share with us a little bit about Profit Ladder. So it is a company where I help
service-based business owners turn their sort of high ticket services that they
have into scalable offers that attract ideal clients and help them to scale
their business so they have more time back to serve their clients. Absolutely
and I tell you most people want the time back. As I read a lot of information
regarding you and your business that's one of your main focuses as you have a
story that I would really love for you to share as how your business got to a
level where you are now. Well it started by solving my own like really scratching
my own itch so I ran another consulting business for 15 years and I sold high
ticket services to large companies and the sales cycles were just really
grueling to say the least. Very long 12 plus months trying to get in front of
executives that are busy and so like a lot of prospecting and pitching and
doing all the sales stuff you know like following the traditional playbook and
being ghosted left and right and just kind of like you grow some scales to
that and your armor goes up but it also over time for me who you know I became an
entrepreneur and never really wanted to be in charge of sales but it became my
job and doing a job that you don't like doing that's exceptionally hard and
you're getting sort of rejected left and right. I just wanted a way to make that
that that job that I had of building my own business easier. I wanted to create
offers that people saw as valuable and easy to buy and let me focus more on
doing the work instead of spending so much of my time selling the work. Yeah
yeah it's interesting because as a real estate agent full-time time just sounds
really good more time right but of course we know we only have 24 hours in
a day and majority of that is spending time with family or driving so I
definitely get that so as you realized you were in a situation what was a what
was the system or the turning point that got you to where you are today? Well so I
got well to be honest I got so burned out doing the work that I tried to start
giving away parts in my job first just trying to automate and systematize the
marketing and sales that I did but then even the delivery of the the work that I
was hired to do which is sort of like innovation and strategy work I said you
know it's a three and six month project that I tend to sell and that work is
very intense highly performative I'm helping executives and big companies
make really critical decisions that are seven eight nine figure decisions so
over time I was like you know maybe I can take the expertise that I built up
doing this sort of like in this product development innovation work and I can
package it into formats that my clients and sort of their teams could use without
me having to be in the room because because like I mentioned before it was
such a long complicated sales process I had to really explain a lot of how we
would work the time I'd need from them how long things would take when they
could expect a return on their investment and so I said like I bet that
there's a way that I can take these things packaged up so that they don't
need me they don't need to like spend five six figures hiring me and go
through that whole vendor approval process I could just almost immediately
give them access to what I know about the frameworks that I use and then they
can get their own wins and sort of like significantly minimize their time to
value and the problems that they were trying to solve to begin with when they
sought out my help nice nice so you built a system where they can work it on
their own and are you pretty much the support team if they have questions or
things like that yeah so I called them tool kits so I took I took all those
resources my knowledge I created training videos of how to use my tools
how to go through the process and so I packaged them into these things called
tool kits and I sold them so like to hire me to do what I did was often like
fifty to a hundred thousand dollars for a six month long project and now I'm
selling these tool kits for two three hundred bucks so that at first was a bit
of a mindset shift for me to take ten years worth of expertise and and be
willing to sell it for a really small nominal fee but what I notice is the
people that bought them often then went on to come back and hire me anyway so
it was an unexpected benefit that I had instead of just being this new revenue
source from these tool kits it wound up almost being a marketing vehicle that
people would drop back into my inbox and say hey Jay you know I used your toolkit
we loved it we have another project coming up we'd rather you just do it this
time around we were pretty good at it but we imagine that you're so much better
at it since you created this toolkit and that made my job of selling I mean
exceptionally easier so I did have to support them people would reach out with
questions about certain specifics about how the tool kits worked but mostly
people were just like you know I want to pick your brain on like how these things
work and maybe we can talk about a project that we have coming up so my
support role almost blended into my ability to sell without even really
having to sell absolutely and then by them watching your videos they pretty
much knew the person behind the business so why not just go ahead and have him do
it I think that's interesting about entrepreneurship is they first got to
get to know you so they can utilize the services right so that was definitely
