TL; DR
Albert Einstein once said, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”. The value that you provide as a business is key to how you find your place in your industry, just as much as the value you provide as a person is key to your position in society.
Chris Williams is an expert in value. He is a lead generation expert who specializes in high-ticket deals, with a focus on growing mastermind groups. If you have a premium service to sell (whether you’re selling your own time/skill or the experience of an agency) he can help.
Some of Chris’s most valuable insights into this world include:
- Focus on Other People: Being a successful entrepreneur doesn’t mean you’re a jack of all trades who can and should do everything. It means you know how to utilize other people and their skills to your advantage. Let them do what they do best while you focus on your own skills.
- Start at the Top Rung of the Value Ladder: You don’t need to sell your services for the lowest possible price. There are always people who value their time and experience more than money, and if you have something worthwhile to say and can find these people, you can charge them a premium price.
- Offer Strategic Value: Value goes much deeper than the basics. A car isn’t just something that gets you from A to Z, it’s a status symbol. A course isn’t just something that teaches you about business, it could change your life. Once you find the strategic value you can justify a higher price.
- Use Organic Growth Methods: Organic growth methods are best for building mastermind groups. They will connect you with your audience, teaching you what’s working and what’s not working.
- Master Your Own Lead Generation: Don’t leave your lead generation to someone else and then hope they do all of the work. If you want to succeed in this industry, you need to master your own lead generation.
For more information, check out the full This Week With Sabir episode on this blog or read the corresponding guide.
How To Sell High-Ticket Items And Mastermind Groups
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or freelancer, there’s a good chance you’re plagued with the dilemma of wanting to work less but knowing you’ll earn more.
Many entrepreneurs work 15+ hour days and take few vacations. If their business was a car and their clients were the road, they would be the engine that powers the journey.
It doesn’t matter how smooth the road is or how strong the wheels are, if you take that engine away, the car’s not going anywhere.
So, how do you strike the right balance between growth/progression and reasonable working hours? In other words, how do you earn more while working less?
Chris Williams could have the answer.
I invited Chris to speak on the latest episode of This Week With Sabir. He offered some insights into his work as a mentor and coach. He has built a career on helping others to effectively sell high-ticket services, so he is perfectly placed to offer assistance.
What follows is a list of insights from Chris, all taken from the video embedded below (also available on YouTube).
You Are The Reason You’re Not Growing
Unless you’re lucky enough to have been given a lot of capital and opportunities, you probably started your career with very little money and a lot of hard work.
If something needed writing, you wrote it. If emails needed to be sent and meetings conducted, you were the one sending those emails and conducting those meetings.
When the money comes in, it’s because you’re working hard. You’re putting in more hours than before and you’re noticing a clear connection correlation between the time you work and the money you earn.
For that reason, it’s hard to take a backseat and let others take over, but oftentimes, that’s exactly what you need to do.
It’s not just about freeing yourself from the cycle of endless work. It’s about accepting that you will make less money but have more time.
According to Chris Williams, taking a step back is what you need to drive your business forward.
In other words, you are the reason your business isn’t growing as quickly as it should. You are the thing holding you back.
If writing is what you do best, then spend more time writing guides, blogs, and marketing content and less time fiddling with your website, stressing over designs, and trying to manage your Google Ads account.
It’s something that many entrepreneurs struggle with. They think that the cheapest and safest option is to do the work themselves, whatever that work might be.
But that’s simply not the case. Do what you do best and hire others to fill specialist roles.
That way, you’ll have more time to focus on your specialty, every department will be staffed by experts, and your business will run more efficiently as a result.
It reminds me of a story that a friend once told me.
At the time, my friend was working as a freelancer and spending every waking hour working. He was earning around $100 an hour and his services were in demand, so he wasn’t short on work.
If he wanted to work and earn, he could, and as he was a workaholic, he did.
His wife argued that he wasn’t doing enough housework. It’s an argument that I’m sure has happened in every household where one person works remotely and the other is traditionally employed.
