Packaging Expertise into Scalable Frameworks: $1M Coaching Session with Yuval Yeret

[00:00:00] Yuval: My goal would be to find a way to bring it to seven figure that would feel like it can create the freedom that I want faster, which is
[00:00:10] Dustin: important. I hit a seven figure run rate with this business with less than a thousand people on an email list, but the people on that list and the people I'm in contact with, it's very high quality.
[00:00:21] Dustin: Low quantity my design and that I think in your world, that is fundamentally what you're trying to build here. It's like it's not a dream 1000, it's a Dream 100, and it starts with a Dream 10
[00:00:40] Intro: Your you are listening to the seven Figure Leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Reman.
[00:00:55] Dustin: Welcome back to the seven Figure Leap Podcast and our special coaching series. I'm [00:01:00] really delighted today. I have Yuval Yurt. I somewhat said that close. You can correct me, but Yuval came to me with a really unique opportunity for I think unpacking his business model. He's a B2B consultant. Quite niche, quite high touch, and we were actually having an offline conversation about do these strategies you talk about, would that even work for this type of industry?
[00:01:21] Dustin: So I'm really excited to answer that question live as we unpack his business and get into some new marketing and growth strategies for you all. So you've all thank you so much for being here. I'd love to hand the mic over to you for a couple minutes here. Let you give a bit of background context so people kind of understand.
[00:01:38] Dustin: The way that you see the world and the work that you're doing, and then we'll get much more into the details of your business as a follow up to that.
[00:01:44] Yuval: Thank you. Great to be here, Dustin. So very high level. The way I toy with introducing myself these days is I'm a plumber or I'm a hacker. Depends on the mood, but I've been hacking operating systems.[00:02:00]
[00:02:00] Yuval: Since, you know, my early twenties at the beginning, those were computer operating systems, mainframe PCs, all that good stuff. Then I
started to actually build products in the storage and networking industry. I grew up in engineering leadership and I started to hack for improve the plumbing in how organizations work, how my organization works, improving the flow of innovation, the ability to innovate, time to market, and.
[00:02:28] Yuval: That's how I found the Agile and agility and lean software development. And about 15, 16 years ago, I started helping other people with that and have been hacking or helping people with the plumbing of their operating systems, their organizational operating systems in those last 16 years. So essentially what that means is that I'm a product scaling coach.
[00:02:53] Yuval: I help people. Tweak, develop, evolve their organizational product [00:03:00] operating systems as they scale their organization, work with scale up and enterprises. Companies like Gilet and HP Software and Siemens and CME Group. A lot of bigger and smaller organizations before their IPOs on adopting more agile, leaner ways of working product organization, but also across the entire.
[00:03:21] Dustin: Okay. That's super helpful. So I'm being facetious when I say this, but I was looking at your LinkedIn and looking at the application you submitted for the podcast. And I'm like, he's an agility coach. And I'm like, oh. He like helps people jump through hula hoops and like gymnastics bars. And so it sounds like you're pretty centered in sort of the tech slash software slash maybe SaaS space.
[00:03:42] Dustin: You gave a few examples of clients. Anything else you'd want us to know before we start diving into like numbers? Ideal clients and all that sort of thing. Anything else about the work that you do that maybe people would need you to articulate a little more?
[00:03:55] Yuval: Yeah, maybe a little bit more of context. I started doing this [00:04:00] as a employee and then a partner in a consulting firm.
[00:04:04] Yuval: Then about 10 years ago, I brought this firm as the managing partner to the US and scale it to seven figures. Together with a few other people, but like three years ago, I decided to go out on my own, build my own practice.
Most of the work gets to me based on a couple of things, very high level, it's word of mouth and partnerships.
[00:04:28] Yuval: It's through industry associations. Like in this agile space, there are a couple of bodies that are, you might call it the certification bodies. There's scrum.org, there's Scaled Agile. I have very high level credentials and
connections with these two walls, and that has been enough for a while, as long as that platform was really strong.
[00:04:51] Yuval: I also had some successful case studies that became podcasts. Funny enough, and some of my [00:05:00] most interesting clients came because they heard that podcasts sometimes, not even with me. And said, we want that for ourselves. And they might have talked to the person that was on the podcast and they connected them.
[00:05:12] Yuval: There's a couple of biotech examples that a beach tech in biotech that all got started from this sort of stuff. So I'm essentially at the point in my business where I'm trying to both protect it from the platform, let's call it the Agile platform. Not providing enough leads in and of itself. I figured out a year and a half ago that I need to double down on my personal brand and positioning, and what should I be differentiated by?
[00:05:45] Yuval: How am I different than dozens, if not thousands of other people that can do work in this space? So I'm on a journey of talking to people like you to kind of figure some of that stuff out. Thinking of myself as a product too. [00:06:00]
[00:06:00] Dustin: That's a great way to put it. I'm glad you added that extra context because yeah, you like had engineering product, consultancy partnership and you've sort of like narrowed that focus down to you are your own company, you are your own brand in a sense, and so that's about three years old.
[00:06:17] Dustin: About a year and a half ago you had a realization that you need to sort of take control of your own destiny. Have your own differentiation, your own lead sources, your own story, your own poly marketing assets. And so at some point in there you've started tuning into the stuff I do. And it's funny that we kind of opened the conversation with, would this really work for B2B?
[00:06:36] Dustin: And as you were naming off the ways that you get leads. Yeah, word of mouth, that's sort of the universal answer, right? Partnerships, industry associations, which I would consider a form of partnership. And then you know, some specific podcasts to even without you in the room. In some cases. We're talking about your case studies that got people's attention and they said, who is this guy?
[00:06:54] Dustin: I need to talk to him. So that's great. We'll kind of save that obviously before the end when we're talking more about strategy. [00:07:00] So let's dig in a little bit more to the current snapshot of the business. So if you
don't mind sharing, you know, revenue or number of clients and then we can get into more like average project size to sort of get our feel.
[00:07:10] Dustin: Is this like two clients a year making X dollars or is it a hundred clients or 2000 clients? So yeah, give us a snapshot. Maybe the trailing 12 months of the business.
[00:07:20] Yuval: Yeah, so I would call it mid six figure low, mid six figure consulting business. With 2024 and 2025, I mean, 2024 was good, but if you looked recent, 12 months, it's actually been been lower than what the previous 2012 months were, which is worrying.