very smart as you mentioned you had no clue is going to be a marketing vehicle
for them to hire you anyway so when it comes to profit ladder of course we
wouldn't be on vision pros live if I didn't ask you to tell me about your
vision so I have this system that I use today when I work with clients it's
called a reverse flywheel and what I think it is what I think makes for a
really strong service business is to put at sort of like the gateway to working
with you which is exactly what you're just saying create offers that are easy
to understand easy to buy easy to use minimize your time to value and remove
you from all the sort of acting consulting coaching work that you're
doing so I build I help my clients build this sort of reverse flywheel where the
goal is to sell as much as you can of your one-on-one work so I'm pretty I'm
dog-fooding my own process for the next year I'm going to be working with up to
a hundred entrepreneurs that are trying to scale their service-based business
then I'll create one too many formats from that work and then as I answer
questions create templates create assets I'll package those into do-it-yourself
versions of the work that I do and eventually I'll have my own flywheel
which is very much inception of exactly what I'm teaching my clients to do
because it works and I really believe in it so I want to do the same for my own
business absolutely so I was looking as I mentioned me looking on your site and
everything and you have the you know still getting the leads still getting
people in you know it's it's almost like an ever-giving system that allows you to
have continuous growth in the business what was the biggest struggles you faced
when you decided to grow profit ladder at first jumping to sort of like chasing
money it's always been a thing for me is like chasing the revenue and forgetting
that again dog-fooding the process I have to demonstrate my expertise and my
value earn trust from my market and so people won't be willing to just drop
five ten thousand bucks to work with me one-on-one and they probably also won't
just buy a toolkit or a template that they don't they haven't yet gotten to
know me so after six months or so of research I realized that if I could run
master classes and be in front of my audience and show them sort of like
teach them the process and get them down the funnel then it'll be much easier for
them to just hire me or kind of use one of my do-it-yourself offers yes yes yes
makes a lot of sense so you're now doing masterminds as well yeah these master
class like two-day workshops I probably should be charging for them but I I
really have a good feeling that if I can bring the right people together and
inspire them educate them on like productizing and finding their own
packaged offers that the right people lean forward and want to work with me so
I'm keeping them free at least for now it's invite only I have an application
process and so far the first one I'm doing next week is almost already sold
out or not sold out but filled because it's very I'm really excited about it
how many you have participating if you don't mind my asking there's 18 right
now and I said I said like at max I want 20 but I plan to do the monthly so I'll
take it like one one master class at a time and if it goes really well and I
get really confident in it maybe I can expand it okay and you said the max
you're taking this time would be 20 yeah so I've got two spots left applications
close this Friday so it should be filled out by them got it got it so y'all hear
that there's two spots left to being educated and sitting with Jay Malone to
figure out how to profit get on the profit ladder I love the name of that
because I tell you interesting enough is the goal is always to to rise right to
increase and and like you said a lot of people are often chasing money but
there's a better way of doing that right letting and what I see you have done is
by having those toolkits and allowing people to do it on their own is giving
them an ability to learn and know you first which is what everyone is talking
about now is just building a relationship so that people can contact
you and trust you to contact you and to make their business move forward and
climb the ladder so not to give away much or a lot you do have a website
which we will announce later but what tips do you have for entrepreneurs
business owners or leaders that you can give them I think I build on top of what
you're saying is I think especially service-based business owners you are
sort of led to believe that you got to chase revenue at first and that the only
way to do that is to show up and do what you do day in and day out you you know
you're burning the candle at both ends and there's no room left for you to
scale your business let alone enjoy your life and spend time with family there
are ways if you're willing to I think like the biggest pitfall is too many
business owners including myself for many years are willing to put in a little
bit of elbow grease up front to create those offers that do attract people and
make things offer and bring in more predictable revenue they just want to
like chase the clock and sign clients and move on to the next deal and that
just keeps you on that hamster wheel so take a minute think about that there are
wedge or gateway offers that you can create that bring your next client to
you instead of always having to chase that's the way you want it to is just
not you know one person one client that's done now where's the rest of them
