I Need a Business Model

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week we offer you a taste of the 21 hats live event we held in Fort Worth 2 weeks ago it's a different kind of event where there are no speakers only participants it's pretty much a three-day peer group session for business owners where we share challenges and insights and make connections there were 25 of us including most of our podcast regulars we voted on topics we wanted to discuss and then we discussed them we visited Laura Xander melinos yarn Factory and learned that making yarn is surprisingly complex and we wandered the somewhat eccentric Deadwood meets Disneyland streets of Fort Worth's Stockyards District but for me the Highlight was an exercise that Chris Hutchinson of the trevet group facilitates he calls it a fishbowl because the idea is to have an owner stand up and expose everything about a specific challenge that he or she has confronting that's asking a lot but of course that's what we do on this podcast and fortunately we have one owner who was gracious enough to agree to reveal all and to answer any question and that owner was well it was me actually the truth is this was a Priceless opportunity for me to get some feedback from a focus group of smart entrepreneurs who were already familiar with 21 hats here's how it worked first Chris our facilitator extraordinaire asked me to explain my biggest challenge which was pretty easy I need to find more people like those in that Fort Worth conference room while I've developed several promising revenue streams I barely cracked $100,000 in Revenue last year after explaining my challenge I took questions from the group then they split into four smaller groups that spent 10 or 15 minutes brainstorming ideas which they then took turns presenting to the group as all receiving their advice and feedback was a little like what I imagined attending my own funeral would be with people saying nice things about me almost as if I wasn't in the very same room but it also felt a bit like an intervention with some tough love confrontation thrown in as well it even got emotional at points mostly because a couple of the owners were kind enough to say that had it not been for 21 hats their businesses might not have survived the pandemic that was moving to here to say the least but of course that alone doesn't mean 21 hats has a sustainable business model in the end what did I take from the exercise a lot of Goodwill a lot to think about a lot of offers to help and several checks oh boy we we recorded the whole thing and if you have any thoughts after listening to it please send them my way as always our hope is that these weekly conversations brought to you by our principal sponsor of the great game of business will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which in magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews the episode is titled I I need a business model so I'm Chris Hutchinson from the trie group and I'm glad to be here helping facilitate this amazing amount of knowledge wisdom and care so Lauren uh tell us about your challenge or problem in a nutshell you know what what are we doing here my challenge is to meet more people and rope in more people like the people in this room I've been doing this for about 3 years now trying to build a community of business owners who compare notes who share their wins and losses who learn from each other and making some progress although my growth has kind of plateaued over the last year and I need to figure out a real business model which I have not successfully done yet I've been experimenting with a couple of revenue streams but I don't have a sustainable business model as of yet that's what I'm looking for okay so you notice the last thing you said was really the most right a sustainable business model is what I hear is the challenge so let's go ahead and put that down what's working right now in your model well from a financial standpoint not much but I get great feedback and support from people like the people in this room who I think are getting something out of what I'm doing which is a daily email newsletter which summarizes the most important news of the day for business owners a weekly podcast that is a peer group conversation with a group of business owners talking about what's going on in their businesses a monthly Zoom call and uh this is the second live event that we've done and I hope to do a lot more assuming these people are having a good time and getting something out of it so how do these things connect to your sustainable business model they're all related in this sense that they're all building a community they're all ways that business owners are coming together to compare notes share their experiences and learn from each other to help and build that community that you want to have yes what's not working right now in your sustainable business model I'm not making enough money to pay my bills without the fact that I have a wife who has a real job so I'm if you're hearing the scritchy scratch or you're not hearing me I'm I'm writing things down so in terms of then not making enough money what would be enough well I have um I guess I have a series of goals the first goal might be to make as much money as I used to make as an employed journalist okay but that would mean that I'm still a oneman show I would love for this to grow beyond that and be able to hire a few people who would help me do what I do allow me to stop working seven days a week and you know work on the business instead of in the business and do some things that I used to do when I had a big Media Company support in me um but that I haven't been able to do as a onep person operation what what kind of things for instance well uh when I was at Forbes I brought Bo Burlingham over from Inc and he had written the book small Giants and we created an annual Forbes small Giants list where we kind of listed 20 small businesses of the Year there was an application process we picked really cool