Ep55 Mary Shakun - Million-Dollar Coach Secrets: Why High-Value Clients DON'T Choose Based on Your Resume

Mary Shakun  0:00  
I say to my clients, million dollar clients, that you won't find any other person in the world who can solve your problem the way I can, but says, If I'm going to charge you a million dollars or $3 million you need to know that you have the creme de la creme.

Suzanne Taylor-King  0:20  
Hey, hey, welcome to a podcast where dreams meet determination and success is just around the corner. I'm your host, Suzanne Taylor King, and I'm here to help you unlock the full potential of your business and your life. Welcome to unlock your way with SDK, let's unlock your path to success together. Hello, everyone. Suzanne Taylor King, here for another episode, a special episode of unlock your way with STK, I'm here today with the incredible and the incomparable. Mary chacoon, Mary, welcome to the show.

Mary Shakun  0:59  
Well, thank you, Suzanne. I'm delighted to be here. Thank

Suzanne Taylor-King  1:03  
you so much. Full transparency, Mary is one of my mentors, and has been just so gracious pouring into me. For the last couple of years, I've been part of Mary's million dollar boardroom program and a group of coaches she has mentored, and your appearance on coaches in conversation a couple weeks ago has prompted so many conversations that I had to bring you back for more of you. So I really appreciate you being here today. Oh, you're very welcome. Let's get into it. Let's let's talk about first question I have for you is, how many coaches struggle with the right fit clients? They accept everyone. They work with everyone. And I wanted to hear a little bit about how you personally vet people. Many of your clients, come from referrals. But what's your process like getting to know someone before you make them a client offer?

Mary Shakun  2:13  
Well, from my experience, especially in the last six months, I would say 90% of coaches are struggling to get clients. It doesn't regardless of what niche you're in, everybody i get emails every day, Mary, I'm stuck. I need times. Do you have any resources? I get that question, 1012, 20 times a week, sometimes. And I don't have any special resources other than the research I do myself. You know, as you know, I spent, I've done hours, maybe 3600 hours of research over the course of two years, men and women. And while that took a long time back then to do with AI, I can do all of that in less than five minutes, providing you enter the correct prompts and you're very clear about who your ideal client is. You know, for example, one key example I give, I like to give is political. If you vote for Trump, you couldn't work with the Biden supporter. End of story. It's not going to work. He's not your ideal client, and vice versa just doesn't work, so you have to be very, very careful with who you work. Yes, and I ask a lot of personal questions. I take deep dives, especially those who pay me a million dollars and the bap, I take serious deep dives into their personality. Over a consultation, I ask them all sorts of personal questions, and there's, there's no taboo, so to speak, because I've heard it all, yeah, and I want to know most of importantly is why you want to work with me? Why me? There's a million of other better coaches out there. Why me? Why? What is this? You know that attracted you to me, other than the refer, and the refer isn't always correct. Somebody refers three people, and I might not want to work with any of them. And I would sometimes they might say, Oh, do you have three more like that? They're perfect. It's very difficult to know, so you have to have a list of questions before you get on that consultation. You have to be clear in your mind. You have to have done your research. Number one, you have to know who this person is. Is he a vegetarian? Is he a carnivore, or is he a pescetarian? Does he play gal 10? You know his hobbies? What you like to do in spare time. You need to know all of that stuff, because it gives you the rounding of the person, the rounding of the character. And then I ask, do you lie? Because if you lie to me, you're done. I'll give you back your money and you'll you. No, that's it. And I'd had orders of people who lied. They didn't do the work. I you know, I'll question them. I'll say, you know, I'll give them some homework. Or what did you find out about so and so, who's the chairman of blah, blah, blah, you never mentioned that? I said, it's written down, it's done the exercise I gave you. You know that don't pay attention sometimes, even though they went to Harvard jail and forever, and I just grew up in a country town in Ireland, so to speak, people are sometimes stumped by the questions I ask, they're not able to answer. And that's another Wow.