[00:07:46] Yuval: Of course, there's a question around is it just the industry, the economy, or is there more? Is it the modality? What's going on there? But that's why I'm, I'm doing the work. It's very client [00:08:00] dense, so it's one or two customers. It's like very whale centric. One or two customers bring about 80 to
90%, at least in the last two years.
[00:08:14] Yuval: Earlier than that, there were many more or more, let's say a dozen clients a year. With more of a, let's call it low, mid five figure engagement. Think a couple of trainings, maybe even one training, sometimes just a strategic workshop. More recently, it's been almost like one or two deeper six figure engagements that are, are the bread and butter important to keep, but a lot of
[00:08:42] Dustin: risk?
[00:08:42] Dustin: I was gonna say a lot of risk, a lot of pressure, a lot of uncertainty because obviously your wagons hitch directly to theirs and if they decide to cut, it's like your whole business. So we don't have to give specific numbers, but let's just call it three 60,000 just to have a number. So like previous reality is.
[00:08:59] Dustin: [00:09:00] 12 clients doing 30,000 each. Just obviously very rough numbers, but like every month there's a $30,000 client and so there's more diversity. It's still, you know, pretty concentrated. But
[00:09:10] Yuval: yeah, I, I think even at that point, even earlier, it was 60 to 70 deep clients that, you know, are six figure clients and more of a sprinkling of those low five figure clients.
[00:09:25] Dustin: So the six figure clients have still been, or have kind of always been in your version in the past three year. You've all centered version. It's always been pretty heavily dependent on a couple clients a year. And those will generate six figures each.
[00:09:40] Yuval: Yeah. And, and I really enjoy working with these sort of clients because when you work at this level, you can make a lot of impact.
[00:09:47] Yuval: You can really, you know, it's almost like being a fractional
[00:09:50] Dustin: That's exactly what I was about to say. Does it feel like a fractional engagement where you're an embedded part of their team, basically. And so if that's 80, 90% is the big whale [00:10:00] clients, is the balance also consulting engagements that like require a proposal, but they're just.
[00:10:06] Dustin: Five to 50,000.
[00:10:08] Yuval: It's more of a productized services, I would say. So it could be a specific training workshop or my strategy workshops are that are the typical way I start an engagement. What I often like to do is start with those without a big proposal, learn a lot. They learn a lot, and we use a proposal to dive deep.
[00:10:28] Dustin: Great. So you have basically a front end product that's a strategy workshop, and what's the price point on that? Between 10 and 20 K. Okay. Awesome. And then at some point for a six figure engagement, I guess there's a proposal process where you're like, here's all the stuff I can deliver over the next year, and they sign the contract.
[00:10:48] Dustin: Is there typically like an RFP process where you get engaged or is this all direct engagements where they hire you
[00:10:53] Yuval: and then you work out a, I'm trying to think about a situation where I won an RFP. I don't think I [00:11:00] ever won an RFP. I tried participating in a couple, but. My engagements are typically, they come for me.
[00:11:07] Yuval: They know why. We just need to frame exactly what we wanna do, but it's not in our great
[00:11:12] Dustin: current business still. So we got a pretty good feel of the revenue, sort of the client split front end product trailing 12 months is down a
bit. That's troubling. That's part of why you've really taken a look at differentiation.
[00:11:25] Dustin: Was there, i, I meant to ask this earlier. Was there a period in your business where you mentioned the Agile platform? Where basically because you were associated with that, you were just getting leads from the platform, but that's really declined over time. Yeah. Okay. I'm in the StoryBrand world. For a long time, people would be like, oh, I got certified and they sent me all the leads and it fed my whole business.
[00:11:46] Dustin: And over time that dwindled. And now it's like, oh, you gotta go like find your own clients and we're not giving them to you anymore. And so it sounds like that. I understand that dynamic. Well, so tell me about team. Is it just you? Are there any contractors or virtual assistants or [00:12:00] anything? It's just
[00:12:00] Yuval: me.
[00:12:01] Yuval: When I have bigger engagements, especially when they're global, I have a network like you have in the StoryBrand world. You have other StoryBrand coaches that you probably know I can work with. I have similarly wide networks of people in the agile space that I collaborate with.
[00:12:20] Dustin: It's just you from a roster standpoint.
[00:12:23] Dustin: But if you have a project and you need a specialist or you just need some bullpen support, you can bring someone else in.
[00:12:29] Yuval: Yeah, but I do all of the B Dev market content every, everything, me and Chachi, PT and Gemini these days.
[00:12:38] Dustin: Of course, with the ideal clients. You talked a bit about the companies that you work with, who actually hires you, like who's the decision maker who you really need to have that connection with.
[00:12:47] Dustin: Who ultimately gets, maybe they don't sign the check, but they're the one who approve you to be the one that's selected.
[00:12:54] Yuval: Yeah. It's typically. Head of product, head of engineering, head of [00:13:00] transformation, whether it's the C-level role or a VP or a director, that's the typical
[00:13:07] Dustin: person. And I know it varies even based on those different titles, but if you had to give a range and say the past three years for the big clients, for the six figure clients, what's the range of total revenue for these companies?
[00:13:20] Dustin: Billions. The six figure clients are Fortune 50 companies. And so, okay. That's great. That paints a really good snapshot. I think of it's the current reality. It's not necessarily the organizations I want to work with. That's exactly where I was gonna go is like, I think we've established this is what you've got, which.
[00:13:38] Dustin: A lot of positives in there, right? Like good revenue, small complexity in the sense you only have a couple of clients that you have to win and keep happy. You've got a great network of people that you can sort of flex up and flex down if you needed additional support. But otherwise, it's just you.
[00:13:54] Yuval: One important thing is there are partners that bring me in for specialized work, [00:14:00] specifically those six figure, those recent six figure clients came in through partners, so that partnership is.
[00:14:08] Yuval: An important aspect of the work that I want to keep on leveraging, but I don't know that I can always rely upon. I guess a
[00:14:15] Dustin: question I wanna get into. What do you want more so than what you have, but I guess just snapshot today. It's August, 2025. How do you feel about capacity? Or do you basically get one or two clients and you're like, I'm full, and then you sort of stop marketing and then you're like, oh, the
contract's ending, I need another client.