businesses we had an event where they came together and it was kind of building a community there unfortunately Forbes didn't find it as interesting as I did but it was successful in the sense that when we first started of course nobody had heard of it so we had to solicit uh we had to go find these companies by the fourth year we did it we had hundreds of applications people really cared about it and it brought in like $4 million a year in revenue for Forbes that would be okay $4 million Revenue would be okay for you well I'm not assuming that I mean Forbes had something to do with that so I'm not expecting to be able to do that myself okay um but yeah that would be okay that would be okay is there any last thing that you can think uh before we get the questions from our August group of business owners here that it would be good for them to know to help ask you the right kind of question uh you know what I trust these folks I'm eager to hear whatever questions they have okay great you go ahead and write some questions down and then uh go to the mic say your name and the company and then share your questions so we're going to encourage enourage you to ask open-ended questions that help us all think especially Lauren about what's happening and what are the factors that are going to be able to help him be more successful in having a sustainable business model so how about we'll go over first hi it's Jennifer from SP Expos and events Lauren my question is what are your current streams of Revenue now on the podcast I have a sponsor the great game of business and um they pay me a monthly fee I uh completed a oneyear contract and we're on the second year now with the newsletter I've never put up a pay wall but that's something that I'm considering I did a couple years ago ask people to pay on a voluntary basis and um out of about 6,500 uh subscribers I got about a 100 people who did start paying me they pay me either a monthly fee or an annual fee for the newsletter and about 30 or so pay me to be part of a monthly Forum a zoom call where we just talk about what's going on in everybody's uh business so those are the uh those are the revenue streams at the moment okay thanks Shen for next question Kurt wilin with h better my question is in what ways have you leveraged this group you've got quite a few folks who really love you and appreciate what you've done for them in their careers how have I leveraged this group you know I wouldn't say I've been terribly successful at doing that except that you guys are all successful influential people and I have periodically asked everybody to spread the word as best they can and a lot of you have managed to do that I know word of mouth is my best marketing and when other entrepreneurs hear from the folks like the people in this room um uh that the podcast or the newsletter has been valuable that's tremendously helpful to me um so it's happened a little bit in formally probably not as I haven't done as much with that as I should okay great thanks next Sarah seagull with seet Communications Lauren um when a lot of aspiring actors go to LA or New York they give themselves two years to be successful or they pack it in and get a real job what's your plan um well you know I'm in some ways I consider myself fortunate being a slightly older than usual entrepreneur uh I have two kids they are both out of college their tuitions are paid for um my mortgage is paid for uh so I don't have the immediate fear that if this doesn't work I'm going to be lost so I have not set a deadline date um it's kind of how long I enjoy doing this and uh how long I go on feeling as though this is a worthwhile Enterprise that has some Prospect of succeeding I don't know what the exact time frame for that would be thanks next question Paul Downs Paul Downs cabinet makers Lauren what distribution channels are you using and which of those platforms is most likely to result in Rapid growth are you talking about social media well yeah like do you here we are doing a podcast is it also going to be on YouTube is it you know whatever what how does the content go out the newsletter is on substack and substack is actually very helpful in terms of spreading the word you know they have a huge audience they do their best to get people to recommend other substacks and I've benefited uh from that with the podcast uh you know we posted on a platform called spreer that nobody's ever heard of but it's distributed through spreer to all the places that you have heard of uh not YouTube we don't do it in video we just do audio uh I do try to promote what we do on LinkedIn I think that of all the social media channels that's the one that has an audience that makes sense for me that's probably it okay thanks next question he it's uh am casar from multifunding Lauren my friend what is your greatest strength and how does that translate into your greatest weakness we getting personal here I don't know if I'm smart enough to answer the second part of that I think my greatest strength is that I've been doing a version of what I'm doing now for more than 20 years and you know a lot of journalists are not satisfied being on the small business feat they are looking to move up the food chain and if they're working on the small business desk at the Wall Street Journal or you know even if they're at ink magazine their career goals often want to take them somewhere else I've discovered this beat and kind of fell in love with it and decided to stick with it and you know you do something for 20 years you got to get a little bit better at it and you start meeting people and making connections and I don't know if there's anybody who's put this amount of time into covering this particular beat so I feel like I know people and I know things about these types of businesses that most journalists don't know I mean you know I I work with some of the smartest business journalists in the world at the New York Times at Forbes and even at Inc and I can tell you the percentage of them who realize that