Grow Without Hiring

[00:00:00] Ken: Have you ever felt stuck between what you think you're selling and what your prospects actually want to buy? One day it's consulting. The next day it's agency style. Another time it's advisory. Maybe a prospect even calls it coaching, and suddenly your offer feels blurry and your pipeline gets even blurrier.
[00:00:23] Ken: You can feel the momentum and you know you're good at what you do. People respect you. They say That was an amazing conversation. Yet the deal never crosses the line. It stalls, it lingers, and you start questioning whether the problem is the market, the pricing, or maybe even the positioning. But the real issue is something deeper.
[00:00:47] Ken: Something most founders and consultants never say out loud, you have an offer identity crisis. The container is unclear. The transformation [00:01:00] is fuzzy and the words you're using aren't matching the value you actually deliver. In today's conversation, we're doing something a little different. You're coming with me into a real session with an actual client where I help that person untangle this exact problem.
[00:01:18] Ken: And like many of you, they have an established background. They are an expert at what they do. They're having trouble matching that expertise and packaging it and positioning in a way that the market understands. No theory, no hypotheticals, just an honest day's work of getting an offer back into alignment so it can finally close.
[00:01:40] Ken: So let's get right into it. You're gonna love this conversation and how it helps you grow without hiring.
[00:01:46] Ken: Chris, appreciate the time here and excited to jump into this. We have had a lot of discussions personally, professionally, everything in between we were just catching up on that. We will not bore. Everyone with that, but I want to get straight into it
[00:01:59] Ken: [00:02:00] And here's the thing, as I told you, yes, this is gonna benefit the other Chrises of the world, but I want to be here primarily for you. You've put in a lot of work. We've made a lot of progress, and I would say a relatively short period of time. I keep trying to tell you to give yourself more credit on that, but we have pivoted from what I would call.
[00:02:16] Ken: The play that a lot of people tell you to do online to you being a high-end consultant, you've updated your profile, you've changed your positioning, the call, call to actions, all the things. But here's the thing, I am not happy yet until we get one through the finish line, and I know that will also, and you as well.
[00:02:34] Ken: So we have gone through a lot of things relative to a couple different offer paths, something that kind of dawned on you. That you weren't expecting, frankly, from a direction that we initially were exploring. So just catch me up to speed on, those different paths and then let's walk through each step there so that we can get you to get your deal through the finish line.
[00:02:53] Chris: Okay, so I'll try and keep that brief. Let's say plan a plan a w is basically a consulting [00:03:00] business. That makes kind of sense for me, given my experience as a CEO over many years. So a consulting, probably my niche would be something like, let's say SMEs, I'm not gonna take on McKinsey but SMEs probably in the media tech marketing space, but.
[00:03:20] Chris: I, I don't, I feel like I might be being a bit too narrow in that regard. So my, if you like, lighthouse clients would be CEOs and founders of tho of those kind of businesses.
[00:03:33] Chris: And the, I had a three product portfolio within that we're still in Plan A. Okay. So that they were, growth, culture and transformation basically. Now, the reason that I had three products was really to put well, because people want different things, obviously, but also to be able to build some price price differentials within the product. So you have a tier of [00:04:00] pricing, different access
[00:04:00] Ken: Yeah. The offer portfolio concept that we have as part of
[00:04:03] Chris: Yeah, exactly. So that's the one I'll say one other thing about that, which is I act, I actually think everything, certainly everything that I want to get involved in, and if I'm a CEO, everything I should be involved in is about growth. So one of the things with dividing them into growth, culture and transformation is I've always had this thing going well.
[00:04:24] Chris: I'm not sure that's quite right. 'cause actually I want everything to be about growth. But that, so
[00:04:28] Ken: We're just getting the skeleton down. Fair enough.
[00:04:29] Chris: exactly. So planning, but then, and I'd always said, look, I don't want to be a coach. A lot of people who ask me if I do coaching, whether I'll coach them, whether I wanna get into coaching, I'm, and I've never really wanted to do it because it just didn't feel like it's for me, I think a lot of business coaching is like kind of therapy, and that's not me.
[00:04:47] Chris: I want, yeah. And that, by the way. I'm not knocking that, I'm not knocking
[00:04:51] Ken: it's just a different thing.
[00:04:52] Chris: I wanna do.
[00:04:53] Ken: Yep. Exactly.
[00:04:54] Chris: But I got approached, I'm not gonna get into the names of the organizations but that's confidential but by a very big [00:05:00] organization completely left field and asked if I would essentially coach an individual. And I said, I'm not coach. But as we talked about it, it turned more into what I would describe as. Sort of leadership advisory, strategic leadership advisory. It was yes, to help that person be a more effective leader, but it was also about actually helping them specifically inside some of the big challenges they had over a finite period, 12 month project that they wanted to run. And I thought, do you know what that is right of my street because that. In my last job, I was a global CEO, but I had a hundred CEOs work for me,
[00:05:41] Chris: And essentially my job was to influence the performance of their businesses whilst not being di wholly inside their businesses. Okay, so it's a kind of a
[00:05:51] Ken: You did the same thing. .
[00:05:52] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind, and I'm thinking well, actually not only did I enjoy that, but I've got loads of experience at it. I'm good at [00:06:00] it. And it and I, I enjoy it. I enjoy being. Being able to get into the problems a bit, not just talking in theory, and all that kind of stuff. So that sort of became a kind of, oh, that's not a totally divergent path, but it is a, it is different.
[00:06:19] Chris: There's something, there's something different between consultancy and say leadership advisory as I've just described it. As I said to you, Ken, I was thinking, wow, the perfect name for this is UN coaching, but you've already got that,
[00:06:29] Ken: it's all right. It wouldn't be the first time that my clients stole my names. Chris, go. Keep going.
[00:06:33] Chris: I'll put a little TM next to it for you if
[00:06:35] Chris: Don't worry. Don't worry. No, no licensing fee required. But it, but that, that, that was quite a nice way of describing, what I thought that might be about, it's almost like a kind of fractional chair kind of role whilst not being on the payroll. So those were the two, those were the two paths.