coming from yes feast or famine cycles that you get caught up in and it really
drives you crazy after a while yes and an interesting is now that me being on
the podcast interviewing a lot of guests and social media a lot of people are
trying to be entrepreneurs based off of other people's visions considering you
had gone through another business and now you're here and now you're realizing
and have realized so much to help other people how often do you believe that
these business owners and entrepreneurs can reach a level immediately because of
what they're seeing everybody else do you know it looks real good but yeah it's
it social media is really a trap like that that you I mean it's good to be
inspired so the good part of social media is that you can very much more
easily these days you just have to go to seminars and hire coaches and get
mentored from these high-power executives today you can open up YouTube
or LinkedIn or another social platform and you can follow along the stories of
people that build in public which I'm a huge fan of the trap is that you then
put a timeline and unrealistic expectations in terms of time and money
that you'll be able to replicate what they did and it's always an iceberg you
never very few share the 10-year saga behind I mean my business my first
business is my prototype of me being an entrepreneur and that was 15 years
most many people would give up or just assume that I started profit ladder and
I made six figures in my first year and I like a few months of struggle and pain
and I figured it out but there's so much more behind that so you got to just you
really have to be inspired but then be realistic about what you can do with
that inspiration absolutely and I love how you I say twisted that because it it
is being inspired and there's nothing wrong with being inspired and and I
truly truly love the way you said that because it can be an inspiration as long
as you're not looking for a quick fix what are the common mistakes business
owners are making when trying to scale I think it's a direct correlation between
scale equals more of my time or or hiring more people and that can totally
be true I'm not knocking companies that want like business there's some plenty
of business owners that want to grow a big team and that's how they will scale
I've been down that path and I think that it's especially the more we get into
the better the technology gets the better you're able to leverage AI as a
partner in the work that you do and manage sort of contractors and virtual
assistants I think you can build a very healthy and profitable six seven eight
figure business with a tiny tiny team so I think like think about what scale
means to you it doesn't need to be always increasing your prices till you
price yourself out of the market hiring bring on all that risk or working
yourself to like really grinding out until you're unable to do the work
anymore yeah yeah Jay are you also a consultant is that a part of your
business as well sort of I do more well I guess no I do I'm trying to be more on
the strategy side and maybe a little bit of coaching my first business was in
consulting and I also grew up in Accenture and had other consulting roles
and I'm trying my best not to build that business which requires me to always
have to show up and do what I do in order to get paid so it's more strategy
work I give people out of the tools and the frameworks I point out their blind
spots that I always use that expression and it's hard to read the label from
inside the jar so that's kind of the I provide them with a second brain and I'm
like here are two or three offers that are right under your nose that I think
would really scale your business here's how to build them so I give them a plan
and a blueprint and off they go yes well I had to ask because I'm sure everyone
is thinking it I'm like hey I mean that the tips that you're given it's like oh
I could just give him a quick call he could tell me how to scale my business
real quick and give me some great advice so I'm sure I wasn't the only one trying
to figure that out yeah advice advice and help is totally up I just don't want
to build the offers for people I think I have partners that do that work I'm very
leery of building another start-to-finish service business like that
yeah yeah it makes all the sense in the world and before we go this is one of my
favorite questions what are the greatest joys of what you do so in my last job I
helped big companies move big boulders of big mountains which is great and
there's a lot of pride that comes with that in helping a Ford and a Rosetta
Stone and a Home Depot today I'm working with people like you and I individual
business owners that have gone all in on building their dream and I know how hard
that is and I now have like a system it's not just like I do coaching and I
can help the next entrepreneur I have systems that I know work that I use that
I give back to people and it's really it's talk about inspiration it's like
inspiring and an honor to be able to help those people in ways that will
really kind of move the needle for them thank you for being here today I'm
really happy that you tuned in to vision pros live I'm looking forward to seeing
your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward is going to
get more and more fun we'll have more and more engagement as well we'll invite
people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and
attention have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a
vision for yourself