people like you routinely borrow against your homes to support your business I mean nobody knows that that that's my biggest Advantage I think I I know this Bea in a way few people do how does that translate into my biggest disadvantage and I would need some time to think about that you you might have a better answer to it than I do well if somebody's doing something for a very long time and that's what they know how might that be a disadvantage I guess it's possible you start to take things for granted and some things become so familiar to you that you think everybody knows it and you don't realize what you know that others don't but I'm not sure I've gotten to that point yet that's great let's see next question Sean busy with Kinesis two-part question how do you feel about sales and how do you feel about self-promotion sales if you had asked me that question before I started doing this I would have told you I can't even imagine trying to do that I got to stay as far away from that as possible what I found is that I feel I've done the best I've done in terms of growing my Audience by having direct conversations with people I wouldn't say I'm good at marketing per se but I am good at having a conversation one-on-one or in a small group where I talk about what I'm doing and why I think it matters and I think I'm good at capturing the authenticity that comes through in the podcast and and the newsletter and um because I'm you know you know would never be comfortable with a hard cell I think that that has worked for me what was the second part self-promotion self-promotion you're seeing it on display right now I'm as uncomfortable as I could possibly be does that answer your question excellent next question please Liz patzi City bin so Lauren I'm curious if you ever considered monetizing your moderating skills or your storytelling discussion skills I've considered it I've had trouble getting uh other organizations that would pay the money to consider it and kind of an interesting challenge in the sense that I've done a lot of that I've done it at a lot of high-profile events for business owners they usually don't offer to pay me I always ask and then I'm left with a decision well it would be nice to get paid for doing this I think I should get paid for doing this but if they're not going to pay me I still get the opportunity to present what I do and expose what I do to a large audience of the kinds of people I'm trying to reach so yeah I'll do it for nothing I haven't figured out how to break out of that okay thanks next question Michelle Wyatt St John's rers ship company have you considered ways to segment your target audience oh that's a great question well how segmented is your audience already it's not segmented um I'm looking for anybody who is trying to build a business and feels as though they would benefit from being part of a community and part of a conversation with other people on similar Journeys honestly I do worry that there's the potential that I don't go deep enough in any one particular area I remember before I started 21 hats I had a conversation with a manufacturer who said to me somebody who I covered who had become something of a friend I was telling him what my plans were and he said I'll be honest with you you're a friend of mine I'm going to give it a shot but what's most valuable to me is being in a community with other manufacturers that's the support that I am looking for and if you're creating a community of people with more General business concerns I don't know if that's going to do it for me or not I might put my time into just manufacturers so I you know as a oneperson operation I haven't figured out how to go deeper in certain areas with a team if I ever get to the point where I can hire that team I would love to figure out a way to you know represent more of those 21 hats and go deeper in areas so that people like that friend of mine who is not part of the community would find enough uh here to be to have it be worth its time what do we have I'm G to phrase my question slightly differently this is Kurt uh yes this is Kurt wilin and my question is going to start with uh Lauren you're a badass the number of people that you've impacted over the years is in the thousands the number of people I've met here this week is over 25 people who have had such an impact from you over the course of their careers is phenomenal so you're making an absolute impact I want you to know that so part of my that leads to my question which is how are you leveraging the folks in your sphere that are more perhaps influential Publishers your experience at Inc and Forbes authors like Bo Burlingham or Doug Tatum famous friends how are you uh leveraging those folks I'm not well that was easy I didn't want a yes or no question but okay yeah that's a great idea all right please next question Justin Jordan essential ingredients Lauren who are your competitors and what are they doing very well that you would like to emulate or improve on you know this gets back to what I was saying before about journalists not wanting to make a career on the small business beat and looking to move off it as quickly as possible in part for that reason I really don't feel as though I have a lot of direct competitors now I've been covering business owners long enough to know to be skeptical anybody anytime somebody says I have no real competition so let me acknowledge that but I don't think there's anybody who's quite putting two things together which is the kind of peer group Community with the media aspect the content aspect of what I do so my competitors include you know Publications like Inc or or the Wall Street Journal Entrepreneur magazine on one side peer group organizations like EO YPO vistage on the other side I don't think any of them quite put it all together the way I am trying to do here specifically with the experience that I have and the knowledge that I have of what you folks go through trying to to build a business so I I think I do offer something that's