Suzanne Taylor-King  5:51  
I'm kind of speechless at what you just said, because many of your clients are paying upwards of hundreds of 1000s of dollars, if not a million dollars, to work with you, and they still don't do the homework.

Mary Shakun  6:13  
Sometimes they don't even show up. I'm sitting there on Zoom for a horror and there's no sign of them. I email them. I Facebook them. I messaged them your response. You know, with the higher end kind for somebody who gives me a million dollars up, they just want to know I'm available to them when they need it's like a hand holding exercise. It's like, I'm the mom, and I'm always there to ask the question or hold your hand. Wow, that's at the million dollar and at the $10,000 and the Get It is totally different. You know, if they don't get the results they want, like, my million dollar thing is it's money up front. The whole thing paid in full. No refund, no guarantee do the work. I guarantee you'll get the results with the $10,000 client. Oh, Mary, at the three weeks or three months, maybe, if it's a six month program, this isn't working for me. I want my money back or no. Sorry, didn't you read your contract, no money back, no refunds, no guarantee. You have to do the work. So it's very important that you vet the person. I also go and look for comments what other people said about them. I'll go into their Facebook or their LinkedIn, especially, and see what's going on if people argue with them their treasury account? Are they argumentative for who they are? Before I take them on how

Suzanne Taylor-King  7:50  
much time would you say on average you spend with someone before they sign up to work with you?

Mary Shakun  7:58  
I generally do 245 minute sessions, and if I have any doubts, I'll do a third one. Okay, but mostly I'm the one looking for the doubt. I, you know, do it when somebody has a big problem, Suzanne, and they want it fixed now or yesterday, and they think you can fix it further, they'll pay you no problems. They don't even want to consult. You know, we're dressing the check. We're dressing the money. Yes, I'm not interested. But that's the million dollar client. That's the CEO level, or the entrepreneur who has a billion dollar problem and will pay a million dollars to make it disappear.

Suzanne Taylor-King  8:39  
Well, those people don't just show up from a social media post. And one of the things that I love so much about what you teach and what you do is that your content on social media is is so great, but I wonder your content is not what brings really high level clients, it's the personal relationship and the personal research and knowing that ideal client. What would you say has been the number one thing that's brought those higher ticket, higher value, higher longer engagement, more expensive engagements to you,

Mary Shakun  9:29  
the research is key. Like before AI, I would go shop for 5x off and do five hours of research on one person, maybe more. Maybe that five hours a day for a week on one person, until I find everything about him. Wow. The second thing is to be sure of your solution. He's paying you for the solution to his problem before you pick up the phone or reach out to him and wherever. However, you reach out to him, you must have at least two solutions in mind that will work for him, and then you must be able to convince them or persuade him, like I say. And I have said this in groups and people say, Mary, you're so arrogant. But I say to my clients, million dollar clients, that you won't find any other person in the world who can solve your problem the way I can. You can search high and low and you won't find them and the best you can get. And I have to believe that about myself. And began to support a million dollars, yes. And I tell people in groups, I say that, and they said, What? How could you say that? But such, if I'm going to charge you a million dollars or $3 million you need to know that you have the creme de la creme,

Suzanne Taylor-King  10:57  
and that that comes from not only confidence and your your your past history with clients, but it also comes from a deep commitment to your clients. I know you are so committed to people's success the people who hire you, you're committed to working with them. And you've said something to me once before about doing the work. If a client is doing the work that you recommend, it fuels you. And I'd love to know what it what does it feel like compared to working with somebody at the $10,000 level, when you help somebody with a million dollar problem, what's the difference that feels like for you solving those bigger problems?

