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Thought Leader Coaching and Technology | John Warrillow
Blending Coaching and Technology to build thought leadership.
An interview with John Warrillow about the Value Builder software, working with various types of entrepreneurs, and blending coaching and technology.
Today’s guest is John Warrillow, the Founder of the Value Builder System and Best-selling author of Built to Sell and The Automatic Customer.
John talks about marketing to small business owners and how they can be a hybrid of consumer and business owner. Then, John explains how the Value Builder system was inspired by the IP in his book Built to Sell. In addition, he reveals the errors they made trying to take the software directly to the consumer. He identifies the reasons why going for a niche audience was a better choice.
We explore how a blend of traditional coaching and software tools can be merged together for powerful results. Finally, we discuss how John is supporting and training his coaches to ensure they are comfortable with both the product and working in this blended world, where we cannot always be face-to-face.
Three Key Takeaways from the Interview
- Taking thought leadership directly to the consumer can be expensive.
- Thought leaders need to be able to break their content down into the smallest steps or work with an outside partner who can aid them in breaking it down.
- When creating thought leader content to be delivered by others, never underestimate the importance of training your advisors.
Are you trying to figure out how to blend coaching and technology into your thought leadership? Do you need a strategy to reach small business owners? Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information.
Transcript
Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is John Warrilow from up in Canada. And I’m really excited about our conversation today. Let me give you a quick background on John. He’s the founder of the Value Builder System, which is a simple software for building the value of a company used by thousands of businesses worldwide, offered by a global network of independent advisors known as Certified Value builders. The Value Builder system incorporates several diagnostic tools, including the Value Builder Score. John’s obviously a also a bestselling author of The Automatic Customer Creating a subscription Business in any industry. And prior to that, he had started and exited four companies. So here we are. So I love your story, John. You and I were talking a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, it’s interesting. You know, I’m always fascinated with the underlying business models. Right? And this is software to coaching, coaching the software to unpack the business model here, because you’re really more in the software business with sort of a side of thought leadership.
John Warrilow Yeah, no, for sure. So that’s right. So we had built a software called Value Builder, which is essentially inspired by a lot of the IP that I developed in a book prior to the automatic customer called Build to Sell. So I wrote a book called Build to Sell, which had some IP on creating a business that can kind of succeed without the owner and then try to codify that into software which became Value Builder. And originally, Peter, I don’t know if they were talking about this. Originally we tried to go direct to consumer, so we tried to go direct to business owners with.
Peter Winick Tell me about what a nightmare that is because I have so many clients that we’ll go direct to. There’s so many millions of entrepreneurs. Let’s go direct to them. And I’m like, Yeah, but you don’t have the budget of Coca-Cola at P&G. So tell me. No bias here, but what a nightmare it is going direct to the consumer.
John Warrilow Yeah, it’s tough because it’s very expensive. And it to be honest, Peter, it’s just not my wheelhouse. Like I grew up a business to business marketer, working large enterprise organizations. And so this concept of marketing to small business owners who are this sort of weird hybrid of in one way they’re a consumer, in other way they’re a business owner. And so.
Peter Winick So can I pause you there for a minute? Because I it’s funny. I feel like you’re stealing my words at some point in a good way is I think the mistake and this is what I try to explain to clients is that people mistake when they go after beta SMB, that it’s a real B to B, but it’s not a real B to B in terms of an enterprise sale, right? If you’re selling technology into enterprise, that’s A straight up B to B full stop. Yet when you’re selling B to B into the SMB, what you don’t realize is you’re competing with, I’m renovating the kitchen. Taking the kids to Disney World. Got a kid. And there’s all this. And the flip side, the positive side of that, you’re also sometimes riding the wave of an emotional connection, like, my God, I fell in love with this guy world. I’m going to buy everything he’s got. So it’s a totally different game and it is much more B2C and it’s psychology than it is B2B.
John Warrilow You’re absolutely right. And we actually did some research into the different types of entrepreneurs. We discovered there was this series of three psychographic profiles. We call them mountain climbers, freedom fighters and cross people. And the third group in particular, crafts people, are the ones you describe where they’re making that Disney World decision along with like, do I buy the new computer for the office or do I take the kids to Disney World? They’re the most price sensitive of the three segments, the toughest to market to, because, again, they’re very price sensitive mountain climbers and freedom fighters, a little bit more business oriented. But still, you know, in many ways, business owners and consumers clothing in the way you market to them. And so to go back to the original question, what’s the business model, the idea was to originally go to direct to SMB, went pivoted pretty early and decided that we would go to the people that trust they trust the most, which is their professional advisor. So their accountant. Yeah, their coaches and consultants. And we licensed the platform to them essentially.
