Why Mindset Matters: Keys to High Performance with Brandon Barbers

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Brandon Barber, the founder of Brandon Barber Coaching and a transformational mindset coach who helps people break free from subconscious patterns holding them back; you’ll hear his journey, his tools for mental and emotional fitness, and how he helps clients create real momentum in business and relationships.

You can find him on:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonbarbercoaching

https://www.brandonandmichellebarber.com/

Transcript

Brandon Barbers 0:00

Engagement's critical and accountability. So what we do when we build a course is we build, we make sure we have a course that's fully engageable, if you will. It not doesn't just help you learn more, it helps you experience more. So exercises that become experiential exercises. So that you're actually giving exercises to people where they're actually not doing things, but experiencing things so that they get a whole level of knowledge that's not just like reading a book. So the engagement piece and then the accountability. So we incorporate accountability factors or pieces into our courses where it's not, you know, I mean, if people are working with you one-on-one, then there's they get that accountability because they got to show up and tell you they've done stuff or haven't done stuff. So we've built that accountability.

Davis Nguyen 0:45

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wynne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Kevin Yee 1:16

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcasts. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Brandon Barber. He has been in the coaching industry for 25 plus years. He is the co-founder of Brandon and Michelle Barber Coaching. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon.

Brandon Barbers 1:31

Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for having me.

Kevin Yee 1:32

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you on today. Now, one of the first things that we were talking about pre-podcast was that you've been in the industry for over 25 years. So I love to hear the origin story, the lore. What made you want to become a coach and how did it turn into a business?

Brandon Barbers 1:47

Yeah, I'm the old guy, right? Like I was a coach back when I would tell people I was a coach, they'd say, for what team? And I would say the team of life. And then they'd hang up on me. But getting into coaching, what really got me into coaching is it was the struggle of all of you know the big problems or the big issues in my life that I would work through and then overcome and then want to help other people with. So what really spurred that was, I mean that, and I listened to personal power, Tony Robbins, um, when I was 18 in my Volkswagen van. I remember my Volkswagen van when I was 18 years old didn't run most of the time. So it sat in my driveway, but it was really cool because I had a bing bag in there and I could sit in there and I'd listen to Tony Robbins' personal power. I listened to his entire cassette tape again, that ages me big time. And, you know, it kind of like got me hungry for I'd like to do this someday. And then I remember in my late 20s, I struggled immensely with anxiety. I had severe anxiety from my late 20s. In fact, I had a panic attack a day for an entire year until I became agoraphobic. I wouldn't leave my house. And obviously the issues that come with that are big, but I overcame that. And I remember one of the things that I was profound for me is that I wanted to help others. It's like people with anxiety showed up in my life and I was able to help them. And I'm like, hey, this coaching thing, like this is like a thing, helping others. Like maybe this is psychiatry, is it coaching? What is it? And then later in life, when I became a regional sales manager for a large telecommunication company, I was constantly out engaging in different programs. I was doing, you know, I became a facilitator of this program and this program and this, and then I would help people, and those people would show up. And one day I was like, hey, I'd do this for my company. Why not do this for myself? And that's when I launched into my own coaching program. It's how cool is it to teach, express, and help others at the same time.

Kevin Yee 3:33

Yeah, it's like what a blessing to be able to do that, like as you're living, right? And so, man, I love that journey. It started off in the Voltswagon. What a cool journey. You started off in the Volkswagen, enlisted Tony Robbins, and then you were running programs as a regional sales manager, and then you kind of went off to do your own thing too. And so I guess like I don't know how long ago that was when you went off on your own, but how did you kind of discover who you wanted to help and the problems that you help them with? Because you know, when we help people, there's so many different types of people. But have you gravitated to a certain demographic or a certain type of person?

Brandon Barbers 4:08

That was like Kevin. Now I think that was the hardest thing. When I first became a coach, it was who am I helping? Who's my like today? It's you gotta find your niche, right? Back then you could say, I'm hey, I'm helping anybody with a heartbeat. It'd be like, Who who who are you gonna help and how are you gonna help them? And it's like, hey, if you've got a heartbeat and you have an issue, I can help you. Today you can't do that. Today you can't say, Hey, I'm gonna help whoever, because who how do you find those people? How do you go out and market to those people? If they're not, there's so many coaches now. Today I think it's critical to find that niche. It's to find that group of people that you are working with or have the niche of what you do. So you specialize in something that you do, which is you know what we had to do, you know, years ago, probably five years ago, we had to massively pivot in our business and really buckle down and decide what do we do? And who is it that we actually help? It's people that want this thing from us. So today, I don't think you can run your coaching business like you could then. You've got to get a lot clearer about who it is that you're working with because you've got to get a lot clearer about what your offer is.

Kevin Yee 5:08

Yeah, which kind of uh like what is the specialization for your niche, I guess, or what you do, I guess. What did you discover like five years ago?

