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Turning Expertise into Entrepreneurship with Sam Lee · The Heart-Led Business Show

0:01
Speaker: Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
0:09
Speaker: Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second.
0:20
Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
0:29
Speaker: So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.
0:36
Tom Jackobs: Well, welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show.
0:39
Tom Jackobs: Today we are thrilled to have Sam Lee joining us.
0:42
Tom Jackobs: As a visionary founder and CEO of IndeCollective.
0:46
Tom Jackobs: Sam has been a guiding star for over 750 mid-career professionals transforming their expertise into flourishing consulting and coaching empires.
0:57
Tom Jackobs: With a treasure trove of experience from the likes of Goldman Sachs and WeWork.
1:02
Tom Jackobs: He's here to share his journey of heart-led leadership and the magic of unlocking income, impact, and independence.
1:10
Tom Jackobs: So get ready to be inspired by Sam Lee, everybody.
1:14
Tom Jackobs: And Sam, welcome to the show.
1:15
Sam Lee: Thank you so much for having me, Tom.
1:17
Tom Jackobs: I'm so excited to kinda dive into your story and really I think it's gonna inspire a lot of the listeners to really dive into their passion, especially coming from someone who's transitioned themselves out of corporate and into their own heart-led business as well, and, and come out surviving and thriving the on the other side.
1:37
Tom Jackobs: Right.
1:38
Sam Lee: A hundred percent.
1:39
Tom Jackobs: But first, I always like to ask, what's your definition of a heart-led business?
1:43
Sam Lee: Absolutely.
1:45
Sam Lee: Well, you know, from my own lived experience and as you said, having now served more than 750 amazing mid-career professionals and launching their own heart-led businesses, I like to think of a heart-led business as one that helps that experience professional to maximize three things, their impact on clients, their community, and the world.
2:07
Sam Lee: Also their income and flexibility.
2:10
Sam Lee: 'cause we deserve more of those things given all the, been there, done that experience that we have in the middle and late stages of our career.
2:18
Sam Lee: So a heart-led business very simply is one that allows an experienced professional to maximize their impact, their income, and their flexibility.
2:27
Tom Jackobs: Love it.
2:28
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, exactly.
2:29
Tom Jackobs: You may want to change flexibility to independence that way.
2:31
Tom Jackobs: They all start with I
2:33
Sam Lee: Yes.
2:34
Tom Jackobs: three I process.
2:35
Sam Lee: Yeah, you're right.
2:36
Sam Lee: You're totally right.
2:38
Tom Jackobs: No, that's awesome.
2:39
Tom Jackobs: What a, what a great definition and more and more people are looking for that these days.
2:44
Tom Jackobs: Clearly.
2:45
Tom Jackobs: I mean, having served 750, that, that's a huge number of people that you've been able to help create that's created such an impact.
2:52
Tom Jackobs: What inspired you to kind of get, go out of Goldman Sachs and WeWork and, and go out on your own?
2:59
Sam Lee: Yeah, well, what I've now, you know, seen in my own experience of, of building a consultancy for more than 10 years and in those 750 grads of IndeCollective is that building, you know, a heart-led business.
3:11
Sam Lee: I like to call them better businesses.
3:13
Sam Lee: Those businesses that maximize those three things.
3:15
Sam Lee: It's not that complicated.
3:17
Sam Lee: It does of course, require work.
3:19
Sam Lee: Anything a value requires or effort, but it's not that complicated.
3:24
Sam Lee: And what I've found in my own experience and in seeing others do it, is that there's four key ingredients that help people to get on a fast and reliable path to superlative outcomes in those three things.
3:35
Sam Lee: And the four key ingredients simply are, one, you and your expertise, and that is actually the most important ingredient.
3:43
Sam Lee: I like to think of it as even 80% of the recipe, and that's the stuff that you've spent a career developing.
3:49
Sam Lee: And that is inherently you.
