 And we are live, Tad. Great to see you, buddy. Yeah, so for those who don't know, Tad are great. Hopefully you all know by this point because Tad and I have collaborated together for years. Good friends and I learned a lot from Tad. And we're gonna talk today about a topic that, yeah, I don't feel like I talk about it often enough but I think it's really important. Those of you watching this who are solopreneurs, service providers, even freelancers, we're gonna talk about business models because if you don't got one, you don't really have a financially viable business. And you might have noticed that. And if you do have a good one, then business is just easier. Having a stable income is just easier. So, Tad, I'm gonna interview you about this and we only have like 20-ish minutes. So, yeah, you're gonna have to tell us everything that you know in 20 minutes. And while you still give us a understandable pace, you know. So, but later, Tad has a webinar coming up about business models and an entire three-month sort of like a more well-paced community experience to work on business models. We can touch on that later, but at least in this, the next 20 minutes, I'm gonna see what Tad can give us at least an overview and some of the key points to think about. So, Tad, anything, by the way, anything you wanna say about yourself in terms of introduction, background? So, yeah, I run marketingforhippies.com. I've been doing this for about 20 years or so, a little more than 20 years. Helping hippies figure out ways to grow their business, travel around the world doing it in a bunch of e-books. And this is the first time in my membership, I'm actually talking about business model in a formal, structured way. Yeah, it's awesome. I think it's so important. I'm glad you're bringing it up. So, first of all, you and I probably agree on what a business model is, but I bet a lot of people watching, they're like, what's a business model? Why do I need one? So, let's start with the basics of what is it? Why do we need one? What's interesting when you were saying this at the beginning, the thing I wanted to respond is it's similar to niche. People will say, well, do I need to niche? It's like, oh, so you think you don't have one already? I look at niche as just what do you want to be known for? And so the idea that we're not already known for something by the people who know us, it's just not true. Of course, people know us for something. It just may not be the thing we want to be known for. That reputation may not be getting us the kind of clients that we want. So I think there's a similar thing with business model. It's not that you either have a business model or you don't, it's just that it's either working for you or it isn't. And so I suppose business model is like the structure of your business, the architecture of the lattice work, the framework, the kind of blueprint your business has been built on. And so is it a lean to, is it a one room cabin? Is it a mansion? Is it somewhere in between? Because if it's too big and too crazy, it's impossible to keep it up, potentially. And if it's too small, it just may not sustain you. If you're having a little tent and winter comes around, well, then you may die, you may freeze and die. And this happens in business all the time. So I think there's two things about business model. One is the size of it. Sometimes it's like a bucket, and you need to bring water to your family. But if you're trying to feed a family and it takes a couple of hours to go down to the river and get water, and this is what you're using, it's fine. It's just not enough. And then the other trouble is you get a leaky bucket. You know, the bucket doesn't work. And by the time you get home, it's all gone or most of it's gone. And so some business models are like that, they're big enough, but they don't work. Yeah. I love the metaphor you're bringing in. The tent and the winter, that's a really good one. It's so true. And also the mansion, a castle, sounds great. Like who wouldn't want a castle, right? Well, the upkeep will keep you, it's like 12 full-time jobs, just to keep it going, keep it clean or whatever. The heating bills, you know. The heating bills, right, all that. So let's just get really practical on someone who's going, I'm still not quite sure what you mean by business model. I'm gonna say something and it's gonna be really basic but I want you to fill this out. So many of you watching basically have, I have one-on-one service. People can hire me as a one-to-one life coach. I sell sessions. And then I got real sophisticated, you know, a while ago and I'm selling packages now. That's a business model. That's what we're talking about. You've got a really simple business model. You've got, oh, people can just hire you for a hundred and something, $200 an hour, whatever it is, your sessions, right? And then they can also buy packages from you. Package of three sessions, package of nine sessions or whatever it may be. Ted, is that fair to call that a business model? Is that basic? And what else might you say about that? Yeah, I mean, I like the way Mark Silver talks about that a business model is the way that money enters your business. And I would also add stays in your business. That's the main function of a business model. And so, you know, there's the old sales funnel. Most of us are familiar with, you go to an ice cream shop, there's little pink spoons and you can get an ice cream cone. You really get a gallon, you get a cake and you can join a club, ice cream related things. Go to yoga studio, there's a free drop-in class, there's a paid class, there's workshops, there's retreats and then there's the teacher trends. So the kind of bronze, silver, gold level of things that, you know, the sales funnel broader at the top just more people are gonna do the free stuff and they're with a lot of secure people will do that. But, and the challenge I find is sometimes a business model is, I mean, the worst business model for a service provider is, you know, I do a single session once and that's it. Like I read your astrological life chart and then we're done. And you can never hire me for anything again and you paid me 100 bucks, but that was it. Yeah. Which was the case of a woman