Brandon Barbers 5:15

Yeah, we realized that I couldn't narrow it down to one thing. I probably should, but we do three things. I didn't ever want to get away from our resilience training. I realized that that's one of the things that we help people do is overcome hard stuff. So we have a resilience component to what we do. We help organizations and individuals when they things are hard. Like, okay, that sounds like anybody with a heartbeat and a struggle. But then we got clear about helping people really develop a course that is effective. So we realized that we'd literally created a hundred courses. I would have a struggle or issue in life and then I'd create a course around it. So I'd have an anxiety course or resilience course, or my wife and I were going through some struggles and we learned all about masculine and feminine. So then we I built a masculine course and she built a feminine course. Whatever struggle or issue or problem we were going through, I would get so entrenched in that thing and research it and identify it that I'd go build a course. And after a while, I realized, oh my gosh, we've literally built a hundred courses, over a hundred courses that have sold over $10 million. I'm like, why don't I help people build their own course? And I have this like a little bit better way of going about it just because I've done it so many times and I've seen how it's failed. So I've walked in all the problems and issues and I can do it really quickly. Let me help people build their course. And then I thought, gosh, you know, here's the other thing is now people build their own course, but I built courses, but then I had to be the one to facilitate the course. How can I automate this and make it effective? So there's a lot of DIY programs out there that coaches do, but are they really effective? So you get a bunch of videos and you get, you know, some worksheets together, you put them up on a platform, and now you have a course. And then you offer it to people, and then they come by it, and then are they really making, are they having the impact or having the changes? So, what I realized is when you get a really solid course that you can then divide it into three different components. You can divide it into a DIY program, a done with you program, and a done for you. And then you have different price points along the way. So that's what we really do. We focus on really helping people just develop an incredible course using an overview, using worksheets, using videos, and then science behind each one of those, the science of doing a hundred plus that have generated some money and just help people just dig in. Like, you know, it's like now how can we automate this thing, but still make it massively effective so that it has an impact on people and it's not just this watered down version of something that's you know, here's my $500 product because I need a low-end ticket. It's like, no, here's a product actually super valuable and it works while I sleep, it automates while I sleep. But then I have a done for you program where I come in with somebody and I do the things for them, and it's a higher ticket, but then I can build a course for somebody that's selling. That's beautiful.

Kevin Yee 7:56

Yeah, I think one of the critiques about courses is, and I love your thoughts on this, one of the critiques about courses is that there's a typically low completion rate for courses a lot of times right on the back end. And so, what do you feel like it sounds like you kind of thought through this problem? Like, what's your approach to that?

Brandon Barbers 8:12

Yeah, I mean, engagement's critical and accountability. So, what we do when we build a course is we build, we make sure we have a course that's fully engageable, if you will. It not doesn't just help you learn more, it helps you experience more. So exercises that become experiential exercises, so that you're actually giving exercises to people where they're actually not doing things, but experiencing things so that they get a whole level of knowledge that's not just like reading a book. So the engagement piece and then the accountability. So we incorporate accountability factors or pieces into our courses where it's not, you know. I mean, if people are working with you one-on-one, then there's they get that accountability because they got to show up and tell you they've done stuff or haven't done stuff. So we've built that accountability in a DIY course with people the same way we do with a one-on-one client. At least it has the same impact or level. We have that accountability in place so they know people are watching. We'll do a lot more for other people. We'll do a lot more than other people than we do we will for ourselves. I think there's a lot of times people will give up on themselves. They don't give up on others. So we make sure we we tap into that accountability. And then I think the last thing we do is we help people really build leverage. So, why do you want to take on what you're taking on? So, right from the get-go, we build a lot of leverage with people up front. So they, you know, they're like, I gotta do this thing. Like, and they remember their leverage, they remember their accountability. It's almost like they've tapped into what I would call a threshold. They're not just satiated. Hey, I want to make some changes because I'm bored or I'm dissatisfied, but I'm I've hit a threshold. Let's go, I will do it. And when they're in that space, I think they'll do anything and they'll keep doing anything to make changes.

Kevin Yee 9:52

Beautiful stuff. Yeah.

Brandon Barbers 9:53

I can share how to a threshold too.

Kevin Yee 9:55

But oh yeah, yeah. Please do. I'm personally really, really curious about it.

Brandon Barbers 9:59

Yeah, I mean, you get people to a threshold by first of all helping them, we call it pacing, right? Identify their pain. What's their pain? Do a future pacing exercise where you're like, hey, what's the pain and what's it gonna look like a year from now? What's gonna look like two years from now? What's gonna look like three years from now? Literally walk them through an exercise where you have them go look in the mirror at one year, at two years, at three years, at five years, at 10 years, at 20 years, if they haven't overcome this particular situation and look in the mirror and they got older and they ring up, you take people out 20 years, some people are in their caskets. So it's the Tony Robbins calls it the Dickens process, but it's literally a future-pacing process where you help people identify the pain if they don't make the changes. And then what I do is I there's something we call it stacking consequences. So you look at all of those consequences, you tell those consequences back to those people, hey, like here's the consequences, here's what I'm hearing if you don't make a shift. And then you do the opposite, like do it with pain, and then you do it with pleasure. And now you get people into a place where like, oh my gosh, I've seen my future. If I don't make the changes, if I don't shift, here's what's here's what's gonna happen. If I do shift, here's all the benefits. And we make sure to include like who's watching, who's engaging in this, who's seeing you make this process happen or not happen. Oh, my kids are watching. Oh, I gotta do something there. So future pacing, consequences, stacking consequences is a way we get people to obtain more leverage, if you will.

Kevin Yee 11:25

Yeah, that's a beautiful thing about like what you do, because you know, I've been head of sales for a lot of creators and stuff, and really sales conversations are the same exact thing, right? It's being able to hold up in the air and let the other person kind of sit in their pain and make their decision on what they want to do. If they're okay with it, then there's no need for change. But I love that like stacking consequences, I think. And yeah, but the other thing I was very, very curious about too, uh, from the business side, another critique about courses a lot of times is that there's no recurring revenue model with it, right? It's like one and done. What are your thoughts about that? Do you agree with that? Do you disagree?