3:51
Sam Lee: In addition to that first ingredient, there are three other ingredients, and these are accelerator ingredients because when you combine them.
3:59
Sam Lee: You and your expertise, they get you on a fast, reliable path to the superlative outcomes.
4:04
Sam Lee: Not to replacing income or trading time for money to get to okay outcomes, but to doubling income and freeing up half your time and finding the space to pursue people and passion projects that matter to you.
4:19
Sam Lee: Those three accelerator ingredients are playbooks that work, that allow you to translate expertise into a heart-led business.
4:27
Sam Lee: I've been there, done that.
4:29
Sam Lee: Mentors, people who have walked the path, who can coach you because who in the middle of their career wants to trial and error and hope for the best.
4:37
Tom Jackobs: Correct.
4:37
Sam Lee: And third, surrounding yourself by a supportive community.
4:41
Sam Lee: Because at that stage of our career, why are you gonna be in isolation?
4:45
Sam Lee: That's not how you do your most effective work, and it's also not the fun or fulfilling path to building a business that will achieve those outcomes.
4:53
Sam Lee: So the reason that I started IndeCollective and the reason that I pursued this path myself is because it's possible, and because more people need access to those accelerator ingredients.
5:04
Sam Lee: They have been there, done that expertise from, you know, years if not decades of career, and they should be able to access the playbooks, the mentors in the community to get them to great outcomes, in business and life.
5:17
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, absolutely.
5:18
Tom Jackobs: And I wanna kind of unpack a little bit the first ingredient, the you ingredient.
5:23
Sam Lee: Mm-hmm.
5:23
Tom Jackobs: And using all that expertise.
5:26
Tom Jackobs: Have you found working with all these folks that a lot of people kind of put down their own experience to a point where like, ah, you know, I did this for 20 years and I was really good at it.
5:37
Tom Jackobs: But nobody's gonna want that kinda, they just like minimize what they've done.
5:41
Sam Lee: Yeah, a hundred percent.
5:43
Sam Lee: I think what everybody knows, everybody that I've had the opportunity to work with and you know, 750 people is just scratching.
5:52
Sam Lee: You know the tip of the needle, because just in the US alone, there are 60 million adults that are currently launching and growing their own coaching, consulting, and service-based businesses.
6:05
Sam Lee: And half of those people, 30 million adults, are in the middle and late stage of their career.
6:09
Sam Lee: So 700 people is just the tiny little, you know, scratch on the surface.
6:14
Sam Lee: But of those 750 people I've had the chance to work with, I'd say all of them know in their bones that they've got great experience.
6:24
Sam Lee: Probably 75% of them don't believe they're experts.
6:29
Sam Lee: They've got experience, but they don't believe they're experts and not all of them are wrong.
6:35
Sam Lee: Why is that?
6:37
Sam Lee: And, and, and it's not that they don't have the experience, but expertise is marrying experience with focus.
6:45
Sam Lee: Because if you're unfocused in the business you're building, you just have a lot of experiences that you're offering, not expertise.
6:53
Sam Lee: Expertise is experience rubber, meeting the road with focus on the right client, solving the right painkiller problems, and doing it in a way that scales the impact, income and flexibility you deserve.
7:06
Sam Lee: And anybody with experience can get to expertise.
7:09
Sam Lee: They just need to move the experience through a process that gets them focused, and that's what we help people to do.
7:15
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, no, that, that, and I love that.
7:17
Tom Jackobs: That's such a key point to make, and people need to kinda hear that again, that the experience alone isn't going to get you to where you want to be, especially if you're not focused, which if I think of any entrepreneur, that's pretty much everybody needs to really work on that focus.
7:36
Tom Jackobs: And that's what gets you to the expertise level.
7:40
Sam Lee: Yup.
7:40
Tom Jackobs: And that's, I mean, that's where the paycheck becomes happening and that's where you make the biggest impact for people as well, is when you're able to really laser focus and guide them to they want to be.
