The Missing Piece in Megan Huber’s $1M Coaching Business

[00:00:00] Dustin: What are you doing for fulfillment? Like how, what would be the day-to-day doing the work Megan existence, that would make you super happy if you're generating 500,000 to a million a year?
[00:00:12] Megan: I would love to make $700,000 just from that, but I've gotta figure out a legion solution for that right now. I do not have one.
[00:00:20] Megan: Like, that's not gonna happen until I have a significant legion faucet on.
[00:00:35] Introduction: 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.
[00:00:49] Dustin: Welcome back to the Seven Figure Leap. Uh, I'm super excited. I have a, an old friend. I don't mean she's old. I mean, we've been friends for a long time. Megan Huber is here with me and we're gonna do. I know is gonna be an amazing coaching session because she's a coach too. We have different emphasis in the work that we deal with online businesses.
[00:01:06] Dustin: So I'm really excited to have Megan here. I think we originally connected through a mutual friend Marilyn Ria maybe, or maybe through Todd Herman. It was somewhere circa like 20 15, 20 16. And we've stayed, you know, pretty good friends since then. And we reconnected in a deeper way recently when I was a guest on Megan's podcast.
[00:01:23] Dustin: And then I was really excited when she raised her hand and said she would like to be part of this experience and let me coach her with her marketing and her partnership and podcast guesting strategy. So Megan, first of all, welcome, awesome to see you. And I'd love to give you the mic for a minute. Give people just enough of your backstory so they kinda have context as we start to deep dive into your business.
[00:01:45] Megan: Very cool. And it was Marilyn who introduced us because I checked in with her after I talked to you last. I was like, did you introduce me and Dustin? And she goes, yes, that was me. You didn't meet him through somebody else. So she took credit. So a little bit about me. I've been in the coaching industry since 2011, and like most of us who are in the coaching
space, or I guess business in general, you have lots of different iterations of what that business actually looks like.
[00:02:10] Megan: So 2011 is when I got started. I was a high school business education teacher before that. I think that's important to note because a lot of the skills that I bring into my business, a lot of that comes from my teaching background, from the planning side, the lesson planning side, the leadership side, classroom management, knowing how to run a group of students, knowing how to teach.
[00:02:32] Megan: When you run your own classroom, it kind of is running like your own little mini business in a way. So I think that's important to note left teaching when we had, our daughter started a business in 2011. It was very general coaching. I was coaching entrepreneurs. I was coaching people who had a brick and mortar, and the way that I grew was through the local speaking network.
[00:02:51] Megan: I joined networking groups that had a lot of different chapters across the state of North Carolina and Brighton was an infant in her little car seat, and I would take her everywhere I went, I was willing to drive to the mountains or to the coast, or anywhere in between to go speak as long as there were two people in the room and I had a 10 minute slot.
[00:03:11] Megan: And that is how I built. I did it for six months to a year, and I would speak anywhere from two to 10 times a month. So that was the first iteration of the business, not charging hardly anything, didn't know what I was doing. And it's a lot of coaching people on goal setting, vision, casting focus, being productive, doing what you're supposed to do, taking action.
[00:03:29] Megan: It's like the really typical stuff no matter who you're coaching. Right. Then fast forward a little bit, I had a mentor that I became an apprentice under. She had a coaching business and is really one of the OGs in our industry. I think she got started around 2004, 2005. And during that apprenticeship, I helped her build a coaching certification program that also doubled as a business coaching program.
[00:03:52] Megan: So I wrote the curriculum for it, and when we were done with it and launched, we had a $2.3 million launch, which was her biggest launch ever. We had 212 people join that program in September of 2013, and she asked me to be her certification director. I said, yes, it was part-time. I was still coaching in my own business at the same time.
[00:04:15] Megan: And then six months later, she's like, I need you full-time. So in 2014, that turned into a full-time position. I left my business and I was the director of client success and client experience. And at any given time, I was running four large scale coaching programs that were all 12 months long. Had a certification team hired, fired, traveled the world, did live events with her.
[00:04:38] Megan: Basically created a brand within a brand for myself. 'cause I was very front facing with clients, but I was also running the operations, not of the entire company, but I was running the operations of all the programs. I left there at the end of 2016. And naturally when you leave that type of position and the coaching industry, people know who you are.
[00:04:58] Megan: So I built extremely rapidly. My first year back in 2017, I did close to 500,000 in sales and that was through one-on-one coaching and small group coaching. And again, my ideal client was a coach, but it was still a lot of the same thing. It's how do you grow a coaching business? How do you get clients consistently?
[00:05:19] Megan: How do you transition from one-on-one to a group? Those were all things that I was really good at. So I had one-on-one clients, maxed out within three months, had 25 clients, had a transition to a group, then I launched a mastermind. Did that the way that I filled all those programs, it was through a Facebook group.
[00:05:36] Megan: I started a Facebook group. All my lead gen was organic, all my sales were happening inside that Facebook group. And in 2019, I started live launching. So that was a nine day live launch model. And in 2022, the very beginning of the year, I found myself, we'll just use the word burnout just for the sake of using a word.
[00:05:58] Megan: And I shut everything down. And there had been a lot of life events that had occurred. My husband had a heart attack in August of 2021. I got really sick. I think I had COVID in December of 2021. It was kind of like a lot of things were happening and it all just sort of came like crashing down on you personally.
[00:06:17] Megan: And for someone like me who's a super high achiever, I wanna fix everything. You kind of just keep going when those types of things are happening and you don't spend a single second processing any of it. And then all of a sudden, and my husband's heart attack, that was like the straw that broke the camel's back.
[00:06:34] Megan: There were a lot of other things leading up to that, that were really severe and significant. So I shut everything down. And in 2022, I immediately pivoted to a consulting model, and I focused on mostly high seven and multiple eight figure coaching and education companies. And I was promising an increase in client retention, client renewals, upsells, resells to extend the lifetime value of the client.
[00:07:01] Megan: And that was fairly easy to fill for a while because I had so many relationships in the industry. And then it became a little bit more difficult of a sale because most people aren't even paying attention to retention at all, although it is insanely important. So I've been doing that, still do that to this day.
[00:07:22] Megan: My model is quite labor intensive and I love what I do there. So there's a part of me that would like to figure out how do I still do that because I'm insanely good at it, but not almost feeling like I'm a playing a fractional role in somebody's company. So just note that. And I decided to reboot my coaching business in October of 2024.
[00:07:45] Megan: So what did I do? I reignited my trusty Facebook group that I had had since 2017. I started rebuilding right inside my Facebook group and doing live streams, masterclasses, posting in there. I have an organic DM strategy that I follow as well, and I kind of changed my coaching model. I used to be very high ticket originally.
[00:08:08] Megan: This time around I'm doing more of a trust building offer approach. So I have a trust building offer that's a 60 day sprint called super community. That's two payments of $97. And the purpose of super community is for coaches and experts to reignite their disengaged dead quiet Facebook groups, or if they have a community on another platform, the same principles apply.
[00:08:30] Megan: And then from there, I teach them how to turn that audience in their Facebook group into a buyer ready community so that they can easily fill their programs. So I have super community and then I'm kind of in the beginning stages. I have some clients in a, like a mid-tier mentorship offer. So if they want more beyond super community, then they can either go to a just month to month model in super community and stay in super community and cancel any time, or they can go into the mentorship.
[00:08:59] Megan: Which is a structure freedom mentorship. So that's what I'm doing right now.
[00:09:03] Dustin: That's awesome. Instead of going straight to high ticket, now you've got a front end offer, a trust building offer, as you called it, to help people rev up their own community. And that's, uh, basically $200 offer. And then from that, now sounds like fairly recently you've added for the people ascending from that who want to go deeper with you, you've got this mentorship offer.
