Niching, Positioning, and Marketing a Meditation Coaching Business w/ Giovanni Dienstmann
Giovanni Dienstmann is the creator of Live and Dare, one of the top five most popular meditation blogs on the planet. In this episode, you'll discover how Giovanni leveraged his unique approach to self-discipline and mindfulness to stand out in the crowded meditation market. This episode provides an in-depth look at the importance of niching, differentiation, and the persistent pursuit of value creation through content and SEO. Giovanni's story is a practical guide for anyone aspiring to turn their passion for spirituality into a sustainable business. We also explore Giovanni's new book, Mindful self-discipline and how it can help mindfulness coaches.
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Podcast Transcript
Lou: Hello friends. Welcome to another episode of the Art and Business of Meditation podcast. I'm excited for our guest. Giovanni Dinsman is the creator of the live and dare, one of the top five most popular meditation blogs on the planet. As an international author, meditation coach and speaker, Giovanni is an expert in helping people overcome anxiety and stress to live a more calm and centered life. He is the author of the bestselling book Practical Meditation and also a new book, Mindful Self Discipline, which is an awesome title. Giovanni's clients range from stay at home parents to entrepreneurs, c level executives, and pro athletes. His acclaimed program limitless life has helped thousands of people master their mind, find contentment and clarity, and have greater well being in their lives. And he has what looks like built a really powerful impact and mark that he's making on the world. So I'm so grateful, Giovanni, that you're spending time to even have this conversation on the show. So thanks for being here.
Giovanni: Thank you. Thank you, Lou.
Lou: It's actually kind of a full circle moment for me because I had a big spiritual shift and awakening in early 2015 and had quit my job and really pursued, like, I want to share this with other people. It was just a real, just jumping into the world. Like, I need to live my purpose. And I remember looking at podcasts and things that were of meditation. I remember finding live and dare podcast and listening to this and just like, thinking and seeing your blog and being like, wow, I would love one day to create something that this guy's created. And this was in 2015, so this is nine years ago. So I'd love to hear just obviously not your whole story, but I'd love to hear the zero to one to reference, like Peter Thiel of where were you? A sense of like, I'm doing meditation. I find the value to what is the one where now, this is my business, this is my career. I'm teaching it. I'm making this a thing. So what is that kind of zero to one for you?
Giovanni: Right? So I've been practicing Meditation daily since I'm 15 years old. And that was always a part of my life. But for me, it was a personal pursuit. It was my spiritual practice, my philosophy, my meaning of life, but it was never my career. I had a law degree, worked with law in Brazil, then migrated to Australia, taught myself programming, became a programmer. That's how I got the australian green card and then citizenship. But throughout all this period of time, meditation and spirituality, they were the main thing in my life. They were just not the thing that I was making a living off. And I eventually realized, like, I don't want to spend the rest of my life working on a nine to five. That's not the vision that I have for myself. I want to work with something that is more aligned. And so I started studying a lot about entrepreneurship and how to make a living selling services and products online and all of that. And that's how live and dare was born. Initially, live and dare was supposed to be a directory for life coaches. That was the first idea. I would be the one writing articles that brings the people via SEO, via Google search, and then the coaches would all be there. People would go and hire a coach and I would just be the guy who is bringing everyone to the place. And soon I realized that that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a teacher on my own, right, and have my own voice. And so I quickly pivoted to that and it took me, after about a year and a half, I decided to quit my job and then to just be a meditation teacher writer coach full time. And it took a little bit more time for me to be able to get to the point where I was earning the same as I was earning in a high paid programming job in Sydney. So it wasn't a quick journey by any means, but I immediately felt that as I was combining those two areas of my life, my career and my spiritual practice, that felt different. Like my career is helping my spiritual practice and my spiritual practice is helping my career. Before, there was a very definite am I now working or am I now doing spiritual practice? And then after a while I couldn't make a difference anymore. I'm reading this book because I want to write about this topic, but I'm also reading this book because it's helpful for my own journey. So it was great to see these two things finally combined.
Lou: That's the beauty of this work. It's like we get to grow ourselves, but also in that we get to help others kind of grow or understand and share. So that line is blurred and I don't know, sometimes that has its own challenges because we're never really not working. I think when we're at a corporate job, it's like we come home and we can leave work. So sometimes hard to set those boundaries. It's so fascinating that you started with thinking that this was going to be a space for life. Coaches I know some people that I know and work with, they get into meditation and life coaching maybe is in the same realm, but they really want to teach meditation or they want to focus more on the mindfulness of meditation and coaching is like a whole separate thing. And so how did early on, were you attracted towards the life coaching aspect of it? And is that from growing the blog? Was that initially one of the core revenue streams for you early on or were you monetizing the blog in another way?