7:51
Sam Lee: Totally.
7:51
Tom Jackobs: So what kind of, well, let's talk about your journey out of corporate and into having your own business.
7:58
Tom Jackobs: What was that like for you?
8:00
Sam Lee: Mm-hmm.
8:01
Sam Lee: So I've been building E3 Ventures, my consultancy for more than a decade.
8:06
Sam Lee: Half of those years, I did it as a side hustle.
8:09
Sam Lee: I was doing it while in large companies, you know, venture backed companies, public companies, and you know, it allowed me to invest, advise, and do some lightweight consulting, which I found fun, engaging, and frankly, it just was an additional paycheck.
8:25
Sam Lee: And when we worked, didn't work, at least not to plan.
8:29
Sam Lee: It created an opening and I needed to step back from that business.
8:32
Sam Lee: There was no more a thousand person team for me to lead.
8:36
Sam Lee: And it created an opening to step into E3 Ventures full-time.
8:40
Sam Lee: And in doing it full-time in that first year, I was able to double the income I made as a full-time executive.
8:48
Sam Lee: And I was working, you know, 30 hour weeks, so about half as much as I had previously.
8:54
Sam Lee: And that honestly blew my mind.
8:55
Sam Lee: Because I had mentors and friends who had walked this path and talked about those types of outcomes, but until you've seen it for yourself, it's hard to believe it.
9:06
Sam Lee: And until you believe it, you can't become it.
9:08
Sam Lee: So in that year, I got to those outcomes, but the first quarter was none too easy.
9:16
Sam Lee: It really was none too easy.
9:17
Sam Lee: As I know you've experienced too, I'm sure in, in building your own businesses.
9:21
Sam Lee: But the first quarter I found myself.
9:24
Sam Lee: You know, almost out of fear, accepting whatever came my way.
9:28
Sam Lee: I had a great network that was sending me opportunities, but I was a yes man to everything.
9:34
Sam Lee: I was taking on too many projects, doing too many bespoke things for too many types of people with too many types of problems, which meant that I was trading time for money.
9:44
Sam Lee: I wasn't able to clearly articulate my value or charge for it.
9:48
Sam Lee: And I was burnt out and tired, right?
9:50
Sam Lee: Like I was, I was replacing my income immediately, but I was working more than I had as the full-time executive and I was running myself ragged.
9:58
Sam Lee: So that was the first quarter and in the second quarter I took a bit of a beat and I took a step back and said, let me turn to these mentors and friends that have talked about the great results and let me see what I can learn from them so I can find that focus and translate great experience from all sorts of interesting industries and companies and roles into expertise.
10:19
Sam Lee: And it was in that next chapter.
10:21
Sam Lee: And it didn't take me that long.
10:22
Sam Lee: I find that most of our members are able to do this process because we've now productized this process in the course of six to nine months.
10:30
Sam Lee: Definitely within a year of working with us.
10:32
Sam Lee: But in, in those next, you know, couple of months, I really focused on a couple of things.
10:37
Sam Lee: One, I wanted to get focused on the right clients, the right problems that I would solve for those clients so I could productize an offering.
10:45
Sam Lee: An offering that wouldn't have me serving everybody bespoke.
10:48
Sam Lee: But serving a subset of people in a scalable way, build once, sell again and again and again, or put differently, build once, and have impact again, again and again.
11:00
Sam Lee: So I got really focused and we now help people to niche on the right clients.
11:05
Sam Lee: The right painkiller problems, the problems that people will always be willing to pay and apply time and treasure to, even in tough economic environments.
11:13
Sam Lee: So that was the first thing.
11:14
Sam Lee: I just got focused on the right clients and problems and built a more scalable offering to help those early to mid stage startups with mission to, to grow.
11:23
Sam Lee: 'cause I'm a commercial leader, so it was thing one.
11:25
Sam Lee: Thing two, with clarity of clients and problems, I got clear on my pricing.
11:29
Tom Jackobs: Mm-hmm.
