285 – How To Simplify Your Life With Taki Moore

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Are you experiencing friction in your business? Learn how you can turn that friction into freedom by using powerful frameworks.

In this episode:

01:40 – Taki’s specialty
02:13 – Why is freedom important?
04:20 – The Attract, Convert, Deliver (ACD) Chart
06:08 – ACD 1.0 vs ACD 2.0
07:00 – 2 easiest ways to be free
07:06 – Get the right tool
08:09 – Get a virtual team
08:52 – Taki’s upcoming presentation at SuperFastBusiness Live
10:14 – Upscale your brain software
10:48 – Learning and doing
12:50 – Choosing the right platform
14:20 – Offering workshops
16:30 – Using frameworks and checklists
18:10 – Taki shares an article about Obama’s decision making
18:47 – Examples of businessmen saving time on decision making
20:45 – An action step from Taki Moore

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Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Another special guest episode where we interview people who know really cool stuff about cool things and I can’t believe that I haven’t had today’s guest on the show earlier because we’re such good friends and we catch up pretty much every single week.

Welcome to the show, Taki Moore.

Taki: Dude, about time I got this invite.

James: I know. I know you’ve had me come and chat to your people at a special event you ran and you’re coming to speak to my people at the event.

And then this sort of podcasting cross-over was destined to happen and we’re going to be really dialing in on the topic of freedom and how you might sort of achieve that.

Now, you run a very popular website called CoachMarketingMachine.com.

Taki: Yup.

James: And, you’ve primarily worked with coaches to help them market their coaching business to get students and to deliver good results right?

Taki: Exactly. Yeah, most of my guys are great at what they do and often not so good at the “How do we get enough clients to do it for” piece, and so my job’s the marketing and sales guy to teach them how to do that that well.

Freedom In Life
James: And I think that topic has a broad application for most people listening to this. Most people are looking to get customers, looking to convert, looking to somehow deliver whatever they’re doing in a leveraged fashion and that happens to be your specialty. So, let’s dig into this.

As the coach’s coach, I’m sure you’ve got some highly evolved techniques and I’ve seen you in action. I’ve known you for a few years now and you do really walk the walk as opposed to talk the talk.

So, freedom is important to you. You might just give us just a little bit of context about how that applies to your life. I know for one when I’m travelling around the world, quite often, you’re right there beside me even in another country so I know you do travel a lot. How else does this freedom theme translate into your life?

Taki: Yeah, good call. So I think, since I was a kid, freedom and fun have been my two kind of biggest drivers and so that hasn’t changed a lot. What did change though was about 13 years ago, we had a son called Ethan, and he’s an amazingly funny, bright kid, but he’s got cerebral palsy and autism and epilepsy – just a bunch of physical challenges.

And so, we needed a way to be able to run a business that let us, if we needed to, kind of drop everything and spend 10 weeks at the hospital or whatever. A bunch of crazy stuff has had to happen so that’s kind of led me to how do I…

Tim Ferriss would call it “minimum effective dose.” How do we get the biggest result with the minimum amount of input so that we can live a really great, free life?

And so for me, that’s about “How do we make more money?”, “How do we make more impact?” and “How do we get more freedom?” In its current iteration that means that we do somewhere between one and two million bucks a year which is good for the money point of view.

We change tens of thousands of people’s lives and businesses which I’m really, really proud of and we get to take an incredible amount of free time, about four months off a year with this crazy kind of brood of kids with us all around the world.

So it’s about four months a year, travel away from Australia time and some of that is actually hanging out with you in the States and enjoying Burger Fridays but a lot of it is kind of on a plane and off with the kids adventuring somewhere as well.

James: And you have about a thousand kids too, right?

Taki: I do have about a thousand kids, that’s true. I started when I was very young. I tell everyone that I was really popular in year 10 and that’s why I’ve got all these kids.

James: That’s kind of weird, like both you and I have some grownup kids.

Taki: Yeah.

The ACD Chart
James: And it’s bizarre going to the pub with your kid and I don’t feel that old and I know you live a young lifestyle as well, so it’s kind of cool. Now, a big part of what you’ve done is simplify everything out.

When I look at your business as an outsider looking in, what I see is that you have a very clever way of just focusing on the stuff that’s important and you really do just disregard things that are irrelevant.

So, you’ve pared it down to the essentials and you have a nice way of explaining this. You might want to talk about your ACD chart that you were referring to me at some point.

