You can also watch this interview on my Youtube Channel

*PS. Below you will find an auto-generated transcript of this episode.

Arek Dvornechuck: Hey, what's up, branding experts. Arek here at Ebaqdesign and welcome to On Branding Podcast. And today we have a special guest, Luke Charlton. And Luke is an internationally recognized business coach and marketing speaker. So he has been featured in Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS News, and other publications. So Luke basically helps coaches and experts in their fields to attract high-ticket clients. 

Hello, Luke. Thanks for joining us today.

Luke Charlton: Hey, Arek. Pleasure to be here.

Arek Dvornechuck: Thank you so much. Basically just to explain to our listeners, you are a coach that coaches other coaches, right?

Luke Charlton: One of those ones. Yes. 

Arek Dvornechuck: So basically let's just think about this scenario, let's say you're a branding expert or a brand strategist for example, or you coach clients when it comes to brand strategy, branding and marketing or anything like that. You help those coaches. Basically generate leads, right? So can we just start with what inspired you to actually become a business coach?

Luke Charlton: That's a good question. Cause I didn't really ever set out to become a business coach. So I left my full time job 10 years ago this month. August 2013 is when I quit my full time job. It's been exactly 10 years. And when I left there, I left to become actually a health coach cause I was really into going to the gym and I still am to this day. And so I was going to basically coach people on how to get into shape, and do it with physical plus mental coaching and the type of things that was going to be my approach. And then what I realized is that I really didn't like doing that, I wasn't really passionate about it. I like doing it for myself. But yeah, coaching other people are in health and fitness, it just, it wasn't something that I was passionate about that I only found out after a while of doing it or trying to get that coaching business off the ground. 

But what happened was, when I stepped out to become a health coach, I really fell in love with the business side of things, the marketing and sales side of things. And I found that I had I guess a talent for things like copywriting. And so as I learned what copywriting was and the power of copywriting and how to use words to basically make sales, to get people to buy stuff from you. And I really fell in love with it. And then that's where things took off and I just became very passionate about and just learning everything I could about it. And because I was speaking to other coaches at the time and helping them with their campaigns, I just fell into working with other coaches because I was around coaches because I was learning how to grow my health business at the time. So that's the short story about how I became a business coach, yeah.

Arek Dvornechuck: So that's the story behind how you get it in space. So now, I know that you've developed some unique approach, right? To get high ticket clients. So, can we just start maybe with common mistakes that coaches make because, there is this misconception these days that you have to set up the whole funnel, which takes a lot of time and it tends to be complex, right? There's all those moving pieces that you have to figure out, but you actually propose a different approach, right? Which you called like a 15 minute email per day. Can you explain that?

Luke Charlton: Yeah.So when I transitioned from a health coach to a business coach, one of the mistakes that I made is I would chase the bright, shiny marketing. Like the latest and greatest marketing strategy. There weren't really funnels back then, like it's popularized today by Russell Brunson. But there weren't really these funnels with upsells and downsells. I was just doing networking, I had been doing LinkedIn groups, I was doing online workshops, offline workshops. Like I think in the first 12 months, I did like 15 or so different marketing strategies. It was just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck basically.

So I was just chasing all these bright shining objects and I thought the more complex it was, the more kind of authenticity it had, because I was struggling so much to get clients, I felt to get clients must be really hard. And I'll focus more on the marketing method than the simple stuff, which is actually what makes it convert, which is knowing your market really well. Step one, knowing your market better than they know themselves, that's number one. And then once you know your market really well, then you craft an offer. You take your program or your solution, whatever it is, could be a physical product. And then you communicate that in a way where the market goes, Oh, yes, I want that solution. So we do it the other way around as business owners. It doesn't matter whether you're a coach or not. Typically we look at our offer, our solution, right? Our product, our program, and we love it so much. And then we start talking about all the cool features that don't really resonate with the market, and we wonder why people aren't buying when we should actually almost forget about our product and just go to the market.