11:30
Tom Jackobs: Mm-hmm.
11:31
Sam Lee: It wasn't about charging for time, which is where I started, and that's where a lot of people start.
11:34
Sam Lee: It's charging for your time.
11:36
Sam Lee: There's ceiling to that, right?
11:38
Sam Lee: You only have so many hours in the day and week.
11:39
Sam Lee: So if you're just charging for time, you're eventually gonna cap your potential impact and income.
11:44
Sam Lee: So I started to charge for value, and we can talk more about value-based pricing, but it required me to get really clear on the value that I was creating for those clients by solving their problems, I get confident on how to express that value so I could charge for it.
11:58
Sam Lee: And that was the second thing.
11:59
Sam Lee: And then third, it was about, you know, taking what I had learned as a commercial leader and making sure I was applying it to my own business so I could have a consistent pipeline of those ideal clients and confidently send those value based proposals.
12:10
Sam Lee: So those were the three things, the productization, the pricing, and the pipeline work that I focused on then that got me focused as an expert and building a business that allowed me, you know, within a year to get that great outcome of doubling the income, working 30 hour weeks, and uh, and seeing a path for myself and now for so many people that have followed.
12:32
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, that's a, that's a quick turnaround.
12:34
Tom Jackobs: You're a quick learner.
12:35
Tom Jackobs: Obviously.
12:36
Tom Jackobs: Some people it takes.
12:38
Tom Jackobs: Me, myself included, several years to kind of figure that that out before you know it.
12:44
Tom Jackobs: But, you know, everybody has their own journey on it, but it's, it's really important to, to go through that, that process.
12:50
Tom Jackobs: A couple things I want to kind of dig into there that you mentioned that I've noticed heart-led business owners kinda have a, have a problem with, and that's the niching down.
12:59
Tom Jackobs: How do you, like how many of the people that you work with struggle at first with the concept of being laser focused on who they can help and who they cannot help?
13:09
Tom Jackobs: Yup.
13:10
Sam Lee: So I will say I bet half of members, and, you know, I do different speaking engagements.
13:17
Sam Lee: I'd say half of any given audience gets it.
13:21
Sam Lee: It's the value of focus and actually scaling.
13:24
Sam Lee: And the other half just see it as counterintuitive.
13:26
Sam Lee: How can I maximize my reach, my impact, my income if I'm niching and focusing right?
13:32
Sam Lee: So it's, it's like intuitive for some and totally counterintuitive to the other half.
13:37
Sam Lee: I will say we have an amazing, so, so IndeCollective is led by a dozen, a dozen experts that teach our different playbooks, all of whom have built their own seven or eight figure business.
13:47
Sam Lee: You know, Josh Neckes, teaches two of our playbooks.
13:50
Sam Lee: As a marketer who's built a seven figure consultancy and a billion dollar tech company.
13:55
Sam Lee: He teaches productization and also value-based pricing.
13:59
Sam Lee: And he likes to say those two topics are actually two sides of the same coin.
14:06
Sam Lee: Productization is you as an expert, not as a generalist, but as an expert coming to your ideal client and saying, Hey, client, I've worked with countless people like you.
14:16
Sam Lee: Organizations decision makers, and in working with them, I've helped them to solve this type of painful problem.
14:23
Sam Lee: A problem that one solve creates a giant bag of value for you as a leader and your organization.
14:29
Sam Lee: And I know you're a reasonable person, you're gonna be willing to pay for the value that we create together.
14:35
Sam Lee: It's gonna be a smaller but commensurate bag of value that I'll take as my fair pricing.
14:39
Sam Lee: But you'll be willing to pay it'cause we're gonna create so much value for you.
14:42
Sam Lee: How does that feel?
14:43
Sam Lee: Right?
14:44
Sam Lee: So that's a fair value chain.
14:45
Sam Lee: That's value-based pricing in its essence.