Mary Shakun  11:56  
It's like chalk and cheese or a vegan and a carnivore. Okay, completely different either the spectrum, but I don't change my personality nor my behavior, nor my language, nor the way I look, or the makeup I wear or my hair do. To meet the $3 million client, I meet them on the same level as I meet the $10,000 client, because I believe that being authentic is really a key ingredient, yeah, to getting that client, I met somebody in a client came in from I hadn't met him, and he wasn't a million dollar sign, but she was, like a 250,000 up there. And he covered me up. And he says, Mary, I'm going to be in New York. Let's meet for lunch. And I just got dressed up the way any New Yorker. We found a pair of sneakers and walked down to the restaurant. He looks me up and down for your high use. I said, we're in New York. No dude around you who's running I use nobody you wear high heels, you bring you carry them in your bag, and you change them at the brochure. What's the COVID? We've been working eight or nine months now, but doesn't matter whether I wear high heels or sneakers. You know, have little things like that, but I give, you know, like, people will call me up and say, Mary, I'm really stuck, and I want to do the million dollar thing, or I they call me up and they have a preconceived notion in their head, like, I see this company. I hate the branding. I want to enroll them. I want to change the branding, and they don't want to pay attention to my program. They just want me to get this client program. And I have failed many times. I can't get that client from you. That's your job. I will show you how to get the client. I will tell you what to say. But at the end of the day, getting that client and ruining that client, be it for a million dollars or 100,000 or 10,000 is the coach's job. I don't do that well.

Suzanne Taylor-King  14:10  
So much of it is based on the relationship. But I want to go back to what you said about the high heels, because the most money I ever made in one day I was wearing jeans, a t shirt and flip flops. So I totally agree with that. You're not, you're not buying my shoes. You're, you're, you're paying for this right here. So I love that so much, and I want to also ask so being authentic, being real, that was one of the biggest compliments from our last conversation, was just this natural way you have, and it's you just being you, but of telling stories full transparent. Stories of how you started and where you started and where you were at, and I think that's so appealing to people. But when it comes to doing the research and spending all of that time, many people, many coaches in particular, are not willing to invest three conversations or three hours of research into one person. And I want to argue that that is exactly what's required to have $100,000 a million dollar clients, because it's the relationship that sells what your your solution for them.

Mary Shakun  15:51  
It's all about the relationship. And yes, so I had look my I had a program, and I do have a teaching the the art of finding engaging and closing a seven figure client, and I prefer to use seven figure than a million most of the time, because people freak out at the idea of a million. They even freak out at the idea of 100,000 they can't handle it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  16:16  
But if you look back,

Mary Shakun  16:18  
you know when, when coaching started, you know, whenever it started, and people were selling programs at 497-290-7497, was like the regular eight week program, signature program. And now, how much are people charging for signature programs? You know, it's all and people think, oh, at the million dollar level. This is one thing that really gets me about self esteem. Well, you know, why would he want to work with me? He to CEO upper. That's their fortune 50 company. What do I have to harbor to him? And they shared that without doing any research about who he is, what his problem is, or anything. That's yeah, you know. And it's interesting, because now, but where I used to spend five hours on one person and like so, in 2015 I did five hours a day, 365 days for that year on men only. Now that was 1800 plus hours. Now I can get all of that information. I know I can get 20 clients in two minutes. It's 20 clients and with AI in less than two minutes. Well, that that's

Suzanne Taylor-King  17:43  
what that's so incredible, that you have embraced technology. And if I could say anything about you, is that you've adapted so well to technology, and that is the number one excuse I get from coaches over 50 years old, is I don't know how to do technology. I don't know how to do that. And you have embraced technology as much as I have, and which is just astonishing to me. And this idea of being able to do the research that you taught me how to do, and be able to do that research in 1020, minutes, max, and I would have enough people to research, sell, to have conversations with for a year in 20 minutes, and people aren't willing to do it, and they're not willing to learn technology, to adapt like that. What would you say, motivated you to learn it and adapt like that.