[00:06:52] Chris: And like I say, the second one came up unplanned after I'd already started to do quite a lot of [00:07:00] work around Plan A. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, actually, do you know what I think that leadership advisory piece might be? Might be the direction I want to go in. I figured, you are the king of sales Ken but I figured like it's no harder to sell one than the other.
[00:07:19] Ken: You're not wrong.
[00:07:21] Chris: In a sense. selling is difficult. It's hard work, lemme say it's hard work anyway. Everything's hard work. if I get. The pricing and the positioning and all those pieces.
[00:07:30] Chris: Right. I think they're both as difficult to sell as each other. Therefore, perhaps I pivot towards, let's call it plan B, and that's
[00:07:38] Ken: Yeah, that's where we left off and I gave you some perspectives around that I think we, we can do live now.
[00:07:43] Ken: But you said a lot of really important things, and I think that this is actually simpler than you believe if we actually put certain things in place. So let's talk about those. And again, people have listened to the conversations that I do in my podcast.
[00:07:57] Ken: By the way, you are the inaugural version of this, Chris, so [00:08:00] congratulations. But yes. So I haven't
[00:08:02] Chris: Patient. Patient, patient. Zero.
[00:08:04] Ken: Patient zero. We've done a lot of this inside the mentoring program, but not externally. but because of some fundamentals that I just wanna quickly go through that we have in place, this becomes easier.
[00:08:15] Ken: So what I mean by that is that we have defined a lighthouse client. It's the client that you want to replicate, which I know you say, Hey, I haven't had a client before. It's the client in certain cases that you served internally in that case and was a good representation of who you could go after today.
[00:08:33] Ken: The unfair advantage that we built for you, Chris, that I pointed out in early conversations and subsequently after that, is that when you can tell to your former self, that is an unfair advantage because you don't have to ask ChatGPT or Perplexity or Google or have a bunch of conversations, right?
[00:08:48] Ken: Because you actually sat in that chair before I understand the first group that you were targeting. Wasn't exactly that, but let's say there were maybe a couple steps before that, but they still were versions of you. The way this [00:09:00] becomes easier for us, and obviously we'll have dialogue on it, is that if we can think about the first group that you talked about as, let's call it for at least for today, a core lighthouse client.
[00:09:11] Ken: Meaning that the one that you had targeted, and that's what your positioning calls out to. The second grouping as it stands today. I'm gonna talk about why I say, as it stands today is actually a scaled lighthouse client. There are versions of each other. I don't wanna say exactly 'cause I know some of these are big firms, but let's just say it was something like this, and I'm just gonna make up the numbers.
[00:09:29] Ken: One could be 50 million pounds a year. Another one could be a hundred million pounds a year or 500 million pounds a year, but they both are in a form of services. Don't worry about the consultancy versus advisory. We'll come back to that in a minute. They're both in a service based business. You have experience, you have social proof.
[00:09:47] Ken: In fact, people around you were almost like, should Chris be here based on his background? But it's very different, like you said, when you're at not zero to one, but one to a thousand or one to a hundred, which is where you were before. So I [00:10:00] actually believe that these are more versions of each other, which makes your marketing and sales process a bit easier.
[00:10:06] Ken: As long as we aren't putting anything out into the universe that excludes or disqualifies. Between those two groups, you can actually attract both of them with a very simple marketing go-to-market motion, right? In other words, if you were talking about things that, and I'll just use my example for a minute.
[00:10:22] Ken: I help solopreneurs and agencies. If I talked about culture, and we'll talk about this in yours, guess what? The person like Chris doesn't really care. First of all, you're already an expert on that, right? But that's not where the problem is in your business today. Okay. As a person who is a consultant, solopreneur, however you identify, however, it would be useful for the agencies who are struggling with that.
[00:10:43] Ken: But now I've disqualified half of my market or more. So essentially we wanna find the commonality, the mutual intersection between these two groups, right? Between the bigger guys and the smaller guys. But I don't mind Chris, by the way, and then I'll be quiet if we actually start to look at that second [00:11:00] grouping, but I don't think right now we have to push our chips on either one of them.
[00:11:03] Ken: That's the concept that I would suggest is right now I actually like the signals that are coming to you without you having to fight to go get those.
[00:11:10] Chris: By chips, do you mean, are you talking about the audience or or are you talking about products?
[00:11:18] Ken: A little bit of both, right? We'll use the word offers today, right? But a bit of
[00:11:21] Chris: Offers.
[00:11:22] Ken: Yeah. A bit of both, right. Chris? my sort of position is let's operationalize the business. I know there's other words out there, and I've talked about it, like why I believe that productization is a myth as a person who actually built products.
[00:11:33] Ken: But a fundamentally, you and I agree. About, we're constructing it in a way where it's not trying to exchange time for money. I know that's a big conversation that we don't have to go deeper into. So I'm talking about both meaning that the offers are informed by who you're targeting. And a lot of people will reverse that and they'll go build the offers first and then they find the target market.
[00:11:53] Ken: I'm saying don't worry about pushing the chips on the second group right away, or even saying that we have to, [00:12:00] ignore the second group because we have the first one. There actually are versions of each other. That have very similar things inside your decks. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:12:07] Chris: So I, I think in terms of audience I, I agree with you in, in, in actual fact, one of the things that I didn't mention but but struck me as being quite interesting and potentially powerful about. Plan B is that, I actually think that opens out a far wider array of businesses because if what I'm doing is I'm talking to a founder or a CEO about the key challenges they have with regard to leadership, with regard to execution of strategy, these kind of things that sit on every single CEO, every single founder's to-do list suddenly, and in fact the opportunity that turned up.
[00:12:44] Chris: That I'm, that I'm still, I've still got a tender waiting to hear from. That is about as left field for me as I could ever have imagined in terms of market category. But the challenges are the same. Whereas when I'm thinking consultancy, which is a more [00:13:00] inside the business kind of task, I feel like.