14:48
Sam Lee: And when you think about your niched focus, the right client solving the right painkiller problems that create huge value, that's how you get, that's you then charge for that value in value-based pricing.
15:02
Sam Lee: So we kind of set up this personal business value chain through the program where we help people to understand that through focus, they're gonna create more value, they can accrue more value to themselves.
15:13
Sam Lee: And, and I think it clicks over time, but it's, it's a counterintuitive thing for a lot of people, um, who think, gosh, by focusing I'm gonna reach fewer people and therefore create less value, make less value, all the rest of it.
15:25
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, exactly.
15:26
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
15:26
Tom Jackobs: I've, I've shared this story before, but the, the, way that it really got into my head was when I was transitioning out of fitness and into sales coaching, and I would go to my BNI meetings every Wednesday morning at seven o'clock in the morning and I would do my general pitch'cause I was doing sales coaching and so I would do my little ten second.
15:47
Tom Jackobs: Hey, I'm Tom Jackobs.
15:48
Tom Jackobs: I do sales coaching for small businesses.
15:50
Tom Jackobs: If you're having a sales problem, I'm your guy.
15:52
Tom Jackobs: Come talk to me after.
15:53
Tom Jackobs: Something like that.
15:54
Tom Jackobs: And I was doing this for like four weeks and no referrals at all.
15:59
Tom Jackobs: And I was like, what am I doing wrong?
16:01
Tom Jackobs: So, finally I, I remember a coach saying, you need to niche down.
16:06
Tom Jackobs: I was like, okay, let me try this out.
16:07
Tom Jackobs: There's a lot of insurance agents that are in my my BNI group.
16:10
Tom Jackobs: So the next time I went there, I said I help insurance agents double their sales in the next six months by training their sales staff to
16:18
Sam Lee: Hmm.
16:18
Tom Jackobs: be really impactful in their sales.
16:20
Tom Jackobs: I got three referrals that day and none of them from insurance people.
16:24
Tom Jackobs: I was like
16:25
Sam Lee: Interesting.
16:26
Tom Jackobs: interesting.
16:27
Sam Lee: Yeah.
16:27
Tom Jackobs: And I, I asked one person, I was like, you know, I've been saying that I do sales coaching for four weeks now.
16:31
Tom Jackobs: Why now?
16:32
Tom Jackobs: He said, well, you seem like more of an expert now.
16:35
Tom Jackobs: I'm like, yeah.
16:36
Tom Jackobs: Interesting.
16:37
Tom Jackobs: Okay.
16:39
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, kept niching down.
16:41
Sam Lee: We're in the middle of, of our spring cohort as we speak, and we're in the middle of a three week series on building your predictable revenue machine and, and just last week we heard from two of our expert coaches one who helps people to relationship build at scale to activate their current network and, and build an army of champions to send you referrals.
17:02
Sam Lee: The other of whom helps you to go beyond your current network, helps you to ideal, uh, uh, identify what she calls ideal connection avatars.
17:11
Sam Lee: Partners who already serve your audience, who can be making a trust transfer, introducing you to the right people that you wanna be meeting with, and both of those frameworks activating your current network to drive referrals and building partnerships that drive referrals require that you have focus.
17:28
Sam Lee: 'cause how in the heck can you recalibrate your audience or build a new audience that is gonna get you in front of the right clients if you're a generalist?
17:37
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
17:37
Sam Lee: Right?
17:37
Sam Lee: You need to know who you're gonna serve and how you're gonna serve them, and the great outcomes you're gonna achieve in order to activate people in service of building the business of your dream.
17:44
Sam Lee: So, so anyway, it, it really is the, the underlying thread of your whole business value chain.
17:50
Sam Lee: It's who do you really wanna serve?
17:52
Sam Lee: And it needs to be specific.
17:54
Sam Lee: And when you can get specific, frankly, you get to work with people you like.
17:57
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
17:58
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, exactly.
17:59
Sam Lee: It's just the fun part.