Brandon Barbers 11:59

Yeah, I disagree because I mean, we've courses right now that are out in the marketplace that our people are attending and doing without me having to facilitate that. So this is ongoing. Um, and then what we make sure we do in a final module, if you will. Let's say it's a 10 module program or a 12 module program in module 10 and module 12. It's like we get really clear about some of the questions we ask about, hey, where are you headed next? What's your plan? You took this on, but where are you going in your next phase? What's the next step for you? We're always seeding in to our programs what the next step would be. So from day one, from module one, we seed in what may be the next step for them. And then we're clear with people at the end. It's like not, hey, I'm duping you to come do this next program, but legitimately I've seeded in what was the next step. So there's always in their mind another program or a next step after that. There's not a, this is a final. This is this is it. I'm done with this. Okay, I just did this for 10 weeks. Now the program's over. We made that mistake for years. And now with programs that we create, having the model that we've created in that final session, but it's really dripping throughout the entire process, not in a sleazy way, not in a salesy way, but in a way that's really effective for people because we let them know, hey, there's this mastermind, right? This mastermind is our ultimate, our high-ticket offer to come be part of this mastermind, could come join us or to come spend a day with my wife and I, which is called our VIP day, which is a $50,000 day, but something that's next. So I'm always mentioning our VIP day. I'm always mentioning our mastermind throughout these entire programs. So when people from day one, they're like, oh my gosh, this, there's more to this. I'm getting just like kind of the, I don't want to say introductory, but I'm getting a taste of this, or I'm getting this this piece of this, but I can see that there is more. And so their next logical step is when they're done, is hey, and some a lot of people do this before they're even done. Hey, I wouldn't need to know about your mastermind, or I need to know about this VIP day thing. And so we seed in along the way so that it's not a one and done.

Kevin Yee 14:03

Yeah, that's uh, you know, I think your thoughts are a lot more like mine, right? I think like courses alone by themselves, it's hard to get that MRR or ARR right from it, monthly occurring revenue and all that. But when you stack it with offers, it's like so powerful, you know, especially because people get a taste of you and then it's a lot less risk than just hey, I don't really know Brandon that well. And uh to drop 50,000 on a VIP day, I'm not quite sure. But after I go through your process and I know how you think, it just makes it a lot more palatable, you know. So I love that. With that being said, too, like I'm kind of curious on your business end. How do people typically find out about you? Like, so you know, people want to kind of build these courses, and you're probably putting content out there, but like, how do people find out about you?

Brandon Barbers 14:48

So this is one way. Like, we guest on a lot of different podcasts, we do a lot of joint ventures with people, so we'd have a lot of individuals that have mean we have a big list, so we have a massive list of individuals that that are attentive to us too, that are paying attention. So, you know, over 25 years, we've built a pretty big list. And then we'll joint venture with other people with big lists. So whether or not they have big list, an email list, or they have, you know, a big following in social media. We do a lot of joint ventures with people. So we will work with them in one of the things that I do is I help people create as part of their course, we help them market that course. Part of marketing that course is getting really good at challenges and masterclasses, event marketing, if you will. And we have a whole process where you teach people how to get your events out there. And I'll come in and JV with people and I'll emce their masterclass for them. And so we'll combine our list together. We'll do a split when that happens. I'll edify that person in their masterclass or their challenge, help them build that credibility, if you will, show them how to choreograph a five-day or three-day masterclass or challenge, and people show up. Now you're getting lots of different audiences to show up to see what you have to offer. So we've been doing that for about three years, and it's been super effective. We do paid ads once in a while. We do, I don't know how fantastic that's going. It's not my lane, that's my wife's lane. So, but yeah, we do some other things along the way to get new faces.

Kevin Yee 16:14

And you mentioned you have three different offers, right? So there's a DIY version done with you, done for you, right? And so one of the things I'm kind of curious about is like, I don't know how big your team is and all that, but how do you think about like your or manage your current client capacity? I guess. How do you think about that?

Brandon Barbers 16:31

How do we manage our current client capacity? I do not do one-on-ones. I don't do a lot of one-on-ones anymore. That's the thing that really bogged me down big time. When I have nine to 12 one-on-ones in a day and a couple of group sessions, like, come on, like that's your all you're doing is working. So the only one-on-ones we do are very high ticket. You want to come work with us? We spend a day with you. We engage with you for a day. If we do a done for you program, our system is so clean. It's so like nailed down that it's we're not spending hours and hours and hours. We don't need to spend hours and hours and hours on the phone with people or in Zooms. Our group, the way we've set up our groups, is that I don't have, it's not limited to a small group. So we can have, you can have a hundred people as part of our mastermind. We don't. We have more like 45, 50 people in our masterminds. Not because we couldn't have more, we could, but just the way we've designed them. And then, of course, having an automated process is so critical. Because if you have an automated process, it's all being done for you. You're not tied to Zooms, you're not tied to clients can get your material, they can get your information, they can get your stuff while you sleep. I'm sleeping last night. I know there are people in Australia that are watching our or engaging in our course. They're seeing some sort of a masterclass that's automated. Maybe we used to call that a webinar back in the day, but it's an automated course that they think is live. They're watching that, they're engaging in that, and now they're buying the DIY course from me. And I didn't, I don't even know who they are. They know me. That's so beautiful.

