Finding, Creating, and Selling the Right Coaching Offer w/ Ofir Yakobowicz
Ofir Yakobowicz is a highlevel business coach and founder of Straight Shot Ops. In this episode we explore common pitfalls in building a coaching business and how to navigate the challenges of starting a business.
We explore:
Why manifestation doesn't work
The key challenges of starting a coaching business.
Why having a proven concept is crucial for success in coaching
How to avoid common pitfalls when starting a coaching business
Exploring the concept of "High Ticket" sales
Running an effective sales call
Tips for improving communication with clients
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Music Credit: Nova by River Roots - https://www.youtube.com/riverroots
Podcast Transcript
Lou: Hello there, dear friends. Welcome to another episode of the Art and Business of Meditation podcast. I'm your host, Lou Redmond, and today I have a brother from another mother, Ophir Jacobovich. He is a renowned he's renowned for his profound ability to connect and communicate with almost anyone around him. I've seen it upfront and personal. He's a gifted listener who excels empathetically in guiding those around him through personal and professional challenges, expressing transformative insights, and emphasizing that life improvements begin with enhanced communication. He's the founder of Straight Shot Ops, where he helps online service providers grow and scale their businesses, as well as the author of you suck at communicating ten formulas to diagnose and solve almost every communication issue. So I look forward to sharing Ophir with you all today and learning some of his wisdom and insights around business and communicating. So Ophir, welcome to the show.
Ofir: I feel very blessed and honored and very grateful to be here. So thank you for having me, Lou.
Lou: So maybe just quick background as far as how does Ophir enter the coaching world? And we talked about this before, the wild west of the coaching world. Maybe we can get into that later. But how do you get into coaching? Personal development, spirituality, and maybe just painting the picture of also the company that you worked with and kind of how you got to now having your own organization?
Ofir: There were definitely I'm a very spiritual guy, as are you. There were definitely many opportunities that unfolded when I aligned myself more energetically. So it started a number of years ago when I dove really deep into the process of releasing. Many people believe many people only focus on the idea of manifesting and they very seldomly realize that 75% of manifesting is being able to just release what is actually holding you away from what you desire. So I started diving really into that at the same time as going through a coaching training program where I was learning about marketing and sales and how to start your own online coaching business. I had connected with another alumni of the program and I started coaching her spiritually and as I was coaching her, her business was starting to grow and at a certain point she just turned to me and said, hey, what would you think about doing the same coaching you do for me, but for all of my clients? So that was my first in, into a, into an established coaching practice, if you will, and into, and in the online coaching space, actually just starting to practice it myself. Should I continue or did you have any questions about that?
Lou: I am curious about the I know you influenced by David Hawkins book, letting go and releasing. So maybe just speaking for those that might not be familiar with what that is, but maybe are curious, like how does that process work?
Ofir: So David Hawkins did an exceptional job explaining this. The idea is that instead of consistently focusing on the thing that you want or the thing that you're attempting to attract, or the thing that if you were to say it in present test in present tense, are attracting, focus more on releasing what's currently present that isn't benefiting you. And 99% of the time it is some type of emotion that's under the energy of courageous. Most of the time it's either either pride, fear or anger that people feel stuck in. Lust is a very big one as well, the constant wanting. And so he discusses how to go through the different levels of energy and identifying it and how one could sit with the energy and begin to release it. Since reading his book, I am very deep into the releasing rabbit hole and I actually have a teacher now, a releasing teacher now who wasn't in the same class as David Hawkins when he was learning it, but they shared the same teacher and she has taken a different, much simpler approach that I find works just as well potentially, if not better. But I letting go by Doctor Hawkins is easily the best place to start with understanding releasing from a conscious. If you're someone that enjoys thinking, letting go by Doctor Hawkins is an excellent place to start.
Lou: And so maybe this is a good way to tune into the connection with where you ended up going with your business. But how, what's maybe a practical example of you using releasing in order to bring this into your life or to bring something like that's like a fun story, maybe even.