Peter Winick Got it. So I want to touch on something you said a bit earlier where in order to and I would say this is the highest level of difficulty, one of the things that a lot of folks have trouble doing is to codify their content. What I mean by that is, you know, in its loosest form, you start to write an article, you’re doing a blog, maybe doing some speaking, and it kind of changes every time you do it just a little bit, right? It’s not perfect, but it’s not the equivalent of, you know, a flight plan checklist where a pilot every time they it’s not that regimented. And the reality is that when you’re moving into scalable, you can’t do that until you codify the content down to sort of the Lego piece level and obviously to do that. Software really, really, really matters. But tell me about how difficult or easy it was for you to really codify that because a lot of people get stuck there.
John Warrilow Yeah. And I think the secret is to niche down, you know. Just to your point, I speak to audiences of plumbers and patricians and all kinds of different business owners, and they’re all very different. And so what we’ve really discovered is the secret to creating a software piece or effectively monetizing your IP in a in a in a product of some sort is to niche way, way down. Because if we’re if we’re still if we’re selling a speech or we’re doing consulting, you know, you had the luxury, as you point out, to tailor it a little bit for the audience. That doesn’t exist when you’re selling a product. So that in order to have a product resonate, I think you’ve got to just pick one niche that you are very comfortable resonating with. And I think that’s the sort of secret so well.
Peter Winick But I always going a little bit differently than the than the niche. So I agree with the niche piece, but what I’m saying is in order for you to even be able to teach what you do when you’re doing it from the stage, a lot of the burden is on you to carry that. And sometimes that can be done with energy, charisma, you know, reading through all that sort of old school stuff. And there’s not that that’s bad. That’s, that’s good. That’s what gets people engaged. But in order for you to be able to transfer the knowledge, you need to be able to break it down and say, here are the 17 steps done in this way. Right. And I always say to clients, you know, one way to think about it is we said, All right, John, let’s go in the kitchen and make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But you have to tell me all 87 steps involved. Your first reaction was you’re out of your mind. And then we’re like, wait, I never thought that taking the knife out of the drawer was one. Locating the peanut butter, taking the cap, you know, like, yeah, there’s a lot of steps. And we don’t think about sort of as the curse of the experts breaking it down. But in order to for others to benefit from that, you got to break it down.
John Warrilow Yeah. And that’s where I think some of the work that you do and others can be a tremendous benefit because we’re most entrepreneurs and sort of most speakers and people who have IP are somewhat unconsciously competent, right? Like, you know what you’re doing, You’ve been doing it for 20 years, but try to explain it to somebody else this way. I mean this again, I’m preaching to the choir and talking to you about this, but it’s why some of the best ski coaches are not the best racers, right? Like the guys who walk down the hill hundred miles an hour, like it’s been years since they’ve learned how to ski and therefore it’s very difficult to just go down the hill. It’s very difficult for them to translate that knowledge to a new racer. And so some of the best teachers are not often the best practitioners. And so I think getting someone like you, someone who can be an unbiased person to review them about their process and say, well, you talked about applying peanut butter, but what you actually have to do first to take off the lid, right? Yeah. That’s unconscious competence that we wouldn’t think about. But you’ve got to get someone to draw that out. And so I think working with a partner I think is a big deal.
Peter Winick If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcasts, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.
Peter Winick Yep. So you’ve also got as part of your model which is really interesting to me, two pieces that blend together nicely. There’s the coaching network and I’ve seen others, many others over the years go down the coaching path and some. And the core problem, there has been consistency in delivery, quality, blah, blah, blah. Right. Because you have, you know, 100 coaches by definition and 100 humans, they’re all different. Sure, some will be better than average, etc.. But the consistent sort of piece for you is the software, which is obviously consistent. So tell me about sort of that blend between, you know, that when the end client. Right, the business owner in Topeka or whatever is getting coached by a coach, there’s coaching and there’s technology. And how do you how does that blend together to come up with the right outcome for the end user?
