061: What to Sell Online + How to Truly Serve First with Bobby Klinck

Kate Kordsmeier 0:00

Welcome, welcome. Welcome. We are back with the Success with Soul podcast. I'm your host, Kate Kordsmeier. And today we have got Bobby Klinck in the house. We are over 50 episodes into the Success with Soul podcast. And Bobby is only the fourth man to come on the show. So it's an extra special episode. And it's a little bit longer than usual. But as Bobby said, You can't be too long, you can only be too boring. And I promise you this episode will do anything but bore you. Now, this is a little bit ironic, because when I first met Bobby, he is a Harvard Law grad turned online entrepreneur, but he's not your typical lawyer. He's a cool lawyer. He doesn't do suits. He hates legalese, more than you do. He has a tendency to make lame pop culture references and dad jokes. But he's still a lawyer. And a lot of times when I end up talking to Bobby, we're talking about the legal stuff, right? We're talking about disclaimers and privacy policies and all the agreements and kind of the boring legalese stuff, right. Well, today, even though I went in with some legal questions, I wanted to ask Bobby, we actually didn't cover a single legal term or idea in this episode. Instead, we are talking about how to truly serve first, and why you should give away most of your stuff for free. We're talking about what's happening and the online course and marketing industry and how to future proof your business. It is fascinating. Bobby's got some out there ideas, I got to tell you that I don't think anybody else has come on the show yet and recommended some of the tactics that he recommends. But they're pretty brilliant. And I think you're going to love them. At the very least it's going to give you a lot to think about and I can't wait to hear what comes up for you. DM me on Instagram at Kate Kordsmeier and let me know what you thought of this episode. Let me know if you're going to change your business model and start giving away more stuff. I know I'm thinking about it. Alright, without further ado, let's go. You're listening to the Success with Soul podcast with Kate Kordsmeier ex journalists turn CEO of a multi six figure blog in online business. But it wasn't that long ago that Kate was a struggling entrepreneur who lacked confidence, clarity, and let's be honest, the money. But all those failures, experiments and lessons learned helped Kay create a thriving business that impacts 1000s and brings freedom, flexibility and fulfillment to her life. If you're ready to do the same and make something happen with holistic, soulful, step by step strategies from Kate and other experts, you're in the right place. here's your host, writer, educator, Mom, recovering perfectionist, bookworm and sushi connoisseur, Kate Kordsmeier. Bobby, welcome to the show.

Bobby Klinck 3:00

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have an interesting chat. And you know, we're gonna bore your listeners by talking about all the legal stuff the whole time, right? That's the

Kate Kordsmeier 3:09

that's the plan. Of course, my number one goal in life is like, let me see how boring I can make every episode.

Bobby Klinck 3:16

I you know, it's not always the best way to go. But you know, sometimes sometimes I feel like maybe we ought to try to bore people just to weed out the people who don't really like us. But I don't do that. And we won't do that. I promise. We won't do that.

Kate Kordsmeier 3:28

We won't do that. Okay. So this is exciting to for many reasons, but one of which is that you're only the fourth man to ever come on the show. So there's a very exclusive club of male Success with Soul guests. And you are now a proud member.

Bobby Klinck 3:45

I love it. Well, it's funny. In my group coaching program, I have I think there are 41 members somewhere around there. And I think there are three men maybe for three or four men in the control room. So I I always hang out with women, and I'm always around women in the entrepreneurial circles. So you know, I will just say I'm in good company,

Kate Kordsmeier 4:06

which is really interesting, because depending on which kind of circle you hang out and an online marketing, it's either all men or now it sounds like in your case, primarily women. So how did you get to be in the circle that's mostly women and not with the kind of the bro marketers as they're now called?

Bobby Klinck 4:25

Well, first of all, we're going to talk about bro marketers. I'm also on a quest in that term as hell. And I'll tell you why later. But basically, I mean, what it comes down to is that there tends to be two sides to the entrepreneurial or online entrepreneurial world. They're the people who are driven almost exclusively by money, and they tend to be what what you call the bro marketers, it tends to skew more men. And then there tend to be the entrepreneurial circles where people have some kind of passion for what they're doing. And yes, we, I want to be clear, I want to make money, I'm sure you want to make money, you know, we're in business to make money. But it's not just let's figure out, you know, the quickest way to get someone to part with their dollars. And so I think that's a big part of it. It's kind of the path I chose in entrepreneurship. But also, I mean, it's weird. And I don't understand this, when I was literally starting my podcast back in 2017, I used a I used a group to help me with it to kind of coach me through it to create the intro to do all that stuff. And the company was run by a guy, but I was working with a woman coach, and she said way back then, and this is when I was just the legal, just legal stuff for entrepreneurs, at that point, hadn't even sold anything online. And she said that she could see me leading a mastermind for women, which I it struck me as odd at the time. But there's something about me, I guess that I just, you know, I don't know if it's an energy thing. I don't know what it is like. at church, my teams have pretty much always been all women, my house, I have a wife, a daughter, we now only have one dog. But when we had two dogs, both of them, female dogs, my team, all women. My number two says she thinks it's because I have a big brother kind of energy. And so it it? I don't know, that's her theory. I don't know why. Yeah, interesting. It's all you know, it's all speculation. But we could you know, we could guess and we'll never really know,

Kate Kordsmeier 6:28

well, I could see that you have this kind of nurturing tendency about you. And I know, you really, I'm on your email list, and I see how you talk about serving first and giving people value before you're trying to sell them. And I think, you know, to be completely sexist, and overgeneralize women tend to be more nurturing. So maybe there's something in that energy and not putting money first, even though it's like, yes, of course, we do all want to make money. We're in business for a reason. We've got to pay our bills, support our families, etc. But what a novel concept to actually enjoy what you do.

Bobby Klinck 7:08

I know, it's crazy, right? It's, it's crazy. And people hear me say this. And I think some people say, but I say, I truly feel like I'm getting up and playing with friends all day. Yeah. And that's one of the things I you know, when people ask me the secret to success, I don't think there are a lot of secrets. But I'm like, that's it. I'm passionate about who I serve, what I do and all that. So it makes all of this stuff way easier when you really love what you're doing. And makes it easier to want to serve the people because, you know, I care about them as people not just as wallets.

Kate Kordsmeier 7:37

Right. Totally. So, yeah, I think that's so important. And it reminds me, one of my mentors, right now Mariah cause she talks about how she treats her business, just like it's a game. Like every day, we're just getting up to play and see what's on the next level. And it's not this like taking yourself so seriously, everything is so life or death, everything. You know, there's so much like fear and limiting beliefs and all these things where we can really act like oh my gosh, if this doesn't work, it's the end of the world. And you just kind of treat it as like, let's just have fun. Let's just play. Let's just see what's on the next level. Yeah, it becomes so much more enjoyable.

Bobby Klinck 8:17

Yeah, well, and again, so the difficulty that I'm sure you face and you recognize is it's and this is where I always want to be careful with that kind of advice. Because I say that too. We have to detach from results and things like that. But that's easy enough for you and me to say right, like, once you've broken through trail, it's like, you know, and I get it, like I get my people who are struggling. And you know, they're struggling to make ends meet. And I get that it feels harder. But what I tell people, so this is gonna be hard. We've joked internally that we're trying to find a place, you know, the easy button that you can get from whatever staples, we want to find a place that will make them that says hard. So that I can literally tell people, this is gonna be hard, if you're not willing to press the hard button, go get a job, because building businesses is going to be hard. And so what I like to tell people is, don't make it worse by making it something you really don't like doing on top of just being hard because it's hard work. And I you know, it's one of those things that that I just think we so many people are making it hard on themselves. And I hear people talk about this, like they're trying to build a business to retire by the time they're 45 or something I say. And that makes me sad. Yeah, makes me really, really sad. Now, I don't want to bust my butt and have to hustle my whole life. But I don't want to retire either because I actually enjoy what I'm doing. And you know, I want to other entrepreneurs who say, Well, what am I find that thing that I enjoy doing? And so I don't they don't have that same mindset.

Kate Kordsmeier 9:48

Yeah, I've done a lot of, you know, mindfulness groups and entrepreneurship. We have this place in Atlanta, that's for female. It's really not just for entrepreneurs, but anyway, it's kind of like a co working space. But they do these personal development classes. And I feel like an almost everyone, they would ask everybody like, if you didn't have to work for money, what would you do? And I'm always like, I think I would just do what I'm doing. I just really like, I just really like this. And it's not that it's so easy. There are parts of it that we can let be easy, and we don't have to make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be, which I know, especially as an over analyzer and overthinker, I can tend to overcomplicate myself into something where it's just like, Oh, my God, just take a step back and choose the simple, easy answer. But I was talking to a friend the other day, and she was she just left her corporate career, like a couple weeks ago. And she was saying that, you know, it's really hard. It's not about like, the, there's just more more of this pressure. And I said, Well, yeah, but just so you know, like, that's never gonna go away, it is harder to be an entrepreneur, because everything that you do or don't do actually matters. And in a regular job, I mean, unless you're a complete shit employee, and they want to fire you, like your effort does not correlate to the result or your income or impact. And to some people, that's, that's way that's terrifying, right? They're like, I don't want that kind of pressure, like, I need the stability, I just want to know that every day is kind of the same. And, to me, I'm like, that feels like being in prison. And I would rather know that, like, how I show up matters.