17:59
Tom Jackobs: And it's, it's your tribe as as well, which is always nice to, to work with people like that.
18:05
Tom Jackobs: And, and you get paid more as a specialist.
18:07
Tom Jackobs: You know, you look at a, a cardiologist gets paid more than a, a family practitioner by far.
18:13
Tom Jackobs: You know, and same with, same with lawyers and like the generalist lawyer not doing as great as the one that focuses specifically on whatever, you know, some, some problem, criminal or whatever.
18:26
Tom Jackobs: And so, yeah, I think that's, that's a hard lesson for a lot of people to, to learn, but they have to do it, right?
18:32
Sam Lee: Yep.
18:33
Sam Lee: And, and to, to borrow on, on the example of the, the doctor, the family practitioner versus the cardiologist.
18:40
Sam Lee: Why is it that the cardiologist is making 10 times probably as much as the family practitioner and probably working no more hours,
18:51
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
18:51
Tom Jackobs: Probably about the same.
18:52
Sam Lee: Probably about the same, right?
18:53
Sam Lee: They've got probably specific hours and a way of working, but it's probably about the same.
18:57
Sam Lee: The reason they're making 10 times more is not because they've necessarily spent a heck of a lot more time studying.
19:03
Sam Lee: Right, the inputs, it's the outputs.
19:06
Sam Lee: It's the fact that people are paying for a life saving treatment, a painkiller problem intervention.
19:14
Sam Lee: There is a hierarchy of problems that your ideal clients face.
19:20
Sam Lee: At the top of that hierarchy are painful problems, and I say painful, not to elicit negative feelings, but to underscore that there are painful problems that no matter the economic environment.
19:31
Sam Lee: Your ideal clients will be willing to apply time and treasure to solve, period.
19:35
Sam Lee: Because they're so acute that when solved, they will create so much value.
19:39
Sam Lee: And then at the bottom of that hierarchy, there are what I call nice to solve.
19:44
Tom Jackobs: Yes.
19:44
Sam Lee: Or vitamin problems.
19:45
Sam Lee: Good luck in this economic environment.
19:48
Sam Lee: Getting the sales call, closing the contract, building a referral engine around, nice to solve problems.
19:54
Sam Lee: No one's thinking about them and they don't care right now.
19:57
Sam Lee: So you need to like the cardiologist, focus.
20:02
Sam Lee: On a painkiller problem for a type of client, because when you do that, you'll be able to get the sales calls.
20:09
Sam Lee: You'll be able to close the value-based contracts.
20:10
Sam Lee: You'll be able to activate the referral network, the current network, and the network you'll build in service of building that better business or that heart-led business of your own.
20:20
Sam Lee: And that's where the specialization really kicks into high gear.
20:23
Sam Lee: And we help people, as I said, to take the experience, which can be broad, right?
20:27
Sam Lee: I've worked in six different industries.
20:29
Sam Lee: I've worked with early stage startups and public companies in different executive capacities.
20:35
Sam Lee: So I could be, I could naturally fall into being a generalist, but I'm not.
20:39
Sam Lee: I'm very focused and it allows me to do double the income in half the time, right?
20:44
Sam Lee: 'cause I'm charging for the value I create and doing it in scalable ways.
20:48
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, exactly, and, and, just piggybacking on that nice to have to, the must have the, you know, do or die.
20:55
Tom Jackobs: And that's, that's the sales situation as well that I teach in heart-led and, and the heart selling method that I teach is you need to transform the nice-to-haves into needs-to-haves
21:06
Sam Lee: Yes.
21:07
Tom Jackobs: during that sales conversation.
21:08
Tom Jackobs: It's, you know, when you're dealing with, like, I, I work with health and wellness practitioners.
21:12
Tom Jackobs: A lot of times it's can be discretionary because it's not bad yet.
21:18
Sam Lee: Right.
21:19
Tom Jackobs: It's not bad enough yet,
21:21
Sam Lee: Right.