Giovanni: In the first year? I basically didn't monetize the blog. When I started the whole entrepreneurship, the idea was still these are two separate areas of my life, but instead of working a nine to five, I will create a business that would give me more freedom to then have my own practice, my own time, my own travels and retreats. So initially they were all separated and as I was doing research for all the different types of coaches, then I saw that there was this keyword for meditation coaching and it was really low competition. And then I felt like, so maybe this is going to be a blog more around meditation coaching, whatever that means. And so that's how I got it was my destiny, right? It pulled me in and then I found myself like, oh, then I can do this coaching because I see people writing about this topic and they seem to have less experience than me and less knowledge and time in meditation than me. So they are writing this and people are reading and liking so I can do this.
Lou: So were you paying ads then? Did I catch that right? Was it a low SEO and so it was like a lower cost per click on meditation coaches? Or were you just like researching different the search engine for each one?
Giovanni: I was researching the ad prices for the clicks, not because I wanted to run them, but for me it's an indication of how much interest there is around the it's.
Lou: I just read Noah Kagan's new book, Million Dollar weekend and he talks about this exact strategy when you're testing your business upfront to start to go to Google and see what are people searching, what's the trend? Is this a growing and emerging market? So obviously I think with this type of work, regardless if it's growing, sometimes if it is our soul work, we kind of just have to follow it. But like you said, for you, it's like you were meant to see this thing. It's like it all is all perfect in that way for how you are able to grow. So you then begin opening yourself up to coaching and how are you structuring? What does coaching look like to you back then? Or has it changed to now?
Giovanni: Yeah, well, back then I just had one page on my site called coaching and where I am explaining the tools that I use and my way to navigate life's challenges. And I had the price there and then people could click and we would start like there was not much structure or thought around it in terms of business strategy or marketing. Then, of course, over the years, as I got to know more, how do the successful coaches, how do they run their business? Then I felt like, oh, of course that way would have never worked. I would have got a new client every four months and I would never make it as a coach. But when I started learning the best practices and making shifts, at a certain point I felt like, okay, I need to niche down, like life coaching or spiritual coaching. That's very vague. That doesn't say anything. I have to have a specific problem that I fix. And at that time, I created three pages. One of them was meditation coaching, one of them was anxiety coaching and the other was self discipline coaching. These were things that I felt like, okay, these are topics that I am passionate about that I can help, that I can spend time listening to problems and exploring together. And I created these three pages and also the fourth page was spiritual coaching. That was still very vague. I created these four pages and there was a lot of interest in the self discipline page. I can say that creating the self discipline coaching page on live and dare was perhaps the most profitable decision of my business. Just creating that page, I love that.
Lou: So were you testing, I mean, I guess obviously you knew from people actually booking discovery calls with you of what people were searching on, but were you also testing the clicks of where are people clicking? Are they clicking on anxiety? Are they clicking on this and gauging it from that? Or was it purely just like, oh, wow, everyone's coming to me for this self discipline and this is the thing?
Giovanni: Yeah, it was mostly the discovery calls. Maybe out of every ten discovery calls, seven of them were about self discipline.
Lou: Got it.
Giovanni: So that's when I decided to write my next book on the topic of self discipline.
Lou: It's a brilliant idea to test it just through having these different tops types of niche. And so I think that's something I struggle with or I kind of know where I want to go with it, but I don't let myself fully niche. I think what I've been able to do through insight timer is cast a wider net. And so I've been able to coach a lot of different people. And so it's hard for me to be like, well, I'm actually not for this and I'm actually this type of coach. And I know other people listening that might have that so I think maybe we can direct this to just someone who wants to set up a mindfulness or meditation coaching business, because it is different. And I know that for me and for many other teachers, the one on one becomes a good foundation of how we make a revenue. It's a solid way to actually make an income that supports your workshops or your classes or your app or your other things. And so for someone that's like, I don't have a one on one kind of practice, how would you suggest someone getting started on developing their kind of meditation coaching business?
Giovanni: Really start by brainstorming who is it that you serve and what problem do you help fixing? Right. What is the problem that you solve and what is the person that you serve? If you just say that I do live coaching or I do meditation coaching, first there are 1000 of you out there. There's no reason for them to pick you on top of anyone else, unless they really, really like you for whatever reason, then people go with who they like, but there's no differentiation. And it's also very hard to command a high price when you are very vague in your offering. Now, if you're very specialized, if you are the person who solves help people navigate depression through meditation, well, that's very much more specific. Right. If I have depression and I believe that meditation might be the solution, and I'm looking for coaching, how many coaches out there say that I am a coach focused on using meditation to help with depression? Very few. Many of them may include that on their page somewhere, but they don't call themselves that. That's not the focus of their work. So just because you've made this the focus of your work already puts you ahead of everyone else for that particular problem. So I would get a problem that you are passionate about, something that you can spend the next ten years of your life reading about, talking about, and that you really want to help people in? If it's something that you have already gone through yourself in your life, even better. Even better.
Lou: What is the difference between niching and positioning, if there is one? Because I think that's a. You mentioned this word when we were chatting of talking about how do we position oneself in the world? And I know that it has its own kind of business sector that I think feels like a little different than niching, but I don't hear it talked about a lot. So I'm just curious if you define those differently and maybe what is positioning?