Bobby Klinck 11:31

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it is funny, and I've thought about this for a long time, I think there's an illusion. And it depends on what level of a corporate job, but I think there's an illusion that people have, that they're safe, and that they don't have to worry about these things. And I think it likes it, I think it's an illusion, I think ultimately, people, especially now more and more than average becoming employed thing that even people who have corporate jobs, they kind of have to be responsible for their results in some level, or they have problems. And I saw this in, you know, as a recovering lawyer in the law firm world, where there were these people who are big law firms, and it was traditionally Hey, you're at a big law firm, you go there, you know, you spend seven years as an associate, you make partner, you're safe, you're gonna make a good living, you're gonna make a half million dollars or more, after, you know, whatever it is after, let's say, you know, 15 years as a lawyer, and so people were accustomed to that. And then things started changing. Like, during the 2007 2008 2009, all these lawyers from like, you know, high pedigrees were getting laid off. And were like, Well, what do I do, and it's continued to happen. And that's why, like, I've seen, I think that a lot of people thought that had that thought that you were talking about that most corporate people do. But ultimately, if you don't bring value of some sort, you are commodity expendable. And, you know, we entrepreneurs have just embraced it and said, we're gonna admit that we're gonna, you know, we're gonna admit that we're going to face that, and we're going to deal with it. But going back to your thing about, you know, what would you do if you had all the money in the world? I mean, I think one of the things that's interesting is, I think you should have that answer. Well, I would do the same thing I'm doing now. Maybe I'd have more help. So I could get rid of the parts I really don't want to do. Right. Um,

Kate Kordsmeier 13:20

yeah, it might look slightly different. But generally, like, the overall theme is always like, no, it's this like, this is, this is what lights me up. And, But to your point about being, you know, more expendable than we may be realized, when we're in a corporate setting. I think the same thing I've heard so many people say like, well, I just need this stability, I need the guarantee. And I'm like, that's an illusion, there is no guarantee you could get laid off tomorrow for no fault of your own. And now you've got all your eggs in one basket. Whereas, and then, like, I think most successful entrepreneurs have multiple revenue streams. So something goes south, okay. It's not a complete problem, because we have these other things that we can float by until we figure out the next the next thing, right. And so,

Bobby Klinck 14:09

yeah, I mean, I think I think that's absolutely right. And again, the big problem I've seen. Now, I'm not there yet, I'm not at a point in my life where this you know, where I'm at this age range. But I know a lot of entrepreneurs who became entrepreneurs because they were forced to because they got laid off later in life. And in spite of the fact that there is a you know, there are laws against age discrimination and employment, the reality is, it happens, the reality is if you find yourself as you know, a 55 year old, you know, laid off person, trying to get yourself another, like corporate job is going to be tough, and you know, it's not fair, but it's true. And that, you know, that's one of those things people need to be think about it and, separately as we're recording this, I was reading an article recently in the Washington post about how Washington DC is going to look completely different after the pandemic, because something like 30% of the workers have already said they're going to continue to work from home or work remotely. Because DC were, you know, is such a knowledge based economy, we are almost all knowledge workers, and then the professionals are at least and so it's going to have these broad ripple effects for all of the other industries that serve those people. And, you know, there's already been a lot of layoffs and in, you know, what, I don't know if they would be considered white collar jobs, but people who were like, assistance, and you know, kind of working in support roles and these things, and I don't know what's going to happen, but it's not going to be pretty and and people need to expect that and be ready for

Kate Kordsmeier 15:45

Yeah, so interesting. Okay, I feel like we jumped right into the deep end, and I'm like, let's back it up, rewind for a second. Tell everybody who you even are, how did we come to be here today, tell us about i know, i in the intro, I told everybody about your Harvard educated lawyer, but you give us the scoop of how you went from I said the scoop, I was gonna say scoop and I was gonna say schpeel. So the scoop. Boy or two now online entrepreneur, badass online marketer.

Bobby Klinck 16:18

So it's kind of it's a weird long story, because so I grew up in Deep South Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, five miles from the Mexican border. My dad ran a chain of drugstore. So like a Think of it as kind of CDs or wherever you are that kind of thing, but nicer. And so it had a nice electronic section, it had a nice fragrance and cosmetics section. So something kind of between what we think of as a drugstore now or pharmacy now and like a department store kind of thing. So he ran a chain of these and it was funny, he wanted me to be to go into business. And at the time, I was like, I don't want to, I have no interest. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. Now at the time, I had the wrong view about what a lawyer was, ironically. But so I go, I go to law school, and I get out and I had, you know, I had jobs and I had a career for the first I guess, like eight years I was a lawyer that that most lawyers would drill about. So I graduated in 2002. I first clerked, which meant I got this prestigious job working for a Federal Court of Appeals judge who many people consider one of kind of the the, the best liberal judges never to make the supreme court he was considered twice by Clinton, but not elevated. So I do that, then I go work at prestigious firms here in DC. And at the second one of those firms. I was mentored by this guy that at the time I just called Neil. Now I have to call him Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. So like I was, you know, by a liberal liar and a conservative like I've had, you know, all of those experiences, and this is what I was doing. But I never liked it.

Kate Kordsmeier 17:55

It's just then why not? What did you not like about it?

Bobby Klinck 17:58

Well, because, I mean, there's a lot of things what I don't like suits, I just don't fundamentally like it. And it's not even about anything about it. But I'm, I'm the guy who wears t shirts, shorts and flip flops. That's just who I am. I played in a punk rock band in college. Yeah, oh, yeah. I did. Yeah, no, I did. I was the bass player in a punk rock band was my brother who like my brother has kind of continued on he still like, plays, you know, he's the pandemic has caused some problems for him. But I mean, they he and his band now tour in Europe. And so I mean, I had all that in my background. And that's why I was but then I'm like, literally working at these firms like, you know, representing, you know, at&t and big, huge companies and fights against other big huge companies, you know, where it's like, Okay, well, we're fighting about stockholder value. And again, not that there's anything wrong with that. But it gets kind of hard to get excited about doing that. So after doing that, for a while, I became a federal prosecutor in Fort Worth, Texas, which was a lot of fun. And I got to stand up in court nearly every day, but at least every week, I would stand up because I would have to go to court for something and get to say, I'm Robert clink. I'm here on behalf the United States of America now. Maybe it sounds cliche, but that's a kind of a cool thing to say. To set is pretty. Yeah, so I did this for three years had a lot of fun. But, you know, I knew that wasn't my long term career. So I joined an entrepreneurial firm here in Washington DC made the classic entrepreneurs mistake we didn't have an agreement in place about what was going to happen long term How would I become a partner and and the reason why that was a bigger issue was that it was a firm with like two people other than me too large other than me. And we did contingency fee work mainly. So we had some other stuff but money came in chunks. So I would go six months without getting a paycheck. And then you know, payment come in, I'll get paid now. I was treated completely fairly in the four years I was there. But the problem is I had all the downside risk. I didn't get paid when the firm didn't but I had None of the guaranteed upside. Like if we hit any of these big cases we had going, I wasn't guaranteed anything other than, you know, my salary basically, that was in this letter. And so when my wife got pregnant, I talked to her about it, or I talked to them, I said, hey, we've got to formalize this. And over the next. I don't know, it was probably the next like, 10 months, we kind of talked about it off and on, it came to a head, when my daughter was three months old, we got on a conference call. And at the end of the conference call, I knew I mean, it wasn't that they were firing me. But I was like, I'm out. I'm not, I'm not sticking around. And this is what happens if you don't get these things agreed to in advance. Because if you think about it, it is kind of a zero sum game. So someone saying why I shouldn't get as much is basically saying you don't contribute much to the firm, like things like that were said, and, you know, all of these issues. And so that was in 2014. And like a sad part about that the guy who was saying the things that really drove me nuts, he had flown through Hurricane Sandy to get to my wedding in the Bahamas on a 10 person plane. I have not talked to him since the last day of February 2014. You know, that's what happens when you make these mistakes. So you can kind of see why I'm passionate about helping entrepreneurs avoid those kinds of things. But so I started my own law firm. And one client came with me and we settled that case pretty quickly. So I'm sitting here as a lawyer kind of twiddling my thumbs, didn't didn't have much to do had a lot of time, no work. So I started learning stuff about the online world, like literally, I learned a little bit of HTML coding, so I could move like things on my website. Not a good use of time. But I did.