Ofir: Yeah, so something happened two and a half years ago, I'll never forget it. The
Ofir: I always focused on why can't I have this thing that's, that's in my head? And what I never truly realized was that any energy, regardless if it was related to the thing that I wanted, could hold me back. So at the time, like two and a half years ago, I was constantly doing everything I could to manifest this head of operations job that I was really looking for. I was looking to, I'd already had experience in the coaching industry, I'd done really well done the fulfillment side of things. I'd done sales, marketing, I understood how to piece it all together. I was looking for a head of operations for a coaching company and I was constantly doing all of like the quote unquote right things. And I remember my teacher sitting me down and saying be here for a sec. What's coming up for you. And there was a. I don't know if one would call it trauma, but there was a very unpleasant experience I had in my. I don't remember if it was late teens or early twenties. I was living with my mom, and there was a mouse, and we were doing our best to catch it. It took us, like, two or three weeks, and we tried everything. Tried putting down food, different glue traps, whatever. Finally, one day, I got it on the glue trap, and I didn't. I hated the idea of the glue trap, and for obvious reasons, you know, it's. And I remember we finally got it on, and my mom and I were like, well, now what? Well, we need to let it go outside. But I had no idea how to get it off of this trap. And so I tried, like, putting a stick under its foot. I tried seeing, like, if it would pull itself free, and it, like, couldn't. And I could see this thing was suffering, and it haunted me. And I finally, after, like, many attempts of trying to, like, help this animal get free, uh, I looked up online, how does one get a mouse off of one of these traps? And I saw that olive oil actually dissolves the adhesive, and they could just walk right off. But at that point, there had already been so much hurt done to that animal. It stuck with me for at least a decade. It hurt. So about two and a half years ago, my teacher asked me, what's coming up for you right now? And I said, this memory is coming up for me right now. And I kid you nothing. The same night, there was a mouse in our apartment running around, and I started to cry because I was like, this is happening again. But this time, I get to fix the mistake. And it took four days. I got the mouse onto the trap. I put him in a box immediately, and I told my wife, grab the olive oil. She was like, what's going on? I was like, grab the olive oil. And he was perfectly fine. And we brought him outside, and I put the oil on the pad, and he slipped right off and walked away unharmed. And I was just standing in the parking lot crying that I was able to just heal this. This thing that I hadn't. I mean, I definitely had thought about, but was, like, such a hurt in me that I had the opportunity to finally accept that, yeah, it was a bad thing that happened at the time, but there are opportunities to make up for it. I started releasing on that. The opportunity came up. I released any fear that I had. I followed through with it. I stepped into courage. I saved that animal, and then, sure enough, I got connected with the CEO of a company that still runs a men's coaching program where they offered me the head of operations. I had no idea how much that energy held me back from quote unquote, manifesting. And that's what real manifesting is, identifying what's presented and just being with it until you could let it all go regardless of what comes up. Did that answer your question?
Lou: Totally. And it's also, like, a curiosity. Is it a mix of how do you feel? Like having that desire to find that? Or is it just like, this is actually the best place where you can serve in your unique way, that by releasing the. That kind of. That healing process, by. By releasing into that, that just happens to be where. Where you are most aligned? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I think sometimes, is it that? How do I guess? I ask myself, like, how do I know what I want, right? What. What actually, what does life want for me? Like, what does God want for me? And if I can remove the obstacles to listening to that, life kind of starts to give what it needs. And so, I don't know. I'm just curious if you think it's like, do you think someone should have that clear desire? And maybe I read a David white quote around desire. It means, like, of the stars, that it actually is something that's coming to us, of the stars, like, from the stars. And to actually follow that, it's like our north star in a way, to, like, trust that if we have this desire, then maybe, you know, it's unique for us. So I don't know where I'm getting at, but I was just curious if you're how you think of those two.
Ofir: I do believe we're all connected, so therefore, we're all one unit. However, in this existence, it's definitely clear that, or rather on this plane here, like, as humans, there's definitely a lot of individualism. I believe, personally, that we make choices and then everything unfolds around the choices that we make. That's been my experience. Many of the unpleasant experiences that I've had have come from either choices that went against what I truly believed I'd like or by not making choices that would have helped having the things that I'd like.
Lou: Got it. So you open to this new opportunity, and I know maybe just sharing kind of the exciting numbers of how you helped that company grow and kind of where. How that led to where you're doing now.
Ofir: So I got that opportunity, and I was with them for two years full time, and they were definitely in a very, very good place, well into the high sevens, seven figures. And it was so enjoying, sorry, there was a lot of enjoyment being a part of it. The company specializes in helping Mendez save their marriages and become better fathers and leaders in the community and business owners. So the mission is definitely of good nature. Right. Something that is very easy to get behind. And
Ofir: I think something that was brilliant, that a mentor told me once washing id always had this idea of having my own business, having my own organization where I get to do my own stuff. And I chased that for a while and not successfully, I might add. There were a lot of failures along the way, a lot of money spent. And he had told me, what do you feel youre missing? And I said, if Im being honest, Im missing not specifically the experience, but there's only so much I don't know. What I don't know, right. And so he said, well, why don't you put yourself in a place where you will know what you don't know? There's nothing wrong with being part of a different organization where it's mutually beneficial, where you help them grow and you, in terms, learn yourself. And so after two years there, I was really dedicated to that beingness of just allowing myself to learn while helping others grow. And after two years I said, this has been fantastic. And I finally feel like I could take what I've learned and really turn it into my own thing. So I went off and created my own company, straight shot ops, with a focus on helping online businesses to just grow in any capacity. We cover marketing, we cover sales, we cover the tech of it all and business infrastructure and help with fulfillment. And it's been very rewarding.
Lou: So I'd love to hear maybe in your own experience of failure or what you see a lot of online businesses struggling with more, I guess, early stages. So what do you see? Maybe specifically coaches or service providers you work with, what tends to be a pattern either you fell into or you see people falling into where they get tripped up and maybe end up not going into those further stages of growth.
