Transcript Below:

Alzay Calhoun: Hey, it's Alzay Calhoun with Coveted Consultant and I run a group coaching program helping people package and sell premium productized services. I'm about to share with you a recent client case study. Her name is Lynn McGinnis. Her results are as follows, 800 new Linkedin connections, 13 sales calls, and one premium productized service that she is excited to sell. Please watch the entire case study. I think you'll resonate with her story personally. If at any point you want to speak with me about joining the program, you can click the link attached to this video or in the description below. Enjoy the case study.

Alzay Calhoun: Begin with an introduction. Please tell me your name and your company's name.

Lynn McGinnis: My name is Lynn McGinnis and I am the owner at Lynnmcg.com.

Alzay Calhoun: Let's talk about your number one takeaway from the program.

Lynn McGinnis: My number one takeaway, I have skills that can help people.

Alzay Calhoun: Tell us more.

Lynn McGinnis: Okay. My specific search terms were how to start an agency. Okay? I found you on YouTube, starting watching videos last year. It might've been 2016, it might have been two years ago. Okay? Starting looking at videos. So the world of marketing and digital agencies is filled with a lot of words that don't mean anything, and it can make you feel like you don't know you're doing because you can hear these words and you think, "Well, Gosh, I've got almost 30 years experience. What are they talking about? This doesn't make any sense."

Lynn McGinnis: So I knew that I wanted to start an agency. I knew I wanted to do it by myself. I knew that I had something. I've got all this experience, I can work in any industry. I guess they call me a marketing generalist instead of a marketing specialist because I have marketing and public relations skills.

Lynn McGinnis: So here I am. Now I want to start an agency. Okay, now what? Now everybody says, "Well, you've got to do this, you've got to do that." And there were things about webinars and classes. I thought, that's not what I want to do. I don't want to do that. I want to help people. I want to help people. Who do I want to help? I don't know.

Lynn McGinnis: So I couldn't figure it out and I didn't want a get rich quick scheme. I didn't want somebody to give me any false information, any false pretenses. I wanted honest and that's why I came to the program.

Lynn McGinnis: So here I am, I've got all this experience and now I don't know what to do with it. And so what I've come to realize is that my biggest takeaway, to answer your question, is that I don't have to use everything with everybody. I've got these skills.

Lynn McGinnis: I'm talking to someone, I had a conversation an hour ago with someone, a problem call with someone an hour ago, and as we were talking, I'm able to provide answers for things and provide help that were not related to the services that I offer, but that was okay because that's not what I want to do. I wanted to narrow it down and I narrowed it down. So my biggest takeaway really is that though I have these skill to help people, I have a lot to offer, but it was okay to specialize and it was okay to narrow that.

Alzay Calhoun: Okay. So for someone who is about to join the program and you just gave us some of this just a minute ago, but let's continue. So for someone who's thinking about joining the program, what would you say to them? Because right now they're on the outside looking in, right?

Lynn McGinnis: Right, yeah.

Alzay Calhoun: What would you offer them? What would you say to them?

Lynn McGinnis: Number one, do the work. Number one is do the work. Don't skip any steps. Do not bring your limiting beliefs. Leave them out the door. Really, I know that that's over and over again, limiting belief. Is that a limiting belief? That's limiting belief. Leave the limiting beliefs at the door. I think that the one thing that I would tell someone is to approach it like you don't know what you're doing and just follow the steps and just do the work. Do the work in the order that it's provided, even if it doesn't feel like it makes sense. It's going to make sense. There's a reason for every step.

Alzay Calhoun: What is an example of a limiting belief that was present in your mind?

Lynn McGinnis: Oh, I think I had a lot of them. When you got to do something new there's that, "Oh, I can't do that. Oh, I can't do that. I can't do that." I can't think of anything specific right now. Okay. I can. I said to you, "I am not going to find clients on Linkedin." I said that that's not where my audience is and I was wrong. I said, "I'm going to try this because you told me to try this and because you're the coach and I'm not and I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do," and that's what I did. And it worked.

Alzay Calhoun: Another belief you just talked about was, you didn't say it this way, but I just heard it, was I have to offer all of my experience at once.