Who's our market? What do they want? What are their fears, their frustrations, desires, and then go, okay, this is what they want. Oh, now I can go to my program on a product and now I can explain how it addresses those fears, those frustrations, those desires, et cetera. So that's the best way to market your business. And so when I realized that I realized you don't need, coming back to your question, you don't need a complex funnel to get consistent clients, it's really just about getting the message, right? It's about communicating your offer in a way where the market understands.

And what I realized is that you can get clients, get sales with a very simple method. For example, everyone's heard of this, build your email list, get the right people on your list, the right market on your list, and then send them consistent emails. So you build trust, credibility, And plus each email, you can put an offer in front of them, say, “Hey, if you want help growing your business, or if you want help with this problem, buy here or book a spot in my calendar” kind of thing.

So your strategy to make sales can be very simple once you've got your message down. A lot of my clients that I run ads for, some of them have complex funnels. I don't recommend it you can get just as good if often better results with more simple funnels because there's less moving pieces. There's less complexity with a more simple funnel. You can see what is and what isn't working in relation to the message a lot easier. So for example, the main kind of funnel that I run with my agency and then I do for myself and clients and that I recommend to coaches or high-ticket service providers is literally like an ad that basically pitches a phone call, get someone booked into your calendar right away from your ad, that's where the sale happens, right? As a coach or a high-ticket service professional, where you sign the client up is on the phone call, right? On the sales call. So create a funnel that gets them on the phone. Now that doesn't have to be complex. Like the ones that I teach, like I have another business where I'm running. It's another coaching business that I have with a business partner. And this is our funnel. We literally pitch the program in the ad. Like the ad says, “Hey, so the market is helping women who want to create a secure income for their retirement”. So showing them how to invest their money correctly and stuff. So we literally pitch the program in the ad saying, “Hey, here's our program, here's who we help, here's who we are. If you're interested in creating a secure income for your retirement go here to book a spot in our calendar”. We're getting a qualified appointment.

So these are people who click the ad, fill out an application after they fill out the application, then they go to a calendar booking. It's costing us. 8 dollars at the moment for someone to fill out the application, and then go and that's a qualification because we actually disqualify people if they don't have the right financials, because they don't have a job or whatever. We actually don't direct them to the calendar page. We just take them to a different page. So for a qualified person booking that calendar is about 8 dollars which is awesome, but it's because I just keep it simple, right? The strategy is very simple. Now you can't always pitch your program in the ad. It has to be looked at in the market and the offer has to be done the right way. And that's a bit too advanced to go into right now. But, the point is the strategy. To achieve that can be very simple. You don't need a complex marketing strategy. You don't need bots. You don't need all this complicated SMS or email sequences going on to get sales, you just need to have the right message. And that's what we do in that other business. I just mentioned.

Arek Dvornechuck: So basically it comes down to the right message, right? So as you said at the beginning of our conversation, you got interested in copywriting and you really felt like this is the thing. And it's crucial, especially, when it comes to branding, marketing.

Getting your message right is the most important thing besides that, as you mentioned, if you have a product or a program try to take a step back and actually get to know your market and focus on them and their problems and then tweak that offer. Whatever product or program you have, to address their problems or their concerns or their frustrations or whatever they desire, right? Where they want to be and so on and so forth. And yeah. And also so you basically like to run ads, right? It can cost us anywhere, like you mentioned about 8 dollars per qualified lead.

Luke Charlton: That's unusual, by the way. Typically if it's a B2C market, you're usually spending between $30 to $70 for an appointment. So that's a very good result in B2B cost per latest generally from $70 to $200 for B2B. So yeah, that's kind of average at the moment.

Arek Dvornechuck: Okay. So that's good to know. So that's quite expensive. But it actually, adds to what I just said earlier. You have to have your message, right? Because if you start spending money and running those ads you have to test it out. You have to have some kind of idea of how it's going to convert, right? So

Luke Charlton: When you say you have to have the message right, it's interesting that you said that. So a lot of experts say that you should do like warm traffic for, so you should do referrals and Facebook groups and networking and do that first before you go to run paid ads. And you can understand the thinking behind that because it's like, Hey, yeah, get some clients first, get some kind of clients under your belt, then go to paid ads when you're a bit more established. Whereas I'm a little bit different thinking because. Paid ads are an amazing way to test your message, to get your message refined very quickly.