Ofir: They're definitely, this is where we're going to start to talk about the wild, Wild west, right? So they're definitely sold on a grandiose vision that most people will not obtain, I think in the coaching industry today, every other ad, and this is obviously hyperbole, but many, many ads talk about how you can go from no business at all to seven figures a year in no time, eight figures a year, 9 trillion figures a year. And it's just not the case. It works. Those companies that offer those types of services most of the time are really just talking about how to repackage what your current business is doing, how to install a more systematic and consistent marketing structure to it, and then teach you how to raise your prices and get better at sales. But the caveat to all of that is you need to have a business that you've already proved the concept for. So if you're starting from scratch, or you have no idea what you're doing, or you're barely making your business get off the ground. Joining something like that could help you. But for the heavy majority of people that join programs like that, I would say, like, before you join or even if you had joined, you really have to prove the concept that what you have or what you're doing is something people actually want. I remember coming across a guy in the space that he was really struggling to get his quote unquote, offer off the ground. He was a fashion stylist for high end business people. Maybe theres an offer for it, but honestly, from what ive seen in luxury retail stores, yeah, theyre filled with salespeople. But salespeople in luxury retail stores, like nice clothing stores or watch stores or things like that, the people in the store usually have a really amazing eye for fashion, and so you don't need to hire anyone specifically for that. You walk into a store to buy new clothes, they already have it stocked for you. So I don't think, you know, I tried, I tried finding that person again recently, and I couldn't find anything about that offer anymore. I'm not sure it took off. But on the other side of things, there was an offer, and I'm not sure where this guy is today. There was an offer where a yoga instructor identified the heavy desire of yogis to want to be able to do handstands, and many people are physically incapable of doing that or just don't have the ability to do that. But he said, I know that there's a market for yogis that are flexible and have all of these things, and they want to know how to do handstands, and they just haven't been able to figure it out. And he put this offer together, and it was a six week program, I think six or eight week program, and I think he hit 2 million in the first 18 months. So is this Jason or something?
Lou: What was this? If you don't want to share his name, that's okay, because, no, no, because.
Ofir: I think you can google him. I think his name, I think his name was, like, Brian Agonab.
Lou: Okay.
Ofir: I think his company was called the Asana Academy. Interesting. Yeah.
Lou: Cool. Yeah, because I know another. I mean, I just know another yoga teacher, a pretty popular yoga teacher that I know made a. Yeah, it was a big thing. If maybe it was enhanced and it's like, more about crow, but, yeah, it is. It is like, you know, getting really specific if for any yoga teachers listening to this, like, oh, wow. What is. What is it could be that now, handstands. Everyone wants to look good in class and just, like, pop up in a handstand. Um, but I love that. I love. Yeah, yeah. I could kind of cut you off there. But, um, do you find. How do you. Okay, so not having the right offer. Not having a proven offer. How. I can imagine, you know, some people I work with, some people that are developing, like, how do. How do you help someone find that offer that's like the go to market offer? Like, does it. Does it mean just trying a bunch of different marketing? Like, what if they don't have enough sales? It's like, when do you know that an offer is not the offer and I need to pivot the pitch on it?
Ofir: So there is zero timeline on it. But my criteria is, if you have not been able to sell whatever it is you're trying to do at least five times, you don't have a market for it. It's possible that you haven't had enough traction to the offer. So maybe I'll add a caveat of you've tried hustling and putting the message out there that you have this service and you hit up people that would be in the right audience, and people are just not interested, and you are incapable of selling that thing at least five times. And I'm not talking about, like, hey, I'm a yoga instructor. It's dollar 20 a seat for my class. Like, any family and friends could, like, come and fill that seat. It's not the right thing. Right. We're really talking about more, like, more
Ofir: commitable programs or services or offers, if you will. I guess that's the best word for it. If you can't sell it more than five times, you probably don't have something.
Lou: So what would you help people? Like, how do you help people identify? Maybe it's obviously contextual to the person, but any, like, any ways that if a person is like, oh, wow, I haven't been selling it, how do I pivot? Or what are the, I guess, levers that I pull to try and figure that out?
Ofir: The first thing I always ask anyone with their offer. If it's an offer that I can't understand from the get go or I don't feel has the value that they believe has the value that's in it, the first thing I typically ask is explain to me why this is useful. Like, I was eight years old, because if you can't explain to me why you're doing something or what it is very, very, very simply, then you've got a much bigger issue, which is you just don't know how to talk about the things that you're doing. Uh, and that's. That's a very big occurrence as well. Most people don't know how to talk about what they do, you know, communication.
Lou: Raising my hand here, man, you're feeling called out. Somehow I've, somehow I've. It's like I managed to build a business when I feel like all these things that you're saying is like, I don't know if I have, like, this clear offer, right. I have coaching and I know I help people with, you know, various things, but it's. I've still, you know, yeah, I guess. I guess a little bit more masterminds, a little bit clearer of an offer, but it's not like a proven, I think I said, I always come up against resistance to, hey, I'm going to guarantee you results or I'm going to guarantee that this is going to happen for you. I just tend to be like, hey, I'm not here to guarantee anything. Let's go on this journey together and hear some testimonials of other people's experience on the journey. And do you want to go for the ride? Sort of thing?