Kevin Yee 18:06

Now, something I would like your thoughts on as well is where I see a lot of coaches struggle is kind of with pricing strategies. Obviously, you don't have to give any hard numbers, but like especially when how did you go about structuring your pricing? Like, you know, it sounds like you have certain packages, right, with the DIY done with you and done for you, right? And I'm kind of curious, how has that pricing like evolved over time since you've been in the industry for so long? I'm guessing your day one pricing looks very different from today.

Brandon Barbers 18:33

It has to, I wouldn't be alive. I can tell you how we've handled pricing is the hard way. Lots of trial and error, lots of painful, just what do we do? Whimsically make up a price? Like, do we just like pull it from thin air? So a lot of trial and error, a lot of working with a lot of different people, really understanding how do I price this, where do I price that, until we got to a place that said, hey, first of all, I gotta know that I'm I'm worth it, right? So it's putting value on yourself. What are you actually worth? And then I think it's a science. I think from there, you look at your offer, what your offer is. If it's not clear, go out in the marketplace and do some research to find out where your offer is actually going to fall into a place where people are gonna pay you. Because if it doesn't, if your offer is just something you made up and it's not like something that the market needs, it's gonna be really tough. Unless you have a really, really small niche that you're targeting directly to, it's gonna be difficult for you to sell that. I always model. Like I look at, you know, I look at the big dogs in the industry and what are they doing? Where is their money flowing? And there's usually a place money is flowing in in wealth offers, health offers, and relationship offers. So in that three space, in one of those three spaces, I just do a lot of research. Where is an offer doing really well? And I won't go copy and paste, but I'll certainly model somebody else's offer. And then, of course, I look at what they're doing, what's working for them, what price point are they selling it at? So I do a lot of research, and you'll usually find that the people that aren't doing as gangbusters are the people that have a really low ticket offer, and that's it. Now, use a low-ticket offer to get into a high ticket offer, that's one thing. We do that in our masterclasses and challenges. You can come join us in a masterclass or challenge for $37,000, $47, $97. And then our high-ticket offer is anywhere from 10,000. I mean, we have some DIY stuff, but we don't offer our DIY on the front end and what the marketplace is offering. So I look at the pieces that I bring to the puzzle and I see I compare that to other people's offers, if you will, that are really doing well in the marketplace. And then we become the person or the place that people are actually researching to do that very same thing. So I think yeah, pricing used to be a really challenging thing. I'd look at all the stuff that I do and I'd say, How much value is this? And I'd be, I want to charge more. So I'd have to feel like I had to give more. I had to get more of my time or I had to get more of my effort. And what I realize is the more stuff that I do for people, the higher the ticket. The more we do it together, it lowers the ticket. The more that's you do it on your own, the very low-end ticket. So yeah, we have a nine, we have a thousand dollar offer where you go do it all by yourself, but anything else that's done with you or for you goes to 10, 25, and then 50.

Kevin Yee 21:20

Yeah. You know, I always love talking about pricing because it's one of the most it's kind of taboo, right? A lot of people won't talk about pricing openly, but then on top of that, there's just so many different pricing models out there, right? Do you price anchor against the value that you kind of offer, which is the whole value-based pricing, right? Do you kind of do hourly? Well, I well, I would never do it, but do hourly where you're just like looking at your own resources and stuff, and like, oh, I charge this much for hour. There's so many different models, right? And if you stack that on top of that, and then you're just like, and then there's the whole anxiety of will this person buy, right? It makes it a really tough uh conversation. I'm glad that you kind of shared your uh perspective on it. So thank you for that.

Brandon Barbers 21:59

If you don't decide on your prices, the client will decide on your prices for you. And unfortunately, yeah, if you let the client do it, now all of a sudden you have a low end, very low-end ticket. And I would highly recommend to any coaches, like the first bit of advice I would give to coaches when you start your program, don't start with a low ticket offer and then say you're eventually going to build up or price that higher. We made that mistake, and it's hard to raise prices. What are you raising prices for? Because of inflation. Like, but if you can start with a high ticket offer, you can always come down. It's a lot easier to come down from a high-ticket offer than it is building your way up to that high ticket offer. So the advice I give to a lot of coaches when we do our training where we actually train coaches, which is another component, it's the third component of what we do is we train coaches to really build a coaching, an effective coaching business. And it includes coursework and things like that, but we talk about pricing. One of the things in pricing is start high, start with a high ticket offer, sure.

Kevin Yee 22:59

Yeah, and there's just so much value from doing a high ticket, especially if it's very intimate, right? To get to know your target avatar, have that interaction, and then suddenly you can write better copy and all that for your low-ticket offers and all that too, because you have a good feel of the industry. So I love that. That's not awesome, man. That's good. Okay, you clearly have been in the industry for a while because we're having a pretty deep talk. So I'm kind of curious, man. You've been in the game for 25 years. I guess I'm curious about your future goals. Where do you want your coaching business to take you in the next few years? Do you have like desires to scale, hire more people, secret dreams no one knows about? Would love to hear that.