Kate Kordsmeier 21:39

That's how it all started. Let me twiddle around with like, the meaningless details of my website, because that's what's going to make a difference. Right?

Bobby Klinck 21:46

Well, but again, so the fundamental The funny thing is I was resisting doing the stuff that as a lawyer, you should do because candidly, I didn't like hanging out with a lawyer. So I didn't want to go schmooze other lawyers, which is what most entrepreneurs or lawyers do. Once I start reading books about marketing for lawyers, I decided those were dumb, throw them out. And then I started just reading other stuff. And I came into this whole notion of inbound marketing and online marketing. And this was like in sort of 2015 I think, I got certified as an inbound marketer by HubSpot again, too much time on my hands as a lawyer. But so I did that. wrote a book, I am an Amazon bestseller with a button no one should ever read called patent litigation primer and a little thing to everybody who's listening, you can become an Amazon best seller by selling 25 copies of a book during release week, if you find the right niche, which is what I did.

Kate Kordsmeier 22:40

And apparently, the news needs to be very narrow, because I don't even know what you just said mean.

Bobby Klinck 22:44

Yeah, we've literally I mean, it's it's one of those things. It was like there is a need for like people writing about patents or something. And I was like, Okay, cool. But so I did that. And it's funny, I still, I still get people still buy that book for some reason. And so I get like, $1 or dollar 50 every month from Amazon, which I laugh about. So I did that. But then I was working with a life coach who who said, Do you like what you do for a living? And I stammered, for the first time, I told anyone besides my wife that I didn't. And at this point, I started seeing clients, I was starting to do it. But I really didn't like it because I spent all my days fighting with people and often fighting about dumb stuff. And so that put me on this quest to come in the online world. I started getting on podcast talking about legal stuff. The early podcast I was, the headshot I gave was still me in a suit, which is kind of funny now. But so that was 2017, which was my horrible year, I put about $50,000 into my business made one sale. And she asked for a refund on day 29 have a 30 day refund policy, never having looked at the course. So that's why it wasn't the end of 2017 about to say this is dumb. I'm not doing this online marketing thing anymore. But I I gave myself one last chance. And the pivotal moment I always say is that December 31 2017. I was in church, it was a Sunday. And the pastor was talking about giving and how giving changes you as a person not about any other benefits. And so I decided to make giving my word of the year for 2018. And that little shift and really I did just start giving, giving stuff away giving freely of information, kind of asking how can I give more not Am I giving too much and it started slowly but it started and I think April was my first sale of that year, April 2018. By the end of the year, I had made a quarter of a million dollars in my business all by myself. I had no one else. I didn't even get a VA Don't be like Bobby, VA. But so that was kind of what I was doing. I was I was doing illegal stuff and just helping people legal stuff and then into that 19, people started to ask me how it was that I seem to be able to connect with people online in a way, that was very different. And they thought very unique. And so I in 2019, launched a membership, which we're now we're now shuttering at the end of March of this year. But we launched it was all about finding your fans. And it really was about how to connect and how to do it differently. And kind of since then, I've been a, I still do legal stuff. But I'm also a business coach helping people with this stuff. And then I've also got known for my email. So I'm kind of also the email guy for in some communities. So that is the What was that about a 20 minute version of the story? No, I

Kate Kordsmeier 25:41

love it. I love it. And we have a couple things in common. I mean, one is I lived in Dallas, and I lived in DC. So we have some just geography in common there. But I love this story of I mean, I know it's heartbreaking at the time. But I love the story of your kind of failed launch. Because, of course, like every entrepreneur, I too, had a failed launch, I lost over $12,000 at the end of the launch, even though I made like 50,000 in revenue, by the end of it. I had lost $12,000. And, gosh, I mean, there's nothing like, well, you went to law school. So you're probably a little bit used to having like student loan debt. I don't know if that's an assumption to make. But I had never had a penny of debt in my entire life, which is a huge privilege. But then I was $12,000 in debt. And I was like, What am I doing? I just need to throw in the towel like, this is too hard. I can't do it. So I know you shared the the giving story. But I'd love to hear just like what was your mindset at the time that made you keep going and keep showing up? when things got so hard.

Bobby Klinck 26:52

I mean, candidly, it was and it's weird at the time, it was as much about running away from anything as anything else, which was I really didn't like being a lawyer. And that was the big thing was I was I had a very strong why. And there were there were multiple pieces I didn't like about being a lawyer, including that it wasn't suited for me. But also it meant that my life I was subject my my schedule wasn't mine. It was controlled by the judge, it was controlled by opposing counsel. And so I would have things happen. I mean, I can remember, I don't even remember the case. Remember it was but we're literally I got an order, let's say it would have been like I got an order this morning that said, I have to be in court clear across the country the next afternoon. So let me just think about like, that's kind of the level of disruption that I had to like, you know, I would have to be ready and able to do those things. And it really drove me nuts. So that was a big part of it. But I mean, what I said in 2018, is I said I was giving myself one last chance. And I made a couple of investments that year early. One of them was a I mean, it was a complete disaster. And it was the bigger investment it was in a program to develop a high ticket program, which is funny because as a lawyer, my stuff was naturally high ticket, the hard part was making it low ticket. But it was also like based upon they wanted me to like literally like pressure people into like going out and getting multiple credit cards that they had to buy my thing, even if they didn't have a business yet, so they didn't really need to spend six or $7,000 on legal stuff. But that's what they were encouraging me to do. And so that one didn't work. But it was also the year I joined the school and I joined through Amy Porterfield as an affiliate. And that really was kind of the watershed moment because it was the first time that I was very conscious of saying, I'm going to I'm going to just be here. So I got to be in a Facebook group with the other people who had signed up through her with about 1000 of my ideal customers. And and I didn't go in there with the will let me do market research and ask questions knew the stupid stuff people do where we post the questions, but I was just there. I was among my people and I gave to them. And so they I mean, Amy and her team noticed. So she like reached out to me like literally at this point at a point where I'd made I think maybe I made $1,000 in sales. But I don't know if I'd made that she reached out and asked me to be a guest teacher in a program she was developing. And I was like, Okay, I literally ran downstairs told my wife excitedly. She's like, Who did?

Kate Kordsmeier 29:24

You don't understand?

Bobby Klinck 29:25

Yeah, she's like what, say Who? I was like, Oh, so I come back upstairs. And I'm typing this response. Like, I'm like, be cool. Bobby be cool. And so I'm doing that and like, I respond, but my response was, hey, happy to but I'm gonna be launching my own thing and I'm in the middle of this GDPR training I'm doing but we can definitely find a time something like that. And so I set it off. And then like, I immediately get back right away almost an email back from her. She's a wait, hold up. She's like, cool, wait, hold up. GDPR training, how much you charging for that. As I'm not charging. I'm giving it away for free. Which confused her even more. Because like, you know,

Kate Kordsmeier 30:04

what an interesting business model,

Bobby Klinck 30:06

because every lawyer at the time was trying to listen to, you know, haven't dealt with GDPR. If you weren't in the online space in 2018, there was craziness and every lawyer what I mean, lawyers were trying to charge people, you know, hundreds of dollars for a checklist, not even for anything you do, but just a checklist. This is insane. And the training came about because I attended trainings, and I couldn't understand what they were saying, as a lawyer. I was like, well, this, I guess I'm gonna have to do it myself. So I created it. But then that was the reason she then invited me to come under a podcast. And at the time, I had a list of maybe 800 people. Overnight, my list like exploded to 4000 or 5000 people. And that happened the day before my first successful launch started.

Kate Kordsmeier 30:48

Oh, that was convenient.

Bobby Klinck 30:50

Yeah. And it was like, pure serendipity I had when it was coming out. But I just did it. And so I went, I made I think, 1000 or $2,000, in April 2018. In May, I made $70,000. And it was like, holy, and it was all because I had given. And it was like, because again, Amy knows me. But most of people who bought from me. In that first launch, were people who were in that group with me who had seen it, or they heard me on Amy's podcast got on my list. And I decided like I was originally just doing one webinar on May 1, I decided, well, this is working, maybe I'll do another one on the eight. So I did another one on May 8, and a bunch of people joined it. Ironically, my integrator, the woman on my team, now, she bought my stuff there on that set after that second webinar. That's how she came into my world back in 2018. She was building her own business before deciding she didn't really want to anymore. And so, I mean, it was all just because I was doing things that most people online, were looking at me and say, What are you doing that to charge for that? Don't give that away? I'm gonna give it away. And I, you know, people quit telling you that now, which is nice, because a lot of people I know are trying to not charge, you know, multiple 1000s of dollars for courses, and people are saying, Oh, no, you got to charge more, you got to serve more like, just be like me keep doing it. And then people quit telling you because they figure out the telling you is not going to do any good.