Ofir: Well, you're a little bit different, right. So it'd be one thing if there's an offer where, hey, we're going to get your Facebook ads up and running in the next 30 days, guaranteed. If that's a deliverable, a tangible, you can do something like that with someone like you and even someone like me. I tell everyone, I'm not above being really terrible at what I do, so there's a very good probability that what I do doesn't work, or there's a probability that what I do does work but requires input from you and you don't do it at the level that it needs to be done, and then there's still no results. So I never attach guarantees to anything personally. But what I'd love to do for a moment is backtrack for a sec and talk about your offer, because you have a proven concept. You would not have a massive following on insight timer if you didn't have a proven concept. And so you essentially, from what I've seen, specialize not just in meditation trainings, but you're looking specifically to be able to give people meditations that inspire and uplift and help them move closer to actions that are more in line with their beingness and to be able to have specific trainings like that, knowing, hey, if I want to feel this particular way, I'm going to lift up my phone and go to lous training. That is a very specific offer. And you have a proven concept, over 40,000 followers. Right. So that's well way above proven concept.
Lou: Thanks for that. Yeah, we have to talk about that more. So I do appreciate that. So, coming back now. Let's say there's so many ways we can go with this as far as common traits you see. Okay. We talked about what people aren't successful. They don't have the proven offer. And then I'm assuming the people that you see, the coaches that do find success in a solo practice. So just talking about solo practice right now, you're just getting stuff off the ground, or you've been getting something off the ground, but you're quite not finding enough to really be thriving. Like, you're either just breaking even month to month, or you're still in this kind of survival mode. And so what do you see? Is it a similar. How might you help someone? And I know it's either more leads, more marketing, more sales calls. Like, what do you find the recipe for someone who is at that level of, like, I'm surviving. I'm getting one, you know, one client here and there, but it's still. I need to be thriving. So what would you typically tell that type of person?
Ofir: I'd always ask a question first. You'll notice that about me. I always ask questions first.
Lou: Good coach.
Ofir: The first question in a situation like that, with the phrasing that you use, is, like, need to be thriving. Like, so the first thing I'd ask is, do you need to be thriving? A lot of people think that their issue is they don't have systems or they don't have, like, the right blueprint or whatever. I can assure you all 9000 trainings, everyone listening to this has watched before, whether it's been, like, the various webinars that people get hit with or trainings on YouTube or whatever. They all cover the same things a lot of time. What's just missing is drive. People don't have the drive or the entrepreneurial determination to make something thrive. They get to the point where they're breaking even and they see, wow, it took me this much effort to break even. Do I want to put that much effort in double to have me thrive? And most of the time they're like, no. So I'm just going to keep things where they're at until I figure out whatever my next move is. That's usually the starting place. If it really is a systems thing, I'll find that out really quickly. But it's very difficult for most people to move past the drive and motivation.
Lou: Part of that, and it's hard. My mastermind tends to be people in this sort of phase, and I had my first, it's an ongoing mastermind, but we kind of take a rolling in and out cohorts. So some new people come in and some, some people leave. And we just started yesterday with this newer cohort, and I just reminded, and I'm reminding anyone listening, uh, that's listening to this podcast too, that, that the, the zero to thriving is the hardest part of building a business, like the getting something off the ground and getting it consistent. Um, I'm still at like zero to thriving. I'm, I'm saying what I'd be more at the thriving stage, and now you, you have more experience in like the thriving to scaling and I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I hear from entrepreneurs, often getting to zero to six figures is often harder than getting from six figures to whatever the next benchmark is. Would you say that that's factual, or is that just a fun thing to say?
Ofir: I'm inclined to agree with that for one very specific reason. Which is, most people in the zero to thriving phase spend like 80% of their time figuring out what the proof of concept is. Because if you have a proven concept, like I said earlier, it's easy. You just need some marketing structures and stuff like that, and your business starts to scale and take off if you already have a business that you've proven. So most of the time, if you talk about the 80 20 rule, what's the 20% you could do for 80% of the results? The zero to thriving is usually flopped. People spend 80% of their time trying to figure out how to prove the concept, but then once they have it and they know how to talk about it, the systems just start falling into place, and then it starts to build.