Brandon Barbers 23:37

No secret dreams. I don't have any desire to hire a bunch more people. I could outsource some things to people for sure and build. We once had a team of 12, and I can tell you that as fun as that was and enjoyable as that was, it was a lot of overhead. So, in order for us to profit, it was messy with all of that. So I'm not, I have no desire to hire a bunch more people, but I have a desire to impact more people for sure. I don't want to build a massive empire, but I do want to impact a lot more people. And so I want to do a lot more, I want to get a lot better at one to many. I want to get a lot better at automating more courses. I want to get a lot better at building out a process that is not requiring so much of me because I do want to impact a lot more people. And, you know, money's nice too. I'd like to make more money, but I certainly want to make a bigger impact. But again, I love what I do. We're in a pretty sweet spot of our lives and of our business for sure. And when I see other people struggling right now, which is really cool, I'm obviously blessed to be in that space because I see a lot of other coaches struggling because people are, I think we're in a trust recession and people don't trust as much. And let's face it, how we treat other people, that bar is on the floor right now. So no wonder people don't trust us as much. There's a lot of coaches, there's a lot of people doing a lot of different things. Can people really fulfill what they're saying they can fulfill? Yeah. So we I think we have this massive trust recession and it makes it challenging. It makes it challenging for coaches, it makes it challenging for businesses to get people to show up and participate. Yeah.

Kevin Yee 25:05

You know, one of the things that you mentioned was like you have a desire to impact more people, right? And when I think about impact, right, it can be very, very subjective. So like I'm kind of curious about your vision, right? Like, what does impacting people look like to you? Like look like to you.

Brandon Barbers 25:21

I think it looks like more people participating in. I mean, it's it's more people buying our process, it's more people consuming our courses, consuming our product. I know if we can impact people, if I can make an impact on somebody by building a really, really profitable coaching business, an incredible course, that they're going to then impact how many people? How many people will they impact? So it's more coaches, more entrepreneurs, more business owners consuming our course, consuming what we do. If I can help more people build phenomenal courses that have a big impact on others, we're making a bigger impact in so many different ways. So to me, it looks like us building or more people purchasing our products, our services, our courses.

Kevin Yee 26:07

As you're thinking about making more impact, right? What are some like kind of growing pains that you're noticing in the season of business right now? Like maybe anything that was kind of unexpected or like general growing pains that most people can't see.

Brandon Barbers 26:19

I think the biggest growing pain for most people, and I think for us, is pivoting. When you hit a plateau in your business, it's not a matter of if you hit a plateau, it's a matter of when you're gonna hit a plateau and when you hit that plateau to be able to pivot and how quickly you can pivot. Listen, we don't like change. Survival brain hates change. So getting to a space where we can, where you can pivot and deal with the confusion and the discomfort and uncertainty of the pivot. That's the biggest growing pain we've seen, and which I see others do is they just keep getting getting back to some what I call the basics instead of shifting and making a pivot in their business where they need to and welcoming the discomfort. When things get uncomfortable, that's part of the process. It is the price of you running a business. It's the price of passion. So discomfort, I like to help people lean into discomfort and not get into suffering. What I see a lot of people do is they get into suffering, and now they're in a suffering state. It's really hard to run your business when you're suffering. You're in your limbic system, you're offline, now you're not functioning like you normally would. You're in desperation. That's a challenging space. So the biggest thing, the biggest growing pain I see is just willing to pivot and uh adapt to change when needed, when needed. Discomfort.

Kevin Yee 27:32

I think pre-podcast we were talking, and you said that you had to make some pivots in your business. And so I'm kind of curious, like what was going through your mind during that time, too, during those pivots if you're open to it.

Brandon Barbers 27:41

Oh my gosh, chaos, confusion. What do we do? I've never done this before. Slip back into the old ways.

Kevin Yee 27:47

What exactly was happening at the time?

Brandon Barbers 27:49

Well, 2020, 2019, our biggest pivot. We've had to pivot a few times in our business, but 2019 was our biggest pivot. I got a cancer diagnosis in 2019, major pivot there. 2020, COVID hit, shut our business down overnight. We had an entire year full of events planned that just got shut down. We had an entire event team we had to let go. We went from a team of many to a team of very few in a very short time. And we had to learn how to do virtual events. We had to learn how to do everything online. We had to learn how to build our business virtually. So we hired the best in the virtual event business. We learned how to do virtual events. We built a studio. We started doing events in our studio. We learned how to do masterclasses and challenges, event marketing, how to, you know, really do it in a scientific way that works. We Frankenstein's it until we learned the science of it by just again modeling the people who were doing it really, really well. So we started modeling the people doing it well. We learned how to do master classes and challenges. We've now done over 150, I think close to 200 masterclasses and challenges. We know there's a science to them, there's a choreography to each one of those things. We had to learn how to build a funnel. Like, how do you really build an efficient and effective funnel? We had to learn how to build resilience in the middle of a pivot and stay online. What ways do we stay online and keep ourselves in our prefrontal cortex and not back here in our limbic system, like stuck and overwhelmed and frustrated? Like we had to stay engaged. So being resilient through a pivot is critical. If you're not grounded, you're all over the place.

Kevin Yee 29:21

Yeah, nothing's worse than that amygdala hijack. So totally, totally get it. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I think it's sometimes we see the highlight reels, right? A lot of businesses, and we see like, well, yeah, we hit record like revenue numbers, but it's always nice to see like what's actually really going if we go inside the hood, you know. So thank you for sharing that. I do appreciate that.