Kate Kordsmeier 32:14

Yeah. Okay. But this is so interesting to me. Because I have seen a few entrepreneurs where I've thought, I think they got into a bad habit of maybe giving too much away for free, then when they tried to sell something people are like, What do you mean, I have to pay for this now, you should just give it to me. But clearly, that has not been your experience? Well, so

Bobby Klinck 32:34

here's my view, my view is that there's a couple of things going on there. Number one, some people give not forgiving sake, there they give because they're afraid to ask for money, or they give as a tactic. And that can't be what you're doing. So that's part of it is kind of like the way you do it. But also, I mean, there needs to be clear lines. And in my mind, and I'm really weird on this, like, you know, I'm, I'm way crazy on this. Just I believe it's time for us to stop saying we sell information. Because if we sell information, guess what? We compete with Google with Facebook with everybody else. And I'm maybe I'm nuts. But I think five years from now, Google or Facebook or someone like that is going to be offering online courses, online trainings at 50 bucks, that will replace almost all the online trainings that are out there. And so I honestly believe that if what you're saying is I sell information. You are already antiquated, you were like blockbuster in the in the 2000 timeframe when they could have bought Netflix but chose not to. So I've chosen I don't charge for information. I give my information away for free. I charge for implementation, I might legal stuff, it's my legal templates that I charge for I give the training away. We have created this thing called a badass online marketing University, which is a you know, right now it's one course called online marketing foundations. But we are adding more, I'm redoing my legal training, putting it in there. It's online legal foundations, I'm creating a course on messaging on copy on list building an email course, a course about sales pages, of course about beta launching a course about creating your product, of course about storytelling, a course about content marketing, and we'll go on and on. And it's 100% free. We're creating it. And these are not like we're not just putting courses in there that it's like, oh, look, we're just gonna put this on a, you know, do something really quick. Now, these are courses that could be signature courses that other people charge $1,000 $2,000 for my view is I'm giving that away for free. And what I charge people for is my coaching, and I've got VIP days and group coaching. And that's my belief. I think, if you're asking me and I could be crazy like that. I can be 100% nuts here. But I think that everybody's gonna have to make that shift five years from now. I'd rather To be ahead of the curve than behind the curve on this one. So that's the choice I've made. But I think like I saw a question in a group recently about someone was like, serves surfers, and said that, you know, surfers aren't used to paying for courses, they go to YouTube. So how do I charge people? And again, my response, what I wanted to say is, well, if they can, like if literally, they can find all the information on YouTube, that's a problem for you, because a lot of people say, well, but we organize. Okay, organizing information is not high value work. It's just not there. There's what we could call an arbitrage opportunity right now, which is right now, people are willing to pay for. And so I'm not saying everyone has to be like me and give stuff away right now, I'm not saying that. But I think you need to have a plan for when I don't know if AI or whatever can organize this stuff, and people will no longer pay for organized information. Mm hmm. Interesting.

Kate Kordsmeier 36:04

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We've definitely got my wheels turning. I do agree with you in that. I think that selling just information is probably short sighted. Yeah. And I hadn't even thought about the fact that Yeah, of course, because eventually the Google's are going to get in on this. And then what who can compete with Google?

Bobby Klinck 37:38

Now there's, there's already masterclass, calm, and they don't teach a lot of stuff we teach. But I'm saying it's gonna come. I mean, we've already got you to me, but Udemy is different. Because it's

Kate Kordsmeier 37:48

Skillshare. I don't know. Yeah, there's some of those. But I agree that so what the difference though is I'm thinking Well, okay, yeah, there's using the surfing example. You can get free youtube videos, free blog posts, free what out, you know, podcast episodes, whatever the platform is, and you could learn how to do these things. But it's not enough people still aren't getting the result that they want, just because they have the information. So then that's where we come in. And it's like, so we're not selling the information. We're selling the coaching or selling the community, we're selling more of this support? Because that's what what the missing pieces to information? Is that how you go?

Bobby Klinck 38:28

Yeah, so I think I think we need to say we don't sell information, we sell implementation. Okay, we help people with that. It's exactly that. And again, like, what I like to say is, if you think about it, like when you go to college, you're not paying for the information, you're paying for the teacher presenting it and helping you learn it in a particular way, because I can go buy a book and get the information, right. And then so it's not saying that the information doesn't come with it, it's simply saying, that's not what you sell, you sell something else. And again, so like, this is why I you know, if you have an a program that has the information, but then you know, you're offering in depth, you know, kind of in depth support community coaching, all of that great, but like I shifted someone who she was gonna say, Well, I'm, you know, I'm gonna, I've got a course and I'm gonna do a VIP level with coaching. I said, Well, who are you serving? She talked about, she was serving more advanced people. I said, No, you have a coaching program. And you're giving him the course as a bonus. And she made that shift. And she said, she got a ton of results because of it. I just think that at some point, and again, I don't know when it's going to happen. But I think at some point, the notion of charging 1000 $2,000 for courses that are largely about the information is going to pass. And again, I could be wrong. I could be 100% wrong on this. But I mean, I don't know what your mindset was, but when I entered the space, the idea Paying $1,000 for a course seemed weird to me. I was like, Can I just buy a book? I mean, couldn't I just learn this and again, so I think at some point, the pendulum is gonna swing back. And people start to expect that again, especially when the Googles. And again, I don't know if it's Google or Facebook, it may be a company we've never heard of, but some bigger company with scale will come in and start doing it. And then, you know, what are we going to do it? And that's why I said, I think of us as like, I think in terms of pop culture. So I think I love the office. And there was the famous episode or not a famous episode, but there was an episode towards the end, when James Spader was on it. And he came in, he's like rallying the troops about how they were going to compete with the big office superstores. And they said, he said, the era of personal services back, I don't think it ever left. But I think that's our advantage. That's what we can deliver that Google. That's what we can deliver, that Facebook can write. And that's what I think we need to be doing. And this is why you better love the people you serve. Because if you don't love the people you serve, guess what, you want something scalable, so you don't have to be there. And I'm just saying, Well, I don't think those types of opportunities are sustainable. And if you look outside in the broader world, it's not how people are building businesses. And so I just think we need to, to recognize that and start thinking about what's next.

Kate Kordsmeier 41:29

Yeah. So I have this quote here in my notes that you've said before, it's, I'll read the quote, and then let your spawn here, he said, too many people are focused on automating delegating, and templatized. Everything in their business, that approach won't fly, because people don't want to feel like they're just a number. If you'll focus on actually connecting with people and non scalable ways you'll thrive. So talk to us about this, because I do think that everybody's talking about now, like the the buzzword in online marketing, at least in my world is scale. Everything needs to be scalable, and automate and like you said, so how do we build a successful business and have it keep growing and keep our sanity? If it's not scalable? Well, so I mean, there's stuff that has to be scalable, right? I mean, my weekly email, obviously, is a weekly email that goes to everybody, right? My automated emails have to be automated, that just you know, there's no way to do that