My friend’s argument was that it would make more sense to hire a cleaner. If he did the work, it would take him twice as long, effectively costing him $100 an hour in lost work. A cleaner, on the other hand, might cost $20 an hour.
To him, it was simple math. Either pay a cleaner $100 for five hours of work or do it himself for the equivalent cost of $1,000 (as it would take twice the time). To his wife, it was more about the principal—“it’s your house, so you clean it”.
You’re putting yourself in a similar position when you insist on doing all the work just because it’s your business, even though you lack the skills needed to do it properly.
By focusing on the specific areas that you know well, you’re like my friend who stuck with his freelancing and—eventually—hired a cleaner.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should just focus on one element and then ignore everything else. You’re not a freelancer. Your job is to hire the right people, give them the best opportunities, and ensure they are utilized to their best abilities.
You might be the most important person in that business. You might be the one with the most to gain and the most to lose. But you are not 100% of the business and you have to remember that it’s not all about you.
Want Vs Need: Selling High-End Services, Information, And Products
When you sell a product, you’re selling a need. With a high-ticket item, you’re going above and beyond that need and into “want” territory. But that doesn’t mean the high-ticket item isn’t more useful and won’t provide considerably more benefits to the buyer.
That’s where the strategic value comes in.
Imagine that you need a car to get you from A to Z.
Public transport is not available to you. You can’t walk or cycle to work, and it’s simply not economically viable to rent a car or take an Uber every day.
It makes sense to consider a basic car. It’s more than capable of doing the job that you need it to do, and it’s not expensive.
In those situations, how can you justify spending money on a Ferrari or Lamborghini?
Well, if we’re focusing on strategic value, you could argue that it elevates your personal brand. If you’re an influencer, celebrity, or executive, that’s important.
Like it or not, your status is closely tied to your wealth, or rather it’s tied to the wealth that you exhibit externally. That’s just the way of the world. And if you’re an executive or entrepreneur, that could mean that a flash car helps you to attract a larger following and more clients.
It may also improve your self-confidence and perhaps even your love life.
Does that mean everyone will reap those benefits? No. But that’s why a Lamborghini isn’t for everyone.
It’s much the same story in the info-selling space.
To use myself as an example, I provide services as a consultant. I charge a fee that many would consider substantial, but only when compared to a Fiverr freelancer charging the most basic price.
The difference is that I make it my mission to greatly increase a business’s revenue and reduce its expenses. I make it more efficient.
Let’s assume that I charged $1 million for my services (I don’t, but for the sake of argument…). It would be an extreme amount and at first glance, you’d be forgiven for dismissing my services as overpriced.
But what if I could increase your revenue by $100 million?
It’s a no-brainer.
On the flip side, if you spend $100 on a Fiverr freelancer who has a look around, gives you some terrible advice, and ultimately wastes your time, you’ve just lost $100 and gained nothing.
By the same token, a book is cheap and a course organized by a business expert is expensive. But what if the book is just another meaningless tome added to your expansive library while the course gives you advice that changes your life?
True value is not limited to what’s on the surface, nor should you be comparing it like-for-like to similar products and services.
As an entrepreneur with something to say, you shouldn’t be comparing your $1,000+ event to a $9.99 downloadable course for the same reason that you wouldn’t compare a Honda to a Lamborghini. Sure, both are cars and both will get you from A to Z, but that’s where the similarities end.
The Info-Selling Space
Much of what I discussed with Chris Williams revolved around the info-selling space.
One of the most scalable things that you can sell is your knowledge and expertise. There is no shipping and handling. No supply chain to worry about. And as long as you have something useful to say, there will always be someone eager to pay you for it.
It is infinitely scalable.
One of the things that stops people from proceeding in this sector is the idea that they need a large audience. They think it’s a numbers game, and that they should be charging lots of people small amounts of money.
But Chris Williams recommends a different approach.