Taki: Oh yeah, cool. So, I just kind of broke business down into, effectively, these three things that every business has got to do and you’ve got to Attract new clients and new customers, you’ve got to Convert them from prospects to client or from curious to committed, and then you’ve got to Deliver your service.

And so, if they are your three pillars that make up any business, then how do we do that in the most leveraged way possible? If I think about most of the guys who come to me, the way they attract, convert and deliver when they first come is very 1990s.

The way they attract is kind of its manual prospect. They knock on doors or they cold call and they network and they collect business cards and they follow up. And it’s really unleveraged, right? The way they convert is one-on-one sales appointments – face-to-face or on the phone.

And again, that’s a bunch of time and they sell, if they’re good they’ll have an appointment and they’ll sign a client but they don’t always and so that’s kind of hard work. And then the way they deliver is often some kind of one-on-one time for money service.

And if you think about what those three things have in common – manual prospecting and selling onesy-twosy and delivering time for money, what they’ve all got in common is they’re all fuelled by your time and your effort and you don’t have that much time, and eventually you’ll run out of energy, and so I think that’s a flawed model.

And so, just crazy excited about A – doing in my business and B – sharing with others is how do you flip that. So instead of like business 1.0, which is the manual hard work, slow way, to do the new way which is still Attract, Convert, Deliver but it’s 2.0. And so instead of manual prospecting, we automate our lead generation and automate our marketing.

Instead of selling one-on-one, we’re able to sell with, in a leveraged way, typically, with webinars. And then, instead of delivering a time-for-money service, how do we leverage that, so we can touch thousands of people in a way that an extra hundred customers doesn’t affect your work week or even your work day, not even by a minute? And that’s kind of what I’m juiced about. I think that’s 2.0.

And the difference between those two is 1.0 is your time and your energy and 2.0 is going to be filled by a different fuel, it’s fuelled by having some IPs and content to share and secondly, by having some systems in place and so I think that’s kind of the big distinction, the big shift.

Overcoming That Huge Hurdle
James: What do you say to people who are there thinking it’s all right for you, Taki, because you’ve figured this out. I see a lot of people feel helpless where they have this expertise and they’ve got people trying to buy their stuff but they’re like: “I can’t figure out the tech” or “I struggle with the…You could tell me and I can’t implement it,” “I’ve struggled with finding people to get to do this.” How did you broach that subject originally?

Taki: You mean specifically in terms of implementing these ideas?

James: Yeah. It sounds fantastic, it’s magical. How do I do it?

Taki: Yeah, cool. So, there’s a bunch of different ways to get free and I think that kind of the two easiest ways for me, automate just means I don’t have to do it.

And so I’m either looking for how do I automate through a tool – and I know you and I both use Ontraport – and how do I leverage through a team, and you and I both have teams in the Philippines, although yours is ginormous and mine has three dudes. So that’s kind of, the first thing is, it doesn’t have to be very hard.

I think when I first got started, I didn’t know you could…there was software and I didn’t know you could get virtual assistance so I just kind of learned WordPress and HTML and some techy stuff and honestly, it got me through but I’m really glad that I stopped that as quick as I learned that somebody else can do it because I suck at it.

I’m not very good in the tech’s age and it’s really frustrating. I think the technology is a place where lots of people get stuck.

And so the shortcut is to, as much as you can, leverage off work that other people have already done. So I know that when I’m working with my clients and we need like a webinar campaign – how do we get people to show up to a webinar or sign up to a webinar? – well they could go away and try to figure all that out.

For example with Ontraport, there’s this thing called the OATs code which is like a prebuilt system that for example, I might have built or you might have built and I get a 10-digit code, they can punch in the 10-digit code and they get the whole campaign dropped into their account straight away without having to do any of the tech, you know?

So that’s the first way. And then secondly, I would say just get some help from either somebody who knows what they’re doing and be willing to pay a premium to never have to do it, or get a virtual team that can do stuff for you at a much, much lower cost.

Does that kind of answer your question? I’m not sure if it does.

James: Yeah it does. Basically, you’re saying you’re going to have to just get the right pieces.

Taki: You can learn or get some help, right?

James: Get the right tool and get someone to implement it and I guess there’s a lot of people in that struggle street startup phase where they don’t feel they can afford to but I almost feel like they can’t afford not to, because it takes years to learn how to run this stuff automatically.