Brandon Barbers 29:41

I know if you hit a plateau and you don't make a change, your business will die. Like that's just part of the process. Look at Blockbuster Video, their business they put they hit a plateau and they die, right? Now, how many people go to block video? They were a multi billion dollar company at one time and didn't make the pivot when it was necessary. So if you you hit the plateau. And don't pivot, you will eventually die. The problem is when you pivot, sometimes things don't work as well right away. So your business can actually slip back a little bit. And that's when people will go back to the way they always did things. And um, we wanted to do that, right? We pivoted in our business, we had to do all this stuff virtually, and it people weren't showing up like they were. We'd get droves of people to show up to an in-person event. Now we were doing these events that had, you know, but we used to have a thousand people show up to an in-person event. Now we have maybe 50, 75 people show up to an online event. It was like, what? This is crazy. So in the midst of that, I'm like, oh, our business isn't doing as well. Let's go back to the way we used to do things. Now we probably would have if we could have, but COVID didn't allow us to go back to the way things used to be. But we tried. I tried to get people to do events in people's backyards and I'd try to do events where people, where can the people of, you know, not be so scared about COVID and just show up to events and gosh. I remember doing an event in somebody's backyard in in New Orleans and there was 40 people there with masks on. It was like, this is just not what I had in mind. So when you do pivot and your business starts to slide, what I see a lot of people is they go back the way they always did things. And the hardest thing with pivoting is to stick with it, especially when things are not working. Because eventually, if it's something that's of value and something you've witnessed that, you know, other people have done, or you know that there's some success behind it, or maybe you don't know there's some success behind it, but you stick with it with the faith that eventually your business starts to move in the right direction. That's what happened for us. That's what happened for us.

Kevin Yee 31:34

You mentioned plateaus and you brought up that great Blockbuster analogy because I grew up in the 90s, right? And I remember Blockbuster was everywhere, and then overnight it literally disappeared with like Netflix and all that sort of stuff, literally overnight. Yeah. Do you feel like you're kind of like in your business? Do you feel like you're kind of hitting a plateau right now, or do you feel like the next one's coming soon? Or how do you know like when you're when it's time to like start to put a bit?

Brandon Barbers 31:59

Yeah, like I said, I don't think it's a matter of if you hit a plateau, it's a matter of when. And they can come often or they don't have to come off. But what I notice a plateau is a simple thing. I'm paying attention to my numbers. So when I watch numbers start to dramatically shift over a certain period of time, I know we're in a plateau. That's the obvious thing to look at. The other thing I look at is am I bored? Have I delivered this thing and I'm like, I'm not really passionate about a particular thing. It seems like I'm having to pull people more than people interested. That's a plateau. I think I there's two plateaus in there. If I get bored or I watch other people get bored or not as interested, I think those are three signs that I pay really close attention to to notice if a plateau is coming. I don't just gauge it on a day or a week. I mean, this is months. And if you see months of the same type of thing, then you know you're in a plateau. I know we hit a plateau every summer. So every summer the plateau. Then we ramp back up, but the summer has always been sort of slow for us. It's a plateau. Now I notice that. So I make sure that I gear us up for things to do in the summer now that are very different than maybe what we do throughout the rest of the year. We have different types of master classes and challenges. We make sure we rev up our DIY programs. And we even have a DIY DIY program that is summer focused. So it's like this summer focused thing. So you can do while you're out vacationing and doing all your other things that will keep you online. People want simple and easy and basic in the summer where they make dig in a lot deeper in November and December or January. So we've designed our process around the summer slump or the plateaus, if you will. But the big plateaus in my business, I realize in November, December, like if people aren't buying things, if I'm feeling depressed or down or low about a particular thing that we're doing, I know it's plateau. It's it's time to, it's time to pivot. What I don't, what we did is we pivoted. What I learned around pivoting and plateaus is that you can wait for the plateaus to come and be forced to pivot, or you can be one step ahead of the plateaus by really noticing and being attentive to what your business is doing and paying attention to your numbers. Because if you wait until COVID hits or whatever other massive thing hits, now you're in a reactive state, right? Where if you know the plateau, you know the signs of a plateau, you can start to go, hey, I'm gonna be more responsive to what's happening and you get ahead of the game. Being reactive is not a fun place to be for sure.

Kevin Yee 34:29

Never, for sure. Definitely the worst decisions usually come from reactivity in that amygdala hijack that we were talking about earlier. So yeah. Okay, I do want to play a game with you, Brandon, if you're open to it. We've come to this part of the segment of the podcast where we have this game, and so I like to do it through the lens of business investments because a lot of coaches, entrepreneurs, right? We invested things into like our own training, marketing, team members, masterminds. There's a lot of things, probably infinite amount of things that we can invest in. But what I want to do is let's pretend I'm the psychologist and you're the patient, like lying on the couch, twiddling your fingers. I'm gonna prompt you a phrase and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind. If there's a story behind it, would love to hear that story too. Okay, all right. Number one, there's four of them. First business investment you ever remember making.

Brandon Barbers 35:15

Gosh, first business investment. You can think about our last five business investments, but I'm thinking what's the first one? My first one is oh, okay. All right. It was actually we went to a seminar that taught people how to invest in these, they were uh candy machines, gumball machines, and you paid a I think a franchise fee. We paid a franchise fee for it, and then we had to go put them in different places. I remember, oh my gosh, we probably spent it's probably a three thousand dollar investment and then placing these candy machines in these different places and then collecting money, going around to these candy machines and collecting money. It lasted about three months. Yeah.

Kevin Yee 35:52

How old are you?

Brandon Barbers 35:52

21 years old. Wow. Yeah, love that.

Kevin Yee 35:55

Yeah. Second question. Last business investment you made.