Mary Shakun  19:04  
Okay, so you saw my retreat program, right? I put that website up myself. It was not beautiful. I had to find somebody to do the stripe, because that started my league. And I also push up the hunger to belong website myself, because it's easier for me to push it up than to be talking to somebody, you know, dude, I'd have it done. You know, it's like this. Somebody wanted to work with me once. I believe I shared this with you before, and every part I had, oh, I write a white paper on that. Why are you talking about? But by the time you have the white paper written, I have the whole thing up, ready to go. He had look, you have an 80, okay, but it was 190 and AI has changed, and I'm assuming I'd be alive. Are you gay up there with

Suzanne Taylor-King  19:55  
Yeah, you had to keep up. Well, I love this, but. I call it being AI enabled. There's companies that I've worked with, there's people that I've worked with who just have not grown and adapted into this new mode of doing things. And I want to share this one example that someone asked me, they think I'm online on social media all the time, and I get this comment a lot. Oh my gosh, you're always on social media. No, I'm actually never on social media. It just looks like I'm on social media. And they ask, Well, how do you do that? Well, it's very easy. I create 30 days of content ahead of time, and I create content for my group, my personal page, my LinkedIn and four other communities, all different content, all in a couple hours once a month, and then I schedule it all out. And the astonishment that that conversation brings from other people is, well, how did you learn how to do that? And again, it's this idea that the old way of doing things isn't necessarily the best. And if you're not willing to pivot, how can you possibly grow a coaching practice in in today's day and age?

Mary Shakun  21:32  
It's even beyond the technology, you know, one with all the language, the all the neuro stuff, and you know, all of this stuff that's coming out, one has to keep up with it. Why would I, if I have a serious personal problem, why would I go to a coach? And let's say I've read a lot about neuro dynamics and all of that growth Hiero culture doesn't know anything about that. Why i i i When I could probably teach the course? Yes, okay,

Suzanne Taylor-King  22:04  
so I, I love this so much. Because if you, if you want to be hired by a high performer, you have to be a high performer Exactly,

Mary Shakun  22:20  
exactly. I love it. How? How can you expect somebody who's not a high performer to hire you if you are and if you're not, they're not going to hire you? Yes, but I think there's a there's a malaise at the moment. I think some people are burnt out. Others, I think a big problem is just came up for me the other day with a client. A lot of people, they don't have the know how they might have the solution, but they're not able to express us. And then they'll say, Well, let me try, AI, maybe that'll help me, but they're not pushing in the correct prompt because they don't know the right question to ask, right answer, right, right. And so

Suzanne Taylor-King  23:11  
I think that's why I've been successful with it, because I'm a good questioner and I'm a good explainer of of what I want out, but there's, there's more than that. It's a it's a mindset. I mean, everything that we're talking about is, is a mindset of being a high performer, being willing to pivot, being willing to adapt. And if you want high value clients, you have to be doing that for yourself, and you know you mentioned something in your research of people that you research well beyond demographics. So you know, you go well beyond. I work with men, male CEOs who are over 40. You go much, much deeper than that and explain the importance of of that piece of it.