[00:09:25] Dustin: So you've got fractional consulting on coaching education, customer lifetime value optimization. That's a mouthful. And then separate, but related, you've got your own coaching that you're doing through lead generation, through Facebook teaching people how to make money from communities basically. And then what's the price point on the mentorship?
[00:09:44] Megan: Four 50 a month. Four
[00:09:45] Dustin: 50 a month. Cool. Got it. Mm-hmm. And then like I know the consulting is probably, is it all custom? Like what's a range of monthly fees on on that gonna work?
[00:09:55] Megan: It's relatively custom. So what I like to start out with is a full audit, which takes me about 30 days to do before I go into something longer term, because the audit shows me what they actually need longer term.
[00:10:09] Megan: The audit is $4,500, and again, that takes me like three to four weeks to deliver on. And depending on what they need, that could go to a monthly retainer, which is 2,500 that could go to, you know, one of my projects is a $25,000 project, and we're basically redoing an existing year long program and maybe 10% of the clients are getting results.
[00:10:36] Megan: So they're gonna reshoot. Now, I'm not the subject matter expert, but they're gonna refilm and then I'm coming in. And the biggest problem is there's lack of structure, lack of organization, lack of a client pathway. So students come in and they don't even know what to do, and there's all these elements and all these parts and pieces.
[00:10:52] Megan: So I'm consulting on how do we optimize the delivery and fulfillment of this program so that more than 10% of your clients are getting results and buying other things from you because they do have other things for purchase that they could be capitalizing on so much more. So it kind of ranges. I think my largest client I've had on the consulting side is a hundred K for the year.
[00:11:14] Megan: So it does go all the way up to a hundred K for the year. And that's just me being a teeny bit more involved with the business with something I have started to do is 10% rep share as well. So that's something that I'm newly shifting to is they can either pay a big chunk upfront or they can space those payments out and then it's 10% rev share on anything that comes in from the moment I start working with them.
[00:11:39] Dustin: So 10% of increased revenue from the baseline of of the day you start basically. Okay. So a sense of tension between like the consulting work and the coaching work. I guess one of the reasons I say that is you started, you restarted coaching in 2024. Why the coach? Well the consulting sounds like it's humming along.
[00:11:59] Dustin: Plus as you went through this history, you made a very sort of intentional pause there and you're like, and by the way, make note of the fact that I like this, but it kinda like needs to be more scalable. It feels too fractional.
And by fractional, I don't know if you mean it feels too custom, but Yeah, like tell me a little bit about the coaching versus consulting, just sort of in the current mix of things, how you feel about those two things relative to each other.
[00:12:25] Megan: Yeah, I do think I have like a little bit of a conundrum there. Part of it is because I make more money with the consulting than I do on the coaching. So until the coaching gets back up to a certain level, I'm gonna keep doing the consulting. So that's one part. The second part is, I mean, I'll tell you my favorite thing to do is teach and train.
[00:12:46] Megan: I love to teach and train. So on the consulting side, what I would like to move that to is going in and providing workshops for teams. So I'm only focusing on coaching and education because it's my comfort zone and it's what I know really, really well. Many people over the last three years. Three years, and I recently had someone three weeks ago who has a SaaS product that is similar to what I do.
[00:13:14] Megan: It's in the retention category, but it's a SaaS product to basically go in and save chargebacks or like missed payments and things like that. And that guy recently sold a company to Russell Brunson, and he goes, you should be doing this with SaaS companies. He's not the first person who's told me that.
[00:13:31] Megan: That is of high interest to me because the principles and the process and the psychology of retention. And lifetime. If I have a client and client success, it's all the same no matter what the industry is. Now, what I don't
wanna do is go into a SaaS company and get my hands in there. I'd rather just show up with your team for a half a day and do a workshop with your team that's very experiential, or sell a bundle of workshops.
[00:13:58] Megan: So maybe I'm coming back quarterly. That is insanely attractive to me because it gets me out of doing it for people. And one of the reasons why I end up doing it for people, number one, something that is incredibly valuable to the marketplace right now, it is done for you. I mean, people will pay for done for you in a heartbeat.
[00:14:17] Megan: Number two, what I'm finding is a lot of companies do not have any type of structured team on the client success side of their company. So there's no one there to really do it, or it's this. Warm body, or it's a community manager, or it's a salesperson doubling as a salesperson and the customer success manager, and they don't know what they're doing, so then it's sort of like, Ugh, I'll just charge you more money and do it myself.
[00:14:44] Megan: But then you're sitting here doing work for other people and I can't grow a business that way. So I'm pretty limited in the number of people I can bring on. But I do, I have been approached multiple times in the last three years, and the big suggestion that I've gotten, which is attractive to me, but there's a part of me that's like, how the heck would I even do this?
[00:15:05] Megan: And it's basically becoming a training slash recruiting agency where I'm training customer success managers, and then you can go through my company to hire my trained customer success managers in your company. That's super attractive to me because all the things that that requires, it's my skillset, it's my gift, it's my talent.
[00:15:27] Megan: It lets me teach, it lets me train, and then I'm done with people. Meaning once I train you to be a client success manager, here's your role. You go do it for them. Now that is very attractive to me. I think the big
question mark is that's two ideal clients. One, you've gotta go find the people who actually want to be trained in that particular job role, unless they're already in it and companies are sending them to my program.
[00:15:54] Megan: And then I've gotta have the idle client of the company who needs the client success manager. So then I have to place the people. So it's like, that just seems like a big job, but I'm very, very attracted to that model because it takes me out. So it's like the training and the workshops. If I could pivot the consulting to that first, and then maybe this whole training client, success manager, things like maybe that comes second, I would be happy to do that.
[00:16:22] Megan: So then the second part of your, like the other part of your question is like, and then there's coaching over here. Again, the part that I love the most is that I love creating programs, and I love teaching and training in a group setting. I don't like working with people one-on-one. I do not wanna do one-on-one coaching at all.
[00:16:39] Megan: I don't like it.
[00:16:40] Dustin: And at one point, you know, you had 25 of those going at once, so yeah. Okay.
[00:16:44] Megan: Yeah. The other thing that is also kind of swirling in my mind, and you can just call me out on this, the pattern that I'm noticing that I have, and when I just kind of trace back, like all the years, I definitely have a pattern of, I get really excited about something and then I launch it and I do it.
[00:17:04] Megan: And then what gets hard for me is lead gen. And once Legion gets hard for me and it starts to become a trickle, then I'm like, oh, I should do something else. Maybe I should go, maybe Sean and I should go coach entrepreneurial couples, or maybe I should go do this CSM idea that people keep telling me to do.
[00:17:21] Megan: Or maybe I should go create like a true peer-to-peer mastermind where I'm not the guru, but I'm building this insanely amazing community of experts. So then it's like all the things that I would love to do all start popping up, and then I have like five things, and then I'm like, I'll just go change and do something else that maybe that would be more successful.
[00:17:42] Megan: So I always feel like lead gen becomes this moment of truth for me, where it gets really tough. And then it's like I tap out and then I'll go, like, I'll just go build something else. Then I know I'm gonna run into the same problem again.
[00:17:56] Dustin: Yeah, that's super insightful and yeah, maybe it's 'cause you're, you're talking to me and you know, kind of the topics that I talk about that you sort of self-diagnose that I was kind of, I was kind of going there in a sense of you've made some changes every couple years here and that is a pattern.
[00:18:11] Dustin: Doesn't mean it's good, bad, or indifferent, but sort of like, what do you think that is? I think you just sort of nailed it typically, you know, like a lot of people I talk to, it's not so much that it's just pure boredom. You
know, creativity wanes, they feel like they solve the problem, a, DD you know, that sort of stuff.