Bobby Klinck 42:21

at scale. But the the problem, I think, is that people are using delegate, automate, and scale, and templatized, in a sense, as an excuse to put a barrier between them and their people. And that's where the problem comes up. Now, again, I'm not saying you can't build a business doing that, you can. But I also have this feeling that it's going to be way harder. Because if your people don't feel a deep connection to you, they're only going to be with you, as long as they feel like your course is the best or your product or whatever is is the best buy for the dollar. Otherwise, they're going to go find the cheaper option. And they're going to go that way. And there, if you know, if you use a model where you use open and closed cart, they're not going to wait. If there's someone else with a product that serves them. When you're connected with your people, you don't have to worry about that. They don't, I don't want to say they don't care about price. I mean, you can't, you can't be 50 times as expensive as a good alternative. But if you're more than alternative, they don't really care. So that's part of it. But another big part of it is like when you and this is the thing I want people to get is one brand advocate, one person who you have touched and goes and tells every single person they know about your business is worth, I mean, their weight in gold. And that's what you get when you're willing to do the unscalable. It's like doing the unscalable is like, and again, it's crazy people here, man, and maybe this is gonna cause a problem for me. But people DM me on Facebook, and I respond. And people like Wait, what? But I do. And I'd rather they DM me than my page or my I just DM me personally, that way, we're just having a chat. We don't have to deal with the other stuff and Facebook weirdness. And I can't do it all the time now because we get so many but I try. And especially early on. Every time someone replied to one of my weekly emails, guess what I responded to? And if and I kind of like scaled my response based upon how big their response means. They just said, Hey, great email, you know, I would send a short. Hey, thanks. You know, thanks. I always appreciate you know, hearing this because I like to hear that people are enjoying or sometimes I'd say Well, what do you enjoy? But sometimes people will write me like a five paragraph response. And guess what, those people are getting a big response from me too. Because I know that when that happens, people are blown away. And people then become lifelong. Long fans, and the lifelong fans, and again, this is the stuff that I was doing way back when that had people first asking me to be like to teach them what I was doing connection. But what I like to say is me, think about it from the terms of like, what would a shop owner, like the person who owned the general store in a, in a, you know, smaller community do they take the time to get to know their people, and to take care of them to care what to care about them to connect with them. And that's why people keep going to that place instead of going to, you know, the Costco, a couple of towns over or something like that, because they feel that connection with people. And I look at that, and I say, you know, most of us, let's just be honest, are not Apple, we're not gonna be apple. So why don't we think about how do genuine brick and mortar businesses operate? Build the goodwill, build the connections with people, and let's replicate that do that online? And so again, it's it's like things like when people post in your Facebook group, I mean, you know, find a way to respond to help them don't, you know, don't say, Oh, well, you know, they haven't paid. So I'm not gonna, you know, I don't care about them. And it's about little things like, you know, I hear these people talk about like, being mad about freebie seekers. I love freebie seekers. It means I got to help somebody. Yeah, they're not going to buy from me, guess what I'm going to give everybody who's listening to this. A bit of like, you know, tough love 80% of the people, or 90% of people in your community are never gonna buy from you. That's just, that's just the way it works. But they might tell someone else, right? I've had a lot of people who are brand advocates who've never bought from me, or they had sent me tons of people before they bought anything from me. And so I think that's the approach we need to take. Yeah.

Kate Kordsmeier 46:48

I mean, I wrote down like 10 follow up questions that you just shared. So I'm like, Oh, so good. Okay, I want to talk, let me just go through these here. So, replying to emails, this is one that I've been struggling with lately, because I used to send out some kind of like formatted newsletters, and they got good open rates, but like nobody was ever replying to them, they weren't building this connection. And at the start of the new year, 2021, I was like, every Tuesday, I'm going to send out like, just a really heartfelt email I'm going to show up as me. And that's going to repel a lot of people. And it's going to magnetize the right people. And I've just got to be okay with that. And sure enough, I went from getting like, maybe a couple replies to emails a month to getting, you know, a dozen or two every time I sent out one of these emails. Now, some of them were like, just nasty hate mail that came back fine by I don't need you. Some of them were really thoughtful, like responses, like you said, multiple paragraphs, people really wanting to share and connect. And of course, I want to respond to them. But I can't respond to everybody. And so how do you do you have somebody on your team respond really thoughtfully, do you? Like just make the time? Do you have to give up something else? Like, how do you deal with that?

Bobby Klinck 48:10

So I make the time, one of the things that I've been very clear about is we we are 100% transparent. If you get an email with my signature block, it is from me. It is not you know, if a team members responding to something, they will literally forward it to their email address, and then send a response from them. So we want to be very clear. So people know that because again, it's one of the things people think that people think, Oh, this didn't really bother me. And well, it really is.

Kate Kordsmeier 48:37

What we have just to clarify, like if I have a team member respond, they're not pretending to be me. They're saying, hey, it's tiny on Kate's team. And then but they're giving a very thoughtful response that,

Bobby Klinck 48:48

and I just want to be clear, because I know a lot of people don't do that. A lot of people literally just have their team responding as them on social and all this stuff. And like, that's why like, for one thing, I don't, I've chosen not to use, like, have a team member do engagement on Instagram for me. candidly, if I want people to know that when they're dealing with me, they're dealing with me. So like, we have a separate we have a team Clank Facebook account or Facebook page that then can interact as the team. But no, I mean, I make the time and like I said, I can't do it as much now because my problem is now my, my welcome sequence that I send to new subscribers, which they get over, like over a period of like six weeks or more, is basically my greatest hits. And so I get a lot of responses on that. And some of them like one of them, I tell a very heartfelt story about my dad being in a plane crash before my third year in law school. And I literally just asked people I say, you know, to commit to themselves, because it's gonna be hard, but commit that they're, they're in this and I have a strong why and I'll do it. And if they're so bold to just respond, I'm committed. I said that way, I'll just know. And so on those I don't always respond because I've kind of preface them and said, Look, this is for you. And that way, I'm going to know if they say more than that. I will respond. But yeah, what we have is like, I get my I mean, first of all, I kind of make a point, when I do the send out like, I'm not supposed to be in my inbox, my Filipino VA sorts it. And there's like a urgent for Bobby and non urgent for Bobby folder. So most of the time, that's where I'm supposed to live. But when the emails go out on Tuesday, when I send them out, I make a point to be in my inbox just to be there to see it. So I can just catch them. And like, again, it takes five minutes, most of the time to send a response to people if that. And so I just I make a point, kind of like people say, look, if you're going to post on Instagram, you should be ready to comment, or respond to comments. In the 30 minutes to an hour after I tried to do the same thing. Now, I can't always do it. But I make a point. And it's one of those things I have chosen, like, I have chosen very carefully that what we are trying to do in my business is carve out everything other than kind of the idea generation at the top, the connection piece, and then delivering on coaching everything else, someone else handles. Mm hmm. So that I can do that. Right. I honestly think I mean, one of the things that only I can do. And so I'm going to continue doing it as long as I can.

Kate Kordsmeier 51:11

Yeah. I mean, I think regardless of whether or not you agree with Bobby's take, or you have you know, some caveats or anything, I think the important lesson to me that I'm hearing is like, figure out those things in your business that only you can do. They might be different in your case, and then delegate the rest of those, but there are ways that you need to show up, and you need to show up, as you 100% transparently. And that that is what's going to make the biggest difference. Yeah,

Bobby Klinck 51:41

that's absolutely right. And again, I just everyone should have a list of the things that only they can do. Like, I'm the only one who can show up on podcasts, right? Because right now, we don't yet have my voice. So someone who simply, you know, you know, sound like me, I'm the only one in my view, who can truly connect with people. Because if someone else is trying to do it on my behalf, guess what they don't know my stories, they don't know, they just can't do it. And then I'm the only one who can coach in certain ways. But even the coaching, like in my coaching program, we brought in other coach, we now have a copywriting coach, we have a Facebook ads coach so that we're doing that very intentionally so that it can take some of the load off. But yeah, you got to find what only you can do. And and as you grow your business, you focus more and more of your time on those things, and less and less on everything else. Right.

Kate Kordsmeier 52:25

Right. Okay. Love it. Now, one of the things I heard you say, and now I'm like, what was it specifically that you said, but the note I wrote down was about urgency and scarcity. Oh, that was what you said something about if you only have your cart open during certain periods? So does that mean that for your programs for the things that you sell people can buy them at any time?

Bobby Klinck 52:48

Yep, I've made that decision. And again, this is me looking outside the online space. And I say, if we you know, if it makes sense to only have our programs available for sale two weeks a year, why doesn't Apple do that? Again, I look at it that way and get I can go into a long discussion about the difference between marketing and selling. Because a lot of what we're being taught as marketing isn't actually marketing. I mean, it's one component it's selling. But when you look at marketing theory, the Great's what they say is the point of marketing is that you don't have to sell, and you have the perfect product for the perfect person at the right time for them. And you say do you want it? And they say yes. And so that's what I've done. And I mean, it's it's even broader than that. It's like my my signature legal products. You buy my temple library and all of my legal templates now and any I introduced in the future, and it's 1000 bucks 65% of those sales, they're not from affiliates. They're not from a funnel, they're not on my list. they land on my page, and they buy. And what's happened is I've done again, what businesses outside the online space do and understand you have to do you build goodwill, you build a reputation. And so people have either interacted with me online, or or they ask a question somewhere, where do I get, you know, I need to get legal stuff. And people say go to Bobby clean. And so that's what I do. So we made that shift on the legal stuff in October of 2019. And everything else, my coaching is a bit different because it's kind of you know, we're doing it as cohorts. So, you know, at this point, I'm not really selling my coaching firm because I'm like, I got 40 people, we're good. But everything else we've just decided it's available and it's not even. It's not even through evergreen funnels. Now we have those, but that's how our sales come from our sales come from us nurturing people and kind of treating people the right way and then they're ready and when they're ready, they'll buy.

Kate Kordsmeier 54:48

And so let's just say I'm somebody on your email list, and you've been Are you pitching me your products at any point do you have like because I'm thinking I am on your email list. I don't really remember getting any emails, it's like, Hey, did you know I sell this thing you should buy it.