Lou: So let's talk about something you have a lot of skills and passion for in our industry, sometimes it's called high ticket sales. I think I like to think of it less of high ticket and more just like a premium offer. And I'm just curious what inspired, like what is for you and cause some coaches. So a lot of people, especially in the healing arts and, and I'm kind of an in between. I'm in the middle, you know, I'm not, I'm definitely not the most least expensive person to work with. I don't do per sessions, but I also. It's not ten grand to work with me, so, and this is not to judge anyone who has ten grand to work with. I'm just trying to give people kind of a range because I believe in the value of actually investing and really committing to a journey with someone. And also there's probably a lot of really inexperienced coaches charging way too much money for what they can actually realistically serve. And the hermosis will say, well, if it's perceived value, that person's going to get value out of it. I'm always having these conversations on the podcast because it generally fascinates me, the wild west of the coaching industry. So when you talk about high ticket sales, what do you mean by that and what gets you excited about that process? Because so many people like myself as we talked about, have issues around sales, they feel weird selling. It's never comfortable. And so maybe diving into, I know you have a very different sales process so that we can kind of
Lou: see in the industry as far as the premium coaching and all that.
Ofir: Can you hear me? I cut out for a sec.
Lou: Yep, you're good.
Ofir: Okay, cool. So if I heard your question correctly, like, what is high ticket sales and just what's been my experience of it? Sure, sorry. Because it did just cut out. I was trying to piece it all together, high ticket sales, to me, this is just the way that I learned it as I was going through my experience. Some people will say, like, anything above $2,500, some people will bring it as low as anything above $2,000. Typically anything below $2,000. In the online industry, no one really considers high ticket, at least from in the coaching space, when it comes to sales sales, because of like all of the sleazy salespeople out there, it gets a really bad rep.
Ofir: I try to think of it like this. There is nothing wrong with money. I think actually when you and I first met, we were having a conversation about this, about the energy around money. Like, why are so many people angry around money, right? And if we look at, like the levels of energy. I'll just touch on that really quick here to double down on my point in Doctor Hawkins book and in various releasing teachings, you know, anger will always happen before someone could feel pride. Pride will always happen before someone could feel courage. That might not actually be true. People can feel courageous and work through it. But when it comes to the topic of money, people feel a lot of anger there because when they lack money, they can't feel pride or they don't feel like they can feel pride. And so they're stuck in anger or in lust, or in grief or in fear. So if you can remove attachments, and by attachments I mean stories and emotion from the idea of money, it's really just a tool that we all use on a day to day life in our existence. For the most part, I don't want to take away from the people that barter, because bartering is a very valuable skill and you guys do you? Because that is fantastic. Everyone should be bartering, in my opinion. But money is just a tool. It's just some kind of exchange. So if you look at it like that, it's very, very easy to not have money and say, everything will be difficult. It's very easy to say, well, if I have a lot of money, I'll be a bad person. But if you just look at it as a tool and you're someone that wants to help other people, how are you going to do that if you don't have money, right? Like
Ofir: if you choose not to move past the negative story that a person has with money, if one decides not to move past that, then all of the options that come with having money never present itself. So I love sales because for sales, it's not about me. It provides, yes, it provides for my family, it will provide for generational legacies, whatever I do. But the more money I have, the bigger opportunities I could do. I could speak on stages, and now all of a sudden, instead of one to one interactions, I could change the lives of many. I could start to really double down on social media and spread my message across even further. I could give money back to communities and do various projects. And so sales is just the interaction of will money move from this place to this place? It is not a bad thing in the slightest. It's the only thing bad about it is if you're giving money to someone who is either intentionally deceiving you, or if you are intentionally using money in a way that isn't helpful to whatever causes you're trying to do or existence right.
Ofir: Other than that, there's nothing wrong with money. So I say like, enjoy sales because it means you'll have more opportunity to change the lives that you want to change. As for the wild west of the coaching industry, it's definitely. There's been a lot more government involvement in it recently. Like the FTC has been cracking down on big coaching companies and like all coaching companies now on their marketing and branding and stuff like that to make sure that there's integrity in the the business relationship that companies and people have with each other, that advertising and marketing and messaging is as true as possible so that people don't get swindled. Hormozi isn't wrong that a perceived value could have someone pay for anything. I look at most of the houses in the neighborhood that I live in and they're asking seven $800,000 and ive walked through them and Im like for this house and it needs another 150 grand to put into it and the taxes are almost 20 grand. What? But for someone who believes that the school district is worth it and that this place is just going to continue to go up in value and this is the place where they see raising their family and this is exactly what they wanted. And it's even more than what they envisioned because they left some, I don't know, closet sized apartment in the middle of Queens and now they have the opportunity to move into a four bedroom, two bath house with their own yard and like private driveway and everything. Is it worth 800,000? Yeah, for some people it's worth significantly more than that. 800 is a steal. Tying it back to the coaching industry. And then I'll stop talking for a sec because I realize I've been talking for a while.
Lou: It's a podcast for you, brother, for.
Ofir: Both of us and for the listeners. Yes. To tie back to the coaching industry. There's nothing wrong with a perceived value being high and charging high prices. There's everything wrong with intentionally not delivering the thing that you promised people or had them perceive the value to be.
Lou: Fortunately, I think that's a repeatable statement. So I just wanted to maybe just highlight on that because I think it's important to say that again.