Giovanni: Right. I think just by choosing a niche, you're already making the biggest decision of your positioning. But I think positioning goes a step further. So for example, me saying that I am a self disciplined coach, meaning that I will help you live your life more aligned with your values. I will help you build the routines, the structures, the habits that will help you show up as your best self and succeed with your goals and transform yourself, your behavior change in the way that you want. Right? So that's self discipline, coach. So that is niching now in positioning. I'm saying, well, my approach is, I call it mindful self discipline, which is an awareness based approach to self discipline. It's different from the military approach which is beating yourself up all about mental know, grind your teeth and move forward. No, this is the mindful approach. We also use willpower, but we start with awareness and the order matters. So now I'm positioning myself. I'm saying like how am I different even in the same niche? So if there's a David Goggins out there coaching someone, I know that he doesn't coach because he's too big. But if he's coaching someone then you know, like am I the David Goggins type of guy or am I the Giovanni dinsman type of guy?
Lou: I love that. That's making me think of like, okay, so you have your niche and now this is actually a level deeper know. There's many people talking about, you know, Ryan Holiday comes to mind too. But no, you're like mindful self discipline. That's why I said I love this name of this is it brings two worlds together and so it attracts the person that's attracted to mindfulness. But it also is like, oh, I need this, I need some more self discipline. So that's really think, you know, if I were to just speak to people listening, I think what Giovanni did as far as know, I think you can copy and paste this on your website and put what are the three topics of coaching? And we all do different styles of coaching. I know my coaching might seems a little different than yours, Giovanni. Yours is very program based and mine's a little bit more non program like we might have a goal but it's a little bit more flowy and it's probably, I wish I had a program sometimes because it seems like clearer, clearer steps. But I think for anyone listening just doing that thing and you can, I think go to Giovanni's website to see how he has it where you just have those three different coachings and make three different landing pages and see what people go to and are attracted to to help yourself also make a distinction of oh, I actually love working with people on this because I know for me, in doing different coachings with people, it's like I realize that actually getting on this call drains my energy sometimes. But getting on this type of call with this type of person, I'm excited. Like, I feel charged afterward. And so if you're a coach, you might not know, maybe you're not having a lot of these calls, but I think doing that exact thing is going to be super helpful to start getting clear.
Giovanni: Right?
Lou: So as far as marketing goes, we're kind of having different business topic discussions. How does one think of marketing aligned to the spirit of meditation or mindfulness?
Giovanni: Marketing is about the way I see it. And there are different approaches to marketing. Marketing is about sharing, but it's sharing in a way that it's different from how you would share when you're just purely teaching. Because of the nature of social media and the web in people's mind these days, when someone who is not your follower sees you for the first time, you want your message to be such that they really feel hooked to go and oh, I need to check this guy out. This speaks to me and you don't have many seconds to achieve that. The way that I naturally teach is a little bit slower. It's a little bit like taking my time. Like when I run my live classes on inside timer, they are an hour and a half long live classes and there are people who are coming to every live class for the past three years and it's the same, it's like season seven. I've repeated the same thing still they come. But when I go and am trying to bring someone new, then I have my shorts on YouTube. It's 1 minute and it's super kind of like to the point. And the purpose is to arouse interest. Like, oh, I need to check this because if I don't do this, they're going to scroll to the next video and the next video is going to do that. So they are already in a state of mind that is of that nature. So the way I see marketing is that marketing is about providing a lot of value to your avatar, to the person that you serve. So if you are the person who teaches meditation for single moms, single working moms, then everything in your brand, everything in your message, everything in your content, it's about that. And single moms will follow you because the way you speak, the way you look, everything speaks to them directly and it stands out from the noise.
Lou: So speaking of platforms, okay, where do I market now? Where do I share myself that's going to speak to that person that I'm actually helping? You mentioned inside timer, you mentioned YouTube. I know you have, I think, one hundred k on Facebook. Where are you spending your time as far as where do you like spending your time? And maybe, I know it's probably changed over the years, but what does that look like? How do you have content on all these places? And tell me more about how you think of or how someone might think of finding their platform. Right? Because we might break on one platform or we might find our people more on the other platform.