Lynn McGinnis: Yes. That was the other thing. I was going to say that too. I'm glad you reminded me. Yeah. So I think it can become overwhelming. I think we don't have to be everything to everybody. We're answering the problem, we're trying to solve a problem and it doesn't require everything we know. However, it's nice to have added value and sometimes it builds credibility, it will help build a relationship, it will help build trust. I gave a lot of information in a call earlier today, last week, the week before, and what it did was, "Wow," that's what I got. "Wow. That was great." "Wow. Thank you." "Wow. I love this. Thank you." So it helps.

Alzay Calhoun: So would you recommend this program to someone else and if yes, why? If no, why not?

Lynn McGinnis: Yes, I absolutely would recommend this program. I think that, as I said before, my favorite part about the program is that ... Well to begin with when I started, the reason that I chose to join the program was because there were no false expectations. There wasn't any get rich quick scheme. There wasn't here, just do this. I had to do the work. I had to do the work, but the work drew out of me what was already there and ordered it in such a way that I could identify what was relevant to my client.

Lynn McGinnis: So yeah, I would definitely recommend the program. I could see that if someone is going to come into the program holding onto those limiting beliefs, as we sometimes do, and it's not gonna work. It's not going to work. I think if you yield yourself to it, and you trust it, and you trust the process it'll work.

Alzay Calhoun: Thank you, by the way, for all of that.

Lynn McGinnis: You're welcome. Thank you.

Alzay Calhoun: So let's transition. Let's talk about what you enjoyed most. So the program has a lot of moving parts in it and it can be hard to kind of appreciate all of that outside the program in any case, and from your experience, what parts of the program did you personally enjoy the most?

Lynn McGinnis: I think I enjoyed the end. The last week or two, and I know I said this over the course of our group calls and in talking with you, that there were times when I couldn't understand how things were going to come together and it was really neat to see everything come together. It was pretty cool to see how it worked, especially in the end. Especially when I started implementing. Once I had my productized service established, that was so liberating to have your productized service set up knowing that now that I have this model, when I'm ready, I can do this or this, but this is my productized service.

Lynn McGinnis: As I said, not pulling on all of my years of experience, but just focusing on these things that we talked about. The things that provided the most value, that I found most enjoyable to do, and then being able to see it in practice once I started actually working on the inbound system and seeing how people reacted to it, that was fun. That was fun, because it didn't feel like work at that point. That was fun. That part was fun.

Alzay Calhoun: Yeah.

Lynn McGinnis: So what didn't I like?

Alzay Calhoun: Yeah. Yeah. What-

Lynn McGinnis: Did you ask about that? Okay. So I think getting to the productized service, getting to that productizing. Those steps leading up to that, I think that wasn't fun for a little while. Probably because of limiting beliefs, probably most significantly because there were things that I thought, "Well why not this?" Or, "Why this?" And I remember there was something that I remember you saying, "Well no, no, not now." "Why not now?" But they were limiting beliefs. You can be your worst enemy if you're not following the process. So yeah, I think that was the hardest part, was getting to that point.

Alzay Calhoun: Just for a very brief editorial, there is a lot of conventional wisdom out there about how things should work and some of that stuff is wrong. It's as wrong as two plus two being five. It's just wrong, but depending on where you come from and what your background is you could believe in that stuff. I mean, you can believe that the world is flat, where you come from the world is flat. You believe it. So you're still operating like the world is flat and it doesn't translate.

Alzay Calhoun: So yeah, I appreciate there's some friction early on while you're wrestling with this is not how it works. It works a different way. If you can kind of hang on and kind of get through that, there's some efficiencies that come after. But yeah, I appreciate that.

Lynn McGinnis: Even if, the idea of selling. So you've got this idea of what selling is. Always be closing, always be closing, right? Coffee's for closers. You have this idea that you're pre closing, pre closing, pre closing and you are so focused on what you're going to say that you're not listening to what this person is talking about in front of you. This happened and then I lost track of what I was doing and then just the whole idea of taking the focus off of you, which is what we're taught is to keeps the focus on ourselves and talk about what we have to sell, what we have to offer, and to take that and to switch that around to listen to what this person has presented us with and to listen to see what their problem might be, that's not how we're taught to do business. We're not.

Lynn McGinnis: It's so funny because when you think about it, it's absurd. It's absurd because you're talking about building a relationship with somebody. If you were dating, would you only talk about yourself?

Alzay Calhoun: Right.

Lynn McGinnis: It's ridiculous.

Alzay Calhoun: Right. Right, right. That's right. Let's talk about what's next for you. So you are where you are in the program, and by the way, let's review metrics if we just kinda got down to numbers, right? What's happened in your business here, because I'm looking at the spreadsheet you sent me.