Mary Shakun  24:11  
The word thing I find a lot in the in the in the million dollar at the million dollar level, is that when they're enough, when men who have the potential to perform high highly, the lack of sex, or sex skewed for one to the better word, or abnormal, an abnormal sexual life. I mean, that can, that can take the route of having two or three mistresses as well as a wife. You know, all of these personal problems men don't realize that they get in the way. And I have this new program I'm about to start. Which affects power and money mastery, dressed to men. I'm thinking at the moment it would be addressed men. Maybe I'll do another one for a woman. Because what I find is you have the guy you know, he started out. He has his first 10 clients that $10,000 each. Whoops, he has 100,000 before you know it, he has a million dollars. And he keeps going and going and going, and then, you know, he has ten million $20 million he's on the route to huge, mega success. He's a high performer, okay, oh, the one thing I find with men like that is that, especially men who have had to work their way up. And they chose, they settled. You know, when they got married, they settled for a particular girl because they felt it was she was the best they could guess. But now they're in their 40s, and they're all swagger, and they have multiple millions of dollars, and they buy a designer clothes and a Lamborghini and yada yada. Now, ooh, now they're finding themselves very attractive and the middle of a lot of attention from women, yeah, and before you know it, and man who swore he would never go outside of his marriage is in the pick of an extramarital affair. That's the next part. Then maybe he has three mistresses. And I've come across men who've had three mistresses, and I had to fly Singapore and parish and a middle America, you know, with checks to find the bush lawyers to fix it? Oh, sure. Guess the sex part of it now the power, the power part. They want to have more power. They want to yield more power. They want to be seen as more powerful. They want to become players. I also have a program that I call it, you know, how to be a player on the global stage. I don't know if you ever shall post it on this. And I'm very brand I say, look, the fee is a million dollars, because I don't want people calling me to pick my brain over and haggle over money. And these people who want to be, most of them who want to be players on the global stage, okay, they've gone through the sex stage now they're in the power stage. They're looking for that power, and they don't know how to claim it, don't know how to grab it, or whatever you do. I guess people grab the power, they don't know how to grab the power. Wow. So there's a lot of that. Wow. Okay, and then money, you know, then, then, how many times have you come across somebody whom you know, who went from regs to richest rags because they don't manage, yes, they don't know how to manage the money, just to watch of that too. So I'm thinking about, I was thinking of, well, I pulled him a retreat every year myself for men, for about 10 to 15 men, and I charge $100,000 for the week. And if your message is like people say, oh, you know women, women tend to fuss over their makeup and their hair before they go on Skype or zoom or whatever. This is not important. What's really important is the message. What are you going to do with this? What am I going to do with this group of men or women that are coming to my retreat. Or what am I going to do for this man or woman who is my new client? Yes,

Suzanne Taylor-King  28:50  
yeah, it's really about that positioning, and this is something that you do very, very well but very authentically, you position yourself as exclusive and expensive without being ego driven or arrogant about it. And you said something else to me. It was probably more than a year ago. Suzanne, be approachable, but not accessible. I've repeated that hundreds of times since you said that to me, and I really took it to heart so much so that changing my business to fill out an application if you want to work with me, and then I'll get on a call with you. And that idea of positioning yourself. What advice would you give to a struggling coach who is in that desperate I need a client. I need a client. I just need to make. Money phase about positioning,

Unknown Speaker  30:04  
don't chase,

Unknown Speaker  30:08  
attract.

Mary Shakun  30:10  
You have to, like, for example, if you're not getting a time for many months, still let the six months. You have to take a deep look inside and see what's going on with you, you know, and you have to change your energy and how, you know, people can go and look, I didn't make any tapes about this. A lot of this work is Jordan stanzas work or other people's work, but you have to change your energy. And one way of changing your energy is doing that inner work, creating goals, making them happen, having the vision, reading about it, you're changing your energy, and it might not happen overnight, yeah, but it will happen.

Suzanne Taylor-King  30:51  
Yeah? Great advice. Great advice. I mean, it's it's been two years since I met Dorothy, maybe a little bit more, and then got introduced to you. During that two years, I've grown, I've up leveled my prices. I don't know how many times my offers, my confidence level, but it's it's really come from nothing outside of me. It's come all from owning the journey that has been within and the knowledge that I have, and I think that's the hardest thing for people to do, is to understand that it's not something out here. You need it. It's not some program you need to buy. It's not some thing that's going to make you successful. It's you. It's you. You have to work on you.

Mary Shakun  31:53  
A lot of people don't write down their goals, yeah, and a lot of people take everything they have for granted. And yesterday I had a sub sack, and I think you're part of it. I wrote on gratitude, and gratitude is so important, because when people start complaining, oh, this is wrong, and that is wrong, I tell them, Well, look at the people in India who don't eating, or Africa who don't even have clean water to drink or something in maybe comparison, but they don't want to hear it. And the younger people, there's definitely a difference between the I don't know the differences in all the Gen, Gen X, Y and Z, but let's say in people who are over 50, there's a big difference in their mindset between them and the people under 50, you know, the 20 and 30 year olds, yes, and the 20 and 30 year olds have this sense of entitlement. They don't want to hear about an older person has to say. And then they realize one day, oh, my God, I should have listened to Mary, or I should have done this, or I should, Mary, what was that you said again? Can you