Giovanni: Yes. There are many different ways to succeed, right? There are many different channels. And it's better to pick one channel and master that one and just become really good in that one than to do a little bit in all of them. In my case, I do not use social media. I do not have any social media apps on my phone. I do use YouTube for learning. And so in terms of social media, for 1 hour a week, I will create content for YouTube. 1 hour is enough for me to record ten 1 minute videos. And then that goes to my team. They will edit it and they will publish across four different social media platforms. But I am not on those platforms. And if people ask questions, I am not answering. It's very clear. I even say on my website, the newest website, Microsoft Discipline, I say, do not follow me on social media. Usually in the place where people say, follow me on social media, for me, do not follow me on social media on YouTube. No, I do spend some time on YouTube. So if they ask a question on YouTube, I will always answer. It comes to my email, I go reply and I answer. So when considering which platform you should focus on, there are many different layers here. One of them I would say it has to be a platform that you yourself like and use. So yes, I am on YouTube, but I'm not really a youtuber. I'm creating content for YouTube, but I'm not a youtuber. I'm more of a blogger. I'm more of a writer. That's my element. Right. So I've been reflecting a lot about this. If I should maybe just turn off all the other platforms and just be a writer, just have a blog and a newsletter. If James Clear was able to succeed just with a blog and a newsletter, right, he doesn't have a YouTube channel. I know he has a big Twitter following. There are other authors who are not on social media and they were also able to succeed. So you find example of success across all different channels and you have to pick the one that first you enjoy, because you're going to be spending a lot of time there. Like, you're used to consuming content in that platform. You know, what excellent content looks like and feels like. And second, that your target audience is there.
Lou: What platform? Or I should say, you didn't mention insight timer in there. And it is a social media, but it's different in that it's another company. It's different. It's a different energy, for sure, than a YouTube or an Instagram. First off, before I ask the question, I'm inspired. You have a lot of Cal Newport vibes, of deep work, of just like, hey, I'm going to completely just let go of distractions of these things that aren't really adding to the bottom line. And I've been considering this, too. I have a small Instagram following and it's like something, and I think I want to grow it. But for the sake of what I know people that grow on there and it doesn't do anything for them. It feels good to the ego. Maybe it brings some more credibility. So I'm debating just what you're saying. What if I just actually got focused on the places that actually bring people to my work and I actually really enjoy most? So thanks for the inspiration. But as far as insight timer, how do you think of how you engage on there? Or maybe how did that even come into your life at the time that it did?
Giovanni: Yes. Insight timer is interesting. I have been a user since 2014, the same year that I started living there, 2014, the founder of Insight Timer, a guy from Sydney, he sends me a message saying like, hey, I like your blog. And I just bought insight timer. I said, well, you just bought insight timer. Let's have a chat. My relationship with Insight timer goes back to the beginning, and after a while felt like, okay, let me just go and drop a meditation there. And that meditation went really well, and it exploded inside timer. People loved it. At that time, there were maybe 1000 teachers in the platform. Nowadays there are 20,000. It was a very different time back then. And so whenever they had any new feature that they wanted to test or to release to a selected number of trusted teachers, I was on that list. So I was one of the first ones to run the live sessions. And in the first months running live sessions on my book, mindful self discipline, every live session was like three to 400 people watching me live. So that felt great. And then nowadays, it's getting each time busier. At that time, there were maybe seven live sessions per week. Maybe ten now. Any day there are like 20 different live sessions. So it's harder, and that's the nature of every platform, right? It gets crowded soon, and then it's harder to stand out. There was a time that insight timer was a big pillar of my income, and since the past four years, it has been slowly declining because there's just so many teachers, so many offerings. And that again, we come back to the idea of why it's so important to be hyper focused on one niche. Right. If you are the mindfulness for lawyers guys, yeah, they're going to be all the mindfulness for lawyers out there, but it's going to be 100, not 100,000.
Lou: Remember those days on insight timer? I got on it pretty early too, in 2016, so not too far after that. But I think I remember you were part of, they introduced courses for the first time, and I'm pretty sure they had 20 teachers who did courses. And I think you were on that list. And I remember getting that email. I wasn't a part of that, but I remember getting that email that they were going to do courses in 2017. And I just felt like, okay, there's something really good here. I just got so excited at what the potential is here. And that has been a huge support for me as well. And like you said, yeah, it's not 2017. It's not 2018. It's not even 2020 or 2021 anymore. It's a different world on there. And so what would you suggest, I guess to someone starting out on insight timer now?
Giovanni: I would say run live classes every week, pick a time or two and run live classes every week. They are a great way to, at the very least, to build a little bit of an audience and start interacting with people and get some live feedback on what your meditations feel like and what your teachings feel like, the type of questions people have, the type of experiences they report. For me, that has been important. I've been running live classes twice a week there for many years now, almost four years, and has been good. It's a good way to do it. Then, of course, you need a paid offering, so you need some courses or some meditations that go behind their payroll. And then again, be super specific because there are many courses out there for meditation, for sleep, stress and anxiety, right? So don't be another meditation for anxiety teacher. Meditation to relax teacher, because there's so many. But if it's something like, very specific, then you have a chance to stand out.
Lou: So you think being really specific on insight timer nowadays is a little bit better than it was last in the past. Because in the past sometimes there's an argument to be made that actually people, there's so many people inside timer that a broad course would do well. But I guess it depends on maybe for me or you have a little bit more of an audience already backlog. It might do better than if it was a new person doing a course on types of meditation or how to meditate. Like an intro to meditation course, something like that. Intro to meditation course for lawyers. Boom, just right there. Makes it a whole different game.