Bobby Klinck 55:06

So one of the things that, and again, this is the thing as your as your business gets more complicated, it's tough, right? But part of what we're doing, we're we're in the middle of a tech stack overhaul. And part of that is we're reworking the welcome sequence. And part of that is there's literally going to be four emails that are about that, I think we're calling the legal stuff, welcome sequence. So that's about helping people understand my history as a lawyer, all those things. And here's how I can help you with the legal stuff. So like very early on, making sure that they understand that I have the individual templates, but also that also, we have our premiere thing is this bomb, you will have calls to action. So once people are in there, it'll do it. The training about the legal stuff, for example, talks about it, we have where we literally are building the tech now, but it's going to have a drop down menu. So you can click a button and it will just take you to the sales page for the individual template you're looking at. So you have that. But also, then we do what we'll do like flash sales, we'll just do kind of flash promos that are, you know, we come up with something fun extra to give to people when they buy. So instead of cutting the prices or doing something like that, we say hey, if you buy now we'll give you this like like last year, we did a couple times, well, if you buy my template library or the time you bought this email program I had, we would give you a free ticket to my virtual event. And so like we do things like that. And normally, we're in a place where we do we do some kind of promo almost monthly. Now this year, we haven't done any yet, because we've been just neck deep in the tech stack. We're moving from an all in one to building, building everything through access ally on our site, so that we can really control every aspect of as

many left Kartra

We are in the process of leaving Kartra. We've had multiple I mean, look. Kartra has its benefits, but it has its problems. We've we've found that like, we discovered this recently that for some reason, one of our nurture sequences for people coming in through Facebook ads to my privacy policy, starting last October ish. For some reason, even though there was an automation to put them on the welcome sequence, it didn't do it. So something like 20 or 20 100, or 3000, people didn't get put onto the welcome sequence. And they were just sitting there nowhere. But it was more a bigger decision for Bom, you were treating it differently. It's free. Like every course in there is free, you never have to pay $1. But you have to use points to buy the courses, you get the foundation courses, and you earn points by taking a quiz at the end to prove you learned it. And so we wanted to like put that kind of stuff in there. But all of this additional functionality. And that just wasn't available on Kartra but even then, like we looked at a bunch of other systems, and it wasn't really available on other systems either. So we have a web developer who is writing code to work with access ally so that we can have a truly customized membership portal for people. So yeah,

Kate Kordsmeier 58:12

yeah. When you're ready. Development. Yeah. Okay. So that's so interesting. So bomb you. Do you have to pay to be a member? No, it's all free. But then, are you coaching people inside of there.

Bobby Klinck 58:27

So we were and again, this is where I'm even crazier than most people, there's a lot of people. So a lot of people in the space used to have alumni groups, and they close those down, if you want to get coaching, you have to join their membership and pay, we're actually adding a q&a to my free Facebook group, a monthly q&a, where I will support people for free as they go through bamu. And especially as things get bigger. And so that's always going to be free. But basically, when we looked at it as is, we wanted to create a place where people could come and learn the stuff. So they could keep their money to spend on Facebook ads to spend on service providers to spend on the stuff that they need to get done. Because we all know there's just a lot of stuff that has to get done that you probably need money to pay for. And so that was our decision. And our belief is that what will happen is over time, it becomes a way for people to go from starting out and again, it's not just basic stuff, but like building all these skills, and then they'll join my coaching program, or then they'll hire me to do a VIP day.

Kate Kordsmeier 59:34

And so I was gonna say so how are you making money so you gotta be selling something?

Bobby Klinck 59:39

I'm gonna sell my coaching program. And we do VIP days which these days most people do it for messaging and for bringing me in on that which is weird. I'm not you know, I'm not a trained copywriter or anything like that, but I can find messages really well that people have will pay me for that. And again, we're gonna have like, you know, we will have affiliate stuff in bamu, for software for all those things we recommend, but again, that's that's really meant to defray the costs of ads to get people into bamu. So yeah, I mean, we're gonna, we're spending money to put people into bomb you to do all that, you know, we may launch something later some kind of membership. I don't for something specific, we haven't decided we've toyed with creating like an email membership where people can get like, help with like, you know, editing and thoughts on that. But we really are thinking of it in terms of we honestly believe that it'll take care of itself. But I mean, I could scale my business, especially because I've got the legal templates that bring in money all the time, you know, we could pretty easily scale our business to a $3 million a year business without really having to ramp up much or come up with new offers. And I look at that I'm like, pretty good business. You know, that's, that's not something you know, that I would I would be mad about. And my team always says, they're like, Bobby, you'll come up with something, because I always have ideas for new offers. So I'm sure it'll come. But basically, if you think about what we're doing is I'm building something where I become the person when someone needs coaching, they'll think of me if they learn through Bamian, so I just become kind of a natural progression for them. And so that's our plan for now. But yeah, 100%, free.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:01:20

If fascinating, I you're definitely breaking the mold here and very ahead of the curve. So I but I'm very intrigued by this business model. And I just love that it is, it is truly served first, a lot of people talk about serve first, but I don't think anybody takes it as far as you are right now. So that's pretty cool.

Bobby Klinck 1:01:41

Yeah, nobody's, nobody's as crazy as me.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:01:43

But then you see, like, it's still working, you still have a seven figure business? And

Bobby Klinck 1:01:48

I mean, it's one of these things where, like, I look at it, and again, it's, I've asked this question like, do I need an eight figure business? No. I mean, if it serves an audience to do it, so that people I could serve more people great. But I don't I mean, I don't need it for competitive reasons. I mean, if, if I cared about competitive like, and being competitive and stuff, I would have stayed in the lawyer game and done the the traditional legal route, which, you know, I could have been making, like, not revenue, but like a seven figure paycheck myself. Yeah. You know, for I don't know, maybe not 10 years now, but at least like seven or eight years now. And I didn't want that. I don't, you know, I don't need that, to validate me. And so that's part of it. But also, it's, you know, I just look at it as a way of saying, you know, I just think it's the right thing to do, is it I don't say, I'm not saying people who don't do it, or wrong or bad or anything like that. It's just, it's partly what my kind of values say I should be doing. And I'm leading with my values. And, you know, trusting because in a lot of ways is the evolution of my business, because I made this same change. Back in 2018. Yeah, with my legal stuff. At first, my legal training was packaged up with my templates. But I in I don't know, I think it was October of 2018, I broke it apart. I said, The training is free. You just have to pay for the implementation. And so in some ways, I'm just this is the next logical step of that I'm just doing on the business stuff side.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:03:23

Well, I can speak firsthand to how giving you truly are aside from everything we've just talked about, because people who are in my six figure blog Academy course get Bobby's templates for free, because he just so generously was like, yeah, I'll give this to you guys. Why not? came in did a talk. It was amazing. So um, yeah, yeah.

Bobby Klinck 1:03:43

I mean, last year, I, we did some calculations last year. I mean, if you look at, like, if you look at my privacy policy, which I give away for free as my lead magnet, most lawyers charge 200 bucks for it, if you look at that, I gave away almost $4 million in value there. But when you add all of the other stuff that I gave away to people in their programs, at literally the price, I charge for things, we were somewhere between seven and $8 million in value that we gave away last year. And I said, Okay, it'll take care of itself. And again, I say that and people are like, Are you crazy? But here's the thing, I wouldn't have sold seven or $8 million of it. Right? Right. If I were insisting on selling, I don't know what I would have sold. But I also know that that, for example, with the privacy policy, I helped 13,000 entrepreneurs make their websites legal last year. That's pretty cool. If I want to look at that, and when I think about that, yeah. So

Kate Kordsmeier 1:04:38

and I mean, there's just so much good karma happening here that I feel like it's bound to come back. So

Bobby Klinck 1:04:45

again, this is the thing like one of the things when I talk about giving is I don't do it to get I don't give it with expectation. But I also know that it It pays itself back tenfold and it does it in ways I will never see come like again. getting interviewed by Amy Porterfield on her podcast back in 2008. I couldn't have seen that coming.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:05:05

Right. Like you went and pitched her to be on the show.

Bobby Klinck 1:05:08

It just happened.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:05:10

Well, it just happened because she saw you serving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a such a cool story. Okay, so do you mind me asking? I've got kind of a two part question here. And then we'll we'll wrap up because I know we're coming up to the top of the hour here. So first part of the question and feel free to say no, and we can even edit this out if you're like, I can't believe you asked me this. Is how much do you sell your coaching for?