[00:14:33] Dustin: Or do you even have the ability to have four clients at once at this level, or are you kind of capped out?
[00:14:38] Yuval: I do have spare capacity at the moment. I want to actually get to a point where I'm sold out from a capacity perspective and start to experiment with modalities of leverage at that point. Leverage, not necessarily being bringing additional people in, although for some cases [00:15:00] it'll be what I do.
[00:15:01] Yuval: I'm very curious about leverage, like group coaching or things along those lines at some point, but it's not the top priority at the moment.
[00:15:12] Dustin: You're open to it, but that doesn't seem like the next logical step in the way that you've seen this go. I dunno. Okay. We'll definitely talk about that. It's one of the things I love to talk about.
[00:15:22] Dustin: And maybe this is part of it, but what I'd like to do now is put our heads together and think 12, 18 months out. So whatever it feels like it gives you enough flex. I don't know. You may have contracts, you're like, I'm
locked in for the next 12 months. Let's just call it 2027. Just to give a little space so we get past the current season.
[00:15:40] Dustin: You got some time between now and then, and let's say the year 2027, what do you. Desire the business to be. And I always like to think about, you don't have to get into the details of your family and stuff, but more like what's the personal income you've all would really desire to have? And then we can talk more about how many clients would it be?
[00:15:59] Dustin: Feel [00:16:00] better to create that number. And then we can talk more about offers and stuff from there. But like what do you think would be a good top line revenue number goal? And then we can talk more about the client mix that would feel best to achieve that. I
[00:16:12] Yuval: would sleep better if I am consistently without heavy dependency on one or two clients at the mid six figure, like 500 k.
[00:16:26] Yuval: If I'm at that and I can see a consistent pipeline of clients' proposal products, whatever that continues to feed, that I will sleep better. My goal would be to find a way to bring it to seven theater that would feel like it can create the freedom that I want. Faster, which is important.
[00:16:48] Dustin: Love the ambition towards seven figures.
[00:16:50] Dustin: If we camp out at 500,000, you can tell me, but as a starting point, do you think it would feel good to have, still have one or two [00:17:00] rack, I'll call 'em fractional clients or whale clients, these sort of one or two big fish that, you know, meet half that, let's say it's like half that comes from fractional engagements and then the other half comes from much more leveraged disperse.
[00:17:14] Dustin: Client base is that, yeah, I think that
[00:17:16] Yuval: makes sense. Yeah. So half fractional, the reality that I want to get to also from an income perspective is a reality where I can choose which those two clients are. Yes. Where you're sold
[00:17:31] Dustin: out and you're like, eh, for you, I'll do this in the third quarter. Yeah. That sort
[00:17:36] Yuval: of thing.
[00:17:36] Yuval: Right. I think the more important thing for the client event at that point is people like me. We're hired to say some uncomfortable truths. There is a term fearless coaching. I'm known for providing fearless coaching, but the more I depend on a client, it's more of a conflict on do I really want to provide that [00:18:00] fearless coaching?
[00:18:00] Yuval: I don't want to be in a space where I have to. Sacrifice either my sleeping well at night or the client's wellbeing because I, I think that's not a good flywheel. I, I'm also into flywheels. I know you're as well. I think a good
flywheel is for everybody. It's a win, win win. When I am prosperous, I can give the client the advice, the fearless advice that they really need.
[00:18:28] Yuval: They make the outsized progress that they really need. They tell a great story of how I help them, and whether it's on a podcast or whether it's through referrals, I get more and more prospects. So that's the flywheel I want.
[00:18:44] Dustin: That's great. I love that. And that's a great distinction because. In some ways you're, it's like, Hey, head of products hired me.
[00:18:50] Dustin: We're really excited. We're gonna grow. And you're like, Hey, here's the problem with growth that you, you suck. You need to fix these things. Or people on your team who you really like personally, they're actually dead weight. [00:19:00] I'm exaggerating. But the idea is. In a sense, you're criticizing the people who hire you, which doesn't necessarily make them feel like going out and sharing from the rooftops that you all's a great guy, you should hire him.
[00:19:11] Dustin: It's like, you've all hurt my feelings. Yes, it was the right thing to say, but this was, it's not a referral flywheel in a sense. 'cause the net promoter score might be low even if the results are high. Right.
[00:19:21] Yuval: There's still risk of that. I think the reality is that both because of the type of advice and work that I do.
[00:19:29] Yuval: As well as, because you know, those people really want that advice. The flywheel is working. So the people that I do work with, they're happy with what they're getting and we've seen some examples of that referral works. It's a question of how can I scale that? It know maybe the offer needs to be something stronger, but from a revenue, all I'm saying is from a revenue perspective, I think that.
[00:19:56] Yuval: Sleeping well around the revenue and feeling that the [00:20:00] business is at least in reasonable shape. I mean, I'm not gonna hustle around getting to seven figures. I don't think that's, it'll happen when it happens. I'm not gonna hack funnels to, to make that happen, but it needs to be a healthy, sustainable flywheel, but I think it has that advantage as well.
[00:20:18] Dustin: All right. Well, I feel like there's obviously marketing strategy that we're gonna talk about. I, I feel like in this case. Probably where we should go next and maybe even spend the majority of our time is more offers. And I actually feel like with the offers, there's a potential here to, to at least discuss the possibility of a completely different ideal client.
[00:20:36] Dustin: But what I wanna hear first from you, Yuval, 'cause you talked about, for one, you're doing strategy workshops, that's a productized service. There's some scalability behind that. You mentioned. Proactively leverage, which is one of my, I say leverage and flywheel, of course, they go together. Those are two of my favorite words.
[00:20:52] Dustin: And you mentioned like group coaching, you mentioned. Community, I think even before we started recording. So in your words right [00:21:00] now, and obviously you haven't implemented this to any large extent, but like what are some ideas that you've floated around that like, Hey, someday this seems like this might be something for me to pursue, maybe based on what you've seen in other people's businesses.
[00:21:11] Yuval: Yeah, so I've done a lot of thinking over the last year about offers, read into stuff, even participated in some communities, a very high level. There are a couple of thoughts that I'm entertaining. One is play with the value equation of the offer that I'm currently providing. Do similar things of helping organizations move from agile theater towards, you know, an organization that can really deliver value and impact rather than focus on the mechanics.