Giovanni: Yes.
Lou: So let's talk email. Because email is my favorite medium and to be honest, I'm envious of you. I would see, I think you correct me if I'm wrong, like list 44 around that.
Giovanni: Yes.
Lou: Yeah, great number. So 44,000 email list. That's incredible. I think you could easily shut off every social media and do exactly what James Claire is doing and obviously write your books and scale that I'm envious of that. That sounds like, yes, I want Giovanni's email. That how did that growth happen over time? Was there ever a time you ran ads to anything or was this all purely organic type of growth from writing and blogging? So yeah, I'd love to just hear a little bit more of your story with that because it's something that I spend a lot of time on and it has bursts here and there for me, but I'd like more growth. That's all I could say. Because I really love the medium. I love reading other people's newsletters. Like you said, I love getting newsletters. I love writing newsletters. I think it's just a way to communicate and more of a long term play. So I'll shut up and love to hear your journey with your email list.
Giovanni: Well, for me, everything, I would say 90% of all the people that have come my way was because of search and typically Google search, so all organic. That was a focus of my business from the very beginning. I realized, like, first, I don't use social media. I don't like social media. I don't want people to be in social media. So I'm not going to focus on social media. I did try ads for a little bit, but it was like a half hearted try. And I also realized like, no, I don't want to feed the monster. I don't want to send money to Facebook for them to continue their business model. And there are people who say ads is the price you pay for having a business that is unremarkable. So I believe that. And whenever I share that in some groups, people feel like, ouch.
Lou: Because I was telling Sean Fargo that.
Giovanni: He has a lot of ads. I don't know. Okay. But he has a huge email list. He has 150,000, and he's, again, super focused. He's not just a meditation to relax, it's meditation for meditation. People who want to teach mindfulness, that's like, his focus. But for me, it was all SEO that was the focus of my business. I realized that, you know what? I get zero views of a Instagram post that I posted a month ago, but I still get thousands of views of an article I wrote seven years ago. And YouTube is a little bit like that. I just kind of dropped things on YouTube for a while, never paid any attention. And I realized that my YouTube subscribers number were just increasing by itself because people are listening to those meditations. And I felt, huh, okay, so YouTube, of course, is a little bit more like Google SEO. It's a search engine. You go there to search for something. So if you create a great content, it doesn't matter on a particular search item, it doesn't matter how old it like, what matters is how much is engaging the viewer. So I wanted to focus on things that are kind of set and forget that I do once, and I don't need to be in that content. I call it the content rat wheel of death. If you stop, your business stops, because that's how people are coming. So obviously the strategy that makes most sense is to focus on SEO. Bring Primport to your website, deliver a lot of value, promise even more value if they join your list, to download the pdf summary of the article they just read or whatever it is, and then give them value every week on your email list. And so that has been the core strategy.
Lou: Do you think? Still, at this point, focusing on SEO is a strategy? Like, I know seven or eight years ago, blogs were. A lot of things have changed in seven or eight years online. Is SEO still a strategy? And how would someone think about employing SEO and optimizing for their SEO on their website?
Giovanni: So SEO was the main strategy for me until 2019. So the first five years of my business, and then it's kind of like I couldn't move the needle anymore. Google had some change in algorithms, and they were prioritizing big brands on top of anyone else. Right. So initially, I was ranking number one on important search terms, such as benefits of meditation, types of meditation, how to meditate, and all of that. And then since 2019, I went down to the bottom of the first page and headspace with articles on the same search term, or Deepak Chopra with articles on the same search term with much inferior articles with less information. They were ranking ahead of me because they are a brand. And we know that that's what happened in July 2019. That's one of the changes that happened in the algorithm at that time. So with the SEO knowledge that I had at that time, I couldn't move. I was not able to recover my rankings. And in liveandare.com, still, my rankings now are like 20%. My search volume now is like 20% of what it was before. Luckily, at that time, I was also making a big business shift from selling courses to selling a subscription program. And that's what saved me. And at the same time, I had just discovered my niche with self discipline, and I was starting to write the mindful self discipline book. And then later on, I felt like, okay, I can't seem to grow even there anymore. So I'm going to branch out into a separate website that is super laser focused on an awareness approach to achieving your goals to self discipline.
Lou: And so tell me about the. So I guess the answer to that is maybe SEO is not the best strategy to start to optimize right now.
Giovanni: Well, okay, let me continue from there. But now I am going on a second try, a second turn of the wheel of SEO, and I'm working with a guy that he came up with 50 article ideas for me based on keywords that are very low in competition and have some decent volume of search and said, look, you have a really good chance of ranking for these ones. And they're all around my new niche of confidence, focus, and discipline. So this year, I'm giving another try. I'm going to write those 50 articles. I'm going to publish those 50 articles, and I'm going to see if they help me increase the number of search considerably to the new site. Then I'm going to continue and I'm going to say, hey, man, give me 50 more and I'll continue like this. If that doesn't work, then I will likely continue blogging maybe once a month because I love writing articles, but I would then probably try podcasting and then really go all in, in podcasting because that's a medium that I love and I haven't done that in a while.