He advocates for smaller and higher-quality audiences.
There’s always a percentage of the market that’s ready to buy, and that’s true regardless of what you’re selling.
Furthermore, there is a small sector of each group that values their time more than their money. If you can promise to spend their time wisely and give them lots of useful insights, they will happily pay whatever you are charging.
As noted above, it all boils down to value. $1 million sounds like a lot until you realize it can generate over $100 million in value.
So, don’t simply target the lowest common denominator and then try to get as many people for as little money as possible. Set your price to an amount that accurately reflects your worth and then find the people willing to pay that price.
It’s all about finding the right people.
Stat at the top rung of the value ladder and not the bottom rung.
Once you have your audience, you can start thinking about passive income channels, ensuring that you’re not constantly swapping hours for dollars like a freelancer.
Write books, create courses, record sessions—offer services that provide value to your customers and give you more revenue streams.
Always Choose Groups Vs 1-On-1 Sessions
Whether you’re the student or the teacher, you should always focus on group sessions.
As a student, you might think that 1-on-1 sessions are better as they provide a more direct and personal experience.
But in mastermind groups, you often learn just as much from the other students as you do from the teacher.
The teacher will also likely charge you much more. If they are conducting a group session, all of those members will be paying the same amount of money. If there is just one person, they’ll only get one fee.
Imagine, for instance, that you charge each person in the group $100. If there are 10 people, that’s $1,000 per hour. If you only have one person, you’ll either earn 10x less, charge them 10x more, or settle somewhere in the middle with an amount that isn’t really suitable for either of you.
How Do You Attract People To A Mastermind Group?
When looking for members for your mastermind group, Chris Williams recommends sticking with organic growth methods.
This means that you should utilize social media and other methods that allow you to engage with your audience.
It’s important to stay in touch with them. Not only does it help you to build an audience, but it’ll give you insights into your own processes and the community on the whole. It’ll tell you what’s working and what’s not working.
Podcasts can be a great tool as well, but only if you’re engaging with your audience.
Coincidentally, as we were discussing this, a student of mine engaged with us through the podcast, showing you how this medium can be used both as a soapbox and as a way to directly engage with your audience.
Speaking of mastermind groups, when I asked Chris Williams for some advice on groups to join and people to follow, he recommended Josh Tapp from the Lucky Titan Podcast. You can also follow Chris Williams here.
As for other groups, Chris recommends finding the one that gets you as close to the most relevant and best people for you. And remember, the other students will have just as much impact as the leader, so consider the community as well.
The $100 Million Question
If you don’t have a way to predictably generate leads for your business, you don’t have a business, you’re just getting lucky.
That was Chris’s answer when I asked for his greatest insight of all.
This game is all about getting leads. You need to own that process and not outsource it.
Be dedicated to figuring out this part of the process and don’t simply palm it off on someone else.
Own your lead generation and if you don’t know how then figure it out!
About Chris Williams
Chris spends most of his time raising his five kids, exploring world communities, and trying his hand at adventures like shark diving, ice climbing, running ultra-marathons, and riding electric skateboards:) He works with entrepreneurial and business experts, speakers, coaches, and leaders in his spare time, helping them market, monetize, and lead their high-ticket mastermind (or group coaching) programs. As the world continues to shift, many experts are trying to build high-ticket groups for additional income, lead generation, or impact. Chris teaches experts how to generate leads, close high-ticket deals, and create solid and transformational groups. He has his digital agency, leads two masterminds of his own, and has learned many of these lessons the hard way, so sharing his journey and offer strategies is why he is here. Chris doesn’t have a car, is an ultra-marathoner, and teaches experts simple methods for building high-ticket masterminds.
- Website: https://groupcoachnation.com
- Social Profiles: Group Coach Nation
- Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/groupcoachnation
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.williamshq/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswilliamshq/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswilliamshq/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJw_LEOQhqJc05GmwBoBc8Q