[00:21:40] Yuval: So frame it more in transformation and value the transformation. One area I'm doing some thinking about and is there a way to shape, I don't know, an almost an Grand Slam offer around that? I don't know. There's one thing going with the [00:22:00] offer around the same thing. Another direction is changing ICP towards smaller organizations where the sales process is.
[00:22:11] Yuval: Less complex where there's more opportunity to work with the entire business. I have some clients that were in that space. It was interesting to work with and fun to work with, and there might be less competition in that space, so that might be a different space to play with. I dunno exactly what the offer is in that space, but maybe they need separate offer.
[00:22:34] Yuval: Another thing that that brings to mind is that maybe one of the things that. We're seeing these days is that there's a shift in the desire or openness for B2B consulting engagements or transformation consulting, and maybe the right offer is to actually coach the leaders. On the backend or one-on-one [00:23:00] or group coaching, whatever, not coach their organization, not go into the organization and coach.
[00:23:05] Yuval: Let them coach their organization, let them lead the organization, provide them with like a second opinion. But it's a different framing for the engagement. It's saying, I'm not gonna go into your teams unless you ask me to. Even if you don't have the budget for that fractional, but you still need some advice, I'm there for you.
[00:23:25] Yuval: So that's one other modality. And of course now it gets interesting with the group coaching. Why don't we get a couple of these product leaders in the room together and have them win through relationships with other people that are going through the same, yep.
[00:23:43] Dustin: Not so much like a new software product, but like at a minimum, getting your framework and your processes into a book.
[00:23:49] Dustin: And then that book obviously opens up more opportunities for you for thought leadership, speaking, all that sort of stuff. You're a trainer at large in some case. [00:24:00] Well, I have another option that I don't know, maybe you've considered, maybe you haven't. Maybe it makes no sense at all, but, so to kind of reiterate where we're at, to get a more leveraged business, one option is basically keep doing what you're doing and reify it and basically like charge more or maybe have value-based pricing or maybe get a revenue share for the improvements that you make.
[00:24:19] Dustin: There's like ways to basically still do the same model but get paid more for it. That's one option, right? Another option is to take. The same basic service you provide. Do it for smaller organizations who don't require nearly as long of engagement or as in depth of engagement. You're probably kind of replacing your income, but diversifying it in a great way toward 10 clients instead of one.
[00:24:39] Dustin: But you're engaged for a month instead of a year, that sort of process and five hours a week instead of 50 hours a week or whatever. And then you opened up an idea that's really interesting and that is still serving the same. Person the same ICP in the sense that it's the VP of product. But instead of getting them to do hire you for a consulting contract where you're doing the work for them [00:25:00] in their organization, you instead step out of the organization and you coach them individually, which is more of coaching and consulting with that provides a lot of opportunities for scalability and group, like one-on-one, premium coaching, group coaching and community.
[00:25:14] Dustin: The value is not just U evolve's expertise, but it's a community that you assimilate or assemble and then there's like different people from different industries that all sort of deal with the same struggles and there's a ton of value in that. So mastermind group coaching idea, I like that a lot. The other one I had again, I wanted to throw out and just get your reaction is more of a train the trainer model where you coach one on one or group with other.
[00:25:41] Dustin: Agile consultants who are struggling with leads and all that, and you're like, look, I have a half million dollar business. Or I've, you know, however you wanna frame this. You've done a million in revenue over the past three years, it sounds like, or around there. Let me show you how to do strategy sessions, or let me show you how to have effective fractional engagements.
[00:25:59] Dustin: Like, you know, a [00:26:00] lot of stuff about the business of the business you do. And so there's obviously an angle there and more of a business opportunity. To coach the coaches, train the consultants, coach the consultants, consult the consultants, however you wanna frame that. Has that like occurred to you? Is that something you're like, that sounds cool, or, I hate that
[00:26:17] Yuval: I've toyed with that idea when it comes to helping people in my space thrive and prosper.
[00:26:25] Yuval: That is, on one hand, tempting, but I also feel like it's a space where people are relatively desperate. And I'll need to be a hundred percent sure
that I can help those people before I take their money. I'm happy to help people, but I don't want to make money off of people that are desperate to that level.
[00:26:47] Yuval: So
[00:26:47] Dustin: fair. That's an honest, that's a gut reaction and I'm glad the way that you shared that because. It's a different business and I meet plenty of people who are like, man, I've been doing this industry for 25 [00:27:00] years. I know everything about it. I've built up my own business in it and I don't want to do the work anymore.
[00:27:05] Dustin: But I would love to mentor other people who wanna do this work. And I know I've learned all these lessons. I could help someone do the work successfully, profitably, I could then help a hundred people instead of just myself. Like that is a valid application for knowledge. And I think in your case, what I'm hearing, a pretty strong signal is the thing you're confident in and the people you still like to be around and serve are not necessarily other agile consultants as it is these leaders in companies.
[00:27:33] Yuval: Oh, I love to be with those agile coaches and consultants, but I don't want to take their money. I don't want to be in a position where this is what I'm basing my business on. There's a challenge though. If you look at my mailing list, if you look at my LinkedIn, if you look at my content. A lot of the people that I currently resonate with are those people.
[00:27:56] Yuval: They're not my clients. I could much more [00:28:00] easily guess, for example, on Agile podcasts that those people listen to than places where my real ICPs go. I'm not even sure what are those places that my real ICPs go. I have some assumptions. It would be much harder for me to get on those places. So that's a problem that I'm having and, and I find myself, unless I'm really focused on it, I fall into the pattern of talking to these people.
[00:28:30] Yuval: Even today when I write a newsletter, I catch myself and sometimes I don't catch until later. That I wrote again for these people, not for the people that I really need to resonate.
[00:28:41] Dustin: It's interesting, honestly, when we, I've entered this conversation, that application was not a preconceived notion. I've talked to a couple other B2B consultants in this format in the past week or two.
[00:28:52] Dustin: I've never even suggested that. Intuitively it came up, and maybe it was really about this highlighting this, which is you [00:29:00] don't
wanna do it, and that's who you're attracting, because that's a really good signal about your strategy on your marketing. But it sounds like at least, you know, obviously things could change over time, but I'm getting a pretty strong indication.