And then, you really alluded to something very clever, is building off someone else’s framework.

Taki’s Upcoming SFB Live Presentation Sneakpeek
You have a four-campaign sort of approach to webinars which you’ll be going into deeper into your presentation at SuperFastBusiness Live.

Taki: Yup.

James: So someone could literally say: “Okay, here’s Taki’s Sign, Show, Pay and Follow-up sequences, I’m just going to roll that out now” and it will be much faster than having to identify that there are four campaigns and then to figure out what you should actually do. You’re just going to lay it out for them on a platter?

Taki: Yeah, literally and including here’s what to say in email one, and then these are the dates that you send these emails out, and then these are the SMS that wants to say… Just literally, boom, on a platter.

And then, you don’t have to be creative or technically brainy, just take what works and drop it in. And I think about my business, every month, I’ve got this idea that there’s 50 thousand things that I could be doing and I put them all into this big fat list called: “Someday, Maybe.”

And then once a month, I just pull one thing out and I call it my “monthly marketing project” and so I kind of sit down with my tech dude, but you could do it on your own, and just go: “What’s the one thing this month?” Do that.

And then I think about installing it into my business, almost like plugging an Atari cartridge into an old Atari. Just slot it in, boom and it runs. You know what I mean?

James: Old school, man. You’re showing your age.

Taki: Yeah, I know it’s like that.

James: A cartridge. A cartridge, do you remember that? So it’s like adding an app to your iPhone?

Taki: It’s a lot like adding an app to your iPhone. Right, thanks Mr. 2014.

Learning versus Doing
James: Oh, you know, you’ve got to stick with the program. Now, at some point, I think it’s really appropriate that we mention that you have to get out and about. You should go to events, you should become a member of other people’s programs or communities to upscale your software, your brain software.

You and I both do a course. We also run our own courses for students who can literally plug in to our existing knowledge base and experience and frameworks.

So, that has probably been the biggest shift, is when I started investing in education and traveling to events and buying courses and implementing is when my business skyrocketed as well. So, someone has already figured it out, more time turning the wheel, less time trying to invent it. Right?

Taki: Yeah. I think that’s a great one. I think about it. Really, there’s two things that you’re going to be doing for the rest of our lives in business – you’re going to be learning and you’re going to be doing. And the learning part can either be learned from a smart kid who has done it before and who’s going to show you the path in which case it’s just, “Are you going to follow me in the way to go?” or you can learn it the hard way, which takes ages.

And so, yeah, a big part of both of our success is by learning from others and reaching out to people who are going where those people already are, to get the shortcuts and then be able to take it and synthesize and just focus on doing.

So, if you do learn in the smart way, I reckon your ratio is like 30% learn and 70% do. And if you do it the hard way, then you are going to spend all your time learning and never doing.

So you go straight to the right sources, you can pull what you need to know when you need to know it. I think Rich Schefren talked about the difference between “just in case learning” which lots of people do, and “just in time learning” which, you know, “Here’s what I need to learn right now, and I’m going to learn that bit.”

So for example, at your event, I’m super pumped about, we’re doing some crazy good stuff with our online marketing but I know that when I come into that room, as well as Sharon, I’m going to be able to you know, I’m super pumped about learning from Teddy and I’m super pumped about learning from Justin and others, some online stuff to kind of get my funnel even tweaked.

And I know that an hour with them will be worth three weeks of my own trial and error. It’s cool.

James: That’s it. And we’ve been crisscrossing ideas with each other, you know, for quite some time. I love it. I’ll be sitting here first thing in the morning, my phone will ring, “Hey dude, it’s Taki, are you up?” “Yes.” “I’m downstairs, let’s go have a burrito.” So we’ve been…

Taki: That breakfast burrito is really good, by the way.

James: It was pretty good you know, and it’s attached to a surfboard shop. And of course, I’ve wandered my way next door now and I’m buying off their goods. I’ve just got to get myself good enough to be able to warrant getting a new surfboard.

Taki: Warrant. Knocks your surfboard.

James: Now you’ve been implementing some of the things that I do with the blog marketing front end but what you’ve been doing really well, and I’m looking forward to discovering, is the webinar sequences and how you’re using that. But you’re using that for both attraction and conversion…

Taki: And delivery.

James: And delivery. It’s a core part of your scene, this webinar stuff.

Taki: Yeah.

Choosing among different platforms
James: What platform do you prefer?