Lou: That's a good segue to, we talked about tips or strategies or ways to develop and start a mindfulness coaching business and get that off the ground. You're also someone who clear values your own coaching or investing in specific coaches. And so I'd love to, if you're open to sharing a bit of, because sometimes there's a blind spot with people. They want to be coaches, but they don't ever want to invest in coaches. To me that there's just like, you got to understand how powerful it is to have a coach for different reasons. And so what kind of coaches have you worked with to help grow your business or your own personal work? I'd love to hear maybe your own background with you investing in coaches because, again, what you've been able to build, often we don't do it alone. Obviously, there's some luck involved and timing involved, for sure. But I'd love to hear from my own thoughts of, oh, what kind of coaches may I be thinking, know, investing in and for people listening just to hear like, oh, Giovanni is actually investing this. Not, you don't say amount you're investing, but you're investing in these types of coaches and you're always doing that at the same time. So, yeah, I'd love to hear just what the coaches you're looking towards or that have been beneficial for you.
Giovanni: And I agree, if you want to be a coach, you have to have been coached at least once by a good coach so you feel what it's like to be on the other side of that relationship. I invested a lot of money in courses, in consulting and also in coaching around my business, one that comes to mind. I mean, the main coach that I've had in my business was back in end of 2018, the time that I was kind of making that transition more to the mindful self discipline one. And I worked with her for about a year and she helped me position my work because I realized that meditation is something that they call a fragmented desire market. Right. If you teach meditation, some people are going to come to you because they want to achieve Nirvana. Other people are going to come to you because they want to just not yell so much at their kids anymore. And other people want to help them be less anxious and so many completely different desires. And so it's hard to market to have one unifying story that is specific enough to get people to take action and join courses, et cetera. And so I was realizing that and I needed help to find a niche and to understand how to position myself, and she helped me. Initially, I chose the niche of meditation for anxiety, the one that I'm mocking now I'm mocking, it's good, you can do it. But again, a problem with that is for SEO. Any search terms on meditation and anxiety. Google is going to favorite medical websites to talk about meditation for. So that wasn't easy. Difficult lesson to learn.
Lou: Yeah, I love that. I'm inspired. I'd love to get the name of this person because that's like, oh, is that really? Give me more. Like, we were talking about positioning in some ways. This was part of this podcast. My podcast originally was awakening to purpose and I was like, this is so broad. And I didn't even know who I was talking to. I didn't know what was going on. And then in being part of a meditation teacher training and being like a co teacher in it, I realized I was like, man, I love being around these type of people and helping these type of people. And then the idea for the podcast shift changed. And so I'm like leaning in this direction and I'm almost afraid to position myself as this thing, even though it's probably the most lucrative thing I could position myself. Because helping people make money is always going to make money, right? There's always a market for that if you can do it right. But that's not necessarily the main thing. I'm definitely not just helping people. I keep telling people, not a business coach, the fragmented desire market. I just love that. Is there anything that you've tried, Giovanni, that's been like an epic failure? I'd love to hear maybe I know the feelings of disappointment that can come from that, and I'd love to hear one of those, if you're open to sharing.
Giovanni: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you that nine out of every ten things I've tried in my business failed. And I hope that this is an inspiring piece of data for those of you out there who are failing.
Lou: Fail faster. Right? That's like the face was the early Facebook mod. I don't know, something like that was an entrepreneurship moderator model. Anyway, go ahead.
Giovanni: But that one thing that succeeds out of every ten, then that becomes a little brick, and then you try ten more, and then you have a second brick, and little by little, you layer things. Now, maybe it was my bad karma. Maybe it was my way of thinking that I'm not really a marketer at heart, although I had to partially become that. But you might have success quicker than that. But if nine things out of ten that you're trying is failing, that doesn't mean that it's not going to work. It could be that it's part of the process. The good thing with me is that I forget my disappointment very quickly. So nothing even comes to mind now. But many times, like oh, I'm going to put this page out there. I'm going to try this funnel strategy or I'm going to launch this course and it's going to have this type of numbers and then it doesn't and they're like, oh, well, onto the next course. That's it. Yeah, exactly. But if I would suggest for someone who is starting now and they want to make a living as a meditation teacher or as a coach, is to go and focus on something that you really niche down on, something on a problem and an audience, it could be that you're going to be the mindfulness for ADHD or mindfulness for poker players or meditation skills for public speakers, like, whatever it is, that is not what everyone else is doing, then you are working on a very small niche, too. You're going to have very few competitors. And then if you go one step further and position yourself in that niche or maybe go even like, oh, it's not only for ADHD, it's for, I don't know, adolescents with ADHD, then it's like, okay, then you're really a handful or maybe the only one. But I would not recommend adolescents, teenagers as an itch because they typically don't have money to spend.