So for example, I can spend a hundred dollars on a new campaign, whether it's for me or a client, and I know right away based on the numbers. So I spent a hundred dollars and I'll know based on the numbers that I'm getting, the cost per click, the click through rate cost per appointment. I will know whether that ad is, that angle is resonating or not, if it's not, I just turn off the campaign and I test a different angle so I can test messages very, very quickly for $100 per test. Now, I will say if you, by the way, that's amazing because now I can with warm traffic, it's much harder because you're getting so little people coming through your funnel or to your website or your blog or your Facebook group that it's like, Hey, three people have opted into my email list this week and no one's bought. Is it my offer? That's the problem. Or is it because. I just have three people in there. This is not enough people as with organic, it's very hard to test your message because you get so little traffic in the beginning. So that's why I love paid ads. But I will say one thing. If you want to test your message quickly and you want to use pay ads, do that, number one, you want to have a mentor. So you want to work with someone who has worked to grow the business that you're trying to grow, right? They've run paid ads. They're very good at it and they've helped other people in your Kind of industry as well. That's very important. And also number two is to have some other kind of source of cash flow, right? So you don't want to be stressed out spending 30 a day on ads or 50 a day on ads while you're testing, or you don't have to spend a lot of money. You do not have to spend like a thousand dollars a day to test your message as it's like a hundred dollars per test, but generally my clients are spending anywhere from 30 a day to 100 per day in this testing phase, depending on their cash flow. But what I would say is there are some other ways that you're generating income so that 30 bucks a day or 50 a day is not a big deal. You can just have that, being spent on your ads and it's okay because you've got another source of income coming in.

So I would recommend getting a mentor, having some other cash flow coming in, so you're not stressed out and you're not sitting there going, Oh, my gosh, I have to make my ads work. That's definitely not a place that you want to be in when you're running paid ads because you make really bad decisions.

Arek Dvornechuck: Okay. So those two things have a mentor and have some cash flow. So you're more comfortable spending some money. So yeah, so as you said, and I just wanted to add to that, yeah, this is actually very true, as you said, because SEO has a blog. Running a blog or a podcast that takes a long time and you're not gonna have, the result, the feedback with paid ads is immediate. So you can see the data as you mentioned, and you can test it out immediately versus SEO, blog, podcast, that takes time. So that's the major difference. 

So you actually advise people who are perhaps starting out or just growing in the industry and trying to position themselves as experts in their field to actually run some ads versus doing all these things that are much more complicated, and take a lot of time. Is that correct?

Luke Charlton: Yeah, I recommend it. Yeah. As I said, if you want to test your message in the shortest amount of time possible and get things moving in the shortest amount of time possible, paid ads will help you do that as long as you're with the right mentor. And what I also say is if you run paid ads and you're not an actual expert, don't do that, right? If you're not an expert again, I help coaches, but if you're not an expert on your topic, meaning if you literally just put up a sign yesterday saying I'm a relationship expert and the only relationship experience that you've had is your own dating or whatever, you haven't actually helped someone, that's what an expert is. You don't generally have to have gone through the transformation that you help with, although a lot of coaches do if they're in like a relationship coach because they went through a bad relationship or if they're a weight loss coach because they've lost weight or whatever, that's fine. But, running paid ads, people are very, it's, they're cold, right? That's why it's called cold ads, cold traffic. And so skepticism is very high. One of the ways to address that skepticism that's very effective is to have some credibility behind you. For example, clients that you've worked with, you've got some case studies, maybe you've been in the media, maybe you've been interviewed on 100 different podcasts. So there's different ways to communicate your credibility and it makes it a lot easier to make your ad campaigns convert when you are an actual expert. So, if you're just totally like, in the beginning, you've had no clients at all. I would go work with some clients as in often for free in the beginning to get some runs under your belt in terms of case studies to show that what you have works, but yeah, to answer your question, if you're an actual expert and you want to test your message very quickly then there's no quicker way than paid ads. 

Arek Dvornechuck: Okay. And that brings us closer to talking about because this is actually what you're helping your clients with, to actually, become bestsellers in their respective niche and get into international publications and things like that, which in turn is going to build your credibility in the space even more because people, they're going to check you out, right?