[00:13:05] Chris: Certainly during a launch phase, let's say 12 months, 18 months, perhaps, it's gonna be a whole lot easier for me to get clients within a far narrower section of the market as I described. So even though the types of individuals I agree with you are the same. The breadth of industries they might work within.
[00:13:28] Chris: Actually, I think it opens it up for me when I start to think about un coaching.
[00:13:33] Ken: Yeah. So here's the thing that I find interesting and I want to, I wanna challenge you on it a bit. I actually think you built very similar offers and you don't realize that, and that you just have this idea in your head that the first one was consultancy and the second was advisory. And some of it is actually has to do about simply just the nature of the length of the engagement.
[00:13:53] Ken: But if I have both of them available, again, people are gonna be listening to this, so they can't look at 'em. But I have both of them in front of me. It's [00:14:00] almost like I did some homework for you, Chris
[00:14:01] Ken: And from a standpoint of the investment levels and what you actually do, they look almost exactly the same. The only reason why, Chris, you're believing that the first one is a consultancy is because it's a smaller business. That's it. But if they, if we functionally look, what about what you and I want to get back to talking about culture.
[00:14:19] Ken: 'cause I think it's an important discussion of whether that should be in there for either one, you only believe it's a consultancy. 'cause in your mind, having been in this big global business, you say smaller business, they need more hands-on help. They need more work inside the business. But what I would say to you is that's a cognitive load and a bias that you have superimposed on yourself.
[00:14:41] Chris: Do you think that if if you are a CEO, so there's this, it's the same it's the same buyer.
[00:14:46] Ken: one's bigger, one's
[00:14:47] Chris: What? Yeah. So I'm the CEO of a whatever, a hundred million dollar business, whatever. My, my answer to that question when I asked myself that question was I felt like if I hire somebody, [00:15:00] I'm the client and I hire somebody who says they're a consultant.
[00:15:03] Chris: I kind of expect the consultant to do some of the work for me. so for example
[00:15:09] Ken: yeah I'll just push back right away and say that's about how you position yourself through the process.
[00:15:13] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I, exactly. But also, but language also matters. I agree with you on that, but that's why language matters in terms of just what's the ex what's the starting explanation on the starting preconception, let's say, in terms of a client's mind. But you're right. It's how you position yourself.
[00:15:30] Chris: I agree.
[00:15:30] Ken: I, I think part of it too is that, let's say it the way it is, we're two old agency guys who have been doing this for a long time, right? So we have certain terminology that have been put into our brains, advisors, consultants, and honestly even the word coach Chris, I push back a lot on. But
[00:15:47] Chris: Which is why I don't wanna use it.
[00:15:48] Ken: A hundred percent. And I, I resisted it for a long time, and I think maybe to a disservice to myself in my first year of doing whatever I was doing. For example, that person said, would you coach? And I'm assuming it's someone inside the business or an [00:16:00] investor that said, Hey, will you coach this other.
[00:16:02] Ken: Person that's running this organization, this large firm. But they may not even know that they're, talking with you at this stage. Maybe at this point they do. So I think it's just in your brain, independent of anything else. You should realize that I am doing advisory work for both groups, period. And if you feel like you need to start describing yourself as an advisor or as feel free to steal this as well as a mentor, but sometimes the words. In the conversation or what matter more than what's sitting on a LinkedIn profile or what's put into a deck if you put consultancy into a deck. But then you showed essentially advisory services.
[00:16:39] Ken: You have advisory services, and a lot of what was in both of these two decks are very similar. But that's why I came back to saying, Hey man, they're actually functionally the same. But ultimately I don't mind plan B becoming a thing and becoming the more ongoing concern. If you said, Hey. KY.
[00:16:55] Ken: Why? I'm gonna go from being able to have 20 clients to [00:17:00] five clients, right?
[00:17:01] Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:02] Ken: I think ultimately what we need to see here, and I wanna come back to talking about, where their head's at and what they're waiting for or what they're kind of assessing. 'cause getting it to close is the most important thing for me right now.
[00:17:13] Ken: Like you have generated. Some of these conversations, by the way, I just wanna say this side note Chris, for a lot of people is that, you have built not a bad LinkedIn following. It's not that, it's roughly within the range of mine, right? So we both have invested into building. A personal brand, maybe we got some followers back when it was a little bit easier to get followers.
[00:17:30] Ken: But we did it right. We invested and made those, we made good decisions and calls them. But we didn't even necessarily leverage that. We have to first start by like looking within the network, letting people know what we're doing today. Because the, one of the things that is important for people coming out of corporate and whatever capacity is that the market only knows what they did previously.
[00:17:49] Ken: They don't know what they're doing today. So I think that was an important thing that we had to do is like. Why are we not taking advantage of your amazing network, which is transparently, phenomenally better than mine ever will be, [00:18:00] right? Like your actual network and not just like people that are following you online.
[00:18:03] Ken: So leveraging that and now we didn't just get it outta left field, it actually helped that you started telling the market what you're doing and they might have even looked at something online. Then you made those changes to say like, oh my gosh, Chris is actually available to help with this now. So coming back to.
[00:18:17] Ken: Where we are now. Changing that in your brain I think is starting to click a bit, but I don't mind having to constantly bounce back and forth between them. It might just be like, Hey, I closed this one. I know you're not independently wealthy, but you might not need to go get four more clients tomorrow.
[00:18:34] Ken: So you just work on that a bit and say like, how does this feel for the next quarter? And go from there. The only thing I will say relative to that second grouping and I is to make sure that we have the ability to get more of those clients. It's that optionality. It's the actual repeatable system.
[00:18:49] Ken: Not just for closing the deals, but to get more leads. And obviously there is a risk and you know this, but you did it at a different scale. If we do have five clients and we lose one, that's actually a significant [00:19:00] portion of our revenue. Versus having some diversification. So I wanna say this, I don't mind you doing both.