John Warrilow Yeah. So in our case, we have a sort of three step formula. So the first step the business owner takes is watching a video series in the software itself. So the video is consistent. It’s always the same. Yeah. That step. The second step is a software tool that they’ve got to complete. So that’s always consistent. And then the third step is the meeting with the advisor. And that’s where the glue happens, right? Where you know, what they learn from doing the tool to their business. And so the first two steps are relatively consistent, in fact, 100% consistent for the business owner to the next. Where you’re getting into the application of the idea is. Where there is variability. Right. So I’m not sure that we’ve nailed it. We underestimated when we first started. Peter, The importance of training the advisor network. Again, we were unconsciously competent, right? We said, like, these are tools. You’ll figure them out. It’s easier smart. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, you know, we put them out there, and then we learned that the coaches were not comfortable working with business owners because they just didn’t have the training. And so we’ve really invested deeply in training our advisors. We now had this thing called Smart Start, which is like a nine month program they go through to become really fluent talking about the tool. So we’ve we underestimated in training. And so one piece of advice I would give anyone who’s going to like a distributed network, like a like a coaching network is don’t underestimate the time.
Peter Winick Well, let me let me even back up a step before training. I think the most important piece is the selection criteria, right? Because sometimes what I’ve seen in a coaching model is people that are they’ve just fallen in love with the IP, but they can’t sell if their life depended, depends on it. And then there are others that are really, really good coaches but are not the types to just sort of lock step in a system.
John Warrilow Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, look, we look for people that have credentials. So a CPA credential is a really good indicator of someone who’s had the stick to it. And as to get that, we also charge a fair amount upfront. And we do that for a number of reasons. But one of them is to ensure we’re dealing with someone who’s really serious. There’s a lot of fly by night coaches, and everybody who gets fired from Procter and Gamble decides their business. And we don’t want to work with those guys. We want to work with really, really high quality coaches. And is blunt is an instrument as it is simply charging up front, kind of gets rid of all the riffraff.
Peter Winick So I love that because I am a firm believer that that is right. So, you know, there’s an old school model of, get them in cheap and then they’ll step up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if someone’s willing to put the money down, I mean, there’s a reason that the real estate market in the States fell apart in 2008. There were no down home. You had no skin in the game. So the asset goes down, you walk away and go, good luck, right? You put some skin in the game. Listen, you know, everything takes more time than we think and a little more effort than we think. A little more energy. They’re not walking away. They’re going to crack the code there. And it’s also a signal to you and your organization, hey, I’m serious. I’m putting my money where my mouth is and bang, here’s a check there. So that’s right.
John Warrilow And again, we get hundreds of business owners every week coming to valuable rock com to complete their score. We pass those leads on to our advisors. The last thing we want to do is pass on leads to crappy advisors. And so we use charging upfront for all the reasons you reference, but also as a filtering tool to make sure that we’re dealing with really successful advisors.
Peter Winick When you’re putting your money where your mouth is. From the standpoint of providing the leads because many of the coaching models is, Hey, here’s the model, good luck, God, blessed be well, go out into the wilderness and find a.
John Warrilow Client and by the way, we’re going to compete with you simultaneously. Yeah, right.
Peter Winick Right, right.
John Warrilow That’s the first. Yeah.
Peter Winick Yeah. So that’s interesting. There was something else that you said I want to I wanted to touch on, so. When you’re looking at coaches, right. So they’re making investment. It’s a partnership. Yes. Sure. They’re actually your client, technically, etc., etc.. But in its truest form, you do well when they do well. Yeah. Right. So what are the things that you’ve learned, you know, what are the things that you’re doing now that might be different than what you did 3 or 5 years ago in supporting them? Just because you’ve learned from the marketplace little bits and nuggets that you’ve added in continuous improvement, that sort of thing.
John Warrilow Yeah. I guess the biggest, the biggest thing is training. We broken out our training and totally revamped it. Now we it has three components. The first is how do you integrate the platform into their practice? The second is how do you sell a market and the three of you coach. So lots of investment and training. We’ve also spent a bit, a bit of time on Facebook and we’ve created a private Facebook group for our advisor community and that’s been helpful because our advisors are now, in many cases answering their own questions on the Facebook group. It’s a private group, so they don’t it’s not.
Peter Winick People who want to be.