[00:29:12] Dustin: You don't want to take money from those people. You like them, they're your peers. Maybe they should be referral sources for you as you have a niche carved out for yourself and work that they can't or don't wanna do. But that's not, who's gonna write your
[00:29:24] Yuval: checks? And one of the issues is they cannot write for sure.
[00:29:29] Yuval: I don't want them to write high ticket checks, and I don't want to create a business that requires hundreds of customers. I want to keep a business that requires, you know, a dozen of customers a year, or dozens of customers a year, not hundreds of,
[00:29:43] Dustin: I love that. I mean, I have no dog in this fight. I think that that was a really useful conversation.
[00:29:48] Dustin: Where it brings me back to is. There's probably still, at least for the foreseeable future, some consulting that is covering 200,000, 250,000 a year of your $500,000 initial goal going to a [00:30:00] million. And that's probably gonna stay static. So the something else is the part that's gotta grow, not the consulting.
[00:30:06] Dustin: So let's talk about the something else from an offer standpoint. And I think the component of that is this more one to many. Thought leadership stuff, which actually would serve the audience. You don't want to coach directly really well. So you're writing a book, being, speaking, getting paid for that.
[00:30:24] Dustin: Maybe hosting workshops and things like that where you're a thought leader in the industry and people respect that. I don't think that's the bread and butter piece, but that's probably a component of it, especially probably in the 500 to a million dollar transformation part of your journey. There's that initial $250,000 gap that grows to 500.
[00:30:40] Dustin: We wanna think about strategically. What makes sense to fill in? I really like where you're going with, how can I serve the people I want to reach in a more direct way that doesn't require me to be a fractional part of their
team, but serve them as directly a one-on-one or group. So have you done any coaching or [00:31:00] one-on-one consulting with those individual leaders yet?
[00:31:02] Dustin: Or has all your engagements been on the team basis?
[00:31:05] Yuval: The engagement has all been, let's call it enterprise level organizational. Within that, I would say 80% of the work that I actually do in recent years is those one-on-one engagements of the six figure recent client that I'm working with. Three or four of the last engagements, 80% of the work.
[00:31:30] Yuval: Is with a small set of leaders. It wasn't structured that way. They didn't hire me as their one-on-one coach, but one-on-one coaching is the main modality inside the engagement.
[00:31:42] Dustin: And when you think about the work that you've done, and that's great that you're actually doing it. It may not be what you were calling it or what the company thought was in the budget line item, but effectively it was largely one-on-one coaching.
[00:31:54] Dustin: When you think about those engagements over the past three years. Do you typically follow what we would call a framework? [00:32:00] Is there typically like a process that you kind of run through with everyone? Obviously it's customized to their needs, but is there sort of a beginning, middle, and end? There's a
[00:32:07] Yuval: framework for, let's call it the enterprise transformation.
[00:32:12] Yuval: There isn't a framework for the one-on-one coaching. The one-on-one coaching follows where the organization is in its transformation. And we might be focusing on this pillar, that pillar, but. The reason one for the one-on-one
[00:32:25] Dustin: coaching, which is an interesting gap, do you think it's possible if you step back and you diagnose sort of the work that you've done and you needed to present to someone, here's how this would work.
[00:32:36] Dustin: I don't know you yet, but I know the industry you're in, and here's the process I work through with every client. Do you think it's possible to define a framework? Yes. Yes. Yeah, and I think. In my experience personally and with a couple hundred clients, most of which have some component of group coaching in their businesses.
[00:32:53] Dustin: The key to going from one-on-one to group at, you know, at any sort of scale or really just any level of effectiveness is a framework, [00:33:00] right? And so I think if you could define a framework, I
[00:33:02] Yuval: think like I'm doing inside an enterprise, the same frameworks that we use. Could be used to, and, and I've been thinking about structuring a mastermind coaching program that uses the same framework.
[00:33:16] Yuval: Those people need to work through these things to help their organization work through, you know, organizing around outcomes and framing your goals in outcomes rather than activities, and introduce leading indicators. You know, empower teams rather than micromanage everything and how to escape founder mode, there's certain pillars that you need to go for.
[00:33:39] Dustin: Take the transcript of this, put in your chat. GPT, your Claude, and I think you do have a framework. You just haven't had to define it yet. It'll be an iterative thing. I bet if we sat down and all we had was 10 minutes, I said, just write it down. What is the framework? I bet 80% of it's there, right? And so let's talk about the economic model.
[00:33:56] Dustin: If we do wanna develop, what's nice is this isn't like [00:34:00] tomorrow you have to switch because you're in desperation mode. It's like, Hey, I've got my enterprise consulting clients and we wanna add coaching. That's called coaching, right? And we wanna add that as a new revenue stream. You could totally start that one-on-one, but with new clients, maybe on smaller organizations or however you would.
[00:34:15] Dustin: Wanna work that out. And actually I think there's a huge opportunity to go back to past clients and do a kind of round two that's just coaching and it's called that. But anyway, the point is we can roll this out gently and we can do one-on-one and then transition to a group, or we can establish a group B.
[00:34:32] Yuval: I'll tell you what my problem is. My problem is the audience for this, like I think the offer, if you ask me what do I feel the challenges with this offer is I don't have. People, I can send this as a hand raise to at the moment, my audience is not the right audience for this. Most of my, let's call it active audience, worm audience is not the right audience.
[00:34:58] Yuval: I can reach out to [00:35:00] past clients, yes, but those are not people that are in my orbit right now. Reactivate them, and I probably need to get to. More people or activate through referrals, like figuring out a mailing
list or something that has people that are, might be interested in this sort of thing is the main gap that I struggle with right now is what brought me to your world.
[00:35:23] Yuval: As
[00:35:24] Dustin: I say, good news is that's what I love to do. It's funny, all of these podcast interviews are going like this where it's like it takes a lot of clarifying to get to the key objective, which you just defined, which is like, I just don't wanna put a fine tooth on the economics. And I do wanna obviously spend the last five minutes here talking about this marketing strategy.