Brandon Barbers 35:59

Last business investment that I made was putting investment into our company, learning the process. We hired somebody to help us learn the pro. I mean, we've hired so many people over the last five years, but really, this person learned us or taught us. We learned how to create a very solid system. So walking through and making sure that our systems were really dialed in. And one of those systems was how to automate. So, how to automate everything. And that's the last business investment that we made. But oh my gosh, we've made so many over the last five years to help our business grow from funnels to again, master classes and challenges to making a high-ticket offer to how to do events virtually to probably my biggest business investment was 2017. And that was a plaque partnership with Tony Robbins. That was $85,000. That's been our biggest business investment to date, but super powerful. Getting our brains in the right place.

Kevin Yee 36:56

That's the foundation. I love that. Third question. These might overlap, but best business investment you made.

Brandon Barbers 37:01

I think it was probably that that Tony Robbins investment. The year I spent with Tony and learning and becoming a master coach for him. That was some of the most valuable material and yeah, impact not just in my business, but in my entire life. Yeah, that impacted all areas.

Kevin Yee 37:16

I'm guessing the health, wealth, and relationships, and maybe the fourth component like of self-actualization. It's good. Like a real business owner after that. But like a real business owner. Powerful. I know a few friends that have gone through that as well. So I love it. Okay. Last one, it's a bit cheeky. Worst business investment that you kind of wish you got your money back from. We all know there's a silver lining, but like, what's something that you kind of wish you got your money back from?

Brandon Barbers 37:38

I don't want to name any names. I did a program where someone was trying to, they had created success in what they did. And so they were modeling what they did. And it was, it didn't necessarily fit our personality. So, you know, one of the things they taught was use no visuals at an event. Do everything from script, follow the script to the T. A lot of kind of forcing us to do it this way and the way to market your business. There was a lot of heavily focused on the sales, was you know, it's get to the sale, like it became so heavily sales focused that it almost watered our all of our content down. So I'm not saying, listen, I love sales. I've been a salesman my whole life. So I love the process of sales. But when your content watered down because of that, I'll never forget I got to be on, I was on stage. I've been on lots of stages with lots of different companies. And I was on stage in Canada for this group. It was their conference, this particular company. There's 3,000 people in the audience, and I'm using this person's model. And I remember it just like people coming up afterwards saying, Hey, like we really wanted to get to know you better, and we really wanted to get to know what content you have and what, and I just feel like we went straight into this big pitch. So it was like story to pitch, story to pitch. And I spent some quality time with this person who had done a lot of successful things, and so we spent a lot of money and a lot of time. My business actually went backwards after working with this person. So I'd like to go redo that. It was a great learning, great learning, obviously, and there's silver lining, but I'd like my money back in that one.

Kevin Yee 39:10

So as I prompted you these stories, right? I'm sure as you're sharing these stories, memories are popping up. And I'm pretty sure your current brandon probably would not buy the gumball machines again. So I'm kind of curious, how has your decision-making process changed in what to invest in and what not to invest in? How do you look at investments? When to invest and when not to?

Brandon Barbers 39:28

That's a good question. What I don't like to do is sit in indecisions. So I make sure that like when we're looking at things, it's hey, let's make sure we decide quickly, but let's also make decisions from trust. Let's make decisions based on not just past mistakes or fears or worries, but what does our business or what do I need right now more than anything? And when I then evaluate a business investment or a business, whether it's a coaching process or something to help our business grow, or it's just somebody that's offering, you know, I don't know, maybe it's an Amazon, becoming an Amazon distributor or whatever you call that. Trust your intuition. What does your gut tell you about this situation? What is your gut speaking to you about this? Not fear. I think fear is there's emotion tied to fear where guts just matter of fact. Like my gut's just telling me something's not right here. Or like, then I think you listen to that. So I think you have to look at, I'm always looking at does this person have social proof? What are their testimonials, right? So is there social proof where people are actually getting results from this? Have they walked people through this? Have they done this? Have others done this? It's not that, hey, things are on the precipice or on the cusp of something new and you need to dive in. But if your gut's telling you, like, eh, I don't know, like, listen to that. If they don't have any social proof, they don't have anything that's like, I have these people that have done this or made this happen, then I think that's a piece of the decision that I make as well. If other people are talking about this, if other people are getting results, if other people are doing this, then hey, okay, I can see that it's it gives me at least a little bit more certainty. Now, again, there's those one-offs that are certain, you know, do you invest in this? Do you do this with somebody? Do you do this with an investor that offers this? Where you have to, you know, you're gambling to some degree. And if you have the means to gamble, great. If you don't, then you make sure you're getting what you need. What's gonna help you build more business, more profit today? If somebody told me I have an investment that's gonna pay you fifty thousand dollars, you give me ten thousand dollars the next three months, it's gonna give you fifty. I'm gonna say, and they have social proof, my gut feels good about it. I'm gonna say, can I give you 150? That's an I think that's a good investment.

Kevin Yee 41:33

I just really liked what you said about the intuition part because I feel like in modern day society, we're taught to kind of ignore that sometimes and all that, but there's a bit of wisdom there, and I like that you highlighted that. The other thing I really enjoyed was like not staying in the indecision like phase two for too long. It's not like I think sometimes people are like they make quick decisions out of reactivity, but there's a nice balance between being proactive and making quick decisions as well, you know. So I really liked hearing that as well. Last segment I would like to play with you is called overrated, underrated. So, Brandon, you've been around the block as a business owner. You've gotten a lot of advice, some of it good, some of it bad, some of it solicited, probably a lot of it unsolicited. So, what's the most overrated piece of advice that you've gotten so far? It could be a cliche, what are those cliche advices that come to mind? And what's the most underrated piece of business advice you've gotten? Kind of like the things that are like should be kind of like best kept secrets.