Taki: There’s tons to talk right now. But you know, should you do Google hangouts, and all that sort of stuff, I think Hangouts are awesome, I’ve been on a couple. Frankly, I trust GoToWebinar, you know, it doesn’t break, it does what it’s meant to do.

Sure, it’s a little bit more expensive than a free Google Hangout but you can control it and it doesn’t do dumb stuff in the middle of it like my Hangout did a couple of weeks ago.

I will say GoToWebinar. I think it’s the industry standard for your marketing and delivering online.

James: Oh, my buddy Ezra had a classic situation the other week. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me sharing this but he was using GoToWebinar. It had a little bit of a microphone issue which was user operated as it turns out so he switched to Hangout.

And then it was recording him and broadcasting his, you know, setup attempts trying to get it working, so he had people saying, “Dude, you’re broadcasting yourself.”

Taki: And he was like, “Oh crap. What the hell?”

James: Exactly. Oh, I would have died. So he ended up doing a confessional video. “Hey, we made a tech stuff up, sorry about that,” and he run an even bigger event. But, he’s using a combination of Facebook and webinars and just smashing it. He does everything from services through to Masterminds through to e-commerce.

He has really got the hang of this. So, I think there’s a trend. And look, I’ve had a GoToWebinar account for about 6 years now. I’ve been doing paid webinars every week forever. I think it’s still the best platform, GoToWebinar.

If you get yourself an account with that, you can’t go wrong. And you’ve also been testing out new formats for group selling and that is little workshops.

Taki’s workshops
Taki: Yeah. Right. In fact, I’ve got one this weekend. I’ve just been to the printer to pick up my workbooks and I looked at, I’m so proud, man, this is possibly the slickest, coolest looking thing that I have ever made in my life.

And… So I think you and I have had a conversation over a burger once about your done-for-you versus do-it-yourself, and this kind of sweet middle spot that I think we both operate in called done-with-you.

And I think you’re running kind of, workshops we have, either a workshop where you teach amazing value, teach killer stuff and then people will have the opportunity to do more with you, or just do a workshop to deliver to your members which, you know, I do both.

Last year was the first ever, what would you call it, like a sales workshop, a workshop where there’s something to buy at the end, that I’ve ever done.

James: Preview, I suppose?

Taki: Yeah like a preview? It was a two-day preview. And geez, it was fun. I went into it going, I’m not sure…

James: You got oversubscribed, too. You had a little bit of an issue… too popular.

Taki: Yeah. Well, it filled up before I even told people where to go. There was like a backdoor link that you can get in if you want to you know, jump the gun and it filled up beforehand.

And 47 hours, the whole thing was completely sold out then we had to shut it down. And yeah, it was a bit awkward actually. I had to kind of do an Ezra apology video and tell people “Sorry, but maybe next time.”

James: Well you know, worse things could happen, you hear about people struggling to get a customer and when you set things up properly then you’ve created a delivery mechanism that just fills up. I mean, I knew when you were going to have a low-ticket event that it would fill up because my high-ticket event fills up.

And it’s just going to happen. But now, you’re doing little previews around the place so people can get along and see in different countries.

Taki: Yeah. I’m doing sort of one or two a year in Sydney and one or two a year in LA. Got a great little, Black Belt’s my community so we got a really good, strong Australia-New Zealand contingent and a growing Northern Hemisphere posse.

And so, I’m over there three times a year to deliver a two-day intensive for those guys as part of their Black Belt program. So, while I’m over there, I just figured, you know, twice while I’m over there, why don’t we run a little intro thing and wow people and if they want more, they can get more. It’s cool.

Using frameworks and checklists
James: Yeah, very cool. All right. So, Attract, Convert, Deliver. You’ve got the webinar thing down pat. When you go to print things like Workbooks, are you using frameworks and checklists that you’ve already created in the past?

Taki: Yeah. You know, I think the line between that kind of content and marketing has blurred a lot lately. And so I think of the kind of marketing that you do that I’m, frankly, the authority marketing stuff that I do I learned straight from you, so kudos and thank you.

Much appreciated, our podcast is rocking and our blog is killing it and it’s all great. Thank you James, it’s killer.

It’s all frameworks, so anytime I have to do something, if you know you’re going to do it again and again and again, or even if you’re going to have to do it like three times, then build a framework first.

And I think your “framework before work” is a really good way to think about this stuff.