[00:18:28] Dustin: But it's interesting that you're like, it's not me. It's because you seem like you are a very, and knowing you and also just the way you've described your history here. When you're on it, you're on it. Like you're very diligent, very disciplined, focused, you know, it's structured all those things, which is, does not speak to, it's the chasing the squirrel thing.
[00:18:47] Dustin: It's interesting. So I do wanna definitely touch on that because the cure to that would be legion. That is easy, fun in flow with the work that you're doing already, right? Like I think we can totally address that.
[00:18:59] Megan: Here's the other thing I'll add to this whole legion thing, so, and you'll understand this.
[00:19:04] Megan: So one of the things that was very, okay, so when I shut down the coaching stuff, all those things were happening in life, blah, blah, blah. Okay? The other place that I noticed. That my mindset would like kind of get the best of me. It was when I felt like I couldn't teach or help my own clients in the category of Legion, because we all know that's everybody's biggest problem, and it's everybody's biggest problem.
[00:19:25] Megan: I don't care how much money they're making, if they're making like 50 million, because some of those people have been my clients and they all have legion problems too here and there. Even though they're making $50 million a year, or they think their biggest problem is lead gen. So when I get to a point in my own business where I feel like lead gen is my weakest link, I have zero desire in me to teach anybody how to generate leads.
[00:19:47] Megan: I've never been good at it. It's not my skillset. I don't think that's where God's calling me to serve is like Legion, which is why I, I know this was so attractive to me. Going to the consulting model and working with High Seven and multiple eight figure companies. They had a legion system already in place.
[00:20:04] Megan: I didn't have to even open my mouth about Legion to them. I could just stay in the category where I excel the best. So I think that bothers me when I'm coaching coaches and experts who are newer stage, their biggest problem, most of them, it is some form of Legion and it's why they can't fill their programs.
[00:20:26] Megan: But I don't want to help people with Legion. But then they're looking at me to help them with Legion because they hired me to be their business coach. But it's not the thing that I wanna do. And I think part of the, it's not a problem, but it is. I've had a number of very, very successful mentors and coaches tell me this, that my ideal client on the consulting side is so few and far between.
[00:20:52] Megan: There are so few people that are that successful, you know, that are gonna bring somebody on a retention that your pool of candidates is so low that it's not a smart business move. I've been told that by like eight figure business owners. People who've bought businesses, built businesses, sold businesses, and they're like, you need to go back to the widest part of the funnel.
[00:21:11] Megan: What I don't like about the widest part of the funnel, the only thing I don't like about it is me having to teach Legion. I don't wanna be a legion expert.
[00:21:19] Dustin: Interesting. Noted. And it's in my brain now, so I do wanna get a couple more pieces of data, I guess. So got a really good feel on what you're offering, what you like about it, what you don't like about it, sort of the emerging coaching stuff and what you're trying to shift in the consulting.
[00:21:37] Dustin: But like overall, you can combine those two if you'd like. So like snapshot trailing 12 months, you know, revenue and you can talk about client if you have a team or you know, client load team. And then the next logical thing I wanna talk about is let's say one year, three years, I think in your case, I actually wanna go further, but talking a little more like what does winning look like for Megan?
[00:21:59] Dustin: But like to start with that conversation in 30, 60 seconds, like what is the business snapshot today?
[00:22:05] Megan: Yeah, so for this calendar year, I'm on track to do 300 k. And that's a combination of consulting and coaching.
[00:22:13] Dustin: Is it mostly consulting though?
[00:22:15] Megan: It's mostly consulting at this point. Yeah, because when I shut down the coaching, obviously, I mean, I started over from scratch.
[00:22:22] Megan: I mean, my income was completely slashed when I did that. And this year will be the best year I've had in three years, but still not where I was. Even in 2017. 2018. 2019. 2020.
[00:22:35] Dustin: I know you worked for another company and stuff. What's the most you've ever had in your own business? In the top line revenue,
[00:22:41] Megan: it was a little under 500.
[00:22:42] Megan: So I did that in 2017 and I, I just kept repeating it every year. I kind of got stuck. That was kind of my ceiling every year. It was just like knocking on the door of 500 K every year and then I shut it down and then I had to rebuild.
[00:22:55] Dustin: And when you had that 500 K, 500 k, was it a lack of capacity to fulfill more or was it back to this lead generation you just couldn't get enough?
[00:23:04] Megan: It was lead gen. I wasn't creating new programs all the time. I had signature programs. I had two signature programs. That was it. And it was just selling to the same batch of people on my list and the same batch of people in my Facebook group.
[00:23:17] Dustin: And then what's your client, I know it's kind of funky 'cause of the consulting, but like total number of clients served of that you would expect this year and I wouldn't count like maybe the 92, 2 times 97 front end people, but like the significant parts of that 300 K, how many people does that represent?
[00:23:33] Dustin: Who get to like an average client value?
[00:23:36] Megan: So just for a super community that started May 1st, that program started May 1st. I've had over 60 people join that consulting, probably 10 this year has been the most number of consulting clients I've had in a year. It's been this year, it's been a good year with consulting.
[00:23:54] Dustin: Yeah. Where do those 10 people come from?
[00:23:57] Megan: The majority of them come from a real estate investing mastermind that I am a part of. I serve on the board of directors and I also get to speak and I mc the events. So, and I'm the only person who does what I do. Almost everybody in there has a coaching or education company or tech.
[00:24:13] Megan: So almost everybody in there is my ideal client. If they see retention as an actual problem, I think the hardest thing to sell that side of things is that they don't think that's their problem. They still think marketing and legion is their problem, even if they're making $50 million a year.
[00:24:31] Dustin: Interesting.
[00:24:32] Dustin: Okay. And then team, is it just you or do you have a virtual assistants or anything?
[00:24:37] Megan: It's just me on the consulting side, and then I have two virtual assistants, but they are part of their own same team, but it is two people who, they have different skill sets, but they are like a package deal.
[00:24:49] Dustin: Okay. And they're solely focused on super community.
[00:24:53] Megan: Yeah, my consulting side, I don't need help with that. I mean, that's just me. I will every once in a while, bring a contractor in who also has my expertise. If I have a project that I think is too time consuming for me, I will bring someone in to do certain parts of the project, especially if it's a curriculum based project.
[00:25:13] Megan: If I'm like redoing someone's curriculum that's old, you know, if it's like a 10-year-old curriculum and if I'm making them reshoot the whole entire program, then I may have a curriculum expert come in and do all of that work for me. But those are contractors.
[00:25:28] Dustin: So I have follow up questions, but maybe this'll get us there.
[00:25:31] Dustin: So let's say three years. So your daughter's like getting ready to go to college or maybe she's in college. I don't know the exact age, but I know she's a teen, like my youngest. So you're at that phase and it's three years away, so you got plenty of time to kind of build towards this vision and you can raise your, you know, wave your magic wand.
[00:25:51] Dustin: I do wanna know about revenue. I'm actually much more interested in kind of the breakdown of consulting versus coaching. Are you living in Facebook group world or, and maybe this is part of what we need to work out, but I think at a very high level, is it like a primarily a consulting business or is it primary a coaching or a training business?
[00:26:08] Dustin: And then sort of like what would be that ultimate top line revenue that three years from now you think you'd love to hit?
[00:26:14] Megan: I find it very challenging for me to answer how much money do I wanna make? Question. I don't know why, but if it's always been like, I feel like I'm just like throwing a number out there for no reason, and maybe that's part of my problem.
[00:26:27] Megan: Is I don't ever really have that specific financial goal. I mean, I can sit here and say like, everybody wants to have a million dollar business. Right? Okay. But like in my mind I'm like, why am I saying that? Is it just because I hear everybody else saying that? Is it because I think I'm made it if I made that much?
[00:26:45] Megan: Is it because that's what we need based on what our goals are?