[00:19:06] Ken: But I don't think you should be having like 30 of the other client and then five of this other client. It might be a little bit of Hey, yeah, I have this advisory stuff. It's slightly different for this other group, but let's get one through the finish line first, and then we have the optionality to work through that.
[00:19:20] Chris: I, I mean, I sort of do mind me having both if I'm honest at the moment. I think it would be. Better for me to be clear with myself and with, potential customer, potential clients. What the key, what my key offer is. Now, as you say, f first of all, that kind of makes sense because as it's.
[00:19:46] Chris: Focus is a good thing, particularly when you're starting. But second of all, as you've said, actually if you look at the two offers, I may be using slightly different language in places, but in actual fact, [00:20:00] Chris, are they one and the same thing anyway and I think my third observation is that as you start to have a conversation with a client, whether you are calling yourself, mentor, chairman, advisor, consultant, whatever you call yourself, as you start to have a conversation with a client, particularly at that sort of high ticket level, there's gonna be some commonality in terms of what people wanna talk about, but the actual thing you're gonna be doing is by definition, gonna be bespoke to them because that's kind of what they're paying for.
[00:20:28] Ken: Yeah, within the lens of, and this is the difference between and I truly do, say this like we are going to create parameters. And I think right now it's not just about capabilities, it can be, but we're gonna create parameters. To limit how much access they have to us, the things that we're willing to work on.
[00:20:45] Ken: But it's not bespoke in the sense of, hey, every single time I have to rebuild the offers. I know you built this one for I, and I think you get, I just wanna say it out loud for others to hear that. 'Cause they'll think bespoke means like, oh, well we're gonna go build this out custom every time. But providing them parameters. And then the other [00:21:00] thing that I do want to touch on is making sure that. We're looking at the offers as a growth journey. We're looking at them as apples to apples. 'cause right now they're different durations and so forth. But we'll come back to that in a minute. So I just to be clear, Chris, I'm actually fine with you going down the path of one.
[00:21:16] Ken: I'm just saying that if we build this the right way, you have the option to do both and they won't require a different cognitive load. They won't require a different delivery mechanism. I think the main difference, honestly, is gonna be. The price point, and I'm gonna be very specific here. Okay. I work with you, you pay me money, and I appreciate that.
[00:21:35] Ken: That's why I'm here helping you out today, right? There are other people that are steps ahead of Chris that are multi seven figure people that I also work with, and I do the same problem solving. I work with them on offers. I work with them on sales and systems. The complexity is that they may have some people on staff, and honestly a lot of them want to become more like.
[00:21:55] Ken: Solopreneurs and they want to become more advisors. They're tired of all the people management, all the stuff that you and [00:22:00] I did for a long time, and I know you did it at an even larger scale, but I had a large team and getting into the weeds of all that stuff. I want to go back to just practicing craft and not worrying about the people management.
[00:22:10] Ken: They want to do a lot of that, but those people pay me multiples per month of what you pay me to navigate some of those complexities, but the only real difference is the price point. That's it. And that was actually a problem that I had with your two different options is that you had again, you didn't understand you were doing it similar problem set, but you weren't charging, I don't think commensurate relative to going from, let's keep saying it as the 50 mil versus the 500 mil.
[00:22:38] Ken: Just for the point of reference, you were charging roughly the same. I understand there's some different durations on that. But the second grouping that, what I was just trying to point out on that is why I wanted you to at least be open to the first. Is that you didn't actually have a clear way to go get those people.
[00:22:54] Ken: And right now we're still waiting. Anyways, that came through essentially. And again I'm just presuming so we don't have [00:23:00] to go into it, although we're not actually saying any details that would be revealing, but let's say it was like a board member or an investor who said, go coach up this person. And that requires a referral word of mouth based approach, which doesn't take advantage of other things that you have in place.
[00:23:17] Ken: So you might get four or five of those a year maybe, unless you build a clear way to do that. But I just wanted to at least say right now, I don't think we should be, as I said, pushing chips on just one of those. It's let's keep playing both, both hands, so to speak, until we see which one's easier to close.
[00:23:34] Ken: 'cause you know, those big complex deals, we gotta convince this guy now to get it and all those other dynamics plus procurement and so on and so forth.
[00:23:41] Chris: Yeah.
[00:23:42] Ken: Does that make sense? Why? Now I was suggesting that not because I'm not saying the ideal situation, we just don't have enough data right now to make a definitive plan B is what really is gonna work.
[00:23:52] Chris: That does make se yes, that does make sense. And I suppose what I'm a bit confused about is [00:24:00] on one hand we're saying these two things are potentially one and the same. And on the other hand of saying. Maybe we should pursue both until we see what works. When you say pursue both, really my, I'm interpreting that as two, essentially, two different ways of describing very similar products.
[00:24:26] Ken: So that's where I, that's where I'm challenging you and it, when we do it the right way, it's not right. So that's when I talk about that these are similar lighthouse clients who are versions of each other. I talked about this a bit ago, but I'll come back to it now. Essentially, if we were to build a Venn diagram, and we're gonna get super nerdy right now, Chris, right?
[00:24:44] Ken: And say SMEs and global Enterprise. Or global brand, right? And we found like what is the intersection between those? We need to do marketing that's gonna call out to both of them without disqualifying the other group. So in other words, what is the [00:25:00] problem set that's the same between them?
[00:25:01] Ken: And I'm just gonna say it this way for now, which we may actually change and we may do it not in this conversation. We have to keep people coming back. Of course, Chris, right? But essentially, if you talked about growth. Culture and transformation. And I said, Hey man, the word transformation, the whole thing is transformation.
[00:25:15] Ken: Let's get more specific. But if we talk about those three elements and that problem set is universally the same, without saying things like, how do you take your global leadership team from 50 to a hundred? Which the first group's like, we have three people. That doesn't make any sense for us. So if you talked about that, that's gonna make them say, this guy doesn't work with people who are like me.
