The Hustle Ep5 : Can I Pick Your Brains

Hey, guys, Cal here from Young & Wildly Successful. Just driving in Sri Lanka. This place is magnificent. It’s really, really beautiful. I apologize for the bouncy video. I am in the car. I’m trying to figure out how to actually navigate the streets of people that don’t have tail lights. But this is the joys of being in another country and living life on your terms. I’m literally driving along the coast at the moment, which is magnificent.

Guys, on this video, I want to talk to you about how to overcome the challenge, which is that when you start getting some success, when you start making a difference in people’s lives as a coach and as a trainer, as a speaker, as an educator, as an influencer, as a revolutionary if you will, you’re going to start to get a lot of people that ask you if they can pick your brains. A lot of people that ask you, “Hey, can I just have a couple of minutes of your time? I’d like to know if you could just run your eyes over my idea.” I get asked all the time to invest in ideas. You’re going to ask a heap from people if you can give them some help and some support. And in the beginning, you’re going to do that and you’re going to be happy to do it just because the fact that you love people. Hey, that’s what you got into this game before in the first place. You actually just wanted to help people. You wanted to serve people. You wanted to make a difference, but what you’re going to realize as I have is that when you work with that many people, your time quickly just evaporates.

Spending a whole heap of time with people that you want to help them support and serve, but they have this challenge. They’ve got an issue really. That is that you tell them…They ask you for your advice, you give it to them, and then they don’t do anything with it. Then they come back and ask you a couple of weeks later for the same piece of advice that you’ve already given them.

There is nothing more disheartening for a coach than to see somebody who could have made something happen, based on your insights that they just didn’t take action on it. You go, “Gee, I wish I could have just done more.” Then I realized that what was happening was people wanted access to my time because they felt like I was very accessible, and I am through social media and things of that nature.

I’m very accessible, but they weren’t treating my time with the respect that it deserved. The reason why…it wasn’t their fault. The reason why they were treating my time with respect it deserved was because I wasn’t treating my time with the respect it deserved. I’ll give you a really great example of this. About two, three weeks ago I was on the Gold Coast in Australia doing a private client event. I was flown out by a client to train some of his clients of his coaches. They’re actually doing a coaching certification. He had asked me to fly in to train his clients on how to…I love this. There is L plate learner that’s literary taken a piece of white paper and drawn an L, a red L on their paper so that you can see. I’m not sure if you can see. You can’t see behind me. Anyway, sorry, I got a little bit distracted there.

I was in Gold Coast, Australia. I’m having a chat with this client, and he’s quite successful in network marketing. And he was talking to me about how he wanted to get more clients on board. I said, okay. How much money do you want to make? He says, “I want to make a $1,000,000, Calvin.” I said, “Okay.” We worked out what his weekly rate was, what his daily rate was, and then what his hourly rate was. His hourly rate was I think just off the top of my head, I’m not doing the math right now. His hourly rate sat somewhere around about $500 an hour based on the amount of hours he wanted to work per week. Let’s call it 500 for the purpose of the video. Then I asked him, I said, “Okay. How many people when you sign them on board are ultimately successful?”

He says, “I spend a lot of time with people that aren’t really super successful in the business because they’re just not committed.” I go, “Okay.” I said, “Do you realize how much money it’s costing you to bring them on board a new person?” He said, “Oh, no, it doesn’t cost me anything. They pay me to come on board.” I said, “No, you don’t get the point.” And that was that he was spending an average 30 hours a month, for the first two months he was spending 60 hours total just to indoctrinate these people that came on board. He was sitting with them. He was doing calls with them. He was scheduling webinars for them. He’s doing all this work in the hope that they would eventually be successful. What he didn’t realize was that was all taking away his time, and his time had a dollar value.