[00:26:49] Dustin: Yeah. We don't have to have the number. But if you think of like take home, you know, I don't know what your, kinda like your husband's contribution, but I know like when I have to answer this question, I start to do the mental math of like college.
[00:27:01] Dustin: Expenses and cars for kids and like we want to, you know, maybe in three years we'd wanna relocate on some land. And it's like, okay, like to get there, I probably need to be whatever, you know, like it's bringing home 500,000 a year before taxes or you know, and that at least gets me into ballpark. And really what I'm getting at is not so much having you sign a contract that you're gonna make 625,000, it's more, do you want a $300,000 business or a $3 million business or a $30 million business?
[00:27:27] Dustin: Because that's a very different model for the rest of our conversation. So
[00:27:32] Megan: yeah, in terms of us being able to do what we wanna do, 60 a month.
[00:27:38] Dustin: Okay, so like 700,000 basically. Yeah.
[00:27:41] Megan: Yeah.
[00:27:41] Dustin: Okay. And because you said something earlier that kind of jumped out at me and it was like. I've had numerous high, I forget the word you used, kinda like high powered or very successful.
[00:27:51] Dustin: People tell me that model is not scalable enough, you know? And it's like that totally depends on what you want out of it. You know what I mean? Like, do you wanna sell a business for $50 million and you know, or do you want a sustainable 500 to $1 million cash flow business for the next 15 years and then you banked a bunch of money paid off your house, your kid's set and you're good.
[00:28:14] Dustin: And like I fall much more into the latter category. Like, you know, I wanna have a saleable asset for reasons of like, what if I get hit by a bus? What if I do get, you know, incapacitated in some way, but like, I don't have at all this event in my head where I sell this, I hold the big check and it's 50 million.
[00:28:33] Dustin: I never have to work again. Like I think that would be actually horrible for me. So that's more what I was getting at. Do you think that's more of a sustainable 500,000 to a million dollar sort of like. Quote unquote lifestyle business, that's still you and a small team.
[00:28:47] Megan: Yeah, and I don't know that I can see past that until I get to that place.
[00:28:51] Megan: So once I get to that place, like right now I don't see myself building a $50 million company. I don't see that at all.
[00:28:58] Dustin: I didn't see that for you, but I also didn't wanna like make that a false assumption. You're like, yeah, lead generation's it because I need 40 million leads to get to this like exit that I have to get to.
[00:29:09] Dustin: So
[00:29:10] Megan: yeah. And maybe I can't see that because in my head I always think I have a lead gen problem. How am I even gonna do that? So let's just not even go there. I think that's probably what's going on.
[00:29:20] Dustin: Yeah. Okay. Well let's say 700,000 sort of take home, it's roughly a million dollar business probably, right?
[00:29:27] Dustin: With tax considerations and stuff. And to me, the more interesting question is, again, you can do whatever you want as far as fulfillment. Like what are you doing for fulfillment? Like what would be the day-to-day doing the work? Megan existence, that would make you super happy if you're generating 500,000 to a million a year.
[00:29:49] Megan: So I really do like my super community model, and I've been thinking about this the last two days 'cause I knew we were gonna have this conversation. It is like the material is built and I love to create content and teach. So it's not like I'll never touch that content. Like every month I like to do like a bonus workshop or like a bonus piece of content or something.
[00:30:11] Megan: But the crux of what that program is about, it's done, it's there. And I do teach live, but once a week for 60 minutes and I don't even need to prepare. So I can literally fulfill this program with 60 minutes of my time a week. Like to me, that creates so much freedom for me to be a mom, to be a wife, you know, be at Brighton School, you know, do those types of things.
[00:30:38] Megan: And I'm a worker, like I love to work. So I'm not one of those people who just wants to like, let me just go spend my day volunteering and cleaning the house. I don't wanna do that either, but I almost feel like that frees me up to, there are other things I'm interested in. Like I, I really wanna do something with entrepreneurial couples, with my husband, like maybe some kind of mastermind.
[00:30:59] Megan: I would have the time to do that and I would have the funds to be able to do some of these other things. But I really do love now super community, the way it's structured. It's 60 days and then people can choose to just roll into a month to month. But what I'm, I've been thinking about lately, 'cause this is a relatively new program, is do I just shift that?
[00:31:19] Megan: So super community does become, you can invest for the whole entire year or just go month to month and not advertise it as 60 days. That is very attractive to me. And I would add on some other elements around community because right now it's just, it's really just teaching people like how do I reboot, revive my Facebook group and kind of get it engaged and going again and making sales inside of it again.
[00:31:45] Megan: But there's lots of other things that I can do with community because there's community on your free audience side, but then there's also community building with your paying clients. I mean, there's just so much that can go into what it means to have and lead community. And I do have people
that have seven figure businesses who've purchased that and they put their teams in it.
[00:32:04] Megan: So I do think that if I went just all in on super community and just, I almost don't even wanna have like a mentorship level. I almost don't even wanna have a mentor level. It's like, what if I just go balls to the wall with super community and feel super community? Then maybe at some point I'll have like a second tier that isn't like a separate program they have to buy, but it's just a second tier of the membership and maybe it is four 50 a month and maybe we just have like advanced topics that we talk about.
[00:32:37] Megan: Or maybe they get a little bit of more access to me. Or, I mean, I can come up with something or maybe I have guests come in there and teach on lead gen 'cause I don't wanna do it. I could see that where it's like, here's tier one, the super community club, maybe that's tier one and then tier two is super community something.
[00:32:54] Megan: I don't know. I can see that for sure. And then like I would love to make $700,000 just from that, but I've gotta figure out a legion solution for that right now. I do not have one. Like that's not gonna happen until I have a significant legion faucet on.
[00:33:12] Dustin: Yeah, for sure, because you're like a hundred bucks a month is sort of the target there.
[00:33:17] Dustin: There'd be a lot of hundreds, so 700,000 a year, it's not that much. It's 500. It'd be, I guess it'd be like 580 members, is that right? 580 members? A hundred dollars a month for 12 months would be 700,000 in top line revenue. It's actually not as much as I thought. If you can get really good continuity, which you know, you should, since that's, that's what you teach the, you know, very low churn, but it's still a significant number, I think, to start chunking away at that number.
[00:33:45] Dustin: In the interim. Maybe it's the club tier and then there's one super premium tier that's more of an accelerator experience or more of a mastermind experience for that topic where you can charge five, $10,000, you can get to a 700 a lot faster, right? With that, and then maybe over time you do less of that and more of the broad based, scalable.
[00:34:07] Dustin: But it sounds like you're really excited about super community. I did not hear in there the continuation of consulting. So is it the consultant? What I'm picking up with the consulting is you like the subject, it's
this community continuity. You like the people in the sense that like they're really high achieving education coaching people, but it's way too hands-on.
[00:34:27] Dustin: You have too much ownership in it without having an ownership in the company, other than maybe the spread share thing that you're spinning up now, but it's just like too much or it's not enough and then it's like you're, I don't know. You're very invested in the outcomes. You've said it numerous times, like I love training and I love teaching.
[00:34:43] Dustin: I don't want to be a fractional X. Like I don't wanna be a fractional part of someone else's company. Is that feeling pretty heavy when you think three years out that you would just want, you don't want that consulting stuff. You want that folded into super community in some way.
[00:34:57] Megan: I don't wanna do the consulting the way I'm doing it, but I am insanely passionate about client success.
[00:35:03] Megan: It is very easy for me. And I do feel like I have a gift, like a very natural gifting, and I think a skillset that I've built from being a teacher, if I kept it, like if I were gonna write a book, that's what I would wanna write a book about. Because people ask me that all the time. Like, when are you gonna write a book?
[00:35:24] Megan: And I'm like, what would I write a book about? I would love to write a book about that. And community is a very significant piece of it, but I don't wanna do it in the way that I'm doing it. I would rather go into an even much larger companies and just like if you could pay me 10 grand to come do a three hour workshop, I will fly somewhere once a week to do a workshop for 10 grand for your company on that topic.
