn't know who else to go to for this because I need some help. Right. Here's what we're trying to do and I think that you're somebody who could come up with a great solution for it. Do you think you'd be able to do that? Oh, my gosh. That just gives me goosebumps thinking about it from somebody who perhaps has just been... and I'm not saying anything about the way you have your workers work, but like, oftentimes we feel like we're just doing the tasks, but now I have a mission. I've been given the wand or the command stick for a while. So yeah, I'll do that.

Aaron:
That's awesome. That's great insight. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Pat:
Yeah, you're welcome. And I think that'll help support a lot of these other things that we have been talking about. As we wrap up here, what else seems to be still on your mind?

Aaron:
Yeah, I think the number one thing I'd love to know is, for you, where do you see happening... shat are the big opportunities in 2021? Not just for you or for you for me, but what are the problems people are starting to have that we need to think differently about? Because it's not just about getting online because people have so much Zoom fatigue or fatigue of being online right now. It's like, do you see... I'd love to know where you see... whether from what I've shared, some opportunities for me that I'm not seeing or you see some opportunities in the world or in our country where I can be focusing or even other people listening should be focusing?

Pat:
Yeah. For me, the big word is community. We're starving right now because we can't go out and be in these places where we would normally see our friends and people and other... We can't go to conferences anymore and yes, everything is online still, but it just doesn't feel the same. So the big question would be how do we get people to connect with one another so that they feel like they still belong to something? Because I think a lot of us feel like we're lost, even though we are connected to people online. It's just like, we don't have that anymore. So how might we create, whether it's a membership community or some spot online or some sort of thing maybe even outside of business specific stuff, but just for people-to -eople connection that'll help us feel good again? And it doesn't seem like, at least in the U.S. and Europe and other places, it doesn't seem like we're going to get out of this for a while now.

And if people haven't hit fatigue already from this, they're going to. So that's really interesting. There's been this movement of nostalgia as well that I think is really interesting as well, a lot of collectibles. So I don't know if that necessarily relates to what we're doing in business, but I think, again, it just is a sign that people are looking for comfort. And so, how can we make people feel comfortable? And this definitely speaks to, okay, if we're going to be marketing stuff and asking people to pay for money for things, how do we get them comfortable doing that when a lot of us are in this space of unknown right now? And I think that's the big puzzle pieces. How do we get people to feel comfortable with this despite not knowing where necessarily things are going? And that can happen, especially when you have trust and you build a relationship, of course, and there's proof that's sort of just riffing off the top of my head on things that are happening now.

Aaron:
That's awesome. That's it. That's great because I have a live event coming up. Last year it was in person and eight days before we moved it to virtual because of COVID and this year we're going to do it virtual. I'm going to do a two-day live event and I've done webinars for a few years. So I've got a couple ideas in my head, but I'd love to know what you think are the one or two things that I should be doing to create that feeling of community, belonging, and connection when we're doing a virtual event.

Pat:
Yeah. I think if there was a possibility for people to get to see and know each other beforehand, that would be great, a pre event thing. That's one of the things that makes live events great is the night before. Everybody's in the hallways, registering, and they get to know each other. Sometimes when we just go on a live call, it's like confrontation mode already. Right? So how do we ramp up to the point where now it's an event? And I think also having some hallway time in some way, shape or form, again, it's the hallways in between the talks where people get to know each other to decompress and stuff, would be interesting. And I think that also there's room for anybody to be creative with some of this stuff.

I've seen a lot of other events get really creative with how they manage the chat and how they interact and try to have some sense of community and togetherness and interaction and engagement even though we're so far removed now. So it is a challenge, for sure. It's not what we want, but the cards we're dealt with right now and I think that's a very smart question to ask. And I think the other thing you can do is just perhaps see, and maybe follow some tweets about events that are happening online as they're happening to see what people are talking about, about what they like, what they don't like, and perhaps read some reviews of other events that have happened to get some insight and inspiration for what you could do too.

Aaron:
Awesome. Thanks. Are you guys doing something like that this year?

Pat:
FlynnCon was delayed last year because of COVID. It's likely going to be a case where I'm not even able to do it anymore this year, either. So I'm at least at this part in time very much struggling for what do we do? Do we do this virtual? Even though the way FlynnCon was built and what it was for couldn't happen in a virtual manner. It's why we have an hour presentation and then a three-hour break before the next presentations, because of that interaction and getting direct access to ConvertKit, getting direct access toTteachable. That can't happen. It's a different event. So I might put something on, but it's a struggle. So I don't have it all figured out either.

Aaron:
Yeah. Because I've attended a few different ones and I see some things I like and I just figured, I know you've put on that event, it's an amazing event so to have your insights is really valuable. So thank you very much.

Pat:
Yeah, you're welcome. And I'm sure I'm going to publicly share more stuff along the way on the podcast and whatnot. But anyway, Aaron, this has been really great. Thank you for being vulnerable, for being open and sharing. I think that we can all tell that your heart's in the right place with exactly what you want to achieve. You're already doing a lot of things right. And hopefully this conversation has helped inspire you to take it to the next space in this environment. Take yourself out of it, but put more into it as well at the same time. So I like that approach. One more time, Aaron, where can people go and check you out?

Aaron:
Yeah. The best place to find me is AaronLebauer.com or even over on Instagram @AaronLeBauer. So it's A-A-R-O-N, I got two A's and it's L-E-B as in boy, A-U-E-R.com.

Pat:
Cool. Thanks, Aaron. We appreciate you. Well done and we'll chat soon.

Aaron:
And thanks, Pat. Appreciate it. Keep rocking.

Pat:
All right, I hope you enjoyed that coaching call with Aaron LeBauer. You can again find him at just his name, AaronLebauer.com. And if you know anybody who happens to be a physical therapist, who might want to learn more from Aaron, just check him out there at his dot-com. And Aaron, thank you again for coming in today. We talked about a lot of different things, which is great. And hopefully you, the listener have pulled away at least one or two things that can help you in your business too. And I'm looking forward to seeing how this affects you. And I'm looking forward, I don't know why I said it that way, I'm looking forward to potentially not just interviewing you, but coaching you as well.

If you would like to get coached here on AskPat just like Aaron did today, all you have to do is go to AskPat.com, fill out the application and you'll have a chance. I cannot pick everybody, but the truth is you'll not have any chance if you don't apply. So apply there, send us a little voice message about what you're going through and what we can help you with. I might reach back out to you sometime soon, or maybe sometimes later. But it's not going to happen unless you do it.

So AskPat.com is where you want to go. You can also check out some of the other episodes there too. And if you're not yet subscribed to the show, what are you doing? We got so much great stuff coming your way including even more of the fan favorites, which are the Where Are They Now? episodes. We're 1000 and some odd episodes through, and we bring people back all the time to go, what have you implemented? What have you done? What's changed? What is working for you now? What didn't work from the advice I gave you? Right? Isn't that interesting? Because now you can fast forward your success by learning from others who are in it, just like you. So make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already. I look forward to serving you next week and keep working, not just hard but smart. I'll see you soon. Cheers, take care, and as always, Team Flynn for the win. Peace.