21:21
Tom Jackobs: but, so we need to elevate that to the must haves to get the value that you need.
21:27
Sam Lee: Totally, totally, totally.
21:29
Tom Jackobs: How do you work with people on the value-based, how important is that in terms of mindset and and mindset turnaround for people?
21:36
Sam Lee: Mm-hmm.
21:36
Sam Lee: Mm-hmm.
21:37
Sam Lee: So pricing is, is like probably 80% psychology.
21:42
Sam Lee: Um, and in order to get confident and in order to confidently express your pricing to a client, you need to do the behind the scenes work so that in that quick late stage of your sales process, you're able to very confidently express the value, package it in the value-based proposal, and send it once you've done the back work.
22:05
Sam Lee: Those last steps are actually quite easy and they become very routine.
22:09
Sam Lee: The back work, taking a step back starts with your productization.
22:15
Sam Lee: Who is the client that you wanna serve?
22:16
Sam Lee: If you're a generalist, good luck charging for value.
22:19
Sam Lee: 'cause everything looks different.
22:21
Sam Lee: Everybody's got different, different problems and they create different amounts of value.
22:25
Sam Lee: So you really can't consistently express it in terms that will be understood by any client.
22:29
Sam Lee: They'll be general, right?
22:31
Sam Lee: So you gotta focus on the right client, you've gotta key into some problems.
22:35
Sam Lee: And then through the value-based pricing process, you need to unpack the value that you create quantitatively and qualitatively.
22:44
Sam Lee: What will this mean for your client?
22:48
Sam Lee: Both quantitatively and qualitatively.
22:50
Sam Lee: When you solve this problem with and for them, how much value is it creating?
22:54
Sam Lee: How do you express that value in terms that will be viscerally understood?
22:59
Sam Lee: It'll be felt in their bones.
23:00
Sam Lee: It will be a feeling, not just a thinking exercise for them.
23:04
Sam Lee: And we walk people through Josh Neckes, who I mentioned, who does productization and pricing two sides of the same coin.
23:09
Sam Lee: He walks people through a process of quantifying and qualitatively expressing that value.
23:15
Sam Lee: So that is understood by your ideal client.
23:18
Sam Lee: And we companion the thinking that we do, the hypothesizing around what we think we're creating in terms of value with user research interviews.
23:26
Sam Lee: So you're actually speaking to people that have these problems.
23:30
Sam Lee: You're listening to them as well as we've got, we've got custom GPTs custom, you know, AI that we've built into our program that helps people to kind of gather data points to, to, to kind of augment both their thinking, their research, and then package it in ways that can be expressed in a value-based proposal.
23:46
Sam Lee: So, so that's the process.
23:47
Sam Lee: It's about focusing on the right clients and problems and then going under the hood of those problems, understanding how to articulate those problems in, in ways that we viscerally understood.
23:57
Sam Lee: So you can express the value and then charge for it.
24:00
Sam Lee: And we find that our members can frequently raise their rates 25 to 50% in the course of the 10 week program because it's not that complicated.
24:08
Sam Lee: You just gotta do the back work, right?
24:10
Sam Lee: You can express it in ways that are viscerally understood.
24:12
Sam Lee: People will pay to solve their most painful problems.
24:16
Sam Lee: In fact, they'll be happy to pay those reasonable rates.
24:18
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
24:18
Tom Jackobs: Absolutely.
24:20
Tom Jackobs: And it's, it's doing that work that I feel like a lot of health and wellness and heart-led business owners don't do enough of to show the value of what they're providing.
24:32
Tom Jackobs: 'cause it is so valuable what, what a lot of these folks are doing.
24:36
Tom Jackobs: And it's just they talk about the features.
24:39
Tom Jackobs: Well, we're gonna do diet and exercise and we're going do hormone replacement.
24:43
Tom Jackobs: Nobody cares about that.