Ofir: So there's nothing wrong with charging the value that you're worth, especially if the value is perceived for something to be. There's everything wrong with intentionally deceiving someone that's going to be paying that type of money or any money whatsoever.
Lou: And so how would someone understand or come to like, okay, let's say I've used this example before and he'll know I'm speaking about him, but I won't say his name. But someone who has just, I do energy healing. Right. And he works like session per session. But you're constantly having to bring new clients. Right. Someone comes in for one session and, you know, minimal amounts, let's say around like, you know, $100 or something for a session or whatnot. And how does one that, and it's such, and I think also a belief, like it's, if you're having to spend so much time bringing new people in to just do one session at $100, like that's going to be a lot of energy to continue to bring people in and it's going to potentially lead to some kind of burnout. Um, maybe. I think if you have more, if you put yourself in a system, like in therapy or in a system where your people are finding you that maybe they're able to use insurance and you can kind of do, you know, five sessions a day, then you can do okay in that way. So how does someone open to perceiving their value? Right? Like how does someone find what that number. I know this is such a tough question to answer because it's got to be so internal to someone, but how would you say someone might find that value in themselves?
Ofir: This is where so many people get frustrated because, and this is, this is also a very, another big misconception about starting in the coaching industry. I'm a coach, I'm a human being. I have a lot of self worth. My hourly rate is ten zillion dollars an hour. I'm going to give someone an incredibly stupid deal and I'm going to charge them 30 grand for an eight week program. That's my worth. Okay, cool. Do it right. Do it. All you need is a handful of sales to make a good living. And then they try it and they're like, it's not working. It's my mindset. It's whatever. No, it's not the mindset. You didn't do market research. What are other people that are saying the exact same thing that you're saying? Charging? You actually have to think of this from a business standpoint. Not everything on the planet is mindset. And that trips up so many people because everyone is under the assumption that they can charge whatever they want. And sure, when people online didn't know better seven years ago, you could get away with that. But buyer sophistication has increased dramatically and laws have come in to make sure advertising doesn't allow people to get hit like that as much anymore and the government is stepping in to make sure this doesn't happen anymore. Now we're starting to experience equilibrium in the marketplace. So for anyone that wants to charge what they're worth, great, you should have very compelling reasons other than this is just what I'm worth. Because if you can't get someone to perceive that value in you then the likelihood of you getting it is not. On the flip side, if you understand, let's say if I'm in the fitness industry and let's say like personal training at the gym is like $75 an hour. Actually for the sake of simplicity let's just say $100 an hour. So four sessions a month is $400, you sign up for three months with a trainer it's $1,200, right. If you're a fitness specialist and you're telling people, yeah, I'm going to charge $10,000 for twelve weeks, are you going to make me an NBA level athlete? No. Are you going to reverse my hereditary diabetes? No. Are you going to help me drop 150 pounds in twelve weeks? No. Why am I paying ten grand for that? I'll go to the local gym and pay 1200. You actually just made it easier for me to go and decide to work with the personal trainer in the gym now. Now if you have a good reputation maybe you can get away with selling stuff at higher amounts, but if you don't have a developed reputation just do some business research. It really is that simple. You'll save yourself a lot of headaches.
Lou: So what is your process for sales call? So someone, okay, they do the research, they have their offer, they're excited. Now they're actually in conversations with people around selling. A lot of coaches call it, there's a discovery call, consultation call, whatever it might be like how you know, in essence sometimes it is a sales call because you're inviting people in, but I know you look at it a little differently and so maybe speaking to that.
Ofir: There are industries outside of the coaching industry that many people forget about when it comes to sale sales, one of it is the Saasden startup industries. So like sales as a software or sorry, service as a software. Another is luxury markets. If you look at those two industries, what is the sales process there? It's usually something has caught my eye or attention. There is something that can be demonstrated. I'll then find out if it fits my needs or nothing. And if it does ill follow through with the sale and many times it doesnt even require a sales call. It doesnt even require a salesperson. If you are someone thats in the market for a luxury watch, and you walk into Tournot or London jewelers or like a high end watch place, and you find a watch that catches your eye and you go, wow, can I see that? And you hold it and it feels good in your hands, and you put it on your wrist and it looks nice. You haven't even made the purchase yet. You're just demonstrating what it would be like to have this in your life. You then say, okay, this luxury watch is, let's say, just on the average ten grand. To me, is this worth ten grand right now in my life? Do I feel like this is going to enhance my life? Yes. Cool. I'll figure out how to make the payments work, or I'll make the payment, whatever. If not, I'll ask if there's sales, I'll ask if there's deals, I'll ask if I could break apart the payments. If I can't afford that stuff either, maybe right now is not the right time. And that's okay. If I look at SAS, almost every single SaaS website that I've been to has a demo video. You go onto their website, it's like, oh, you want to use this software? Here's a video of how it works, and you watch it. And then you can do one of two things. Either purchase it on your own with no one, or if you have questions to ask someone in real time, you book a call with someone who assumes already that you've watched the demo video. Because if the demo video is there and it's only like two or three minutes long, and it answers 80% of your questions anyway, by the time you get to that call, the questions that you have is really on such nuances that you're pre sold in the process already by the time you talk to that person. That's the mentality that I adopted. Luxury and SaaS have billions of dollars in sales every single year. Why should coaches not adopt a similar sales process? So that's what I do on my experiences. Um, I don't really call them as much sales calls because I'm, I really am detached from the outcome. I just want people to have a really good experience. Um, so I get on a call with someone, I usually fix an issue for them on the call, whether it's something tech related, something in their marketing, like, I'll just have them open the hood, I'll tell them either this is exactly how I would do it, and I'd lay it out for them. Or I'd say, like, hey, would you mind if I just like, did screen share for a second? Like, I just did it for you. And I just give them that experience, no pressure whatsoever. But me demonstrating what I do so well gives them so much confidence that they then ask to be sold. You know, call it to be sold. They ask to work together, which is essentially what it is. And so it's no longer I have to try to pitch you on something. No, you saw what it's like to work with me. You still want to work with me, great. You want to work with me later, great. You don't want to work with me, that's fine, too. But a process like that removes objections from the equation. It removes the feeling from the salesperson of trying to, like, what do I say? What questions do I ask? How do I handle if they bring something up? Nah, like, I'm not trying to sell you, I'm just giving you exactly what you need right now. And then I let them make the choice of working together.