who went a pig years ago in a workshop. So then if you just said, well, and I also offer you can drop in for regular sessions with me. That's more money right away. And then if you said, oh, and I do packages and then I do workshops around astrology and I have a deeper mentorship program where we really go into, you know, you can come up with more and more levels and most people, most service providers in my experience have one level. And that's kind of it. I do single session one-on-one or even worse, I just put out a bunch of free content at the free level, you know, but they don't, they hardly have anything to offer. So mostly it's that I do single sessions and that's all. And in both directions, there's more, you know, in that going up in the funnel, there's the free stuff, which is just about safety for people to check you up before they spend any money. And then going down is more about sustainability for you. You know, is this gonna last? Because most of us I think our clients want more from us than we're offering, you know? And if we just said, oh, hey, like I remember for years, people would say, Tad, come to my city and do a workshop. And I had a lot of offers and I didn't really want to be traveling that much. And the one day I thought, what if I tried it online? It was just tele-seminar service, you know? So I did six calls, spread out over six weeks. And I had 40 people sign up at 200 bucks, which was $8,000 and it blew my mind. You know, but that wasn't a part of my structure, my business model. It wasn't an offering. But the thing is, it's not just having the offerings, but you know, I think the sales model is a good kind of remedial way and in reality it ends up being a bit more of an ecosystem of things, but you're at the center of that ecosystem. And so we want to set it up so that the only people who ever get to you are the perfect fit people. We're not gonna quibble on price. We're not gonna be like, well, I don't know if I agree with your point of view, they're gonna be a really good fit. And so then we set up all these things surrounding us as almost as filters, but that also sustain us. And then, you know, when people come to work with us, they've already been filtered for a great fit, which means also the word of mouth is gonna be better. They're gonna get better results. But the trouble is, we say, well, forget the rest of the ecosystem. I'm just gonna do this one-on-one stuff. Well, the question is still then, how do they hear about you? How do they get familiar with you and see if it's a good fit? And do you think somebody's gonna go from just having heard about you, just dropping 20 grand? It's unlikely that they're gonna spend that much money, you know, with very little knowledge. You don't go to a yoga studio and then just sign up for a teacher training when yoga is brand new to you. You probably have to go through a bit of a process of classes realizing how much you love yoga, how much you love this teacher, and then you realize that particular teacher is doing a teacher training. And then what would have seemed like an insane amount of money even months ago suddenly feels really reasonable, or it may be a stretch, but you can do it. But it takes a bit of that relationship building. So in a lot of ways, I think the sales, a business model is a way of letting them get to know you and build a relationship over time at the pace they wanna go at. And you're sustained by it along the way. Yeah, I love that, I love that. And so there's a common issue I'm seeing, which is a lot of us here watching this, like you do really deep work and you're like, okay, I wanna do really deep work. So some of these other things feel too shallow for me because ideally I would just be doing one-to-one in-person services or in-person retreats. Like by the way, by the way, like I actually, as me, George Cow, I love doing in-person stuff, whenever, but the last time I did it was years ago when I still had some local connections, I have like no local friends anymore. That's another story, I'm such a hermit around here, but it's like someone invited me over and spoke to an ICF chapter and it was, I love doing in-person stuff, but notice, and I love, like the two times I hosted or three times I hosted retreats, it was like some of the best experiences in my life. And yet it's not part of my business model because I'm too lazy to, I'm not as hard working as you, Tad, you travel around, you like create in-person events. I'm like, oh, I get tired just thinking about feeling, so-called putting butts in seats and the risk of the retreat center cost. And I'm like, oh, it's so much work. So I'm like, we're all diligent about different things, right? Like even though I actually really shine in-person, I really shine in the room. It's like, I just, I couldn't be bothered, just too lazy for it. But so it's not that, so that's the, but some people go, well, George, I just wanna do deep work and yet I don't wanna charge a high ticket price. I literally was just talking to someone the other day about that. I'm like, sometimes I just wanna say, I don't know what to tell you, like if you want this and you want that, but those two are not compatible, like how are you gonna, I wanna do deep work, but I don't wanna charge a high ticket price and I want marketing to be easy and I wanna have a great income. I'm like, in this universe with our laws of physics, I'm not sure it doesn't match. So let me stop here and see what you would say to that. Well, I would say that one of the, okay, I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling. You just really wanna get in there with people. You wanna do the deep work with somebody who's a really good fit, somebody who's really willing to show up, take responsibility, do all the homework, all the things we hear all the time. And someone who's gonna bring out your best where you can go to sleep at night feeling like, wow, my gifts were really well used. I helped the kind of people I wanna help, very fulfilled and satisfied, right? So then the question is, how do you get those people? And the reality is a lot of people when they come to you are even if they're a good fit on a lot of levels, they won't be on other levels. So the way I relate to a