S23EP02: The Power of Simplicity

Welcome to One Insight. My name is Rich Litvin. I grew up in London and I now live in LA. And this is a podcast for extraordinary top performers and their coaches. You see, I've coached some of the most successful and talented people on the planet. I can see what most people cannot see, and I dare to say what most people wouldn't dare to say.

And what I know about success is that on the other side of it, it can be incredibly lonely. You can feel more of an imposter the more successful you become. And when you're the most interesting person in the room, you're actually in the wrong room. Clients who are more successful, more intelligent and wealthier than you need your support more than they know and more than you can imagine. I coach around insight.

Life looks one way. Something happens, and the world looks different, and your entire world changes. It can happen in And this podcast is called One Insight because a single insight can change everything. I'm fascinated by the power of simplicity. Tiny steps that make a massive impact.

Today I'm coaching Dave and Michelle. Both of them are coming to the a live in-person intensive in Santa Fe and they're ready to sign up for the virtual intensive too. They didn't know each other and I didn't know Dave. Michelle I've worked with in the past. She's been at previous intensives. And today, it turns out, we didn't know this, it turns out that the very tool that would support Michelle the most is also a powerful tool for Dave.

It's a really powerful tool for long term client creation called a research project. And you'll hear two different ways it can be applied. In this particular conversation. I had fun and it was powerful in its simplicity. Within about 17 minutes, we were complete. Enjoy! Hi Michelle. Hi Dave.

Hey, so Michelle, I know because we just spent some time together at a deep dive. And Dave, I don't know you yet. I wanted to find a way to get to do an interesting series of recordings of podcast episodes with a mix of people I know and I don't know. So Michelle. Why are you in my community?

Well, I've been following your community since probably 2016. And what I've loved about your community is not only the caliber of people, but also the creative thinking, I think is really what that's really what attracts me to your work is this deep get in there, dig around, find the good stuff. And so I think in the community and even like in the things I've participated in, such as trans this transition excellence, the creativity around that, those events is really special.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm always trying to provoke people's thinking. That's what excites me the most. Um how about you, Dave? How do you even know I exist? We have a common friend, Jeff Munn. So I live in Carbondale, Colorado. Jeff lives here too. When I left my executive position and decided to move into coaching, you recommended a book. Yep. That book has uh been selling for ten years, still does, a thousand copies a month. Uh

Exactly. And it was a fantastic roadmap for me to get started, both in my thinking, a little bit of the mechanics, but mostly my thinking about how was I going to go about this. So I started my journey with you. With the book. And now we're here. Now we're here. And so one of the reasons you're both here is that you're both part of the uh intensive that we're running. We've got uh a virtual intensive and a um an in-person intensive in Sound of Faith.

So that focus of the intensive is client creation. Everything I wrote about in that book over 10 years ago now is still what I teach.

How to build a word-of-mouth business. And we get seduced by the complexity of the world these days. Now there's AI, there's all these different software. How do I create clients? Well, for me, nothing's changed. High performing, high-fee clients. are always created in a conversation. Can you do some of that other stuff? Absolutely. You should do. I play with chat GPT almost every day. But today I want to talk to you about how to create clients and I want to ask each of you a question.

Or let's play it this way. Let's play a game. The game I like to play is called I Can Get You Any Client. Well, if I can get you any client, who would that be and how can I help? So Dave, why don't you go first? I can get you any client. Tell me more. Let's see how we play. You'd get me a client who's running their own business. It's probably somewhere between five and fifty million dollars.

They probably have somewhere between 10 and 50 employees, depending on what kind of business that is. And what they struggle with is freedom. They work sixty or more hours a week. They have directors. They've got a leadership team. They have people who are doing work and yet they're trapped. What they've built with a good idea and aiming for freedom has them trapped. They're up in the middle of the night, not sleeping, thinking about work. not really able to take a vacation with our family.

And they're may not even be sure that there's a problem yet. They feel it, but maybe they haven't identified yet that, oh, I'm looking for a solution, I'm looking for a way out of this. Just this hurts and they keep working to try and solve it. Sounds like you might be familiar with this challenge. Little bit. That was your world?

That was not my world. I was not running these businesses. I was working for people in marketing and communications, helping them get very, very, very clear on what they did and connecting them with their people. Project after project after project after project, helping them get clear. And then communicating that. So that was not my world of running these businesses, but I spent a lot of time with these folks. Do you coach clients like that right now?