He wasn’t giving himself $500 an hour because he wasn’t making a $1,000,000. But if you want to make a $1000,000, if you want to make a $100,000, whatever that amount is, you’ve got to work out how much time you’re investing into somebody. And then is that time taking away from a critical, productive activity in your business that could be growing your business even more? We worked it out that it was spending…it was $500 an hour over 30 hours. That was $15,000. So he’s spending $30,000 over two months of his time to help train somebody. I said, “Now that you’ve realized…” His name is Joey. I said, “Joey, now that you’ve realized it’s costing you a $30,000.” I think the actual total worked to be somewhere at 45 off memory, but let’s call it 30. “Now that you realize it’s costing you $30,000 to bring on people into your business,” I said, “Do you actually want more people?” He says, “No.” He says, “I just want the right people.” I says, “That’s the right answer.”

Because a lot of us think that we want more people in our business and we don’t. What we then do is we then think that everyone that’s looking for help could be a potential customer. And I [inaudible 00:05:22] everybody, you don’t. I’m going to give you a couple of strategies right now to help the people that are asking you for advice, help them earn it. Help you get paid while it’s doing it, and on top of that, help you find a little bit more balance and be okay with saying no. Because that’s what really this video is about.

But the first thing I want you to do is just get clear on how much your time is worth so that you know when you say yes to somebody that messages you on Facebook, or reaches out via Instagram or Twitter and they say, “Hey, can I just have a couple of minutes of your time?” They go, “Can I just have an hour of your time? I’d love to take you out for coffee.” You go, “Okay.” That coffee is going to cost me $500. It might cost you $2.50 for an espresso if you live under a rock. I don’t know where $2.50 came from actually. But it might cost you $2.50 for the coffee, but it’s going to cost me $500 to give you my time. So unless I’m feeling exceptionally generous today, you better have some damn good ideas and some damn good things that you want to share.

Hopefully, that really resonates with everybody because if you don’t treat your time with that respect, you won’t get there. Here is a simple hack, just explain that to people. What you’ll find is that the people that are not really committed, they’ll just won’t waste your time. The people that are committed they may still ask you for their time, but they’re going to treat it with the respect it deserves. And so if someone asked me and said, “I’d like to work with you one-on-one.” I had a couple…two girls that were in business together, not a personal couple, a business couple. They called me up, one of my good friends, Karim El Barche, one of top fitness professionals in Australia, gave me this referral, these two girls.

They called me one day. And I don’t know where…they got my number from Karim obviously. They said, “Karim referred us. We want to work with you in our business.” I said, “Okay.” They said, “Do you want to just tell us more about what you do?” Jesus, already we were at a wits end because I don’t explain to anybody what I do. You don’t have to know what I do or you don’t need to know. Not that it’s from a place of arrogance, it’s because you know that they’re not qualified. So I just said to them, “Look, this would be a better idea.” I said, “To work with me one-on-one is $120,000 a year. I’m not sure if you have the capital to invest that, but I just want to let you know that’s how much it costs.”

“So I’m willing to give you all of my time and my energy and my effort, and I’m more than happy to have a conversation with you about business. But I just want you to know that’s how much my time is, and so why don’t you just tell me a little bit about your business and I can see if we’re the right fit together. Because if we are, I’d love to work with you. If we’re not, then at least we can find out and I can refer you onto somebody that might be more applicable.” They were like, “We don’t have a $120,000 right now.” I said, “You don’t have to pay $120,000, but I’d obviously would like to get to know you guys a little bit more. I’d love to find about your business.” So they talked a little bit about their business, and it was clear that their expectations and what they were willing to pay was just completely off base. But I was able to find that out pretty quickly, just by letting them know upfront how much my time was worth.

It also meant that they respected the time more and they just got to the point. So sometimes people rabid [SP] it on about nothing to try and create small chat. If small chat…if you have $500 an hour and takes 15 minutes to get into the conversation, you’ve already lost about $150, guys. So that $150 was that really worth that 15 minutes? Probably not. It’s about getting to the jugular of things and just moving forward with the conversation. You can still have casual conversations, but at least you’re aware of them. So first one is make people aware of it. Therefore, people that genuinely respect you won’t waste your time. And if they do have a conversation with you, they’re going be to the point.