[00:25:37] Ken: I'm just gonna call it out directly. Someone's gonna hear this today and say, oh my gosh, Ken's working with this super established corporate person who ran a group of a hundred CEOs, and I'm just coming out of corporate myself. Does Ken also work with me? And that is actually why I keep coming back to finding the commonality between the two groups.
[00:25:55] Ken: It's still offers, it's still sales, it's still systems. So making sure that you don't talk about [00:26:00] things that's gonna make the other group say he only works with super big brands, or he only works with these small little companies.
[00:26:05] Chris: Okay so I think if I interpret that, then when you are, there's two things. That are obviously linked, but different. There's who the audience is. Let's keep it simple. Let's say smaller. Smaller and bigger. Okay. And and then there's the, then I've also, we've also talked about two different, let's call them different business models, even though we've
[00:26:31] Ken: offer. Two different offer portfolios.
[00:26:33] Chris: yeah. But I so I get that, and actually I think the, I think what I'm hearing is that the driver is insight, of course. Insights into what the audiences want. You have to understand what the audience wants to be able to sell 'em something. And yeah so it's more about, it's more about, I think, making sure that I'm, I.
[00:26:53] Chris: a portfolio of offers, let's say, some of at least some of which appeal to both, at least one [00:27:00] of which appeals to both. Perhaps it's possible to do offers that appeal across the spectrum, but let's not assume that at the start. Is that kind
[00:27:08] Ken: Yeah. Yeah. Let me point out a couple things, Chris. 'Cause I think this is important, not just for you, but for others and for people listening to this, I wanna make sure they understand that what we're talking about right now is an advanced play and approach. Okay? It's what I call a portfolio of offer portfolios.
[00:27:23] Ken: In other words, there's different offer portfolios for very similar client types. I talk about as the core lighthouse client, which is the one that you're going after day to day, and then a scaled version of that. And I will say this as well, Chris, like 99.9% of people listening to this should not do this.
[00:27:39] Ken: So I'll make sure to lead in earlier with that for people that are listening and say that we're gonna cover some advanced topics. However, you have a very, and you're actually astutely observed this, a very similar business to me. We're both former agency people that are helping people that are running service-based businesses.
[00:27:57] Ken: I'm doing it in one segment. You're doing it in another segment. I [00:28:00] wouldn't play in yours, and you don't want to play in mine. Okay? So a lot of what I do in mine actually is very applicable to you, and I wanna give you more credit yet again, as I've tried to do a few times that you've actually identified some amount of shared problem set between both of them. Which is, they're really not that different. And the only thing right now that we started to say, what would be the difference? It's like similar problem set. Let's start with the audience. Lighthouse clients that are versions of each other, which makes it easier to have a similar marketing funnel, which makes it easy to find a shared problem set.
[00:28:33] Ken: To be very careful to make sure that we're not talking about the things that those both groups would say, Chris doesn't work with me. And then very similar offers that are largely differentiated. They're not consultancy versus advisory around the actual pricing. That's the way to talk about that.
[00:28:49] Ken: Now with the advanced version in play of the portfolio of offer portfolios, we can just right now say we don't have to pursue them in parallel. We can say [00:29:00] let's see what happens with this first one. And I would also be fine with this because you're gravitating towards it. Can you give yourself a challenge to go get more of those conversations in the next 60 to 90 days?
[00:29:13] Ken: So now we're not balancing this, oh my gosh, is this turning off this other group, or turning them on or making them disqualified or more interested. In your brain for 90 days, you can give yourself a goal of saying, let me go generate more conversations for group B or plan B and see if I actually can do that.
[00:29:31] Ken: Because if you can't guess what, we're coming back to the first group.
[00:29:35] Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:37] Ken: I like that it came out of nowhere and I like that as a signal, but what I don't like is you go. Work on these things and you never get that again. Just a quick example, I had very large global brands, Toyota Levi's, PBS, and there were marketing efforts that I did, but sometimes you do get the magical unicorn, Chris, that you're like, I want 12 more unicorns.
[00:29:59] Ken: And [00:30:00] you only wind up having one unicorn in the stable
[00:30:02] Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:03] Ken: Oh my gosh, I just spent a year trying to get another unicorn. That just doesn't exist.
[00:30:07] Chris: I mean, That has been my, that has been my, my key question around that. And I certainly until I, yeah, as you say, until I go and actually have spent 60 days, 90 days working at it I'm not gonna have any data at all around that. My hunch is not my hunch, but my. I feel like the more that I deliver advisory services to clients of any size within reason, obviously the more that I'm likely to be able to expand that envelope and the less those might look like unicorns, but that's a theory that who knows until I actually go and try.
[00:30:48] Ken: I, I believe it's probably less unicorn than we're suggesting, but we just need the data to back that up.
[00:30:55] Chris: That's my feeling. I mean, what we know is that your evidence of it, but there's lots of other [00:31:00] data points. We know that people are buying these kind of services.
[00:31:03] Ken: And they're buying it frankly, from people that, I just wanna say this, not to interrupt you, Chris, but they're not buying it from people that they should be buying it from, which is you you've actually sat in the
[00:31:10] Chris: I agree with that, Ken.
[00:31:13] Ken: I wouldn't suspect that you would disagree with Chris, but I'm saying this because it's why I do what I do today, Chris.
[00:31:18] Ken: And like I am passionate about this. 'cause I bought from a lot of people that said they could help me, and then I realized that they just never had built a business like mine before.
[00:31:26] Chris: Yeah.
[00:31:26] Ken: you have, so there's absolutely. This is what I'm trying to close the gap on. Just because you're not used to selling this, you're used to executing on it.
[00:31:33] Ken: Let me equip you with how to sell it, because you deserve the right to have this more than everyone else's that's actually selling it.
[00:31:39] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not just saying this in response to what you think, but what you just said. But If you're taking advice from somebody who's never done the thing that you want the advice on, kind of madness. And you don't have to spend much time on LinkedIn to find out.