Lou: Do they know that they're getting on a. And it's not a sales call, but I know, and you talked about how you've kind of used Facebook groups and help people by answering their questions and to me, and again, this might be spoken to through human design as far as people asking for more. If I were to do that, I'm going to get woo, I'm going to get out there. But I think my closed aura as a manifestor, it makes, makes this strategy not as not my strategy, but for generators listening to respond to people, to be in this sense of responding, see what people need, say, hey, I can help you shoot them a message, be in conversation. Now are you saying like, hey, let's get on a call. Do they have, they have, do they have any idea that it might be a sales call? But it's just like, hey, you've helped me and there happen to be in the market, I guess. Yeah. For, I think your strategy on getting people on the call is just worth noting here.
Ofir: Yeah, I don't ask for a call or I don't tell them or suggest, let's get on a call, unless I think that something is so difficult that going back and forth in some kind of messaging application is just like, I need to see something. So I'll give you two examples. One person in a group that I'm in was talking about a setter process. Like, how do I generate new calls for myself with doing outbound texting? I left that person, I kid you not, a 17 minutes audio, just in a message, like, hey, you asked about this. I hope you don't mind. FYI, this is going to be long. And I laid out a my entire thing in an audio. Here's the first message that I send. Here's how I follow up. Here's how I respond to these messages. Here's the cadences, here's how I do everything technically in a 17 minutes message. And then that person was like, fantastic. Thank you so much. Never heard from that person again. Great. I'm cool with that. Another person says, I'm having a really difficult time figuring out how to get my CTA to pop up on my website at this time, and so I'll send an audio. Hey, just want to. From a tech perspective, just want to make sure we're covering the grounds here. Like, did you do this? Did you do this? Did you do this? Did you do this? Yes, yes, yes. Oh, wait, let me try that one. They go, they try it, they come back. It's still not working. Hey, can we hop on a call just so that I can see what's going on in your system and, like, maybe there's something we can figure out together. I'll hop on a call with them, and then we'll figure it out. And again, I don't ask people to work with me. I don't tell them, hey, are you interested in continuing to work together? What was your experience? None of that. 100% of the time, for me, it's been, if this is what you do with complete strangers, what is it like to actually work with you? And then I'll tell them about the logistics and what it's like to actually work with me. So I never have to sell anyone on anything. I just give them that experience.
Lou: So it's a great strategy for anyone listening. That's like, okay, how do I bring in more clients? Like, let me just look for places that I'm in where have maybe people that can help and can I just offer them help in some ways through my gifts or through whatever I'm sharing? What would you say? Like, what would you say with coaches, where it's a little bit less tangible for you, it's, you're solving more business practical problems sometimes, but how would someone approach that? Maybe it's like, hey, here's some questions to journal on, or here's a way to reflect on this. I'm just curious because also, sometimes people don't like getting that kind of advice. In some ways, maybe it might be a little much of like, whoa, but I guess if they're asking for it, then maybe they would be. Yeah, maybe. Just any thoughts? And I know we have to jump off here in a moment, but any thoughts for a coach that's a little bit less tangible?