Even if you're running out, as you mentioned, the skepticism is high, so people will check you out. So it's good if you have some content out there that builds your credibility.

Luke Charlton: That's correct. Absolutely. One of the first things that they'll do is they'll Google you, so if you Google my name. You'll notice that I have Google, like people have reviewed me on Google and I've done that purposefully. Like I sent out emails to my list saying, Hey, can you just go to my, just Google me. Actually, I just sent them straight to the review box on Google so they could, so it's easier for them. But basically, yeah, I got some of the people on my list to review me. So you can go to me and see, I'm like five stars with, I don't know how many people it is. It's 25 or something.

But that's the first thing people look at is they'll Google your name, right? And so for me, when people Google me, that's the first thing that says, Oh, he's got five stars. Oh, that's pretty cool. So already right away, they can just from that quick Google. “Oh, this guy, he's at least established because he's got Google”, other people are saying that, yes, this guy's legit. Then they go through to my website. That's the second place they'll look is your website and like what they'll just quickly check you out. They're not going to go do a deep dive, but the people generally want to see that you've got a website. So that will pop up for me. LinkedIn will be a big one that pops up right at the top. So you really want to have your website, Google reviews and LinkedIn profile optimized. And then from there, getting clients, getting case studies and then the next level is media. So doing podcast interviews like this is a really good one. So, every interview that I do, I chuck it on my website.

So if you've got a website, you'll see my own podcast. That's credibility right there. I've got my own podcast over 300 episodes and I've got all the interviews that I've done. I don't know how many there are now. It's 50 or something. So there's all my interviews. They don't even need to listen to the interviews to know that I'm an expert because they had to see 50 interviews all of a sudden. Boom. Oh, he's got that many. Oh, he's been in the media. He's been that. So you can tell very quickly this guy is an expert or whatever he does. I can tell just from the amount of content he has and that's what I mean by building credibility and that really yeah, it helps with your conversions. Now, it doesn't mean it doesn't mean that you, I've been doing this for 10 years. So it doesn't mean that you need to have all this in the beginning. I'm not saying that you need that to make paid ads convert. I'm just saying, just be mindful as you build your career as a coach, or it could be an e-commerce store doesn't really matter, when you're running paid ads, people are cold. So we've got to do everything that we can, leverage all of our credibility in the best way possible to help with our sales.

Arek Dvornechuck: Okay. Of course you share more tips on your website, on your podcast and so on. So I invite you listeners to check it out. So your website is lukecharlton.com and your other website is thesixgiurecoach.com, right?

Luke Charlton: No, I don't have that one anymore. No, that's a magazine. I think you're talking about the magazine that I was possibly featured in a long time ago.

Yeah, because I was reading off the bio before. I'm like, that's a really old bio. I think you must have. Yeah. Now I know where you got that from. Yes, that is, so I was on the front cover of the six figure coach magazine. Maybe six years ago or something. Yeah, so that's just again, the media that I was in. That I've been in.

Arek Dvornechuck: So the main website now is just lukecharlton.com, it's your name. And what's the best way to get in touch with you? Is it Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter?

Luke Charlton: Yeah, the best place is just go to lukecharlton.com. So basically, I don't really take on many clients anymore because of the other coaching business that I mentioned that helps women with their finances. I will do consulting with coaches, if they're already running ads but for everyone else or coaches, even wanting to get into ads, I just give away everything for free because as I said, I'm not really bringing on clients anymore. So I literally just give it all away for free. So if you just go to lukecharlton.com, there's the blog, there's lots of great content. My podcast is probably the best resource though, that as I said, I give everything away. So that's just called the 15 minute client. You'll see it on my website there. The 15 minute client with Luke Charlton is the podcast. So that's a really valuable resource. If you're a coach wanting to grow your business online.

Arek Dvornechuck: Okay. Yeah. So for you listeners who want to learn more, check out Luke's podcast. We're going to link to that podcast. Thank you, Luke. Thanks for coming on the show.

Luke Charlton: No worries. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Arek.

Arek Dvornechuck: Thank you.