different there are you know great organizations out there that are offering specific pieces of this and they're really good at it I spent years at Inc magazine that's where I was first exposed to this it was a great experience for me I learned a lot there especially from Bo Burlingham I met some of the people in this room there which was really important to me they're capable of doing really great work although I don't think they've really figured out an a digital strategy there are other organizations like I mean vistage is a fantastic organization I think you know there are people in this room who've had tremendous experiences with with vistage there are some people who've had less happy experiences but they they offer a a great service I can't compete with that I would love to at some point um but I certainly don't now I think that's what I got that's good another question uh Michael Russo with bran Russo um it seems like with the rise right now of coaching in the world and people seeking out answers and there's so many books and there's so many things there is a need for really clean differentiation with your audience and do you have a brand promise and if so what is it um the question I would put that in is I am the only blank that does blank and have you defined that I'm reluctant to say only but my goal is to be the only Media company that does a really good job offering both content and community in one place that's the goal I think um you know for a oneperson shop I think I've had some success with that but there's a there's a long ways to go okay we have time for a few more questions hi Lauren Dr Trisha gra executive adviser could you tell us about how you determine your pricing model for events such as this and for The Mastermind my monthly CEO Forum actually the the way I did it was was to talk to the CEO Forum group and ask them for advice uh as to what they would be willing to pay and what they suggest I charge when it came to the events the advice I got from people in that particular Zoom call was you need to charge a real price because for us it's not so much a matter of the money it's the time and if we're going to spend 3 days at an event we want to know we'll be with other people who are serious about this somebody who is on a similar Journey that I can uh learn from those people in that call told me that I should probably charge about $55,000 I um didn't quite have the nerve to to do that I kind of cut that roughly in half and it was interesting because the three or four people who are most vocal insisting that I charge $5,000 for a event that runs from Wednesday dinner through Friday lunch none of them actually came when I scheduled the event but that was the process that I went through to to come up with the price I I cut it I cut it in half I came up with a number that I was comfortable with I ran up by a bunch of people about half of them said they would not pay that half of them said they would so I gave it a shot and uh happily was able to pretty much sell out the two events I've done so far all right so um we really close to the place I can feel it in the room where people like I know what I want to share I want to I want to see if that's solution that I'm thinking of is really the right solution I can feel it so I'm wondering if there's any other in the minute and a half we have left any other questions that are really going to help us understand the situation rather than what maybe he has tried go ahead John Kelch JM security can you describe what your ideal audience is in your mind it's you guys it's it's business owners who are at any stage of the process uh whether they're getting started and trying to figure things out or whether they've been doing it for decades had a certain amount of success and are looking to share some of what they've learned one of the things I believe I've learned during the last couple of Decades of uh talking to folks like you is that you know everybody's journey is different and I don't know that there's any one particular way to prepare yourself for that Journey think getting an MBA can be helpful but it doesn't really prepare you for what it really takes to build a business I think maybe the best preparation is to be number two on somebody else's Journey for a little while and see what they go through but I I'm looking for people who are on that journey and believe that the best way that they can open their mind to other options is by meeting with other people on similar Journeys and I'm hoping to bring them together okay hi I'm Dave Stern with the inside track and my question is you mentioned earlier that you considered doing a pay wall I wanted to ask why you didn't move forward with that thought and then the the other question is out of the hundred people that have uh paid for the subscription to your newsletter have you asked them what motivated them to voluntarily give you money I I have not thus far implemented the pay wall because I didn't want to restrict the growth I wanted to make it as easy as possible for somebody to subscribe same thing with the podcast I'm rethinking it a little bit because I'm an idiot yes that's my phone it's a normal business owner thing that things interrupt you all the time so you're good to go perfect I'm rethinking it because my growth has plateaued anyway I have a you know I think a significant number of readers for the newsletter and uh people who download the podcast every month and I'd like to think that if I put it behind the pay wall now I would get a much higher percentage than I got on a voluntary basis I yes I have anecdotally asked people actually I I really haven't had to ask much people often volunteer it um as recently as last night someone told me someone in this room told me that they weren't sure their business would have made it through the pandemic if they hadn't had the information in the newsletter every day that helped them figure out things like how to get PPP money um so I think I know why people sign up when they do I don't know