Lou: Their parents might, though. You're marketing, I guess to parents. I know someone is a child psychologist or something and he does pretty well, like marketing to parents because parents will happily pay whatever money to help their kids. Right. There's like no amount that's too small for their kids. But, yeah, you got to dial. That's a tough one. You got to dial in your marketing on that.
Giovanni: Someone once contacted me, oh, wow. You offer self discipline coaching. Can you coach my 16 year old daughter on self discipline? She really needs it. Then I asked, does she want to be coached? No, I can't help you. You want her to be disciplined?
Lou: She does, yeah. They need to want help. You can't force that for sure. So your book, mindful self discipline you talked about, you use the metaphor of laying bricks. I think that's always a helpful visual to think about. Just showing up each day, trying one thing out. Even if it's not working out, you're learning, you're paving your way. Just one brick at a time. It doesn't have to be a lot. So I guess in using more of what you are expertise in, in this mindful self discipline, framing it to meditation, wellness coaches, I guess how does some things from your book can help them in maybe developing more structure or discipline. I think that is something a lot of people struggle with their own accountability to actually do the thing. They know what they need to do, or they know they need to start. They want to start, but they're just paralyzed by fear or doubt or uncertainty. So, yeah. Is there anything from, I guess, your book that can be helpful in this domain?
Giovanni: Yeah, absolutely. These two topics that I talk about in this new phase of my career, which is discipline and confidence, they are things that everyone needs to make any change in your life. You need to believe in yourself and you need to take action consistently, action that is in harmony with your values. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. But the way that most books and videos out there cover these two topics is in a way that people who are more conscious, people who are more in the mindfulness meditation spirituality space, they're like, he's talking about confidence, but it feels more like arrogance and pretentiousness and ego. For me. I feel I need it, but not in that way. Or these guys are talking about discipline, but it's all about whipping yourself. That's actually not what I need also. So I noticed that these two extremely important qualities or virtues, many people out there in the mindfulness space, meditation space, they need more of it, but they can't connect with the message out there around these things. And so that's the way I taught these things differently, that self discipline is not self punishment, it's self respect, that you respect your commitments to yourself, that you prioritize your priorities in life. And does that involve sometimes doing things that you don't feel like doing? Yes. It's not about always being in the moment. In the moment, I don't feel like working in this moment. Well, but if in every moment you don't feel like working, can you expect to get any results in your business? So that's the different approach, but it's still done in a way that is mindful. It's not that you should work because whatever, it's like. No, actually, I may not feel like doing this work now, but this is aligned with the vision that I have for myself. This is aligned with my aspirations. And so I can choose to do what's easy now, or I can choose to do what's more info. And that will involve some level of self mastery, that I can have some level of mastery over my emotions, my thoughts, my impulses. And so I'm using the lessons that comes from the spiritual traditions to teach these concepts. And for some reason they got lost in the 20th century, they got lost in the past. Anyone who is following Buddhism or yoga, et cetera. They know self discipline is the foundation, not even mentioned in the books. It's assumed if you are in this path, of course, you know, you're going to have to have extreme discipline. But I don't know, since the hippies or the way that meditation got taught in the west, we have a different feeling that spirituality is just about flowing with whatever you feel in the.
Giovanni: So some of these virtues got lost, and I'm trying to recover them based on the original teachings saying, like, hey, if you go and live in the monastery for a while, you'll see those guys are pretty disciplined, and that's part of the teaching. And that's also going to help you achieve both your spiritual goals and also your goals in the material life.
Lou: They are the most self disciplined and almost. There's like a paradox. And having that discipline, having that structure, you can almost just surrender to it. You don't have to argue with your mind that, am I going to do this? It's like, no. Every morning I wake up at 04:00 a.m. And we sit for 45 minutes. Now, there's the counterargument that it's very masculine, right? This whole thing is created in a very masculine way by often men, monks, that we like that structure, and there's not a softness or a flowiness in the feminine in those spaces. But for myself, obviously more leaning into the masculine, I do appreciate that structure.
Lou: Speaking of structure and days, when I hear someone who's built their own business used to be a programmer, there's a part of me that deflates of, like, that's why they're crushing it, because they can do things or they have a mind that they're able to do stuff for longer or able to just do the online stuff in a way that I just don't have the tech capacity to. And so I guess I don't know if that's true. If your programming skills, I can't imagine it not being true that it's helpful in building an online business. But what does your days look like? What are you actually doing? How do you structure your days creatively? And how often are you actually working each day? Maybe deep work versus admin work? I think it's just helpful. I'm just curious. Just generally curious.