James: Yeah. We have the same thing. Our first SOP is, Standard Operating Procedure, is if we’re going to do it more than once, then we create the Standard Operating Procedure. And we talked to the team about the airplane pilot going through the checklist when he, you know… fuel, engine.

You kind of want to be doing these things and even though it’s not life or death sometimes in our business, you’ve achieved this level of freedom by having a checklist that you can roll out, and I have the same thing.

I have a little checklist for pretty much everything that I do, even rituals like where I keep the keys to my house. You know, it’s in…

Taki: Dude, I haven’t got that ritual down. I spend about 10 minutes a day looking for my keys. It’s massively embarrassing.

James: Well, that’s the thing. It applies to everyone. I’ve got a ritual for surfing, I’ve got a ritual for the keys, I’ve got a ritual for my wallet, my cap. Not in like a weird, creepy, pedantic way…

Taki: I see. You’re not sort of rocking yourself in the corner when something’s out of place.Right?

James: No. It’s just… it makes sense to anchor these routines because then you’re not sort of using up energy or bandwidth to locate these things.

Keeping your decision-making energy for big stuff
Taki: That’s right. I read this great article this morning actually about Obama. Apparently, Obama only has gray suits or blue suits.

And he does it because he says “My job is to make decisions and if if I have to think about and decide little stuff, I get decision fatigue. So, I keep my decision-making energy for big stuff and little stuff like what am I going to eat, what am I going to wear, what my schedule looks like? I just, it’s a routine. I just do what it says.” I think that’s genius.

James: Well, that’s kind of why when we catch up half the time, I’ll just tag onto whatever you order because I don’t want to be using up my decision-making power too. And you look at some of our friends like Dean Jackson and then of course…

Taki: Right. He’s a black T-shirt and cap guy.

James: Wears the same gear. And there’s Steve Jobs, same thing, I think. They just, like there’s one area I’m not going to use a lot of bandwidth. And half the designers that you see are just cruising around in black skivvies.

Taki: It is a little bit weird. Like I went to my wardrobe yesterday and I’ve got…

James: You have about 10 black T-shirts.

Taki: Literally. I’ve got seven black V-necked T-shirts and five black shirts, like shirts are for presenting and V-necks are for living. And that’s kind of, that’s my deal, man, it’s pretty simple.

James: Well, there you go. I was joking about that with Franziska on a recent interview about branding and I was talking about how we were at the airport making that video. And you said “Oh, I’ve got to get on brand now.” You changed your T-shirt right there in front of everyone.

Taki: Yeah. On the curb. On the footpath.

James: You’re just showing off.

Taki: Yeah, mate, if I had abs, I would gladly show them off. It’s more like a keg than a six-pack right now.

An action step from Taki
James: All right. Let’s see. What else can we talk about that would be really interesting to our listener? We’ve got this idea that you can have a little bit of freedom by simplifying things and by having leverage systems.

We’ve touched on topics such as using webinars to find your customers, to convert them using a series of sequences – which we’ll develop more on at the event.

And then you have the delivery mechanism which is either live format or webinar delivery. I guess we have a lot of similarities in these parts of the businesses. And using frameworks everywhere with the slide decks, workbooks, your process for putting out blog content. I think we’ve delivered some really good value right here.

Taki: I totally agree man. It’s been really fun. I think frameworks is definitely something we’ve both got in common. It’s just something that, you know, most people’s businesses are full of friction. And this is going to sound a bit crass, but I think most people’s businesses need a bit of lube.

And the best kind of lube you can apply is a framework because it takes you from friction to just going… so things just flow. And so, I guess the action step for anyone listening is, if you’ve got parts of your business which are kind of hard or frustrating right now, then kind of just lay out the flowchart, use everything that happens and go, which parts of these do I really need to be involved in? And just kind of circle the bits which only you can do.

And see if you can figure out either a technology or a team person who can do the rest of it so the whole thing just kind of flows like it’s meant to. And the framework’s a huge part of that.

James: Fantastic. All right, well, we’re going to end on that sort of action. So, I’ve been chatting with Taki Moore from CoachMarketingMachine.com and Taki and I are good buddies.

Taki: Sure.

James: Actually, I think we should come back and do some more podcasts because I’ve really enjoyed this and hopefully, our listeners have warm reception for you on SuperFastBusiness here.

Taki: That would be great.

James: Thanks, buddy.

Taki: Thanks, man. Meet you at the event. It’s going to be killer.

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