[00:35:42] Dustin: But all of this is necessary to figure out the actual key objective, which we're now there. But just to put context for you and for the audience. If you had this ideal client and you could fill up a group and it was say a group of 10 of them and you're gonna do a 60 90 day group coaching [00:36:00] with them, what do you think would be a price point for something like that?
[00:36:03] Dustin: Just so we kind of put some numbers to it?
[00:36:05] Yuval: Let's say 5K. More or less could start with three. Could become a 10.
[00:36:11] Dustin: Yeah. So what I like to kinda smell test here is we have a $250,000 gap we want to fill. And so if we had 10 people in a $5,000 group, that's obviously $50,000. That's five cohorts a year. If you're doing 60 day engagements, you're there.
[00:36:26] Dustin: Obviously the huge limiter here is lead flow. We gotta get the leads to support that. If you have 10,000, you only need. Two and a half groups, you know, two or three groups to fill that gap, and that becomes extremely scalable. So as long as you develop the lead flow and the flywheel specifically around this model that does get you to seven figures, it's just a matter of doubling or tripling the number of groups.
[00:36:48] Dustin: Or the price point or the number of people in each group, right? Like that is a very scalable model at that point. And I also, what I really like about this too, Yuval, is these are not disparate offers. They have the same [00:37:00] ICP and it's like, hey, ICP, you know, VP of product. I'm Yuval. Here's the stuff I know I can help organizations.
[00:37:06] Dustin: I typically get embedded partnerships for $200,000, and I can do that. And I also can work with you directly in a small group format where you not only get me but peer-to-peer support. It's only $5,000. There's only $10,000, right? But some of those same individuals will be like, this is freaking awesome.
[00:37:23] Dustin: I'm gonna get you a contract. I need you to come be a part of my team for the next six months. I think you're sourcing the six figure deals from the same pool. I'll take a breath and say, does that all feel aligned? Yeah.
[00:37:35] Yuval: I had that conversation with a past client when I pitched this sort of mastermind, and what they said in the conversation is, I'm interested in joining this.
[00:37:45] Yuval: But also, you know, I might need your help with, I'm becoming a CPO potentially. It's very much a
[00:37:50] Dustin: flywheel in the sense that one ICP can create different strategy session, which is already part of your stack. That's a front end offer that probably [00:38:00] leads more to consulting because it's an enterprise offer, but you can have a surrogate version of that that's directly at helping the VP of product, right?
[00:38:07] Dustin: A workshop. In other words, there's a workshop on the front end that is very accessible that leads to this relationship with the VP of product. They can be in your mastermind or group coaching program and or they can just
hire you directly and be fractional. The money model makes sense. Yeah. The money model works.
[00:38:24] Dustin: So let's talk about how do we find these people. Right? And I think if you get nothing else outta this conversation, you've all, I think what we've learned is you've got actually a lot more clarity than maybe you thought about
[00:38:38] Dustin: all I. I had a realization, or I guess you just, I realized as you were sharing what you already knew, that you've built an audience, you have 8,000 followers on LinkedIn. You have an email newsletter, but the audience is a bunch of peers or people that aren't even peers yet, in a sense of their advanced status within your industry.
[00:38:58] Dustin: I don't think that those folks are [00:39:00] unvaluable to these goals because they probably are referral sources. There are some who do
you know? Hand raisers to this audience because they may have clients or they may have past clients and they don't do coaching and they don't do the niche, specialty, fortune 50 stuff that you do, right?
[00:39:15] Dustin: Like I think there's leads to be had within that pool, even though they're not the buyers, they are referral sources. And so let's talk a little bit as we seek to wrap up here about how to find more of these. VP of products and maybe there's more directors. So we've got a range there of size, which I actually think adds to the dynamic of a group because founders want to be with VPs, and VPs want to be with directors and, and they can learn a lot from each other being at different scales.
[00:39:41] Dustin: So let's talk about podcast guessing, and we'll talk a little more about partnerships. You said earlier like, Hey, if I was trying to reach my peers, I got no. Qualms, no doubts. There's plenty of podcasts. I can go be a guest. Those peers will hear it. They'll come buy from me. But that's not who you wanna serve.
[00:39:57] Dustin: So do you feel a limiting [00:40:00] belief here that there aren't podcasts that. Attract or congregate, we'll just keep calling VPs of product, realizing they could be founders or they could be directors or whatever. But what do you think about if we had to do only do a podcast guesting to build the audience, to fill these group coaching programs that we're talking about, like what comes up for you when I say just do podcast guesting for that?
[00:40:21] Dustin: Yeah.
[00:40:21] Yuval: First of all, one challenge is, I'm not sure whether it's VP product or technology or just the founders. In those smaller organizations. So that's something I, I need to figure out playing with it. Let's say it was the VP product or you know, let's play with founders. Founders. It feels to me limiting belief are interested in podcasts, like business of scale podcasts, like Wisdom from the Top, these sort of podcasts that I feel like don't.
[00:40:57] Yuval: Or the knowledge projects. You know, [00:41:00] one approach that I've been thinking about is another platform like OKRs, for example. Founders are somewhat interested in OKRs, podcast guests on KR podcasts, so that's something I could do. Try to find people that talk about things like EOS, entrepreneurial operating system, but it cannot be.
[00:41:22] Yuval: Before mobile. Yes, there's a lot to unpack
[00:41:25] Dustin: here, but level one, let's just say, yes, these founders, and let's say they only listen to marketing and EOS podcasts, like I still think there's absolutely an angle for you to come into those environments and talk about on an entrepreneurial growth, sort of marketing oriented podcast to talk about as the founder of a scalable company.
[00:41:43] Dustin: The problem is not leads. The problem is X. Like it's whatever you take. It's operations, it's structure, it's your own mindset. As a founder, there's a lot of sort of. Counterpoint sort of approaches to being on those shows. EOSI, I think a show [00:42:00] that talks a lot about EOS, talking about how the agile framework or the agile mindset or, you know, you have better words for this than I do, how that enhances the EOS experience.
[00:42:11] Dustin: That's fine. I can talk about podcast guessing on a StoryBrand podcast. I've talked about podcasting on podcasts that are all about paid ads and I, what I'll say is like. This does not have to replace paid ads. It's an enhancement. It sits aside paid ads. These are complimentary things that people should consider doing.