how money will sign up if I force them to pay and that's the the big question beautiful I would love to keep asking questions and I know there's an itch to say let's get this next step so we're going to number off really quickly get into four groups and in that group it's Thinking Out Loud together about having a response um and again we'll just do those one at a time where it'll be a caution like watch out for this here's a success tip as you're going here's something that could really help you especially if you have experience around that and then the next step is what would be a good thing for Lauren to do next on this journey he shared where he is and where he wants to go so we're going to look for your advice on that okay so at this point we did in fact break up into four small groups Chris gave everyone 10 to 15 minutes to kick around ideas and formulate the advice that each group would then present when we reconvened as a whole and that's where we pick up now with Chris are we ready to uh provide some input please get up in front of the microphones we're going to do one group at a time so come on up and share your advice which is going to be a caution a next step or a success tip hi I'm Noel mat from mat tile Works our our big success tip is get paid do the pay wall and get paid for your moderation we think you undervalue what you bring second thing is one of the strengths you have is your curiosity and literally your personality and how that displays and we feel like actually a visual um YouTube is something you should consider because you would come through thank you okay so we have the things we got is I get paid for payall moderation and consider visual medium because you'd come across am I supposed to respond to these uh you don't need to but you can okay good yeah at the end you can say here's what I'm going to do about him because you know the best thing to do when you're giv advice is just say thank you that's what I did you did all right next all right Sean busy with Kinesis representing group four we were Universal we all believe it's a sales problem and that fundamentally your superpower which is editorial and research and digging you're not dedicating enough time to sales and we actually think you need help with that that's our advice okay bring somebody in from the outside thank you well done next uh we would Echo the sales issue um but we were suggesting that you hire a salesperson on commission only where they get paid when they are successful in monetizing your content and helping you monetize we also think that you might need to look at similar models to yours for example Vern Harish with gazel I have some further thoughts it's amazing to me that Lauren you've been in this space for 22 years and you still see yourself as merely a facilitator of people talking to each other whereas you actually have expertise deep expertise in what it takes to run a business and your content both in the podcast website they don't really really reflect that you're always deferring to somebody else and unfortunately that's not a very efficient way for people to real to get interested in you in your operation so one thing I thought of was that when we do the podcast if someone listens to the whole thing they're going to get something out of it but what you never do is here's the lessons for today and inserting yourself into the process not merely as an editor you could wrap up the podcast with here's several other episodes we did on the same thing here's some resources in other words start to become a more easily accessible and efficient resource for people who need the information you've got to get it in a different more digestible format I think sales is a problem but I think the part of it is also your offering it's got a unique configuration that is not easy for people to easily digest thank you I I think you're absolutely right I'm much more com able doing it this way than the way you're describing because I spent 22 years talking to business owners it's not the same thing as 22 years building a business and when I have conversations with folks like you guys who have been in the thick of building a business for an extended period of time I am always reminded how much I still have to learn Lauren you're struggling to build a business right now You' I may one day be able to do what you're suggesting I do I I'm I I'm not rejecting your advice I appreciate it and I'm going to give it a lot more thought but I just wanted to respond that you've described it very accurately it is how I feel and I'm going to think about it all right thanks next piece of advice Kurt wilin representing group three I'm going to lead with an example and I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and the biggest salesperson for them is often them no one can tell their story better than them no one has the same passion that they do someone once gave me the advice when I wrote my book to to get me out there and be more comfortable about something I was uncomfortable which was being self-promoter was Kurt fake it till you feel it I'm going to repeat what I said before you're a badass and you need to fake that till you feel it and when they said uh you need sales which is absolutely true we're going to take it a step further and say promotion somebody that's a promoter maybe someone to partner with you to be a promoter for Lauren Lauren's mouth piece is Advocate and as I said before there are people that you've met in the past that are big fans of yours that you could leverage we had an idea of could you leverage the small giant name and have the small giant Awards again so things like that that you're a connector connecting for your purpose as opposed to other people's purpose for a change great thanks thank you next uh Michael R again um I'm with group one the more I think about this is like you really need some deep thought into this and really get some advisers and experts and whether it's hiring or just really picking people's brains to come up with a plan that's