[00:31:53] Chris: There's a lot of that about.
[00:31:54] Ken: Chris, if I could post everyday to LinkedIn I'm taking crazy pills. I invented the piano key neck [00:32:00] tie. It's an obscure reference, but it's how we feel. And realistically, LinkedIn is the worst culprit of it because if you get a. Ability to figure out how to do hooks and viral lead magnets.
[00:32:11] Ken: You can get a lot of attention that you really don't deserve. So I won't get onto my soapbox too much, but that is why I work with people like you because I'm saying you're an expert. You haven't simply built offers this way before. You haven't done sales this way because you didn't have to, but let's go get you in front of the right people and then give you a way to navigate it to a close.
[00:32:32] Ken: So turning the corner covered a lot of really good ground here in terms of. Where you are in the process with plan B with the first conversation, obviously again, we're continuing to be careful of confidentiality, but where is that and what is the thing holding it from, crossing the finish line?
[00:32:49] Chris: I've actually got a number of proposals in front of a number of people. I'm so sensitive about it. I don't wanna say more than that about it, if I'm
[00:32:56] Ken: Yeah, that's fine.
[00:32:57] Chris: But I'd say I've probably got [00:33:00] four proposals in front of people, businesses, of different scales. And I'm waiting, and
[00:33:05] Ken: I know and that's the problem. That's what I'm trying to fix.
[00:33:07] Chris: yeah.
[00:33:08] Chris: I say I'm waiting. I'm not literally doing well. Yeah, no, I am waiting. I haven't closed any of those yet. And my question is yeah, my question is, I think if you are trying to sell somebody something high ticket, as you said earlier, there's always, or there's likely to be more chewing and froing around that than there is if you are selling somebody something lower ticket.
[00:33:31] Chris: But I think even some of the, what I would consider to be lower ticket things, I actually think that I'm currently fishing in pools that are a bit small even for that.
[00:33:43] Ken: And so let's just push those ones to the side for a minute and say, okay we'll leave the. We'll use a metaphor. I actually like to talk about putting fish on the deck all the time, but we'll leave those fishing poles and the lines there and if they ring a little bit, maybe you come back over to them, but you may just let the, let them escape.
[00:33:58] Ken: I really want to focus on [00:34:00] that, what you called earlier, like the plan B, the second grouping. And this kind of, I like, I do wanna make sure I come back to and stay honest for people that were listening. It's oh, Ken was gonna talk about these different levers and sort of the durations and so forth, and Growth, culture and sort of transformation. I think the word culture can make you become a nice to have versus a must
[00:34:19] Chris: I agree.
[00:34:20] Chris: I agree.
[00:34:21] Ken: so I think there's a possibility that even though you probably talked about growth, if those things infiltrated the minds of the prospect and potentially the internal conversations, it's okay, yeah, we don't really need help with this or that. And that's why I tell people, when you show them that you could do 27 things, you're judged against 27 things. Chris, from My Sprints, we focus primarily on just two things.
[00:34:47] Ken: What is the big challenge and what is the big win? So I'll ask you the question about this one, because the reason why we're able to reengage someone who's just. Not making any movement is because honestly, they don't see you as [00:35:00] a, I needed Chris yesterday. What is the big challenge of, again, without going into any specifics, you can keep it at a high level.
[00:35:08] Ken: What is the big challenge of this particular organization be? And or the person that brought you in what is it that they need Chris to go help with?
[00:35:17] Chris: I think it's actually team performance. And by the way, I agree. 'cause I also feel the same around culture. I actually think culture's incredibly important, but I also know because it's not a lot of time with CEOs that their eyes glaze over when you talk about culture.
[00:35:30] Ken: But either way for one reason or another I agree with your diagnosis of what, but it tends to come across as being, not real business stuff. It's all squishy and soft and all that kind of stuff.
[00:35:43] Chris: So however the feedback which I agree with was if you talk about team performance, which actually, by the way, in my opinion, is about culture, but it's a, it feels harder and more tangible and something you could put your you could put your arms around. A lot of CEOs [00:36:00] will resonate, I think, with the challenges of, do you need a higher performing team around you, for example?
[00:36:07] Chris: Which you can then if you want, if land and expand. You land and say, okay, the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna understand how we get a super high performing team at the top of the business around you. Once we've done that, we then understand how we cascade that through the rest of the organization, for example.
[00:36:25] Chris: So you can see how that has the potential to be something that scales within an organization without having to use the word cultural front.
[00:36:34] Ken: I think it really comes down to this, and you're not gonna disagree with it. It's really more about how we implement it. Eliminating the word culture. We didn't have to arm wrestle on that. We already talked about it, and you already had some independent assessment on that. Everything we're doing, Chris, is transformation.
[00:36:49] Ken: So the word transformation is ambiguous.
[00:36:51] Chris: Yeah.
[00:36:52] Ken: I think really what it comes down to is that you are a growth advisor. Okay. And the journey that I think could make [00:37:00] sense. But this is the part that I wanna spend a few minutes on and I wanna say this as well and just slip this in quickly. Chris, I'm sorry.
[00:37:05] Ken: For the size of organizations you're dealing with, especially in plan B, it's all gotta be a year minimum period. Like these are large organizations. This isn't like a 30 day conversation and things are gonna get unstuck. Okay. So I think it really comes down to this, and this could be what your growth journey looks like.
[00:37:23] Ken: So the, and the duration that is solved automatically. I just don't think it makes sense. Otherwise, if someone's not willing to commit to this the pricing is definitely higher than you suspect as well. But what we're not gonna solve that right now.
[00:37:33] Ken: The simple version of this could be something around this, I don't know what the exact first one is but for sure the core, and we talk about intro, core and premium as part of the offer portfolio. What about something like you team company, right? You team company. And if you say something around this and I see some light bulbs going off for people that obviously can't see your face, but we'll talk [00:38:00] about it.