[00:42:28] Dustin: Both of now, we don't have that constraint, like founders don't just listen to those podcasts. You don't have to kind of sneak your way in to those shows, but you can What, what I like to start opening your mind up to, let's just say it was VP of product, which is way harder, I think, at least on the surface, to find.
[00:42:47] Dustin: Be a podcast guesting. Then founders thought number one, the Scrum Community podcast has generated leads for you. So I think low hanging fruit first priority for me if we were working together on this, is how can we replicate that [00:43:00] success? Right? And so one of the ways to do that would be. Again, I don't know the specific podcast, but stick with me on the theory here that one podcast we know generates a lot of leads For you, it's a high resonance podcast.
[00:43:12] Dustin: You've been on it multiple times. There's ways to amplify its particular impact, but what I'm really interested in is how do we like create clones of it. One way would be like, whoever hosts that podcast, let's follow around and see where they're guessing because that would be a good signal to follow on the same show.
[00:43:28] Dustin: Looking at some of the guests that have been on there that you're like, Hey, like. These three are doing complimentary things as me. They're on the same show. Maybe you already have a relationship with them.
Let's go follow around where they're being guessed on podcasts, because there's definitely signals that there's an interconnected web there.
[00:43:45] Dustin: So I think there's a lot that we could do to leverage the one opportunity. Two, going back to this VP of product example, we don't have to guess. Which shows they listen to. What you could do instead, which I would
recommend is see where they're [00:44:00] being interviewed. These are the thought leaders, like the VP of product at Siemens or whatever like.
[00:44:05] Dustin: Not every one of them, but a lot of them write books speak, and more importantly, I think they're in these industry podcasts where they're an expert and people like to highlight their expertise and bring them on. Tell me about AI in your company. Tell me about what you guys are, your growth plans for 2026, whatever.
[00:44:21] Dustin: So I think looking at that list of those folks who are in that sort of premier bucket, where are they being interviewed? Like for me, if I wanna be in the StoryBrand universe. I can just go see where Donald Miller's being interviewed and follow him around, right? They're like, okay, well, I know they care about StoryBrand.
[00:44:36] Dustin: How's the podcast? Guessing a extension of what Donna Miller's core message was, and I already know they care about it enough to have Donald Miller on, and that has a lot of dimensions to it that we're gonna run outta time to unpack fully. But all I talked about now so far was discovery of podcasts that are in the ecosystem that you wanna be part of now.
[00:44:55] Dustin: Let's assume you're in the ecosystem and you're on the same podcast as one of these [00:45:00] VPs of development or of product, just as an example. It's not just about the listeners of the show. It's actually largely not about the listeners of the show. I mean, there's obviously some benefit to that. We'll speak to that audience, but very importantly, in your case, it's the host of the show and it's these other guests.
[00:45:16] Dustin: If there's a show that the VP of product that Siemens is on and there's other sort of like who's in. Agile or Scrum or whatever that are being interviewed on this show now, Yuval gets on there and gets interviewed about your area of expertise. Now you've immediately got an open opportunity at least to connect with these decision makers.
[00:45:35] Dustin: Very, very warm outreach. It's like the cool kids club. It's like you guys both spoke at the same conference, which you also do some of
that, right? Like all of a sudden it's pretty easy for you to reach out to the other speakers and be like, Hey, we both shared a stage. I'd love to have a follow up call and get to know you better.
[00:45:49] Dustin: And that is relationship building lead generation. And that's where you start talking about the coaching you do and you love, you know, you worked with their peer over here for a project, that sort of stuff. [00:46:00] So, and the host of that show is gonna be a center of influence 'cause they know the VP of product and they know these other people they've interviewed.
[00:46:06] Dustin: So with a relatively small pool of seed podcast, including the one that you already have results from. I think you could definitely generate, you don't need a 10,000 person email list to fill 10 person cohorts. I hit a seven figure run rate with this business with less than a thousand people on an email list.
[00:46:23] Dustin: But the people on that list and the people I'm in contact with, it's very high quality and low quantity my design, and that I think in your world, that is fundamentally what you're trying to build here. It's like it's not a dream 1000. It's a Dream 100, and it starts with the Dream 10. And I think with the right core podcast guessing strategy, you can easily start to create that ecosystem of your ideal clients.
[00:46:47] Dustin: And we can tap into the people that are already listening to you through your sort of peer-to-peer network and start to look for referrals. And then we haven't really talked about, and I, I do wanna spend two minutes if we have it, talking more about [00:47:00] leveraged partnerships out. So podcast guesting, what one of the great things about it, it generates those direct leads, it creates these relationship webs that we can leverage.
[00:47:09] Dustin: And it will help to daylight further partnership opportunities. Right? One of the people on the show with you or one of the hosts of the show that you're on, organizes a conference in your industry, or they're in one of these associations that you opened a show talking about, right? And they're like, oh yeah, I'm chairing this year's.
[00:47:25] Dustin: Conference committee. Great to meet you. I'd love it. Would you be interested in speaking at our conference? Oh yeah, absolutely. And so where can we find centers of influence who already aggregate these ideal clients of yours? And you know, there's probably things in like YPOC 12, there's things that are not necessarily industry specific that serve these emerging or
established tech leaders in conferences and associations and podcasts are part of that mix.
[00:47:49] Dustin: But a lot of times the podcast is the gateway into these bigger relationships.
[00:47:55] Yuval: I have a limiting belief to put in front of you. I can definitely see how all of that [00:48:00] works in the creator space. I can see the flywheel working great there I am for some reason, not seeing it work that well. In my space, it's a limiting belief.
[00:48:13] Yuval: I don't know if it's also true or not that it's possible to do it. I mean, I do have some partnerships that provide leverage. Scrum org is not just a community podcast, it's also a business that a lot of my business comes from. So that's working. You know, I do have other partnerships, but is it possible to go beyond those major platforms and create this with.
[00:48:39] Yuval: Individual podcasts, unless they're like tool companies, other spaces, tool companies, like an OKR tooling company. I can create a relationship with them. I've done podcast guesting with some of these companies and try to leverage it. I didn't manage, there's probably some better things I could do there, but beyond the tool ecosystem, I'm [00:49:00] struggling to figure out how to make this work.