[00:35:46] Megan: I do not wanna be attached to any type of metric that I am responsible for making sure that company reaches on a weekly, monthly basis, which right now I am.
[00:35:56] Dustin: That's the distinction, then it's you love the subject. You love using your unique ability to channel your knowledge and wisdom and intuition even into those topics.
[00:36:07] Dustin: You're not looking for a job and so it feels too much like a job when you're attached to the outcomes and you're like getting treated like an employee effectively. Right. So the good news is, to me, the super community
topic with some expansion maybe outside of just Facebook groups. It's community and it's community like monetization, the.
[00:36:28] Dustin: Consulting was obviously client success for sort of like longer term monetization. Right? And if you had a mastermind that was sort of like in the mix here, it seems like that would also be about it before community leaders. It could be. Or people that serve community as who provide community as a service is what I'm trying to get at.
[00:36:48] Dustin: Whether that's client success manager, SaaS company, the coach, or education thought leader themselves. But like that's the ecosystem. They're all on the same ecosystem. They're slightly different value propositions. There's different structures behind them. But the good news is they're all kind of doing the same thing at different levels of access, intimacy and speed from Megan personally.
[00:37:11] Dustin: So could there be a mix in a three year vision or, honestly, probably a one year vision where there's the super community membership site, we'll just call it, you know, I know that that's a loaded term, but like the lower T ticket. Sort of self-sufficient thing that you come in and do one hour a week with live.
[00:37:27] Dustin: And then there's maybe a tier, some higher tier, maybe it's uh, an accelerator version where you're uh, more of a group coaching where it's a 90 day commitment from you. Maybe you do a couple of those a year. I dunno if you like that or if it's a mastermind in this arena, because you mentioned mastermind a few times, either with Sean for couples or on your own for like a peer-to-peer thing that's not so centric on you driving results.
[00:37:51] Dustin: And then you have consulting. But the consulting is not consulting, it's workshops, it's training. It is consulting, but it's not a done for you service where you're an embedded part of the company. It's a very limited engagement where you come in and just work your magic. You're in and out and you're sort of like the ninja who comes in, turns your dials and says.
[00:38:11] Dustin: I'll send you the bill. I'm getting back on the plane. So is that kind of a three tier I, I know there's some lack of definition maybe on that middle tier, but, and maybe tell me like in your words, how you would see those three tiers shaken out from a offer. We don't have to get into pricing and all that, but like just sort of an offer standpoint.
[00:38:28] Dustin: Like what would be the promise for each of those three tiers?
[00:38:32] Megan: Super community would stay the way that it is. It's basically turning your audience into a buyer ready community and then making sales inside of that community.
[00:38:42] Dustin: And then the middle tier accelerator mastermind I like. I think that's the part where we could put some more definition.
[00:38:49] Dustin: This is probably actually the more like consulting is probably the fastest path to just cash, which is what you've already been doing. But you gotta shift that to a workshop model. This is probably the more like best combo of scalability and cash in that it's a higher ticket coaching program. And you want it to fit well within the spectrum of the other two.
[00:39:10] Dustin: You know what comes up for you? If I say like, you gotta do an accelerator and it's for the same umbrella as super community.
[00:39:17] Megan: So if I'm looking at what I've always attracted and the people who are in super community, they're all trying to kind of change their business model so that it is more scalable for them.
[00:39:28] Megan: So then you're getting into like, you know, a leveraged business model and you're teaching people how to grow a leveraged business model. Now where I go like, ugh, where it makes me feel like defeated is, and I know there's a solution for this. I do not wanna teach people how to generate leads, and I don't wanna teach people how to launch.
[00:39:49] Megan: I don't wanna teach launching. I don't want to do that. It's almost like I can serve the person who already has something going. I don't like to coach brand new people either. You are just now starting a business that is off the table, but it's almost like this. I don't really wanna coach somebody between like once somebody has to start building a team and they're kind of in that messy middle between like 350 K to like a 1.5 million.
[00:40:18] Megan: I don't like coaching that level. I am very, very good at my expertise with the seven, eight figures because I'm going in, in a very specific part of their business. I'm great getting people to consistent 10, 20, 30 k months, but it's in between that that I don't really wanna coach because I don't feel like what their needs are, I can fulfill because all they want is help me make more money.
[00:40:47] Dustin: Lead gen, right?
[00:40:48] Megan: Lead gen. And then I'm over here like, ugh, am I just teaching people how to like build a list and get more leads? Like really that's what we're doing? And then I feel like that feels like very, very hard work for me to deliver. And I have to work so hard. It's like the student who's like a C student, but they're trying to be an A plus student and they come home and they study until midnight and they can squeak out like a minuses, but it took every single thing they had to make the A.
[00:41:17] Megan: That's how I feel when I get there.
[00:41:20] Dustin: Into working with people in that range and people who just constantly just say they need more leads. Yeah. There are solutions to that. If that's part of the community. I mean like that is my exact sweet spot. Those are people I love to work with. I love lead gen. So yeah, that, that's kind of funny how that works, of course.
[00:41:36] Dustin: But I'm curious real quick and then I want to get more into the kind of plan here and start to get us closer to wrapping up, but with the super community, you said like its purpose is really to help you create a buyer ready community. How does lead gen fit into that? Because I feel like if you're like, Hey, teach me how to make my Facebook group a place to make more sales.
[00:41:57] Dustin: It's like, use your Facebook group for lead gen. And so if we wanna kind of have like a line of demarcation where Megan is not lead gen, she is. After you get a lead, it's monetization and and maximization of customer lifetime value. Am I wrongly assuming that Legion is kind of mixed in the super community, or is it
[00:42:17] Megan: Legion is a teeny bit of it, but almost everybody who's joined, they had an existing Facebook group that they built in at one time and then they just let it sit there and they went and started doing other things, following other trends, other strategies, other tactics.
[00:42:32] Megan: But they have, I've got someone in there that has a 25,000 person Facebook group. I have people in there that have a 10,000 person Facebook group, 6,000 person Facebook group, 2,500 person Facebook group. I think I have four people total that have ever purchased that, maybe five, who are starting groups for the very first time.
[00:42:51] Megan: And the way that I market it, it is to reignite your already existing Facebook group because you're literally sitting on a gold mine. I mean, there's so many clients sitting inside of your dead Facebook group and it's not hard to reignite a Facebook group. And I do teach some strategies to get people into the Facebook group.
[00:43:08] Megan: It's all organic, but I don't teach like Facebook ads or anything like that.
[00:43:13] Dustin: Okay. If we have one business, oh, you kind have two businesses right now, right? 'cause you got the consulting business, you got super community. As a new and emerging growing coaching business, I would think for your sake, you're gonna want one business that maybe has an offer ladder.
[00:43:28] Dustin: And I think we've kind of got it right. You got the lower tier community offer, you got the the middle tier higher ticket coaching offer, four, seven, and eight figure founders where it's about building a leverage business model. Maybe it's a little more on the nose and it's about creating a high leverage community for your coaching business.
[00:43:47] Dustin: You know, that sort of stuff. And then the B2B workshops is what I wrote down, but like this idea, maybe it's even a corporate workshop where you're coming in, you're the ninja. That's also about client success. Where I'm trying to go with this is what's the through line between those three? Is it community?
[00:44:06] Dustin: Is it client success? Is it customer lifetime value optimization?
[00:44:10] Megan: I think the biggest thing is optimization of client lifetime value. I think that's the through line with a very significant emphasis on community, because I hear that at the highest level, when I do third party interviews of my clients', clients, the reason why they stay is community.