John Warrilow Advisors, it’s just the client network. So that’s been helpful for sure.
Peter Winick Interesting. Interesting. You touched on earlier the path that the end user goes through. Like first they do the video first. So first they are exposed to consistency. Then comes the human interaction. So one of the things that I think Covid taught us and is continuing to teach us is it’s not a binary world. You know, hybrid is where it’s at, right? So it used to be, no, I have to be, you know, like think about the assumptions we had just a year ago. No, no, no. When I work with my client, we have to be in the same room because the face time is important. And we, you know, we have a meal and all that sort of stuff. But that that technology to coaching is actually a hybrid model, right? That’s right. So what are the things that are different in your business, in your coaches, business, businesses today in a not post-COVID world quite yet, but clearly during Covid. If it pivoted if I hear pivot one more time, I might vomit. But a pivoted world.
John Warrilow Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, clearly all of our training, as well as all of the interactions our advisors have with their clients is now being done virtually right. So it’s, you know, like the virtual world. The jury’s out. I’ve been tired. I’d be curious to know your opinion on this one. I you know, I think at the end of Covid, we’re all going to be zoomed out, Right? Like there’s going to be real backlash against Zoom. Having said that, when we reflect on how much more productive we’ve been, how much more business we’ve been able to do as a result of not wasting all the time at airports, I hope that we settle in on on that that small group training can continue to happen via Zoom. There’s nothing that’s ever going to be getting a couple hundred people in a room and that vibe and that interaction and that and that networking. But when you’re training ten people on how to use something, I think that kind of interaction is probably going to fault. It’s going to get to continue to be Zoom even after the pandemic.
Peter Winick Yeah. So I, I think yes. End. And the end is I think that when the world gets back to whatever, you know, where we have the options to do things the way we did, I think we’re going to start not just defaulting to well, I always did it this way because you didn’t always do it that way. There was a long period of time. It’s not just the long weekend. Right. Had to do it different ways, I think, before we start putting things back on our plate. Like a commute, like jumping on an airplane every three days, like making assumptions, like it has to be face to face. We’re really going to think about that. So even the commute is going to be, well, maybe I only want to go to the office four days a month, but those four days I need to spend some time with John, not just put my headphones on and, you know, bang away at my keyboard in the corner. I can do that in my home office. So I think it’s knowing where and when and even, you know, even sort of the ten people learning via Zoom. Yes. Certain things are phenomenal. I would say even better to learn remotely what you know, one of the things that I’m seeing now in the marketplace is those that can take great content and the glue being community, right? So one of those things that ten people in a room learning your methodology have a lot of things in common. You know, they all just signed up for this. They’re all excited about it. They’re all probably have things that they can teach each other. Part of the value that you can help them connect is the community that’s not just based on the content, having conversations with each other, learning from one another. And I think that sort of community piece is more and more important because when the world does free up, listen, we’re all going to want to take those trips and do those things, whatever. I think there’ll be a spike and then they’ll be an exhale. And then it’s like, I don’t want to go back to, you know, being in a LaGuardia Kennedy Airport 11 times a month. There’s nothing fun about that.
John Warrilow There’s nothing fun about that whatsoever. So, yeah, I tend to agree with you for sure. I think that’s I think that’s a good analysis.
Peter Winick Interesting. So what’s next? What’s next for you? Next for the business? Next for the coaching business?
John Warrilow The next is probably the new book and how that is sort of dovetailing into the rest of the business. So I wrote this book, as you referenced, Built to Sell, which is about how do you create a business that can thrive without you, the automatic customers about how do you accelerate the value in your company? And then we’re thinking of this new book, The Art of Selling Your Business, as sort of the filling out the trifecta, right? The trilogy. It’s really hard to harvest the value of a company. And so that that’s feeling like a nice little kind of work. We talk about build, accelerate and Harvest. That’s feeling like a tight sort of content package. So that’s a big deal and it’s going to create, I think, some new opportunities for our advisors. And that’s probably the key to the next 12 to 18 months will be kind of more on the harvest side of, of a building to sell.
Peter Winick Got it. Got it. Well, this is this has been great. I appreciate your time and appreciate you sharing, sharing the story and the journey and the ups, the downs, the highs and the lows. But thank you so much for sharing your day with us today.
John Warrilow Yeah, no problem. Thanks, Peter.
Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our Web site at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com to reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.