Bobby Klinck 1:05:36

So my coaching, we did it this first year was 7006 997. Okay. And again, and

then is that is what I

got to end in a seven. And again, we hit we hit a little diatribe about that, like there is I have found no research, anywhere that supports that. But because I serve entrepreneurs in the online space, I'm like, I don't want them to ask why my price doesn't end. And that's why I was doing it. Right. So like literally, normally, I don't do stuff, because what everybody does, but I do it there because the people I serve be like, wait, why are you not ending at seven, so we do it for them. But again, this is the thing that's, again, you'll think I'm crazy. It's a year long program, and I do two calls a month with people. But actually, because we got so many people in for scheduling, I do. Two calls each of those days. So the first and third week of the month, I do two different calls just to do scheduling reasons. But then here's the truly crazy part. Most people of course, charge, like have a mastermind, which they charge for etc. And we said no, we're not gonna do that. We wrapped it into the program. So we have what's called the inner circle. So anyone who has in the last year, made $100,000 in revenue in their online business, or once you're in like, if you fall below, it's fine. But once you're in, you get into this inner circle, which is basically mastermind level support. And you also get calls the second fourth week of each month. So basically, I'm coaching people every week, right? But I love it. And as we're recording this, I'm preparing tomorrow. We also do, we're doing three boot camps a year. So tomorrow we're doing a starting boot camp about messaging and list building to get people kind of moving forward. So yeah, that's the program we did it. And we we announced it, we kind of pitched it at my live event last year in December, which is where I also announced that bomb me with forgot I messed with my people. I did what seemed like a pitch for bomb. You told them, here's the course here's all the things I'm adding. And everybody was literally saying, Here's my card, how much is it? How do I sign up. And so on day two of a three day event, I said, this is part of a bigger movement More about that later, see after lunch, and they were all mad at me. Then I came back and pitch the coaching some people join, I announced that bomb, you was free the last session of day three. And the response was unbelievable. And within 10 minutes of announcing it, nine more people join coaching because they and again, I talked to him. And they basically said if you're willing to do that, I want to learn from you. And so again, wasn't a plan. It was not meant as a sales pitch. But it had that effect again giving led to me getting. So that's what we're doing. And again, we haven't decided like Originally, we planned a pitch after the event. I mean, we had about 100 people there for the pitch at the event and got 40 people in. So 40% conversion rate on a $7,000 program tells you something. Yeah, we were planning to send emails, but I was like, yeah, we gotta let's just make sure we can serve these people well, and so we didn't even email anything. If we get if we're kind of feeling good. We have decided we may do another cohort in the middle of the year, we haven't decided for sure. But you know, that's what we did. That's kind of how the coaching works.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:08:49

Amazing. So, okay, too. I was like, this is a two part question. Now I'm making it like a six part.

Bobby Klinck 1:08:57

So a first part is Can anybody join your coaching at any time, then because you're not like doing it as part of this live launch type model. So and that's the thing, like, you know, as I think you probably know, people don't join coaching, like, without being pitched for the most part. But I mean, one of the things like we didn't know how successful the pitch, the pitch was gonna be, we had no idea. And so I said at the event that it was to be open all the time. So if someone from the event came and said, Hey, I want to join, I'm gonna let you know, we're not actively pitching it at this point. Some would have to call us at this point, someone would have to like get in touch and we would have to feel like they are a good fit to bring them in partly because, you know, the coaching has become I mean, there's kind of a especially with the group of 40 it really is kind of a camaraderie and cohorts. Now, I don't know what our numbers are going to be next year, but I expect next year it will be bigger, and so it'll be a little bit different. I mean, next year, the price will probably go up is our plan, but we also anticipate why more people So adding some people at random times won't have, you know, wouldn't be as big of a deal. But right now, if you imagine if we had like two or three new people all of a sudden, you know, it kind of changes the dynamic as we'll be very everybody came in at one time. Yeah, that makes sense. versus if you had it kind of just on a rolling basis this whole time, and people were coming in any time, which was our plan at going into the event. That was our plan was that it was going to be just, you know, we're announcing it, we're opening the doors, people come in any time. And then we so far surpassed what our expectations were given how many people were there?

Kate Kordsmeier 1:10:36

Let's go back for a minute. Okay. So then inside this coaching program, are you delivering any like content? Are you giving them sort of like, Is it a hybrid model where there's like course content and the coaching or you just show up on the coaching calls? Are they just like, live q&a is are you teaching something? How

Bobby Klinck 1:10:55

does that work? It's it is other than the boot camps, it is hotseat style. I mean, it is more a true coaching slash mastermind feel. Some of it was we had more people join that work earlier on in their journey than we expected. And so it kind of forced us to create a bit of like I created, and we still have to pretty it up and make it nice, but we created kind of a process where we talked about three phases of building a business, which by the way, like on this and the ideal way of doing it, you're not selling until stage 12 of the 12 step process. So you know, most people haven't done a lot of this. But so we created that and are working on it to kind of put it in a nicer way. But our goal is that I don't have to teach because guess what, I'm going to have bomb you. Like if they need information, go to bomb you. Until like right now, since bomb you isn't fully built out, we'll have that one course, I have a lot of trainings I've done for other stuff. So we give, we give them access, like they need like, some folks were already building sales pages. So we had a sales page training I had done at some point. So we gave them access to that just gave it to them. But really, it is a pure coaching, what are you struggling with? Let's get you past it. Except like these boot camps, like this boot camp is going to be messaging and list building, but it very much is a little bit of training. Now go do it, go, you know, do it for yourself. And then they're gonna go to breakout rooms and work together through the things with kind of coaching components. But those are the only pieces that are meant to be a training component. Okay,

Kate Kordsmeier 1:12:27

got it. So cool. I love this so much. So the second part of that what was supposed to be two part question was we this is kind of bringing it all back to the beginning too, because, you know, you mentioned, you got a seven figure business, we're talking about money. And yet, we're also kind of trying to find this balance. And I say we as an all of us have just if we don't want to go the quote unquote, bro marketing way and just talk about how much money we're constantly making and, you know, taking pictures in front of selfies in front of mansions and private jets and with like half naked girls on our arms, whatever. Then there's this balance. And I'm sure I'm thinking about this for myself, because I published income reports. And I do it especially because women talking about money is rare. And it's this portal of possibility for people it shows them what is possible, especially you know, blogging has been a big focus of mine. And traditionally people you tell people, you're a blogger, and they're like, okay, so you're a stay at home mom, or you're unemployed, or you know, whatever, they don't think you can actually make money from this. Now in the online marketing world, we now No, of course you can, but the rest of the world doesn't. So I've it's kind of showing people, hey, this is possible. But I can see there, there's this, there's been this trend of people bragging about six figure launches, or 10k months or whatever it is. And it makes people feel like if they're not doing that, if they're not having a 10k a month or a six figure launch that like they're not doing it right, or they're not good enough. So how do you kind of walk that line of we're doing this for money, because it's a business, it's helpful to talk about it, but it can also be harmful.

Bobby Klinck 1:14:15

So one of the things that happened early on it and and again, I consider myself crazy lucky in a lot of ways, right? Because I stumbled into things. And what I mean by that is because when I was getting into the online space, I I don't say never But yeah, I didn't have a thought that I was going to be teaching people marketing. I was doing legal stuff. And so I would do these things where I would, you know, I would just talk about my launches, but like these were not six figure launches. Like I talked about my $30,000 lunch, and I talked about all the stuff I screwed up and I talked about all these you know, things that I was doing wrong. And what I found is people told me that was their favorite because they heard all about The six figure and seven figure launches, and it just didn't even seem. I mean, it was so foreign. And so they appreciated me not doing it. And again, you and I both know, like some people talk about the six figure launch. And they were like, why did I mean, you talked about it? What did you say you made? You made $50,000 in revenue, but you lost 12,000.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:15:20

At the end of the day is 20,000. In the red, it was a total

Bobby Klinck 1:15:24

flop. But But I mean, I know all I know, plenty of people who like talk about I had $125,000 launch. And I don't know what their total numbers were. But I know they spent $75,000 on Facebook ads, right? And I'm like, you know, that's some of the stuff that's not happy. Not people aren't being honest about and I see these people, there are people I know. And I don't know exactly what their revenue, but like I'm in groups with them were from hearing them talk. They're like, right at that $100,000 mark for the year. And then I will see them like having ads saying, I'll show you how to how to have $50,000 months, I'm like, you're not, you're not. And again, it's this thing that so many people are doing. And what I tell people is like a lot of what I have a problem with is the model that that most people are operating under. And again, this gets back to the bro marketing thing, because we talked about that. I don't like the term bro marketers because they're not marketers. They're sellers. And they're infomercials. And what I what I tell people is going that route going the heavy sales route of it's all about selling. And it's not about connection, it's all about conversion going that route, what I say is it's the equivalent of people saying go to Hollywood and become a movie star. Mm hmm. People are going to it's going to happen for but most people are going to fail. The true reality is that most successful businesses aren't about, you know that. And, you know, maybe I'm making six figures in revenue. But that doesn't mean you're taking six figures home. And when I've like interviewed my audience, what most of them have said is they just want a business will that will let them replace their nine to five. That's what they want. And so part of me is like, that's my messaging I never, ever talked about, I'll talk to tell you how to have a six figure business or anything like that. Now I talk about my launches, I talk about things like that, so people can hear it. This is a launch, I don't have to really do launch anymore. But I talked about like the results of my event, podcast. But you know, what I tell people in my message feels I'm gonna help you build a business that you love that will support your family. Right. And I think we need to change that messaging so that that's what people are hearing. Because again, I you know, it's really hard to build a business, up to seven figures each just is and anyone who's telling you anything different is lying to you so that you'll buy something from them.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:17:53

I think that's so important, too. And I know it's something that we both take very seriously is. Neither of us are one of those coaches, who's going to teach you how to do something that we haven't done ourselves. And I think that's exactly you're saying, you see these people that you're like, I know you're barely making six figures in in gross revenue. And here you are, with an ad about how to have 50k months. You're not doing it. And, you know, I think that's in my income reports. That's part of why I wanted to do them rather than just like having a sentence and an email or something that's like, Hey, I'm, you know, I had a six figure launch. Like, let me break it down for you. But I did have a six figure launch in revenue. then here are my expenses. Here's what I took home here. Like, here's the full picture. Here's the context. So people really see like, this is possible. But also here's everything it took to get here.