Some, yeah. I have a few different areas of people I work with. That's one group. Those are the owners. And then I work with people in companies too. Sure. And but let's stay with this group. This is the interesting place you wanted to talk about today. Yeah.

Tell me about your m your favorite client from that caliber of people so far. Well give me a first name if you can. Yeah, his name is Chris. Where'd Chris come from? How'd you get Chris as a client? Is a referral from another coach. She didn't have time to work with him, suggested we connect, we connected, and then you know, that's how things moved into that space. Um you gave a big smile after you said it was a referral from another coach. What was the smile?

The smile is it's great to be of service. It's great to show up and help. And I have no idea where that came from, other than being of service. Well, so you just answered the your own question. You have no idea where it comes from, other than being of service. That's what the entire premise of the book, The Prosperous Coach, about is serve people. You served this person, she got that you don't nobody makes a referral for something mediocre. Bye.

No, you have a mediocre massage, you don't tell anybody about it. In fact you warn them not to go. If you have an amazing massage, you'll tell everyone. So you created so much value for this woman somehow that she was willing to say, Hey, I've got a space for someone, I don't have a space for someone. Would you be willing to talk to? Fair enough.

So don't lose sight of that. It's easy to miss that and dismiss it like, oh, it wasn't a big deal. I didn't really do anything. Actually, a referral-based business is a platinum standard of business. It's a very high-level way of doing business. You create so much value for people, they tell other people about it. And that's true. I believe that. And it still brings me tremendous anxiety. Be like,

I don't know where the next people are coming from. And that's the neediness and that's the anxiety.

Well, let's throw that down in a second. We'll come back to that in a in a second. I wanna talk to Michelle for a second, bring your your your your thing into the room, Michelle. I can get you any client. How can I help? Well, my passion and and really coming back from the intensive, it's even intensified because you go deeper with yourself, right? Processing things out.

And I think this idea of working with um leaders of leaders, creative artists, because those artists have a lot of team, you know, to have the wraparound support. Some an artist might have a hundred to two hundred people at any event supporting them. And some of those stay with them on tour, some of them are local. And there's a lot of team that goes on.

And so I think that that's my target audience. That is my ideal client that energizes me, that I feel like I can just help pull out who they are at even a higher level. Have you ever worked with an artist like this? I have. I've worked with several artists, and that's really how I distinguished maybe that's my audience that is my preferred level of client.

is the way the sessions run. You just get into a different dynamic. There's artistic language, there's creative flow that starts to show up a little differently than maybe a a different kind of session. And so I think it through the different kinds of coaching I've been exposed to, I really identified that those are the the ones that it feels so amazing to create a conversation with someone around.

I happen to be married to an artist, so I I know what that that that's like. That idea of creative flow. So I I don't recall if we talked about this the last time. I even if we did, I want to say it for those people who are listening. When you create a new archetype for a client or or a different kind of client or you want to go deeper in a kind of client, but you've only worked with a handful of times.

A really powerful tool is a research project. So let me just bring that into the room. Yeah. But a research project would be, oh, okay, I identify there's a kind of client I want to work with some of the most creative artists on the planet. So let me spend a year or two studying.

The way you do it is you reach out to the most creative artist you know and you say, Hey, I'd love to interview you. If you have a podcast, you can add it to the podcast. If you don't have a podcast, you can say, I'm going to record it. It may be released as a podcast. You might have the idea of turning it into a book.

But you reach out to one person at a time and you say, Hey, so and so, you're one of the most creative artists I know. I'd love to interview you for a book I'm writing on creative flow. Do you have twenty minutes where I could ask you three questions? As you start to do that, you start to go deep into the world of these artists. You start to capture or the dream client, whoever they are, capture information and ideas about them that

A, they didn't know, because we can't see our own world. And B that you may not know that is in common with these people. And over time, what begins to happen, you start to develop a real fluency of the language of the doubts, the fears, the insecurities, the dreams, the desires that your dream clients have. You can't use it as a bait and switch. It cannot be, hey, so and so, can I interview for my book?

By the way, at the end of the interview, hey, I'd love to coach you. That will really not go down well. Be very cautious about doing that. Every once in a while you can, if you're very honest. Okay, look, I don't normally do this, but what you just shared. You wanna talk about that? Because I help people do this every single day. But it can't be an everyday thing that you you uh invite them in.

But that's a research project. Dave, that's a possibility for you too, to to get some more language and clarity about these dream clients. So I'll come back to you about how you could use that in a second, but let me stay with you, Michelle.