Giovanni: Yeah. So just speaking first to the first half, I did not program any of my websites, and I did not program my app. I hire people to do all of that. Now, having experience with tech and understanding how tech works, was that helpful? Yes, it was helpful. It was helpful even in hiring the right people, because, you know, when the guys are saying, this is not possible or this is too difficult, you know, if they are bsing you because you understand what's behind it. So, yes, it is helpful. There are many successful teachers out there with different niches that have no idea about tech, and they're bigger than me, so it's not a requirement. Now as to what my day looks like. For many years, coaching has been half of my income. So I spend a big part of my week. I work around 36 hours a week on average, and I use a time tracker to track that. But when I say 36 hours, it's actually 36 hours. If the phone rings now, I will stop the clock. I'll take the phone, and then I'll restart. If I go to the bathroom, I'll pause it. So it's more like a 45 hours or 50 hours week of a normal person. It's like actual focused time. And nowadays, my ideal would be that I would spend 70% of the time doing deep work. Nowadays, I'm doing 40. In the past, it was less. So I am little by little shaping my business and my career in a way that I can spend the bulk of my time doing only what I love most, which is even more than coaching. I love reading. I love thinking. I love creating systems and writing. I want to be spending 70% of my time doing that nowadays. What does it look like? So I think of the way I spend my time into three buckets. Either I am in what they call the zone of genius, which are the things that you love to do the most. And for me, that's learning, writing, reporting, creating courses, or I am in the zone of service, which is I'm having a podcast interview, or I'm running alive, or I'm coaching someone, I'm answering questions from readers, et cetera. And then there is the management zone. Okay? Now I am talking with my team. I am making decisions of what to do, or I am fixing something in my business, et cetera. And so I want the first one to be as big as possible and the last one to be as small as possible. And that's why I keep track of.
Lou: These zone of genius service and manage. I love that because I agree, I feel similar to you. It's like the geniuses and the creativity and that space to come up with new ideas and recordings. And then similar to you, I love coaching, and I love the genius one more. Like, if I could just create, then that would be great. And there's also a deep gratitude for service. And I just love those names of breaking it down in those categories. And 36 hours of actual focused work. You said 45, 50. I would argue that it's probably like 80 hours of productivity of an actual, you know what I mean? People are just not focusing on a lot of in that intense way. I think at a normal work, at least I wasn't when I was in a company. There's a lot of just hanging out and looking at YouTube videos maybe of like, how do I start my own business and get out of here? All right, Giovanni, we're coming up on time, trying to think of. I think sometimes the basic question to ask is like, if you were to give your advice to your former self starting out in their business career journey, what shows up? And if there's nothing that really shows up that's tangible because you probably already said it in this podcast, just, yeah, I guess sharing more about, oh, you know what? I'd love to hear a tech tool from you. I feel like you have some dope tech tools that could help a meditation teacher.
Giovanni: I have so many tech tools that.
Lou: I use anything that comes to mind. I don't know what for what, but maybe just let the spirit that moves you share a tech tool. That would be cool.
Giovanni: I have probably different, 20 different tech tools that I use for business and for productivity. I use craft documents for taking notes and for writing. And I love that. I use things three for my to do list on the Mac, I use clocky, which is what I use to track my time. And then for my business I use cartra as my CRM. Although I'm considering to migrate to go high level, I use WordPress, I use upwork for hiring all sorts of people. I used to use fiver more, but now I'm more in upwork. Yeah, these are just some random. I use calendly, I use zoom. Yeah, these are some random.
Lou: What's your tool that you make the really cool head moving in your email? Is that like a judo move or is there like an app that does that?
Giovanni: No, I don't know. That's a great thing. I don't need to know. I just asked the guy that works for me, can you make that?
Lou: Yes. Okay.
Giovanni: And he will either make it or he will go and hire someone in upwork to make it and give me the end result.
Lou: Brilliant. Yeah. Do you get comments on that a lot?
Giovanni: A couple of people ask, oh, how did you do you do that? For me it's good because I see that it works. People want to do that too.
Lou: It's remarkable.
Giovanni: It's just a gif. You have to create a gif. So if you download a GiF creation app on the App Store or whatever, you can do that. And then you upload that to your Google profile, I bet.
Lou: And for those that don't understand what we're talking about, when you're in Gmail, you got an email from Giovanni. You can see his head moving in where his picture would be. It's moving in and out. And I'm imagining that that helps open rates if you're sending it on a mass email because there's some movement, you're like, what's going on here calls attention. It calls attention. Yeah. So right now, the only two people I know that are doing it are James clear. And so maybe it's going to get flooded at some point. So maybe we should get onto it. Giovanni, any place where else people can find you, where do you want to send them? Your book, your work, whatever feels relevant to share.
Giovanni: Yeah. So you can go to my main website, which is mindful self discipline.com. I am launching a book this march called Wise Confidence. And if your listeners buy this book and they send an email with a receipt of this book, I'll give them a free workshop. That's an offer that I'm giving to your listeners. It's going to be a workshop of me expressing, me explaining some of the concepts in the book that you can follow along.
Lou: Incredible. That sounds super valuable. Giovanni, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your energy and what you're putting out and how you're doing it. Super inspiring. And I learned a ton listening to you, so I'm sure a lot of people learned a lot listening. So thanks for taking the time to join.
Giovanni: Thank you, Lou.