[00:44:28] Megan: The reason why they buy, they buy because they want the result. But a lot of those big seven figure eight figure clients that I have, a lot of them fill their programs with live events. And whether it's virtual, but a lot of them do in-person live events. And as soon as somebody is in that room with community, they're locked in.
[00:44:49] Megan: I mean, that's what gets them to buy. It's that feeling of community, even if you're doing a virtual event, and you could still simulate that feeling. So I think through line is I want people to stay in your ecosystem for a very long time, and that is going to start with your ability to build a relationship with someone before they ever buy from you.
[00:45:09] Megan: And then carrying that all the way through.
[00:45:11] Dustin: And it's almost like, it doesn't have to be this stringent, but in terms of like business strategy, it almost feels like there's a pretty clear sort of revenue range for each of these three offers, right? Like the corporate workshops is probably like a $10 million and up, maybe a, at least a $3 million up.
[00:45:29] Dustin: It's a company, it's a corporation, right? Like they're gonna come in and, Hey, you guys spend $20 million a year on customer acquisition for your cable company or your, you know, your SaaS company or whatever like. Megan's gonna come in and show us how to retain our customers longer and make them happier and have them spend way more time.
[00:45:48] Dustin: Not about customer acquisition, but about once we have 'em, how do we keep 'em and make 'em worth way more to our company? Obviously there's a ton of value you can add in a corporate workshop, but that's like. Enterprise, you know, $10 million and up the Accelerator Mastermind. However, we wanna structure that middle tier.
[00:46:04] Dustin: It's very clearly for seven and eight figure founder led companies, which so far it's been education coaching, but it could certainly be SAS or consulting companies or health companies. It doesn't really matter, right? But the idea is they come in there 'cause they want to be in a peer group led by an expert on maximizing lifetime value.
[00:46:26] Dustin: And really I think you could easily make it like a qualifier to be in there seven figures. Because if you're at seven figures consistently, because clearly have leads and clients in a pool that you could point at and say like, we can make this worth more money without having to solve the problem of getting more of the people in the front door.
[00:46:43] Dustin: Whereas, you know, someone who's approaching six, definitely a problem. Even in the six to seven figure zone. Lead generation is always gonna be the first thing that they think is their problem. I think you get
seven, seven to eight and eight and up. They at least see the value in like, oh, I know this is my group, not for lead generation.
[00:47:00] Dustin: This is my group for the best of the best at retaining clients. Reducing churn, increasing continuity income. Upsells. Yeah, like how to, you know, these are the people that would be really good at live events. So that feels
like a good playground there. You know, 10, $25,000 type of mastermind. Ten two, twenty $5,000 mastermind.
[00:47:23] Dustin: Where the value add is, if I can get. 1% increase or 5% increase in my customer lifetime value. Like it easily pays for this group. And I'm gonna get that because I'm getting state-of-the-art best practices, peer support, accountability, you know, all the things that you join a mastermind for. And then the lower tier is super community.
[00:47:43] Dustin: That's really for getting people to qualify for the Mastermind, right? It's like, hey, go from six to seven figures. This is much more low touch with Megan. But this is the foundational stuff you need to have a profitable community. I think that that's the part that right now doesn't, in its current form, doesn't fit the rest of the flow.
[00:48:04] Dustin: And that Facebook group revamping and revitalizing your Facebook group doesn't really fit the through line as, but like having a. Not even a six-figure business, but like growing a six-figure community or, you know what I mean? Like making it community specific and growing that arm of your business. Or maybe they have a successful coaching business but they really want a six-figure community.
[00:48:26] Dustin: Like that's what super community does. It helps you create a highly profitable community within your business. And then it's like, oh, the people that are really into that join our mastermind because they have a seven figure, you know, business that's largely dependent on community. And then there's the corporate version, which is just bring me in to consult.
[00:48:46] Dustin: Is that starting to feel like in alignment and starting to give some direction?
[00:48:51] Megan: So it kind of, not really changes, but it better defines who is in super community. So what I do notice about the people who already have a high six or seven figure business with team, that person, the business owner does not wanna be in super community.
[00:49:09] Megan: They wanna put their team in it. Is that fine?
[00:49:12] Dustin: I think so. Yeah, I think the key is that whoever's sitting in the seat, there's gotta be a promise in tier one that is in alignment with what you do in tier two and alignment with what you do in tier three. And the reason is not so much, I mean, part of it's ascension and like let's have offers that fit together.
[00:49:29] Dustin: But it's really going back to lead generation where my mind's been, this whole conversation is thinking about a dart board with a bullseye in the middle. And I want Megan to be able to just throw darts at one bullseye, realizing that as long as we stay on the same dart board, we might get some super community people in here.
[00:49:45] Dustin: We might surface a corporate gig and we might find a lot of Mastermind people if that's really what we're aiming for, are young know accelerator people. But what we don't want is three different dartboards that we have to constantly feed with different efforts. And that's why I think whatever these three tiers look like, they could all be about Facebook groups.
[00:50:02] Dustin: You know, it doesn't really matter. But I think the more scalable thing that also fits for our corporate identity is gonna be community, customer lifetime value optimization. It's like, how can a lower tier fit that? And maybe that lower tier is intended as a team training tier. And you actually, your DecisionMaker is always the owner founder, C-M-O-C-C.
[00:50:23] Dustin: C-O-O-C-C-M-O. It's like this decision maker's, like we need to refocus on community or improve our churn, improve our retention. Like that's the business I'm in, Megan, how are you gonna help me? And it's like, well, you should be in my mastermind. I should come into your office for
three days next month and do a workshop for your whole team.
[00:50:43] Dustin: And you should put your front facing client success managers in my super community so that there's one person that we're gonna be talking to with our marketing who can feed all three tiers. Not necessarily directly all the time, but it's in the same ecosystem. That's what I'm trying to find a through line.
[00:50:59] Dustin: That one message, one bullseye fits for all three. And so I do think maybe, unless you want to have a whole business that kind of grows from Facebook groups, I do think the positioning of super community, not like today,
but I think over time you might wanna broaden that a bit and have better definition.
[00:51:17] Dustin: It's really about customer lifetime value optimization. And it's the lower tier of that and like who belongs in there and what's the promise that you're gonna give them. I don't think it's dramatically different than what you're doing, but it maybe is a little less specific or maybe there's a very, very specific, within that second tier broadens out a little bit.
[00:51:34] Dustin: I don't know, like how's all this feeling? I know we've, we've been going a while, but I feel like getting really clear on what you really want your business to do for you and your life, the role you wanna play in it, and getting alignment between the different offers in a way that you won't in two years be like, screw this.
[00:51:50] Dustin: I'm gonna do something different. Because what I want is the lead generation ultimately by doing all this messy middle work that we're talking about now, the lead generation will actually be a fun activity that feeds all three tiers and that there becomes a flywheel between the three where they feed each other.
[00:52:04] Dustin: That's where I want to get, but to get there, I feel like we need to have like better alignment in the offer stack.
[00:52:10] Megan: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then the mastermind level, based on what we just mapped out, I would want the business owner and. They would need to have a team member in there with them.
[00:52:21] Megan: They would have to have their client success manager in there with them, because that's the person who, when I think about a mastermind level, I don't want the model to be, Megan is the guru and everybody's just looking at me to give them all the answers. I would want that to be very community powered where, yeah, I'm gonna do workshops and teach what I teach because I'm an expert at it for sure.
[00:52:42] Megan: And I would want them to do a lot of teaching on what are we implementing that's working really well in our company. Like that to me, is so valuable. Get together in person two times a year.
[00:52:55] Dustin: That's exactly what my model is. So we can talk offline about like details, but I have a very peer-to-peer driven mastermind.
[00:53:03] Dustin: In my case, they all come out of my accelerator. So they all come out of a 90 day program where they're learning podcast guessing and partnership marketing or some portion of those folks are like, I really like this. I like being in a small group. I like, you know, being around Dustin, I like being in this community.