The second thing, and I actually love this idea, and it’s not my idea. It’s an idea from my business partner Kim Barrett, and what he does is he has an Amazon wish list. He has an Amazon wish list and he has a whole heap of things that have monetary values between books that might be $10.00. I think one of his clients that booked in for a call with him not a long ago, paid to have a Japanese tea filter set. I think was for like 70 bucks. He says, “You can book in a call with me, and I won’t charge you for the call.” He says, “My time is normally $1000 an hour. All I ask you to do if you’re committed is you go and buy me two books or buy me one of the gifts on my Amazon wish list. If you think it’s valuable enough to have a call with me for that, then I’d love to have a chat. If you don’t think it’s valuable enough, then I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

He gets a whole heap of these really good gifts from people that he would have never bought himself, but that he really loves having because now he’s actually giving his time. But he’s getting a little gift back. It’s not like he’s getting paid for it. They’re feeling grateful for what he’s offered. They’re getting some value back as well, which is really cool. I really like that as a strategy. Kim does that and I love that as a strategy because he gets all these really cool gifts. Now, I’m out in the streets. One of the other things that Kim does as well is he’ll just refer people on. So he’ll ask them, he’ll say, “What is it about? Can you send me a brief?”

One of the biggest things that you could do, guys, is ask people to send you through a copy or an agenda. You say, “I’d like to meet with you. Can you just send me a detailed agenda of what we’re going to cover? I’ve got approximately 15 minutes with you.” If the conversation goes longer than 15 minutes, then that’s totally cool. But at least you know what you’re going to cover and then if it’s not the right thing for you to cover, and you actually just don’t think that you can actually help this person, at least you’ll figure that out pretty quickly. And then you don’t waste any of your time and any of their time in the process, which is really the most valuable thing. Because a lot of meetings just happen because people want to have a chat about stuff, and they actually are not committed to getting shit done.

For example, if it’s not your area of expertise, then you really shouldn’t do it. What you should do is just pass it off to somebody that is their area of expertise, which might be, for example, a member of your team or it could be a colleague or an associate in business. That’s why I wanted to get the girls up front and find out early if it was the right thing for us to work together, so I don’t waste their time and they don’t waste mine.

Guys, the final strategy I want to give you about people that are potentially wasting a little bit of your time but just wanting to have access to your time is to go and record a little video. So go, “Hey, I’d like to have a chat with you, but what I like to do is I like to get a little bit to know you first.” I’m super busy, and I always tell people that I’m traveling whenever I’m away. That’s because most of the time I am.

But I’ll say, “Hey, do you mind if you can just record a little video and just give me a snapshot, like 30-60 seconds about what your problem is or what you want to breakthrough?” Because in that 30-60 seconds, if they can’t articulate it, then they don’t really know and they’re just looking to sound it out with me. But if they do know, then at least I can directly to the point. Normally, I can just record a video straight back, and we don’t even need to have a chat. I just prefer to solve their problems.

So that’s the big things, guys. I hope the video was a help. If you know someone that’s constantly getting pestered all the time, please share the video with them. If you want to spend some time with me, you’re welcome to. One final thing as well, Kim was telling me about this the other day. One of their clients that sells properties has now got a deal with somebody which is that he won’t speak to any perspective clients till they’ve read his book, because they’re not qualified until they’ve read his book. So he says to them, ‘Look, if you want to speak to me, it’s not a problem. But you’ve got to first read my book. Then once you’ve read my book, give me a call back.” That’s a great way of qualifying people if you’ve got a book. Guys, live strong. Live a passion. Here in the streets of Sri Lanka, living it up. I hope you’re having a fantastic day. Remember to live your life on your terms.