[00:49:03] Yuval: I mean, in some ways, I'm all almost hoping. I was in the space of the people, coaching creators and coaches because there's so much opportunity for synergy there.
[00:49:15] Dustin: I'll say it's, from this perspective, I think you think it's easier in that space because that's the space you sort of spend your day to day in.
[00:49:22] Dustin: You're on LinkedIn, you're write in. Email newsletter, you are a creator. I'll say it that way, be and you're like, man, these creators all kinda like know each other and they get on one podcast and look at, honestly, from my perspective, sometimes I'm like, man, I wish I had Val's talent, skills and network because I can take what I know in marketing and this creator economy and I could absolutely crush it in this pond that he gets to fish in where these people are not inundated with.
[00:49:45] Dustin: LinkedIn dms, they don't know who Alex Oxford Mosey is. Right. You know what I mean? So in some way, the grass is greener on the other side. I do feel like you probably do have a smaller pool of podcast consumers,
as an example, in a non creator world. I actually think that could be a lot better [00:50:00] because you can be the big fish in a small pond.
[00:50:03] Dustin: There's a great analogy. It's like in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and it's just this basic idea that if I go teach marketing in a marketing conference, they're like, whatever. It's like noise. If I go teach marketing at an insurance salesman conference across the hall, they're like, this guy's the smartest guy on earth.
[00:50:17] Dustin: Right? Part of your unique value proposition to these clients in a coaching format is. You're creator, right? You, they don't see the world that way necessarily, right? They're stuck in administrative health. They probably feel like sometimes, and they don't get the same perspective that you can offer. So I guess what I would say is a proof of concept back, and we'll continue this conversation, I'm sure outside the podcast, but.
[00:50:39] Dustin: Sincerely, yes, this will work in your industry. I've worked with very obscure niches. I've worked with doctors in the medical communities. Way worse than, than, than the scrum and agile community as far as like inclu, like being non-receptive to outsiders, you know, that sort of thing. And very hard to sell.
[00:50:54] Dustin: But it definitely has worked in the medical community. Countless examples, engineering, manufacturing, [00:51:00] there. There's lots of industries, aerospace that we've, they've used podcast guesting. In very niche ways to find these ideal clients and meet their goals. So I think not only do I believe. That there's an opportunity here.
[00:51:13] Dustin: I think you've proven it, honestly. And when we talked about how'd you build a two 50 to $500,000 business, and I wrote it down, you're like word of mouth, of course, but partnerships, industry associations. This one podcast, which you later described as a strong community podcast, it really attracted some biotech people in the niche.
[00:51:32] Dustin: You've identified a keystone opportunity that you maybe feel is unreachable right now. You believe that would make a huge difference in your business? The quote unquote line podcast, right? Like, and if there's a line podcast and there's a Scrum podcast, there are plenty of other podcasts here that you don't even need an audience from them.
[00:51:50] Dustin: You need relationships from them. Then we started to talk a little bit more about who already aggregate your ideal client, and you actually
started an offer up who [00:52:00] serves your ideal client in a different way, and you mentioned, you said tools. I would maybe use the word software or other types of consultants.
[00:52:07] Dustin: Associations serve these folks in a way that you don't, there's all kinds of different vendors. HR I, you know, like I would go to your ideal client and be like, Hey, it's part of what we're doing together. I would love to know where does your company allocate their budget for professional development? And you're gonna find all these other people who serve that organization and maybe even the individual.
[00:52:27] Dustin: With a different line item in the budget than the one that you came in on. You know what I mean? And I do think there's a world of opportunity here. And the good news is, I think the closing thought for this time that we have is you need a small number of the right people to make a seven figure business.
[00:52:42] Dustin: Like the math just pans out. You need a very small number of the. Thousands and thousands of founders, directors, C levels, and VPs in your industry, and you have a huge head start towards that because you have incredible credentials and experience. You have a framework that you just need to [00:53:00] flesh out a little bit, and it's not a all or nothing proposition.
[00:53:04] Dustin: It's not like put all your chips in the middle of the table. You've all, and if we don't figure this out, you're out of business. It's like we just need the first one to say yes to a coaching engagement. Then we get the next one to say yes to a coaching engagement. Very quickly, I think you're in a position to launch a group coaching.
[00:53:18] Dustin: We've got an emerging flywheel that's feeding this. So for those listening and they wanna know more about you, maybe they wanna be your peer or maybe their golf buddy is a VP of product somewhere. If people do wanna get ahold of you, follow you, is there a best central source for that or a newsletter or something you like to point people toward?
[00:53:35] Yuval: They can check me out@uhval.com and one of the recent things I've done is take the framework. That I've been using with these recent clients and created a scorecard to help people self assess where they are. It's the project to product scorecard. I'll give you a link and you can share it with people.
[00:53:54] Yuval: They can use it to see where they are and. Get some more of my insights on what to do at that point. [00:54:00]
[00:54:00] Dustin: That's awesome.
[00:54:00] Yuval: So
[00:54:01] Dustin: thank you for being so open, transparent, and let me dive into a business that's in a really unique industry. I get a lot of joy out of getting to know you and getting to understand your business model, so thanks for being here.
[00:54:11] Dustin: Thank you, Dustin. Thank you for listening to the seven Figure Leap podcast. If you got any value out of this episode, I have. Three things, but one most important is to simply share this with a friend. Think of
someone who could get value from this episode, from this show, all the amazing guests that we have.
[00:54:27] Dustin: Copy it. Send it in a text message and say, Hey friend, I think you'll get value out of this. Please go. Check out the seven Bigger League podcast and if you wanna share it with your mastermind group, your social following, all the better. Number two, for your own benefit and to help us reach more people.
[00:54:42] Dustin: Subscribe, follow the show. So if you're on a podcast player, just hit subscribe. If you're listening on YouTube, great follow like us there as well. And number three. Again, this was really helping us, but by helping us, you help us reach more people and help people like you, give us a review. Give us a five star rating.
[00:54:59] Dustin: So [00:55:00] if you're on Apple Podcast, Spotify, you can simply scroll on your phone right now. Hit the five stars, and if you're so gracious to actually write a short review, it means the world to us. As someone who works in the podcasting industry and who helps people with guesting and being on other people's shows, I can't tell you how difficult it is to get ratings and reviews.
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