[00:53:16] Dustin: So they are not only in proximity to me and I do teach stuff, but like you just said, it's a lot of peer-to-peer value. We do two in-person retreats a year, and then within the community they're like the top of the community. They're the mentors of the community. They're actually the ones that do the workshops for the community.
[00:53:35] Dustin: My community is all alumni of my flagship. I don't have like the equivalent of a super community, like lower ticket. Option, at least not yet. But despite that difference, it's the same idea in that. And I also don't have the corporate big workshop stuff at the top right now. I've kinda got the two tiers in the middle that we've talked about, so I know exactly what you're describing.
[00:53:55] Dustin: I think, I love your idea of like it's owner and CSM, like this is sort of the Batman and Robin group where you come in and, and you're a dynamic duo and you, meaning Megan is in a very unique seat in that you fully understand both those roles and where they don't maybe understand each other as well, so.
[00:54:15] Megan: Mm-hmm. And I do see how super community, because again, not everybody has a Facebook group, wants a Facebook group, but everybody has an audience or a community somewhere that they're generating leads from and turning it into clients. So I can see how I could broaden that a little bit too.
[00:54:32] Dustin: Yeah. And then I think there's a strong, with this core model where these are like your three offers.
[00:54:38] Dustin: There's a really strong referral opportunity to you and from you, right? Like there's a guy named Jordan Godby who is in my mastermind and he's been in my program. He built my circle community so. His whole business is like $25,000. I build your circle community, right? Like Megan doesn't wanna build your circle community.
[00:54:56] Dustin: You have strong opinions about the structure and curriculum and all that, right? But you could refer people, oh, I don't build 'em, but you should talk to Jordan or whoever would be your person for that, right? And
Jordan doesn't host a mastermind on community. He doesn't train CSMs, he doesn't do like community, you know, as a expert.
[00:55:13] Dustin: He's an expert, but he is a builder. You're an expert who's a coach and a mastermind leader. And so very easy for you and Jordan, as in this example, and not so hypothetical, but a hypothetical example to be referral sources for each other. 'cause you're both believe strongly in community, both work with high end clients in community.
[00:55:29] Dustin: He builds the things on one specific platform, you. Could work with all of his clients to help them improve their offers and all the things you do reduce churn, because that's not his role. His role is to build a really robust community, get you off all these disparate platforms you're on into one centralized community platform.
[00:55:47] Dustin: You would be a great referral source for me. 'cause I have a lot of clients who do one-on-one and group coaching, but they could really use a community and while they see what I do and do model it to some extent, I'm not a teacher, I'm not a curriculum designer. You know, I don't, that's not my thing. And I'm really good at lead generation.
[00:56:03] Dustin: So your clients may be like, we do want lead generation. You're like, cool, I'm gonna have Dustin come in and teach his thing. And then, you know, so I think what's really nice about staying in your lane and defining one. Phrase that you're known for, and maybe it's customer value optimization, is there's so many paths that open in partnership to all these people who would just bring you in as an expert.
[00:56:21] Dustin: And that's been a huge part of my own growth is like, do I know stuff besides podcast guessing maybe, but I'm just the podcast guessing guy, so you bring me in your community, that's all I'm gonna talk about. I'm not gonna step on your toes and try to steal your business. And so I've become very complimentary to a lot of cool people in the same way that this is a very niche topic you're talking about, but in my opinion, one of the most important.
[00:56:43] Dustin: And it's just getting more and more important in an age of ai. So I think it's a very growth oriented part of the market where everyone's gonna be wanting to add community if they haven't thought about this already. So
[00:56:53] Megan: yeah, and at the mastermind level, I actually would be the part about that that excites me the most, just from a teaching training perspective, it's working with the company's CS in person.
[00:57:05] Megan: Because a lot of those people, they're just hiring someone to hire someone and that person is not trained. They've never had that role before. Even in SaaS companies. I talked to a company the other day about hiring me, and it's a SaaS company in the financial world, and they have two people in A CSM role on their website.
[00:57:22] Megan: It looks like they both have 10 years of experience in CSM. When I talked to the head guy, he's like, they don't even know what they're doing. And I'm like, do you wanna bring me in with two people who dunno what they're doing and train them? Or do you wanna bring two people who do know what they're doing and I train them because that's gonna be very different experiences.
[00:57:40] Megan: So a lot of CSMs have no clue what they're doing. I'm very passionate about training CSMs to do their jobs very well because the business owner is never gonna do that. They're busy making millions of dollars and they are very concerned about marketing and sales. They are not concerned about
this side over here.
[00:57:59] Megan: Or they're concerned about it, but they don't have time for it.
[00:58:01] Dustin: This goes back to something you said earlier about sort of one of the million dollar ideas that I think you've been encouraged on, which I don't think is a bad idea, but the idea of like, you become an agency that plays CSMs, like basically like we have the best CSMs.
[00:58:15] Dustin: To me, that's a whole different business model. It's like, 'cause now you gotta source talent, train talent and place talent, and then you're getting paid based on all, you know, potential fourth tier to this. If this is something you'd want to get into, that would be a lot simpler. Would going back to your roots and certification where people with certain qualifications could come pay you a significant amount of money to be certified as a, you know, premium customer service manager.
[00:58:41] Dustin: And then you could help with placement. You now have a mastermind of people who use these things, who, and you're speaking at these events, you're on these podcasts, like you're known as like expert in this industry. But kind of going back to the theme of not being a consultant, you
don't have ownership on whether this person's successful and their performance reviews and all that.
[00:58:58] Dustin: Like you just certify 'em, you test them and say they are. Qualified in managing communities or client service or however you would phrase that. And you help 'em with their network, but the offer's not, I'm gonna place you in a new job. It's, I will certify you in customer service management. I would think the vast majority of the people that would come through something like that would be placed there by their current employer just to improve their skills.
[00:59:21] Dustin: I love my CSM and she started as my executive assistant, but she's never been trained in it. You know, professionally, like she's kind of picked it up. I feel like she does a good job, but if you had a program where you're like, let me borrow her for 30, 60, 90 days, whatever, 90 days probably whatever it would take, I could pay for that.
[00:59:38] Dustin: And then I get back a much more profit minded person who has a piece of Megan's mind now with her. Like that would be a huge value proposition. And the customer for that is the same people in your mastermind, your corporate world, and it's a natural fourth arm to the thing we've already been talking about, or it's certification of that CSM arm of the Batman Robin.
[01:00:01] Megan: Yeah, it's like community is only one pillar of that. But I think why so many companies don't see this department as valuable is because the CSMs haven't been turned into a profit center that should be a profit center, and it could actually be more than 50% of your company's revenue. They're just not trained to do that.
[01:00:22] Megan: And then you have a business owner who doesn't quite see that because a lot of business owners have a marketing and sales background too, and that's what they've become very, very good at. And then they just have this person over here that doesn't know, I mean, I have people tell me all the time, my CSM isn't a salesperson.
[01:00:39] Megan: I'm like, well, you need to turn 'em into one because you could literally be making bank. I mean, I got hired the other day to come and do an audit because I literally said, you've got somebody in that position and you have not turned them into a profit center. They're not upselling and cross-selling your current clients.
[01:00:53] Megan: They know your current clients better than everybody else. You're losing. I mean, you're losing millions of dollars right now.
[01:00:59] Dustin: And it's just a simple suggestion of like, you know me, I know you, here's what you should be doing next. You want me to send you the link? Like, it could be that because there there's so much trust already.
[01:01:08] Dustin: They're already part of the community. That's where like, like you said, 50% to like 80% of your money should be coming from the people you already have and not new, but everyone thinks of new and you're very passionate about this. 'cause you brought it up like a hundred times that like, I don't wanna do lead gen, but I think there's a, it's coming up for a reason because.