Brandon Barbers 42:26

The underrated advice is such a simple and basic thing that I think the simplification of it definitely muddies it and makes it seem like it's not that fantastic. But to be able to know how to get yourself back online when you're offline. So six minutes of breath work, physical touch, cold water, exercise. I mean, the things that get your brain and your body back online, utilizing what are called protocols. So it's like preventative. So making sure you're doing the breath work, the exercise, the cold water, cold plunges, things like that. You're doing the stuff preventative ahead of time. So some of those basic things, six minutes of breath work, best advice I've ever been given, but underrated. Overrated, I hear a lot about niche. Like you gotta find your niche. And I'm not sure I'm crazy about that. So I think that finding your niche, your avatar, if you will, I feel like is maybe a little overrated. Because I think what you want to be able to do more than anything is build your not so much your niche or your avatar, but build your offer. Getting clear about your offer will bring in the niche, it will bring in the avatar. But so heavily focused on women 18 to 35, and you know, they do this, they do that instead of hey, getting clear about your actual offer and product will actually niche people down instead of so focusing so much on who my avatar or niche is, I think that gets a little overrated.

Kevin Yee 43:55

I love that. You know, I love what you said about the first. I have two comments, right? First comment is about the breath work. I think that is also very, very underrated because that shifts you like it shifts you into the prefrontal cortex, into not being so reactive and stuff. And sometimes people are like, Oh, yeah, breath, but how does breathing help? I'm like, if you ever did jujitsu and you're getting crushed, you know that you gotta control your breathing so you don't panic tap, right? Like that too, you know. So there's that. With the overrated, like just a follow-up question on that. Like, I agree with you. Like, I feel like if you get clear about the offer, I'll naturally niche, you know. But a lot of people say, like, oh, find your niche for like personal branding as well. So do you feel like the same? I definitely agree with the product side, but how do you feel about the personal branding side? Do you feel like that advice is still applied? I don't know.

Brandon Barbers 44:38

I mean, again, I'm not an expert in that area. I haven't, I've spent some time learning from people that have taught the niche, you know, process or concept. Avatar, I hear that all the time. Avatar. And it just didn't seem to maybe we didn't do it effectively, but just didn't seem to have as big an impact as when we decided to get clear about what we offered. Then what we offer, you know, just sort of ties into a certain type of person. I think the type of person I want to attract is somebody who is an action taker and somebody who is a preepel. A prepul is a person who likes premium and knows that premium gives them quality. The prepol is the person who knows that paying a premium for something is valuable. The premium preepel is a person who sees that there is a possibility. How's this going to work? Nah, it won't work. There are two other types of people. There's cheaples and there's freeples. And so if I have an avatar, I want an action taker preeple. I don't want a bunch of cheeples, I don't want freeples. Freeples want everything free, the cheeples want everything cheap and they can't afford it anyway. It's a scarcity mindset. And I want to help the cheeples have a preeple mindset. But here's what I know: you don't get what you want in the marketplace. You get who you are. And if there's certain people showing up in your coaching business or in your business, that certain type of person, you're probably um projecting that. You're probably a part of that person. Not probably, you are. Who you are is who you attract. So if I want my ultimate avatar for my brand, then I just the most important thing that I do is be who I want to attract.

Kevin Yee 46:17

I love that. That's such great advice. On YouTube and stuff, I'm known for like high-ticket sales. And so, like, I find it so ironic how like a lot of people want to do high-ticket sales, but never invested in a high-ticket program ever in their life. And so I find that really, really funny. Okay, cool. Last question for you, Brandon. How can people find you and connect with you?

Brandon Barbers 46:35

We have some really cool things that we have, you know, we giveaways, you can see events, things we do, all at Brandon and Michelle Barber.com. So, yeah, Brandon and A N D Michelle Barber.com. We have three cool things you can get there. You can get uh our coaching training, our coaching certification training there. Absolutely free. You can get the 10 critical steps to do and implement to build your own course, and we have a resilient aid kit there too. So all of those things are absolutely free if you guys want to go check that out. And then you can see what upcoming masterclass or challenge we're doing at the time and come jump into one of those.

Kevin Yee 47:12

You know, as I'm looking at my really bad doctor handwriting here. Oh my god. Um there's so many different takeaways I'm having. First of all, I just want to thank you for just explaining, like, you know, what an effective course kind of looks like. Because I feel like these days there's so many different courses online, and the quality is kind of missing, but what exactly is quality? Because that's kind of subjective sometimes. And so you kind of opened up like kind of a little bit deep into hey, what makes it an effective course? These are things that we should think about. Another thing, too, that was really, really helpful, I think, for a lot of the listeners is like hey, pricing and stuff, because we were talking about that taboo subject a lot of times, but the process of like modeling what works for with the top people in the industry and things like that too. And then you're also talking about the trust recession, which I thought was super, super interesting on my end. And then you're so transparent about the plateau, right? Like the three signs that you look at with the plateau and when to pivot, when to change. And then I think the last things, your overrated, underrated advice was gold. And then learning to trust your intuition and not staying in decision phase too long. So, Brandon, that's just my really long way of saying, Hey, thank you for sharing all your knowledge on the podcast. Thank you for your work. Your work matters, and I appreciate you coming on.

Davis Nguyen 48:27

Uh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin Yee 48:30

Yeah, thank you.

Davis Nguyen 48:31

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This conversation was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. To learn more about Purple Circle, our community, and how we can help you grow your business, visit joinpurplecircle.com.