business model is part of the function of the business models to get them ready to be your ideal client to help them do that. So for example, if I was gonna, well, and this is not for example, hypothetically, I'm doing a retreat coming up in Duncan July 13th through 16th. And everyone who comes to that either is in my membership and already knows my stuff or will be required to watch the full footage of my day-long workshop. Yeah, because I don't wanna have to talk about what niche is or how marketing is. That language just needs to be there. They have to have watched that already. And so this can be a similar thing where you can have DIY programs, little video programs, Danny Gardner who lives QuietMarketing.com she says these tiny courses she sells. You could create that, you can say, yeah, before you work with me you have to have done these tiny courses. Now why? Well, so they're walking in with stuff already done. They're already primed. And then you can dive into the deep work. But the trouble is you wanna dive into the deep work. So I'm saying, great. So we're going to start working on your hubs. What's a hub? Oh, well, a hub is a, these are people who can toast to an intro workshop. What's an intro workshop? Oh, right, an intro workshop is the kind of thing where you share your point of view. What's the point of view? Well, the point of view is your take on how you help people in your niche. What's a niche? Well, you try not to be everything to everybody because if you do that, then it's, you end up leaning on the unethical marketing tag and you're like, what's ethics? You know what I'm saying? It's good. That's good. If we get to this point, it's like, oh, you're not ready to work with me for this program. So for you, we got to start with the ethics. And but do I want to, in that conversation, try to bring them up to speed and say all this stuff? Here's another example. This killed me. So I'd gone through something rough and I was looking for a therapist who did brain spotting. It was a modality I'd heard about. And my friend Brian says, oh, I got the person. I go to see her. 180 bucks. And I, the whole set, first, it's an hour long. And the first half hour is just for going over the ethics of, it's like, you know, this work. And it's like, and then here, and then, you know, I want you to read this. And I was getting angry and angry. So we weren't actually getting into any work. I had actually shared, you know, why I was really there. It was just all of this preliminary stuff. And then I mentioned this was $180. And so at a certain point, I just said, are we going to do any work? And so we'll normally this first session is we just go with the ethics. Now she hadn't told me that. That was not framed. This was literally all stuff she could have put in a video or PDF for me to read. And then I said, I'm feeling angry. And she just said, I hear that you're feeling angry. And I was like, oh, now I'm serious. But what I'm saying is I wasn't a good fit for I never went back. Partly because it just wasn't a fit. But if I'd seen some videos, I probably wouldn't have booked. But let's just say, oh, at a personality level, she's a fit, I like her philosophy. She could have had me showing up being so ready. Could have been like, you have to watch this. You have to understand the ethics of this and the principles. And here's some homework to do before the first session. So then you can show up and in that first session we can dig right in. And me as a client, because this is the other thing, your clients want to do the deep work. Your clients do not want to be bored shitless. Just going around in the shallow waters, they've been swimming in forever because they can't go deeper on the wall. They do want to go deeper. But if they don't show, if they don't have what they need to go deeper with you, they won't. And so that's what a business model is, is you're creating the structures and containers so that by the time they show up to whatever the offering is, they're ready for it. So that people don't just wander into a retreat. And like, yeah, a friend of mine said I should come and I'm not actually even sure what this workshop's about. That's a nightmare for me as a facilitator. That's a huge wild card I don't want to have to deal with. So we can set up our own filters and a business model can be part of those series of filters. So the only people who've got their way through the dense jungle of your ecosystem are the people who is, you know, by the time they arrive, it's just like, ah, traveler, yes, you've made your way through the dragons or, you know, here you are, sit down and I'll teach you the secrets. It should be something like that. It's brilliant. I love it. And there is so much to talk about in terms of, yeah, structuring these different pieces because the filter can be, you know, obviously some free content. It could be a book, two books, e-books, you know, audio books, it could be online courses. It could be large group programs, small, smaller group programs. It could be, you know, webinars, workshops, retreats. It could be, you know, collaborated, collaboration events like summits or panels and things like that. I mean, there's so many different possibilities for the business model and it can be overwhelming. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's memberships, there's mentorships, there's masterminds, there's a million ways. So one of the first things I'd recommend is for people to have a sense of what some of the options are. That's number one. It's good to, and I've got a webinar coming up. I'll go over some of those and in the semesters we'll go deep into it. But, you know, you can ask around. What is your business model? What are your offerings? And you will start to get a sense of some of the options. And the way you choose, I mean, I'd refer to Alex Beasley, our colleague from bigdreamprogram.com, is you start with a lifestyle you wanna have. So you heard George say, oh man, traveling around, doing all those workshops, I'm exhausted. Whereas for me, it's, I actually wanna go travel to those places and I kind of, for me, it works. But you gotta start with a lifestyle you wanna have. Some people do not like one-on-one work. They only like group work. And