[01:01:27] Dustin: That's on this shoulder of like, I don't like legion. It kinda like bothers me. That's the devil version. The angel, the shadow version of that is you actually deeply believe people over index for legion, they're missing a ton of opportunity for the clients they already have and they need to quit listening to this shoulder 'cause this one has all they already need.
[01:01:44] Dustin: So I, I don't think that's a flaw in you. I think it's like an expression of this like deep understanding you have that there's so much to more to be had for your clients, for your business, for your team, if you just focused some more energy on optimizing the experience for the people you already have.
[01:02:01] Megan: I like that. And I can see, based on what you're saying, how I also make Legion for myself very complex. Because what is missing is this through line, like you said. Because if I just had one thing to talk about. Everywhere I went, it would be easy.
[01:02:20] Dustin: And I think we have it, and I think it's speaking to the founders and by founder inserts, you know, whatever, CMO or you know, there's different titles, but basically the decision maker, the person who cares about the money coming in to their bank account, talking to them about why customer service slash community.
[01:02:38] Dustin: I know you have your own nuanced way of describing these, but like, let's call it customer retention, why that should be your top profit center. And that's just the message, right? Some better cleaned up version of that. But like then there's so many podcasts you could be on that talk to founders, entrepreneurs, leaders, executives, and you're just coming in kind of
beating this contrarian drum of like, Hey, the last five episodes on here were about Facebook ads and podcast guessing and speaking, and all these things to generate leads.
[01:03:10] Dustin: Like that's all cool, but the reality is you're gonna get a five x return for every. Hour or dollar you actually spend on taking care of your existing customers better. And I'm Megan, and let me tell you how that works. And then you have your framework around how to make this work. And then, you know, obviously you have your lead magnet that makes this through the founder's eyes.
[01:03:29] Dustin: Something they want to pay attention to and invest in. And then, you know, from there, they either put someone into your community, they join your mastermind, or they bring you in for a workshop. Your bullseye exist
in so many different places or so. You know, I like to use that analogy. You have the same dart, you know, it's like I have the same message.
[01:03:47] Dustin: I can point at a lot of different things and get the result I want. The other thing I wanna spend just a couple minutes on, and we started talking about this a little bit earlier, is partnerships in a broader sense. You know, like podcast guessing is a form of strategic partnership. It's you borrowing other people's audiences, providing a win for yourself, a win for the host, and a win for the audience.
[01:04:06] Dustin: And in addition to that, I like to think of that it's like the once a week cadence. You have an assistant doing all the legwork. You just show up once a week, get interviewed, you continue to get more clear on your message, grow your relationships. There's like, that's a really good, consistent thing to do.
[01:04:19] Dustin: And then kinda like once a month, what are the higher leverage partnerships that we can pour into, which might mean guest training and other people's masterminds, speaking at conferences, virtual or in person, you know, hosting your own collaborative expert panels in this area. So what comes up for you there?
[01:04:36] Dustin: Maybe some stuff you already know that would work to do more deeper partnerships beyond podcasts. Guesting,
[01:04:44] Megan: the only thing I talk about is retention. Yeah. So at every single one of our, we have two live events a year. I have a breakout room. We're
changing like the format of our upcoming event. So I'm not speaking at this one, but I mc, every single person in there knows me for retention.
[01:05:00] Megan: That's it. And I talk about the same thing every single time. I do a digital session or I have a breakout room and I get clients, and even the client I picked up this week, they heard me speak over a year ago in that group. So I probably would call it something other than just like retention. I would probably use another word, but like some of the words that we've used, because once people hear those presentations, what I notice is that even when they're making eight figures, they don't identify there's a problem on the current client side because they are continuing to get a lot of leads.
[01:05:35] Megan: I mean, the guy I talked to the other day is getting 50 to 150 clients in a high ticket coaching program a week. So they don't really identify, oh, we have this problem back here, unless they're getting refund requests and chargebacks, then it's in their face. But a lot of high ticket stuff, you're not getting chargebacks and you're not getting refund requests.
[01:05:54] Megan: You see that more in like the SaaS, the low ticket monthly recurring, which I could also go in. So once I do my presentation and I reveal this is how you should be doing things back there, they're like, oh geez. Like I'm not doing any of that. We need you to come in. I need to fix all of that. It makes it 1000000% easier to have this one main message and I could go into any mastermind with people making they need to be making seven figures.
[01:06:21] Megan: I'm very clear on that and I think where I am also excited to like broaden my scope is this does not have to just be for coaching and education companies. I think that keeps me small and limited.
[01:06:35] Dustin: Yeah, you just gotta be known for one thing. You got one LinkedIn headline, you got one lead magnet that you're known for.
[01:06:42] Dustin: You've got one signature workshop that you deliver in private or, and for your own email list and social media lists, you've got one entry point into your offer stack, but your offer stack serves people at different levels. And then you can go out with one unified message and point that, you know, depending on where you're at in the season of your business, you can point that directly to CSMs, directly to founders, which is probably where you'd spend 80, 90% of your time and then directly to people with corporate titles who deal with this stuff.
[01:07:10] Dustin: Right. On podcasts and in other partnerships.
[01:07:14] Megan: Yeah. I think I was having an identity crisis. I think you solved my identity crisis.
[01:07:17] Dustin: Yay. Okay. That's, that's important. So, okay, I'll take that. Awesome. What was your biggest takeaway from our time together?
[01:07:25] Megan: That, and it seems so simple once you do it, but I think we are so close to our skills and our abilities and our giftings and our talents and what we like and what we don't like.
[01:07:36] Megan: And our strengths and weaknesses and our limiting beliefs or our perceptions of what our weaknesses are. I think it is very challenging to see what is so obvious, because the way that you were like, here's your unified message. Even the way you said it, it was like, it's so obvious.
[01:07:53] Dustin: Well, thank you for spending so much time with me.
[01:07:55] Dustin: For anyone listening and they're like, I need some Megan Huber in my life. I actually want to talk to her about like my business. What's the best way to get ahold of you or see a little more about your work.
[01:08:05] Megan: Yeah, I would say two places. One, I have a podcast called Built To Last, and there are a ton of episodes over there about client success and what that means and how to build that.
[01:08:15] Megan: And then I also have an awesome Facebook group called Structured Freedom Inc. Community for Coaches, and a lot of magic happens there as well.
[01:08:23] Dustin: Awesome. So Structured Freedom Inc. For Facebook group. And if you're listening to this, you probably like podcasts at a very minimum. Go listen to my episode I was on.
[01:08:32] Dustin: It was a lot of fun. We did a deep dive into my own business and yeah, go listen to Megan's show, how they recommend it. Megan, again, so much gratitude for just opening up, getting real with me. It's intimidating honestly to like coach a really good coach. But I appreciate you going along for the ride and I think we got some good stuff out of it.
[01:08:50] Dustin: So thanks for being here again. Thank you everyone listening. We, we got some more coaching series coming ahead, so if you enjoy this sort of long form, deep dive dissecting businesses so people can get clear
and get a good game plan, please stay tuned for the next tier. And uh, thanks again, Megan, for being part of it.
[01:09:04] Dustin: I appreciate you very much. 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.
[01:09:22] 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 free 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.
[01:09:37] 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.
[01:09:54] Dustin: So 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.
[01:10:15] Dustin: You know, it's not something that really serves you. So the best thing I can do is ask you and say, Hey, do you wanna serve the entrepreneurial community? You wanna help me and give back a little bit? For all the time and effort we put into bringing in you what I hope is an amazing experience, simply do those three things.
[01:10:29] Dustin: Share it with a buddy, subscribe and send us a simple rating and review on your podcast. Player of Choice goes a long way. Thank you so much for supporting the show, and we'll see you on the next one.