Lynn McGinnis: Okay.

Alzay Calhoun: So I'm looking at, at this point, 1100 connection as of April 14th. So yes, it's give or take from today, but just to give us a sense. 1100 connections, which is about 800 more than when you guys started. 700 to eight [inaudible 00:13:47] from when you got started, right?

Lynn McGinnis: Correct. And that was over the course of three weeks. Right.

Alzay Calhoun: Sorry. So yeah. So three weeks. So three weeks, 800 more connections, right. Your audience has expanded, those who could see you, know who you are has expanded.

Lynn McGinnis: Right.

Alzay Calhoun: We've got 13, from notes here, 13 total problem calls. Is that right?

Lynn McGinnis: That's right. As of last week, yeah. More this week.

Alzay Calhoun: Okay. So, in three weeks, 21 calendar days, you've had 13 conversations.

Lynn McGinnis: Correct.

Alzay Calhoun: Right. And honestly you're not talking to folks on Friday and Saturday so that's more like 15 or so days, 16 or so days. As far as actual work days for [crosstalk 00:14:33].

Lynn McGinnis: Right, right. Yeah.

Alzay Calhoun: But the point here is that you're having a conversation a day.

Lynn McGinnis: Yes.

Alzay Calhoun: You're averaging more or less a conversation a day.

Lynn McGinnis: And those are phone conversations or video calls though, that is not conversations that are happening online, whether we're chatting on direct message or email.

Alzay Calhoun: Right. So, right, so these are real people, real dialogue. Can we help you, et cetera. Great. Okay.

Lynn McGinnis: Correct.

Alzay Calhoun: So now with that being kind of where you are, right, if we just kind of all that got you down to having this system that's creating these opportunities for you, what are you thinking about now? What's your next step?

Lynn McGinnis: So what I'm thinking about now is fine tuning some things. Because I was able to productize my service and to setup steps, that I'm providing these steps, what I'm noticing is that there are a few changes that I've been able to make that I am making. The industry that I work in is a smaller community than I realized, which is a really good thing. It's a really good thing.

Lynn McGinnis: So what I'm able to do is I've found that people are incredibly helpful and incredibly welcoming once we sit down and have had conversations and so I have been able to expand in opportunities for myself. So I can see, again, just even though, I can work in my industry from start to finish, in this process I've decided to focus on a specific area in this industry, and this is in publishing.

Lynn McGinnis: So I have found that I'm going to be able to expand a little bit on my services and it's really just going to benefit my clients even more. I think it's going to expand my reach, which I think is really helpful. Obviously because it'll expand my reach. Let me be more specific. It's going to expand my reach in so that I'm raising the bar a little bit and it's a higher echelon client that I'm going to be able to reach. So even though I've created this premium product, I'm actually adjusting that to even another level of premium service and I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah.

Alzay Calhoun: Now here's one thing you said in passing that people struggle with. You said, I've learned that this industry is a smaller community than I thought and that's a good thing. A classic limiting belief is by focusing, by selecting a smaller group of people I cut out my options and that's when you get scared. So just what's the value of realizing ... Why is it a good thing? You said it's a good thing that it's a smaller community. Why is that a good thing?

Lynn McGinnis: Okay. So I'm building a referral base that I didn't expect. So here you are, you're in this smaller community, you're building a reputation within this community, and they don't forget. They're people, as I'm speaking to these people, they are people who know people. As I'm talking to people, people are referring people to me. So I am able to build a referral base which was something that I had always relied upon for business, and so the program changed that for me because of the inbound leads that I get now. But because it's a smaller group, people are getting to know who I am and what I do and are talking about it already, which is really cool and it's like it's surprising.

Lynn McGinnis: Which is great and even though it's a smaller community, I have talked to people all over the world and that's been really neat. That's been really neat. I've talked to I think three people in South Africa in the last two weeks. That's pretty crazy from New Jersey.

Alzay Calhoun: Right. Right. So Lynn, there are a few things I want to talk to you about offline. So I'm gonna stop the recording here.

Lynn McGinnis: All right Alzay.

Alzay Calhoun: But congratulations.

Lynn McGinnis: Thank you.

Alzay Calhoun: You've been kicking butt inside the program and it shows. I mean, it's showing in multiple ways. So I know other folks will appreciate your transparency in this conversation. So thank you.

Lynn McGinnis: Great. You're welcome.