for other people, it's the reverse. Other people, you know, you could have a legit, I'm waiting for somebody to do this, a business model based on just handwritten letters. And that's the whole model. Is you write me a letter, I'll write you a letter, one letter a month, back and forth, you know. That's a business model you could do. So the business model is the structure. It's kind of the way you do business. But you wanna choose a way that's actually going to be sustainable for you, that you could do over time that would actually lift you up, bring you joy. You know, I do, in my business, all the puttering sessions where I'm tidying or going for a walk while we do sessions. And that's just part of the deal. Let's say that again, because, you know, it's those who know you well know about this, but for those who don't, it's like, it's a revelation. So these are called puttering sessions. And the reason why they're called that is because Tad is when you get on the phone with him and it's phone call, it's not a Zoom, right? And there's no video. It's just, you know, you may hear buds or whatever and you're walking around puttering, cleaning a little bit of this or a little bit of that, maybe in your garden and whatever, you're puttering around while getting paid to talk to a client. I get paid to tidy my house. That's right, yeah, and these are popular. And actually, I feel like there's a lot of power in that because actually, I mean, when you're moving your body, you have a different level of intelligence than when you're sitting still looking at a camera or something like that or looking at the screen. So it's not just, it happens to be convenient for you, but it's actually probably quite good for the client as well. And also because I'm not resenting them and that's helpful for my clients. I'm not sitting there just like, I could be doing a bunch of other things while you're just reflecting and yammering. Like, you know, people need to verbally process sometimes, but it's, I noticed I was resenting it. I was just, man, I just feel trapped. But when I wasn't on screen and I could be like, this morning I got my recycling all done, took out the compost, I can sweep things, I can get a lot done and then my home feels beautiful and tidy. I feel accomplished after, you know, so that's marketingforhippies.com slash puttering. If you want to check out the writing. Definitely, check it out, everyone. See how Tad describes it, you know, Tad condo, Marie condo, Tad condo. The magic, the life-changing magic of puttering sessions. I know who will do it in the garden or they do it while they're in the kitchen cooking things or they're working on their golf game or there's all sorts of things that people do while they're coaching, but that's, so it's a lifestyle thing. So, yeah. While they're on the toilet, no, okay. The toilet sessions. No, that's another business model for y'all. So, okay, we, I want to respect your time, Tad, and we're almost running out and I want to make sure, so this is amazing, this is awesome. This has been such a great conversation because I am excited. I'm like, shoot, I got to copy Tad now and do a whole course on business models. Yeah, I think I already have three courses on L, man. This idea has been scattered throughout various courses I teach an entire one, but I want to, I think all of you who are really interested in this, you know, Tad is already creating this offering and a community to talk about this, where you actually can see other many people's business models and what options there are and then why they chose that and then you'll get to share why you chose yours and, you know, get support, putting it together. So, I think the main thing those of you interested in this, you might want to consider Tad, the marketing for HIPPY's membership where, you know, we're spending a semester there and I'm going to have a, you know, Tad's going to interview me about business models and we'll have time to, you know, I'll be contributing basically in that semester as well. And other, you know, Tad has many colleagues that are going to contribute their business model teachings to it too. And so there's a whole semester on it. For those who are not sure you're ready for that, you're coming through the filters of marketing for HIPPY's Tad. Tad has a webinar that is much, you know, one-time event, you can see whether you want to continue on, but tell us a bit about the webinar. Yeah, it's going to be July 3rd, noon Pacific time, 25 US, there's a recording available and it's going to, you know, two hours of me just giving my core take about business model, what it is, why it matters, some examples, some, you know, things you can be thinking about and how you design your own, but basically laying out a lot of options. And then I think by the end of that, you'll know if you'd want to work with me on it or not, but whether or not you work with me, I think you'll have a sense of whether it's a thing you need to work on and whoever you work with, I would encourage you to get help with it because profitability does not come from marketing. Profitability comes from your business model. If you sell books and this book costs you 50 cents to make them, you sell it for 40 cents, better marketing only makes you grow book faster. So business model is the key to long-term sustainability and profitability as a business. It's awesome. And just to say it's a low-cost webinar, it's only $25 US, I think it's going to be great value. There are those of you who are watching this later after the fact, you can buy it on TAD's website, marketingforhippies.com. Go there, there's just so many free resources that TAD offers and e-books, low-cost webinars, and of course there's the membership itself where the community really hangs out and supports each other. TAD, thank you so much. You're always innovating and bringing much needed stuff to our fellow hippie business owners. So thanks for all that you do, man. Well, and just if you want to go further webinar, marketingforhippies.com slash events, and if you want to check out the webinar, marketingforhippies.com slash- Thank you, marketingforhippies.com slash events. I will of course put that below as well. So thank you so much, man. Thank you.