Suzanne Taylor-King  33:05  
Yeah, you know, how many times has that happened? A ton, I'm sure. Yeah. All right. Um, last question in all the years coaching, what was the client that stood out to you that you really felt as though you made the biggest difference for

Mary Shakun  33:30  
Okay, he's local to my neighborhood. Here, I was doing Whole Foods with my grandson when he was true about nine years ago, and I was totally dressed down. It was snowing and raining, and you name it. Yeah, everything was my hair was a wreck. My everything was a wreck. And I'm in, I'm online to pay for my groceries, and my two year old grandchild is, you know, wanting a lollipop and this and that. And I'm saying, no, no, no. And there's a man behind me, and he says, Oh, that's a British accent. You're not where you're from, and of course, you can have that lobby pop here. I paid it's my turn shot. And where are you from? And the conversation starts about Ireland. And he said, Oh, I'd love to talk to you more. Would you like to have coffee with me? I said, Sure, I love coffee with you. And he's smelling and raining outside. Why not? So those cafe and hold boots. He said, You go and grab a table and I'll grab the coffee. So 10 minutes later, he appears with the coffee, and he sits down. And what do you do? Yeah, I do. I'm a business coach. And who are your clients? Where are CEOs and Fortune CEOs and entrepreneurs, and how much do you trivia? Method? It depends on the problem. I never you know. When people ask me how much that charge, because I get referrals from million dollar kinds, but the platform might be only 100,000 and you have to be fair. So we got into a conversation, and it lasted two hours. When I'm emailing, my son is calling me, where are you? Where's I'm. I need the milk or dishes and fresh out there. So he said, Oh, I kept a half copy with you again. He said, Can I email you? I didn't have a card. I just posted on the scrap of tissue, and I gave it to him, and I had an email from him, and he wanted me to meet his partner tomorrow locally. I said, just local cafe. I said, Sure. Can I meet your partner? That was my $3 million friend. Wow.

Suzanne Taylor-King  35:30  
I love that. I love that story so much.

Mary Shakun  35:33  
Actually, you know, it took hours of talking, and it wasn't on the Zoom. It was over. It was face to face, yeah, you know, first of all, we had two and a half hours of phone food, and he was anxious to meet me again, and probably three and a half to four hours in the cafe, yes.

Suzanne Taylor-King  35:51  
And I chose him beautiful, well done, yeah, well done and well done, having a charismatic personality that you could start a conversation with somebody in line at Whole Foods. Number one skill to have as a coach is the ability to build rapport and talk to other people, and you do it so so well

Unknown Speaker  36:19  
I kissed the Bernie stone,

Suzanne Taylor-King  36:25  
I love it. That idea of being able to talk to anyone has has just served you so, so well.

Mary Shakun  36:32  
Well, can we remember that we all come into the world the same way, naked, and we all live the same way, and Bucha persons in between is up to you.

Suzanne Taylor-King  36:43  
Love it well. Thank you again for joining me for this conversation today, Mary, it was a delight. You're so welcome. Have a great day. You too. Bye, bye. Thank you for tuning in to another empowering episode of unlock your way. I hope you found today's discussion inspiring and you're ready to take your business and personal growth to that next level. If you're feeling as fired up as I am and eager to unlock that full potential, I'm here to help you on your journey and provide that personalized guidance tailored to your unique goals and challenges. Simply book a one on one coaching call with me, and we'll dive deep into your business aspirations and see how we could co create a roadmap for your success, and whether you're striving to scale an enterprise or just getting started, I'm here to support you every step of the way, to schedule your coaching call, simply visit the website at unlock your way with stk.com click on the book a call button, and we'll turn your dreams into that reality. Subscribe and review on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube, plus you can join over 800 entrepreneurs in the IDEA Lab Facebook group. Let's make success as an entrepreneur happen together until next time I'm SDK, keep dreaming big. Stay focused, and most of all, have fun while you're doing it.

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