[00:38:00] Ken: This is where the, you could be like a little bit squishy and unclear. We have to think about it a little bit more, but clearly. If we were to start to say hey, miss CEO hey, Mr. CEO, we're, then they're gonna also work on the team performance, and then we're gonna just work on the organizational or the company performance.
[00:38:16] Ken: Those are clear. But it really comes down to within that you bucket again, if you were to think about you as the person sitting in that seat, I don't know. And if you, we wanna cross into this. You're like, Ken, I don't want to cross into this, but there is a performance of you as a CEO where there's what are your routines?
[00:38:30] Ken: What are your schedules? What are your cadences? Are you getting some exercise, I don't even know if you wanna touch into some of those things, but I know that you care about them. I know you're someone who stays active. What is your response to the you team organization model?
[00:38:44] Chris: I think that I really like that actually. I, I really like that.
[00:38:48] Ken: It also goes with this, which is the ability for us to increase pricing, especially if you were willing to interact with anyone outside of that CEO, right? [00:39:00] Or founder, which I'm not saying you have to by the way, right? But there might be. Let's just keep it simple for now.
[00:39:05] Ken: hundred thousand pounds a year. 2 500,000 pounds a year. And in the 500 thousand pounds a year, we're getting into this situation where we say up to three to five of your team members, and it's obviously not unlimited access, but it's some leadership training right within the lens of that relative to the company performance.
[00:39:25] Ken: However, you may decide not to do that. It might just be problem set only, and honestly, I like that better. It's more scalable. I'm just saying that these are the things that we play with when we build out the offers. Those are some of the things that we can change. We can change who has access to us, who doesn't, how much access, how frequently are we meeting with them?
[00:39:42] Ken: And then what really truly is the growth journey In this case, it's Hey, if you want me to just work with you, and there is a very clear lane that you have to box in, and that's where I said, is it clear enough? Because obviously the, you can touch a lot of parts of the business. That would be the part that I would actually ask you about.
[00:39:57] Ken: Is it, can we build that cleanly enough? The, you.
[00:39:59] Chris: [00:40:00] Expand on that question a little bit.
[00:40:01] Ken: Essentially what I'm saying is that it's very clear when we talk about team performance and company performance, but if I talk about Chris performance or Chris individual level, can we build that as a nice little silo that doesn't touch those other two lanes?
[00:40:15] Chris: I don't see, to be honest, I don't see why you couldn't. I actually think that leadership performance of the three, leadership performance, which is you
[00:40:24] Ken: So you as an individual leadership performance, right? It's all leadership performance at different levels. So it's, but again, I'm centering back on saying growth, Chris, because leadership trainers are a dime a dozen, right? But a growth advisor around your individual leadership performance, your team's performance, your organization's performance.
[00:40:44] Ken: So again. We're not gonna solve all the problems in the world today, but I think that would be what I would go center back around with the lens of plan B under a one year duration, because
[00:40:54] Ken: It's very hard to start the machine and move it. So that's what I mean relative to why it would [00:41:00] be one year and transparently, even people like me who are not dealing with those complexities, that I also am not gonna work with someone for three days, right?
[00:41:07] Ken: So there's no reason why you should be working. I say three days and as an exaggeration
[00:41:11] Chris: yeah. I know what
[00:41:11] Ken: 30 days makes sense for someone like you at that scale. 'cause guess what it is? Dipping toes in water and saying, oh, don't like it. We're all done. And just because that person was busy traveling to Barbados that week, right?
[00:41:22] Chris: Yeah.
[00:41:23] Ken: Okay. So I think we have some clarity there. But to come back to the actual thing and we will start to land the plane here a bit This is what we have to know, Chris.
[00:41:31] Ken: If we think about the waters being muddied around culture, around ambiguous terms like transformation. If we don't have clarity on the big challenge, we don't have a way to reengage them. 'cause we don't know what they actually really want.
[00:41:44] Ken: do. They want some help with the culture. They want some help with this thing then nothing. What primarily is the thing that they told you, not what maybe was in your offers that is the central focus. Is it them not hitting a certain number this year? Is it the person seems like they might [00:42:00] fail out and they might have to replace that individual?
[00:42:02] Ken: Like what is the thing
[00:42:03] Chris: well that is essentially not crystal clear.
[00:42:10] Ken: that's a problem, and that's why we, that's why it's sitting in limbo land.
[00:42:13] Chris: I think it's, I think it's a budgetary issue. It's a very complicated decision making process,
[00:42:19] Ken: It's a problem with your particular budget, your, the earmark of your services.
[00:42:23] Ken: And again, but here's what I would just say, and you're keeping me around to challenge you. It's not a budgetary issue. When you're crystal clear in the thing that you're gonna go solve and easily can justify it.
[00:42:32] Ken: If I asked you Chris, how much are your offers? And you told me 10,000 pounds a month, and I said, Hey, I charged this amount. We'll make that back within 30 or 90 days. It's, and I show you proof of work. I call them the proof drops. You're like, sign me up yesterday, ky.
[00:42:47] Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:42:48] Ken: if they're not really clear the budget looks like a bigger number.
[00:42:51] Ken: 'cause they don't actually see the pain point that you're gonna go hit. So what I would do is go do this Chris, for me as an action item. Okay. There's obviously a bunch of them. Go [00:43:00] back to, let's say this person sent you a WhatsApp message or they sent you an email or they, whatever. What was the first thing they said they wanted to talk about?
[00:43:08] Ken: Because we need the voice of the customer here to get reoriented around. You don't have to say it now, I'm saying as an action item. What was the reason they reached out that's gonna tell you what they actually care about the most. The first thing, not the 12th thing, but the first thing that they told you was the problem.
[00:43:24] Ken: And then later on, because we worked together, you can go back and we'll build some languaging to smoke them out a bit and put some fire under their feet. And guess what? I'm fine with them saying no, Chris. 'cause I don't wanna keep wasting time. So let's get them to a no or yes. In the next 30 days, understanding it's a complex sale.