24:44
Tom Jackobs: They've, they care about the outcome and the value that it's gonna bring to their life.
24:48
Sam Lee: Yep.
24:49
Sam Lee: Yep.
24:50
Tom Jackobs: It's crazy.
24:51
Sam Lee: And, and there's a, there was a great study that Google did a number of years ago.
24:55
Sam Lee: It's, it's now probably five, six years old.
24:57
Sam Lee: But I think the data holds true that two thirds of the buying decision, um, that your clients are making is actually emotional.
25:05
Sam Lee: It's not logical.
25:07
Sam Lee: It's not about losing this much, you know, weight or, you know, seeing your BMI change to this level.
25:13
Sam Lee: It, it's about how it's gonna make you feel.
25:16
Sam Lee: So being able to articulate that value in ways that are understood emotionally as well as logically the two sides of the equation is so important.
25:26
Sam Lee: And, and that's what the value-based pricing framework is all about.
25:29
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
25:29
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, for sure.
25:30
Tom Jackobs: People buy on emotion and they justify with logic.
25:33
Sam Lee: Bingo.
25:33
Tom Jackobs: You know, a hundred percent.
25:34
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
25:34
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
25:35
Sam Lee: Yup.
25:35
Tom Jackobs: That's great.
25:36
Tom Jackobs: That's great advice and, and great advice all through.
25:38
Tom Jackobs: I can't believe that we're just about at that time as well.
25:42
Tom Jackobs: So, Sam, how can people learn more about, IndeCollective and getting involved in getting better at their, their business.
25:49
Sam Lee: Absolutely.
25:50
Sam Lee: Well, anybody is welcome to check us out online.
25:53
Sam Lee: We've got a lot of great resources that you can find on our website, indecollective.
25:58
Sam Lee: co.
25:58
Sam Lee: That's I-N-D-E-C-O-L-L-E-C-T-I-V-E dot C-O.
26:04
Sam Lee: We've got a podcast that you can find there.
26:06
Sam Lee: A newsletter and we'll include in the show notes a free module on value-based pricing.
26:11
Sam Lee: In case anybody that's listening wants to tune into that, it's an hour long.
26:16
Sam Lee: You'll learn the value-based pricing framework for yourself.
26:18
Sam Lee: It comes with an action sheet and a custom GPT so you can shift into action and hopefully raise your rates like our members do.
26:26
Sam Lee: So yeah, a lot of great resources on our website as well.
26:28
Tom Jackobs: Oh, that's awesome.
26:29
Tom Jackobs: Well, that, that, that alone, the value-based pricing resource is so valuable for so many people.
26:36
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
26:36
Tom Jackobs: We'll make sure we link that up into the show notes so they can take, take that and get some great value out of it as well.
26:42
Sam Lee: Amazing.
26:42
Sam Lee: Amazing.
26:43
Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
26:44
Tom Jackobs: Sam, thank you so much for spending time out of your day and helping tons and thousands of people taking the time from helping them to talk to us and help more heart-led business owners.
26:54
Tom Jackobs: So I really do appreciate you and your time.
26:56
Sam Lee: Thank you, Tom for having me.
26:57
Sam Lee: I appreciate it.
26:58
Tom Jackobs: Absolutely.
26:59
Tom Jackobs: And thank you listeners and those watching the show on YouTube.
27:01
Tom Jackobs: We do really appreciate you tuning in today and make sure that you're checking out everything that Sam Lee is doing and we'll again, we'll provide that all in the show notes down below.
27:11
Tom Jackobs: Just click on the show notes and you can see all the links down there as well.
27:15
Tom Jackobs: if you could do me a favor, and that is to share the show with somebody that you know, that might be wanting to start a heart-led business, but kinda struggling with it.
27:23
Tom Jackobs: Or somebody that has one and is struggling with it and needs some advice from our lovely guests that we've had, especially Sam today.
27:31
Tom Jackobs: And until next time, lead with your heart.
27:35
Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
27:40
Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.