significant because I think there so many ideas everybody here is excited about you and what you provide and I think when I asked you I'm the only blank that does blank that's a really deep question for us at our agency it's important because we want to get to the root of what you do that's special you know and now just quickly it was you know I the only business moderator or Community Builder that has what you just said 22 years of speaking to other businesses that is something unique and that is something to build upon and your advice is valuable and so we talk about the YouTube thing or these things being the expert in the room being that thought leader and building on that and leveraging your base here with that plan I think there are so many opportunities thank you okay we have time for a couple more go ahead Liz pazzi with City bin so Lauren I pitched you an idea for getting sales in a particular area a little while back talked a little bit about it and it was to get some sort of um facilitation or moderating event that you can sell to EOS and any sort of networking sort of group like that and I think that if you were to present a group like that with like a an evening with Lauren Feldman or something where you are facilitating a conversation that people can watch that's worth a lot and I'll tell you why people like us the do EO you pay $8,000 a year here we all 200 of us at the New York City chapter they have a gigantic budget for learning events that almost never gets fully spent and and I know this because I've kind of dug around a little bit if I could vote in my EO and who I would bring in as like a learning event person it would be you and there could be like hundreds of chapters that feel the same way they're going to just keep writing you the checks because they they know they need what you have but like emotional about this for some reason but I think it's that like we're not the people that have the checkbook to pay you for what you do but an EO or any of these you just get out there with what you do you got a huge audience is what I'm saying and they have huge budgets even more importantly like line items everywhere learning events you just go in and grab it thank you so much for that one question when you're describing this as an evening with Lauren Feldman uh are you literally suggesting that I would be the speaker and talking about my experience or or facilitating a conversation you would facilitate a conversation about something that the chapter found interesting that was based on actual like expertise so what not talking about you and your career that is very interesting but I wouldn't pay for that actually neither would I I would like you to facilitate really great discussions and I want to be in the audience and I'll know that everyone else will want to be there because a lot of the events suck like I would say at least 50% of the events I go to really suck and that's why I'm like every time at one of those EO events I think Lauren should do this instead I'd rather have something like that and I don't think I'm alone you've got a really very specific skill set that people have money that they're waiting to spend I'm serious thank you Liz nice advocacy we have one more thought and then we'll wrap and see which of these activities that Lauren would be willing to commit in front of us and make it work Kurt wilin again I Echo lizz's statement about EO and YPO and other organizations like that you can pull together their me their members and you facilitate the discussion our other specific suggestion is that could we white label your content for trade associations associations universities YPO EO other groups white label it so it's it's their content for a hefty fee I think that's a great suggestion thank you you okay Lauren how are you feeling with uh the group here I feel great I know that these folks are putting a lot of thought into this and I couldn't appreciate it more all right so uh we'll have you go over with the red marker and outline which one or two maybe three but I don't want to saddle you too much so you can see what what you're going to commit to commit in well commit to doing exploring exploring commit to exploring commit to exploring exploring I mean if you can commit all the way to do it that'd be perfect you want to read them as I underline I I will I will read them yeah so uh Lauren is accepting uh let see see how much you commit to getting paid and pay wall or moderation not paid in moderation paid for moderation get help with the sales problem all right there's get advisors and create a plan which is part of that help okay so here we go the marker is capped we have uh cell moderation EO Etc which goes along with that passionate uh expression by Liz white lbel content get paid get help so how when are you going to come tell us about that uh the progress you'll be making on that Lauren um well I'm going to I'm going to list enlist the help of the people in this room before I actually do it and pursue some of these conversations a little bit further so some of these people will hear from me before I do anything I'm going to give this a lot of thought and I'm going to try to put myself in a place where when We Gather again next year I will be able to report back that I have actually done most of what I've committed to trying to do that's just if that's all the commitment we got we we can get it um I know everybody here is going to be excited about it and everybody listening is going to be wanting to support you and and helping you help us and I just want to say I so appreciate this I will put out one thing I've acknowledged that I don't have a real business model but let's please not that I've actually managed to get a bunch of people to pay to come here and give me advice so I'm not completely without thoughts about a business model okay uh but mostly I just want to thank you and then just when I thought I was out they pulled me back in again to offer more advice and the session continued a few thoughts uh John