Bobby Klinck 1:18:41

Yeah, and I think that's important. But when you were talking about that, and the people and the ads we see I had to think and come back to something we talked about before we started recording clubhouse. Oh yeah, I saw this on someone's like someone had screenshotted I think it was a tweet, or I don't know someone from from a person in Silicon Valley. Who had stumbled into like a room on clubhouse with people like, are odd, you know, like, you know, coke cans and all that. And it was like the guy that the person said, was something like so there are these people, like talk like coaching you about how to be a coach to be a coach and they'll help you with coaching if you'll pay them $5,000 a month. And he said, It all seems like an MLM to me. Like I was laughing about that and again, it was hilarious this person was posing and all these people were trying to defend clubhouse again, I'm not gonna get into clubhouse thoughts on that but there's so much in that smoke you know, it's like people promising things they haven't done people saying stuff and again, like I will teach like I will give people like thoughts on doing a launch because I'm you know, I'm only done a certain kind of launch and I tell people that but I you know, but I'm also not saying I'm gonna get you a six figure, you know, launch I'm saying why don't we Talk about principles and what you need to accomplish and figure out the best way to do it and thinking it through. But there just needs to be more of that and less of this false bravado and like you joked about the the pictures with mansions and private jets, I've thought about trying to like, go get, like I said, What is it? What was the one that there was like an old car that like, the samurai, I think was a key a samurai or was like this one like that would roll over all the time. It's like, you know, hadn't been made since the 90s. I want to go find one that's like eight colors of rust. And like, take a serious picture like those guys like, like, with me leaning against it with a serious face to make fun of it. Cuz it's so ridiculous.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:20:42

And so ridiculous. They renting that car, right? They're always renting these things. It's like you don't own this stuff. And even if you did, I mean, when I rewrote the sales page for the six figure blog Academy last year, and as I was writing it, I was like, you know, I could tell you work from anywhere on a beach in Tahiti, you know, this and that, like, the truth is like, I just do this so that I can pick my kids up from school and give them dinner at night. Like, that's the kind of freedom and flexibility I'm talking about. Most people don't want these like crazy, lavish lifestyles, it's like, it's not in the cards for the most, you know, my audience is primarily moms like, Alright, let's just figure out a way that you can actually still enjoy your actual life and what you're doing to make money.

Bobby Klinck 1:21:27

Right. And that's what again, and that's what when I, when I did this survey my audience and got that response about that, it hit me that so much of the marketing, and again, it's probably because the people I've attracted, it's just dead wrong, because we're all talking about that. And you're right. I mean, you know, most of my audiences is family, people, you know, Mom, mainly moms, cuz my audience happened to be 90% women. And you're right. I mean, they want, they want a job they actually enjoy. That gives them some flexibility in their regular life. But I mean, it's like me, I was like, Yeah, I've got a daughter, who is in school, we can't, you know, it's not like we're gonna go, you know, jetting off to all these weird plays, right? I mean, it's not the way life works. And like I said, I'm not looking to retire anytime soon. So I'm not promising up. But some of that is just so over the top. Yeah, that it's, it's ridiculous. And But again, it's, you know, I don't even know why, I mean, I think people are doing it, because they have this sense that promising people stuff will do good. And I mean, I feel like a lot of what's happening like a lot of the offers being made to people in the online space on both sides, the the pure money driven, but also the the more nurturing side, a lot of the offers being made to them, remind me of when I was in college, and there was like, you know, it see those flyers for envelope stuffing, which, you know, it promises you all this money, but you're not going to make money at it. Let me just go and tell you, you're not right. But it's, it's, you know, that's why I look, I'm on a quest to try to bring some human back to this space, right?

Kate Kordsmeier 1:23:03

And try to be like, what would happen if we instead of trying to have all this over the top marketing with these huge promises? What if we just really did just keep it really real, and we're just like, Hey, you know, if you just want to replace your nine to five income and have a little bit more time with your family, there's some some really cool things you can do in the online space to create a business, you don't have to have an eight figure business in order to do it.

Bobby Klinck 1:23:26

Right. What and again, I mean, it's like, some people probably don't want that, but they feel like they have to. And again, it's it's another thing that I push people on is do you want income? Or do you want impact? And I'm not saying they're mutually exclusive. But that's always one of the first questions I ask people, because I will always choose impact, which means I keep my stuff more affordable. My stuff is always cheaper than my competitors, because I would rather serve more people than serve fewer people and make the same amount of money. And again, we could get into geeky things about supply and demand. But you know, you can price things different way and make about the same amount of money depending on how many people you want to serve. And again, I guess it's a common theme with me, because I'm not trying to put distance between me and my people. Right? Right. tell people is using this approach that I use is the better long term solution, because guess what those people will be here this year, next year, the year after, and the lifetime value of a customer goes up when you do that. Right. And so that's the other thing I'd like to suggest to people is why aren't you like, let's think about building a business that we think decades, not years. And again, I have no idea what's going to happen in 2031. Let me be clear, but I'm, I'm trying to think through how would I build a business? Right, you're in 2031.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:24:50

Totally. I love it. So this was gone longer than we expected, of course, which is ironic because I think my last than the last man that came on was just at Hopkins, and he was at one I think our very longest interview ever. And now you're you're getting to be a close second. So there's something to having been on the show.

Bobby Klinck 1:25:09

Your promise you have a former trial lawyer who wishes if you let me talk, I'll keep talking about your my, the third podcast I've been on this week. And this is the shortest interview yet at you know, just under what an hour or an hour 20 minutes or something. So yeah,

Kate Kordsmeier 1:25:25

it's so funny. I love it. Okay, so we'll wrap up here. I got one last question for you. And this is normally I asked a lot of the women that come on, like, what do they do for self care? And not that that doesn't apply to men? But I'm going to twist the question a little bit, because I think you are somebody who gives a lot of yourself away. How do you make sure that there's something left for you?

Bobby Klinck 1:25:51

And this is the weird thing. I don't have to think about it. Because the giving lights me up. And again, that's like, I mean, I don't know what it is about me as a person that leads to that. But I know it's true. What what I'll tell you that and I sent it, I think I sent an email about this recently, like, I used to brew beer. And I mean, was this close to starting a brewery about five or six years ago. And I don't, I haven't really brewed beer in two years. And it's not because I don't have time. It's not because my beer isn't good. It's not for anything like that. It's because my job fills me up. Like, literally, if I have an empty cup. The easiest way for me to get filled up is to come into my job, be with my people to serve my people. And again, I don't know if that's a personality thing. It definitely has something to do with the fact that I love the people I serve. And I love how I'm serving them. And I've built a business where the way I'm serving them fits me like I am a relationship, I want to be engaged with people. So I have created a business that allows me to do that. And so that's the honest truth. I don't have to think about the more I give, the more I serve my people, the more lit up I get, the greater I feel. And so that's how I do it. I know it's not a great answer, because I think you were probably hoping for like, you know, a piece of advice. But, but it's the truth. Yeah, I've just realized I don't have a lot of hobbies. I mean, I spend time with my family. And obviously we you know, we're, we're kind of in the middle of quarantine. So, you know, it's gonna take

time with our families.

But I mean, I just you know, I don't need it. And I don't have a lot of hobbies because I don't need them. Because I'm so filled up with what I do all day. Everything.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:27:42

Amazing. Thank you so much for being here, Bobby. This was so fun.

Bobby Klinck 1:27:46

Thank you. I was my pleasure.

Kate Kordsmeier 1:27:52

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