[00:43:40] Ken: We're not gonna give them to tomorrow at midnight, and we're not gonna give them a discount to get them through. But if they're like, Hey, we send this, they're like, yeah, you know what? We just weren't sure about X, Y, Z. Now we know how to get them to the finish line or get them to the exit path. Fair.
[00:43:55] Chris: Yes, I think that is fair. I have a sort of a category question, let's [00:44:00] say, which is that it's a genuine question, but it's a s it's a, I'm giving away my hypothesis by asking question, which is that. I, in an ideal world, I agree with what you say. You can say, okay, this is gonna cost you 10,000 whatever pounds of dollars a month, and I'm gonna be able to justify that to you because of X, Y, and Z.
[00:44:21] Chris: Fine, I, in an ideal world, that's how it goes.
[00:44:24] Chris: That was just one example, by the way. no, No I no. And I totally get it. I agree with you but my kind of. My macro question is that this is when I wonder whether the language and by language words like consultant coaching, advisory, even like fractional chair, people.
[00:44:45] Chris: Have expectations around what they will, what is the going rate in inverted commas against those type of tasks. If you say I'm a co I'm we've said, I don't particularly don't particularly want to say this, but [00:45:00] if I say I'm gonna be a coach. There are market expectations about what I'll, what I, as the CEO or my business will pay for that versus paying different things.
[00:45:09] Chris: If I say I'm bringing a con, I'm bringing a consultancy business in. As we know, there's almost a, there's almost not an upper limit for the amount that consultancy businesses can charge, I think that's why, how, that's why language matters because I think that people have preexisting expectations or bands that they will they will tolerate pain or that they will
[00:45:32] Ken: Yeah I don't disagree with that, Chris. So I feel we covered some of that ground, but just to put a bow on it, we have to be careful. In this case, you were careful and you used the word advisory. So let's just take that out of the equation. That's actually what's on the cover slide in the name of the file.
[00:45:46] Ken: So you were coming in as the advisor. I understand that they also, 'cause I listened to what you said, that they said, Hey, we need some coaching. And if they did describe it that way to that person, they might be like uh, yeah, I'm, [00:46:00] I'm, I'm a dude. Or do that of a global leadership, a GL global firm. I don't need coaching. And that's, that's just a separate issue, which they are not gonna probably surface out to you, but they also had this external factor or force say, Hey, no, you have to go listen to this or consider this. So that's just like a thing that we could have gotten ahead of. If that person actually was involved in the process, which I would've even possibly said to them, and by the way, this goes from, please, sir, may I have another to...?
[00:46:27] Ken: You're in the, the control here. You're in the cockpit. And you say to them, by the way, I don't take on these engagements because they're a year unless I talk to that person. And we actually feel like there's alignment together.
[00:46:36] Chris: Yeah.
[00:46:36] Ken: And that could be something you try here too, right? But Hey, I wouldn't buy a house and not have an inspection.
[00:46:42] Chris: yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:43] Ken: So you could make that as a potential, Hey, why don't we have a bit of conversation between me and this person? And that could be a way to smoke them out further. 'cause guess what? If they're not willing to do that, they're not really seriously considering this and just get them to "no".
[00:46:56] Chris: Yeah.
[00:46:56] Ken: So I agree with all that.
[00:46:57] Ken: I'm just saying that in this case, don't worry about [00:47:00] the multiverse yet another pop culture reference because you did say advisory. But I would say this, Chris, as we conclude our convo, and obviously you and I will talk more, I believe what you have down here is insignificant. Okay?
[00:47:15] Ken: Transparently, those businesses were paying me that amount per month. Per month. For one client, they're paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, and that wasn't a lot for them. I used to joke around, and you know this, but you don't maybe know it from the side. I used to say that they would actually spend more on toilet paper for all their locations.
[00:47:33] Ken: A line item would look more per month than the couple hundred grand that they were paying me. So I actually think that you actually dramatically are under, and I just did a whole episode on this, so people should go back and listen to it around pricing for safety or pricing for growth. And I would actually say here, because of the lack of information, the information asymmetry, that you were actually pricing for safety.
[00:47:54] Ken: And you probably didn't know that. So I don't think it's a, there might be a budgetary issue relative to some [00:48:00] politics transparently thatthey're already spending a million pounds per year just on the salary of the person. And they're like, what? We have to go spend a hundred and whatever, you know, I'm not gonna out your price, but like some six figure deal to have some other guy do the job that this guy has a million dollar base plus 2 million or 5 million.
[00:48:19] Ken: Executive comp package, which actually would be small. Small compared to what most people have, right? So I think that would be more of the issue than it would be about your actual price. But it sounds like you might agree.
[00:48:30] Chris: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's good advice. I think that pricing for safety versus pricing for growth is right and making sure that that I am being realistic about whether I'm going because pricing, there, there is a connection, and you've just alluded to it. By listing those kind of salaries, there is a connection between.
[00:48:49] Chris: The amount a company can pay and the size of the company. And am I just fishing in the wrong? Nevermind pricing. Am I fishing for safety versus fishing
[00:48:57] Ken: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's fair. And I think [00:49:00] that's where again, I didn't have the exact specifics on the first grouping, but I think there is a band inside there that also would be healthy. That wouldn't be the small fishing pond, you know, hole. Yeah I don't need you to go out Chris to the deep sea and fight Moby Dick.
[00:49:15] Ken: Okay. Please don't do that. I don't think that makes a lot of sense. In fact, I always say that the whale clients actually will bring you down to the bottom of the ocean. So I'm not a big fan of whales, but I think there's some Marlins that I'd like you to go get or some fatty tuna to start. Those would be great.
[00:49:29] Ken: Yeah.
[00:49:29] Chris: Yeah. Okay. That's actually really great advice.
[00:49:32] Ken: Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you taking the time today, Chris. Really, good stuff. A lot of ground covered. I think we have clear next steps. Again, we'll recap it outside of this, but thank you again for your time.