Kelch one I don't think you're you're um you're asking directly enough to support you you know at the end of your podcast youve got the little where if you got anything out of this you know here's how you can uh I would just get rid of that um and more directly say you know ask for ask for people to support you I know of another podcast and they've grown like crazy in the last few years I gladly pay them $20 a month uh and the reason I do that is the way they ask me to do it so I think that you have a valuable audience and you're just not quite monetizing enough you're not being direct enough about the ask the other thing is tears so I think you could have um different tiers of offerings so you know for five bucks a month you get very minimal $20 a month maybe you get access to your Mastermind group or whatever this might look like so I think there's differentiation where you can increase the um how much books are P you cool thank you Paul all Downs You Remind Me of a classic problem that I've seen a million times which is someone who's a superb Craftsman and wants to do great work and is horrified at the idea of actually promoting yourself and you you you just don't see that in today's world that's not a winning approach that in order to really accomplish what you want to build communities you have to push yourself out there a little bit and this goes back to another basic business principle which is you don't succeed by doing more of what you're good at when what you need is to get better at what you're bad at and that could be you doing it or somebody else doing the thing you're no good at but you really have to get your head around self-promoting being an expert putting out a book just like uh like you heard suggested a second ago that would be an awesome thing people are dying to get access to what you know and you're just afraid to have it pass out as a Lauren Feldman production or product and you're always trying to push it down to people who are contributing as authentic which it is but there's also value in packaging and in presentation that will give you at the end of the day a larger amount of community if you can get your head around improving the thing you're not doing well there you go I hear you thank you yeah actually this is a this is a setup it's an intervention [Laughter] we're all here to help you get your needs out into the world so consider me intervene so I believe that um if you can segment your audience a lot better it will actually grow so for example you mentioned the industry but I also think geography number of years that they've been an entrepreneur the size of their company and whether or not they're a founder or a leader so if you can segment further Not only would it help you um Target content better but you can find sponsors for that specific area or that specific industry or that specific Target for example pick on Barbara if someone's been an entrepreneur for 20 plus years that would be an awesome Target for her to start talking about an exit strategy and she might want to say to you hey I would love to write an article targeting these people and then be able to contribute better and then segment the audience better and then if and when you get to the point where you do do multiple conferences across the country and you decide to come to lovely Florida then you can segment um and target the people that live in Florida and really push for them to come to your events so there's a lot of advantages to doing better segmentation and that information is free you can ask for it when people sign up for the newsletter and it's valuable to you it may not be money but it will be valuable for you to help promote to other sponsors what you'll do um or to promote your future events which you'll do to those targeted Industries or audiences for you as well there's a lot of great advice there thank you I have to think about this I don't know how much this is reality and how much of it is just an excuse but I am working seven days a week now and I feel as though my time is best spent doing things that I know how to do and getting to a certain point again one more well I'm anonymous uh you mentioned that um someone told you that 21 hats had gotten them through the pandemic sorry I didn't expect this please cut it I I can cut it later but thank you anyway sorry give me a second I'm one of those people uh that you uh and your panel had also gotten through the pandemic so you know fast forward I'm able to you know have a job that I love and I've had for many years and uh also U you know employ nine people so um I wanted to this is so embarrassing I wanted to thank John for that suggestion and um I'm going to um give um excuse me $2,500 to the 21 hats Foundation or whatever you want to call it because um you obviously need uh some some like we're all business owners we need finances to keep us going so whether it's invest in a salesperson or writing a book or anything else I mean it's it's uh such an easy decision and you're going to accept it because I'm not going to take it back and it's and it's recorded but uh John thank you for that suggestion and uh sorry for um taking the mic but I just I couldn't not sit here and think about all the um all the people the panelists that that help people you know just everyday folks that they've never met to uh get through the pandemic and one of the reasons I'm want to come here is just so I could thank those people in person it was great to meet them this has been a great um great couple days and uh I hope it's the first of many contributions you get to keep this going to help others well I can't thank you enough for that you're making me emotional too that means so much uh I'll let you remain anonymous Dave um but but thank you for that you have no idea what it means and and thank you [Applause] all wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcast follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by just th Baron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone he [Music]