First of all, tell me, is that of value? Is that of use? Are you ready doing that? Yes. So that was really something that we talked about at the intensive and coming back from that. I recognize how many artists are actually around me and in my network or within my reach. to go and uh have that conversation with. And so I'm in the process of developing that very program that you're talking about to see who that who makes that list and who I want to engage with.

And I I think I know my burning questions that I want to ask, but I'm just working on that. And, you know, it's just been a couple of weeks. So I definitely have that came into full, you know, full frame for me coming back from the intensive. Don't make it overcomplicated. Make it really simple. In this moment, let me ask you a question, Michelle.

Who's one artist that you know would be really easy to reach out to? They don't have to be famous, they don't have to be hugely successful, just one artist like, oh my God, I'd love to ask them a handful of questions about creative flow. Yeah, we have an artist in our community here. His name is Andy, that is a he's a recording artist, a very famous recording artist, but he he his creative soul is what I'm drawn to.

Nice. I love that. So that's all you do. You make it as simple as one step at a time. You reach out to Andy, you ask him some questions, and then you ask him the question at the end. Hey, Andy, this is really valuable. Who's the most creative person you know? And would you be willing to introduce me? Because I'd love to interview them.

And by word of mouth, you get passed on because people love to talk about themselves. And if you make them feel special because you listen to them deeply, it's very easy for them to say, oh my God, you've got to speak to so-and-so. So let me pause there for a moment. Dave, I've seen you nodding a little bit as we're talking about this idea of a research project. How's that resonating for you? Yeah, I heard about it a few years ago when I was just getting going and it didn't quite make sense.

And then I listened to something on YouTube that you were sharing about that last week. So it's nice to hear that in a little more depth right now. Yeah. Yeah. So how would you use it? What what what is what is it that you would Yeah, how will you use this? Well, first I would identify who do I want to talk to? Who's kind of in that space where I've worked with people before that I'm like, yeah, I think there's something going on here and you're doing something in my world that I see.

But I appreciate connects with me somehow. 감사합니다. Yeah, go. Here's the red flag I had when you were talking earlier. You talked about freedom being the ultimate desire of these people. You're spot on. It's it's the thing that drives so many of us as entrepreneurs. Most of the people you're talking about don't see that. Don't know that. They're caught up in uh I gotta make our figures for this month and we're down ten percent. Yeah. I'm not sure we can make payroll next month.

I've got to go and make a report to my board of directors. If you start talking to them about freedom, like that's nice, son. I haven't got time to talk about freedom. You should live the life that I'm living. So you gotta be careful. You've got to use the language that they use and you gotta speak when you can articulate the voices in their heads, they go, Oh my god, I didn't think anybody knew this.

Yeah the power of a research project, Michelle, for you too, is that you'll discover what is the biggest pain point for these artists you'd love to work with, or these entrepreneurs or business leaders, Dave, that they don't even see. They don't know that they're struggling.

But once you've seen your because you're what you're doing, you're not you don't really care about the individual interviews. They're useful, but you're looking for the patterns, the commonalities. So when you say these things out loud, people go, Oh my God, I didn't know anybody knew that about. with Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think it's one of those episodes where we're there in this moment. Sometimes a tool is powerful in its simplicity and we don't want to overcomplicate.

If each of you went out for the next few weeks until we meet at the intensive and once or twice a week invited someone to a conversation, started to capture the information in these conversations and look for these patterns in your dream client.

you'd have a powerful way of articulating what your dream clients are going through so that the next time we speak, you wouldn't be saying, hey Rich, can you introduce me to an entrepreneur who runs a business between five and fifty million dollars? Rich, can you introduce me to an artist who understands what it means to be in creative flow?

You'd say, hey, one of the things I've noticed about entrepreneurs building multi-million dollar business is that there's a secret thought in their head that sounds like this. One of the things I've noticed about artists in creative flow is that nobody knows that what drives them the most or has them wake up at three in the morning with tears running down the sides of their face is this.

And as soon as you say that, I'm gonna go, oh, I know someone like that. Or I'll remember it the next time I'm talking to someone like that. That's the power of this research project. It's not an instant client creation tool, it's a powerful long-term client creation tool. Yeah, well that that silence is the sound of insight. For those of you who are not watching and listening, the wheels are beginning to spin for both of you, like okay, where do I go now? How do I start?

And we're done with this episode. Thank you. Most of human history. dot com