Ofir: So I will still double down on saying it's about the demonstration and the experience. Right. So if someone were to come to me and say, I've really been stuck in a depressed phase for a while, and let's just say for the sake of this example, there are woo woo, people like us. Um, the first thing that I'll typically ask is, what have you been doing to try and let go of that? Right. I'll go for walks. I'll do this, I'll do that. Okay, that's great. Except none of those things have you addressing the real, like, root cause, which is the emotion that you're sitting with. So then I'll ask just how, when was the last time you let yourself just sit with the depression and be okay with it? I don't like to do that. Ah, okay, cool. You're avoiding exactly what you need to do, and seeing as how you don't do it on your own, is it okay if we just use that time together right now for you to just sit with it? And they'll either say, I don't want to do that, which is, that's cool, but for those that are, like, really committed to getting better. Yeah. And then we'll just sit and I'll just be quiet. I'll hold the space, and things will come up for them and they'll start to let it go and they'll feel better, and then they'll say, what else can we do with this? That has actually happened to me before on a, on a call like that, I didn't end up working with that person because I'm not really, I wasn't, at the time, focused as much about diving more on the spiritual component of things, but demonstrate what you do. Right. Typically, if someone's going to be on a call with you and you're the one that either initiated the call or you're the one that agreed to get on the call, you probably think there's something you could do to help them, so help them.
Lou: Such good wisdom, shared Ophir. I feel, I know we didn't get a chance to talk about your book or communication, so maybe speak a moment about that or point people to what you're excited about, and then maybe we could do around too. That's just on communication, because I can tell how skilled you are at it like it's very clear and might be just worth its own. Maybe a mini podcast episode or something around communication could be interesting to explore.
Ofir: Yeah, I'd love that. I think we can go a few minutes over. I messaged them a little bit earlier to let them know that might happen. So, yeah, I have this book. It's called you suck at communicating. I do genuinely believe that people could enhance the quality of their life if they enhance the quality of their communication. The premise of the book is I took what I believe to be the ten foundations of interpersonal communication and I turned it into mathematical formulas so that you could diagnose and solve almost any communication issue you ever have, ever. It goes everything from understanding someone to being understood by someone. The like, real foundations. And it even touches on emotional influence, logical influence, and conflict resolution as well. And there are some points in between there, too. So odds are if you're experiencing some type of misunderstanding repeatedly with people or miscommunication, or you feel like things are regularly mistaken, or you just feel that there's something not clicking between you and other people, not with anyone at fault or at blame, but there's just something not clicking. Usually it's a communication issue, and this book is written as a manual. There's zero fluff, there's zero personal story in there. It is just a clear walkthrough guide on all the different categories for you to be able to identify what's wrong and then get to fixing it ASAP.
Lou: Amazing. I wasn't a huge fan of the title when I first saw you wrote this book. We don't go deeper into that, but.
Ofir: It does talk for an extra minute or two.
Lou: It does catch. It does catch. I always, always wanted to ask, like, why the title? Why so aggressive to the world with it? But I also understand it's almost like a Mark Manson subtle art sort of title. It definitely grabs you and maybe it's like, oh, man. But, yeah, that was a funny thing that I never hadn't shared with you.
Ofir: So I. When I was. When the book was first written, there was no title for it yet. And in fact, in my mind, from an operations perspective, I was ready to just title it. How to diagnose and solve every communication issue ever or something like that. And my publisher actually sat with me and was like, if you were standing on stage and you were talking to a group of people about communication, what's like the one thing everyone needs to know? And I was just like, everyone sucks at it. And she's like, she's like, cool. So, like, if that's what you think and that's what you believe, let's put that on the title. And so we did. And even, like, the choice of the colors for the book, this bright yellow, it's meant to scream, look at me. Right? Like, that's another form of communication. And so it's really just meant to, like, hey, like, this is the book. This is the book on communication. You know? Like, there's zero reason why you should have issues with communication after this book.
Lou: I could see that as a great question. I could see that keynote, just like, the beginning line, like, coming onto audience just being. You suck at communication.
Ofir: Right?
Lou: That's a. Whereas, you know, that that grabs something, people. Because some people are going to be. Yeah, I do. And then be like, what is he getting? What's going on with this?
Ofir: The back of the book, like, the synopsis on the back of the book, or whatever it's called, actually says the opening line is, so you think you're an effective communicator, think again. You suck at it. And it's just like, guys, we all do. Like, that's just the realization. No one's born an order or a communicator or a speaker. It's a skill. It's something that you pick up. It's intentional.
Lou: Fear. Thanks again for joining. Anywhere else you want to send people, there's the book. And to your company, I know you got some free trainings online there. Highly recommend checking that out. I think straight shot ops.com dot straightshotops.com.
Ofir: Is where you'll find me. If you want any type of business help, you can also find me on Instagram. Ophir Jacobovich. O f I r y a k o b o w I c z. Really sorry about that. Probably just easier to go to Lou's Instagram page and look at the people that he's following and just type in of IR, and I'll most likely be the only person there that's a good hack. Yeah. So do that. And if you have any questions, comments, concerns, you can send me a message on there. But, you know, very rarely do I think there's going to be an issue that you can't solve by asking Lou a question first. So, you know, between the two of us, we've got you covered on anything and everything.
Lou: Send away fears, drop in wisdom left and right, free of charge. Go. Go check them out. So, afir, thanks again for joining us.
Ofir: I appreciate you, brother.
Lou: All right, take care, friends.