Ep87 John Daniels—How to Grow a Coaching Business From the Relationships You Already Have Without Building Another Funnel

John Daniels  0:00  
Someone asked me the other day, "How do I get more people to enter my funnels?" It's like saying, "How do I get more people to come to my birthday party?" You know, you're just thinking about it all round. Yeah, you know, if you're trying to get people to do something, I'm like, "How about like, how do we make the experience amazing?"

Suzanne Taylor-King  0:14  
You build something successful, but growth feels harder than it should. You keep solving problems, but the same patterns return. What if the constraint isn't where you've been looking? Welcome to Unlock Your Way with STK. Each week, I sit down with founders, CEOs, and leaders navigating the messy middle of growth to explore the invisible constraints that keep successful businesses stuck. Because the problem you're solving may not be the real problem. Let's find out what is. Good morning, everyone. Suzanne Taylor King here for another live episode of Unlock Your Way with STK, and today, oh boy, are you in for a treat! I am here today with John Daniels, founder of Connected Impact, and full transparency. I've been his client, or I am his client currently, and he has been my client. We know each other really well, so we're gonna go there today. Welcome, John.

John Daniels  1:19  
Hey, Suzanne. Super cool to hang out with you. Super cool to jam with you. Love spending time with you. You're one of those people. You know, I I know every time I spend time with you, I get better. My business gets better, and I'm looking forward to jamming and just having you know more having more of that today and be able to share the magic that happens. How many times have we said during a conversation with each other, "Man, we should do this live.

Suzanne Taylor-King  1:41  
Yeah.

John Daniels  1:41  
So we're here. We're here.

Suzanne Taylor-King  1:43  
Yeah, I love it. I love it. We kind of matched today. We're both wearing glue today. So I love that from across the pond that burnt mind melding this morning. And I love that about you too. So I I think that's a really key attribute in a referral partner for me that it needs to be inspiring and it needs to be synergistic. Your clients could be my clients. My clients can be your clients, but also we have value for each other's business, and I I think this is so rare to actually experience that, but before we go there, I want to touch on something that you mentioned the other day in one of our conversations. That your intellectual property awareness, and everybody knows, I'm a huge fan of this. Your intellectual property awareness really came together for you in the last couple months. The understanding that you've had businesses that addressed every stage of the entrepreneur spectrum funnel marketing, and and I want to hear a little bit about what that was like for you when you finally saw that through line.

John Daniels  3:06  
Wow, that's amazing! Fantastic question. So let's go. The pivotal decision when I started working with coaches was in the middle of COVID, and at that point, I was like, "Right, I want to work with coaches." I got this message. I was I was meditating, and I got a message from the voice. You all that meditating, you know what that you know what that is. But I'd say to weaponize the light bringers, right? And and and it was this picture of the world and all the people in it and the light trying to get in, but also certain people in the world wanting to reach out, bring bring that light down and spread it around. You know, much lighter sources that. But how do we get there? You know, if I rewind all the way back, I remember one of my my first memories. My my my mom had this box of jewelry. I mean, Suzanne, you probably have something similar, like

Suzanne Taylor-King  4:01  
I do. I do

John Daniels  4:02  
necklaces and yeah, and I used to love sitting and unpicking all of those. You know, they they get all untangled. Like the the male equivalent is the box of cables. Like you have everyone has the box of cables, and it's like, is it there? And there's no way to rush that. Like you got to sit there, be patient, and untangle it and get all the things. And when you do that, you always you're like, huh? I didn't know that was there.

Suzanne Taylor-King  4:24  
Yeah, yeah.

John Daniels  4:25  
So that was you know little little John going like, how do I untangle this thing? And that's sort of been a recurring theme of kind of the the mess between us. So you know, us and the unknown, right? And so, what is that like? I mean, so you know, school. I thought was this is a bullshit system fought fought with with with with problems. Yeah, and it didn't take long before I dropped out, and I was like, ah, you know, I'm I'm not doing this anymore. And I thought. While I'm deciding what to do next, I was going to study psychology, and because I'm fascinated with you know what goes on in our our minds between us and our potential, what there's this this chaos, right? But I thought even though I'm fascinated by the subject matter, I want to be I want to I'm more interested in my own potential development. Yeah. While I do that, I'm going to do some side quests, and I do start doing some additional certification in Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, and that was where I came across the the OSI reference model. It's the first funnel, and it's just basically the schematic diagram where you have the things you can see on the computer screen at the application layer here, and the metal at the bottom, like the cables and the connectors and the power there, and then a way of understanding everything that's in between. I was like, hey, stuff you can see, stuff at the bottom, stuff in between, and a systematic way of decoding the mess, like in a system, in a digital system. And I loved it. I was like, this is this is, and that became a filter that I sought to see things through. It was the first kind of sense of the of the funnel, and fell from there quite quickly into my first business. I was in the the right place at the at the right time, and I kind of fell into my first business. My my girlfriend at the time was moving from Cape Town, where we were in South Africa, to Johannesburg, and the business the the owners of the business I was in said, "You know, hey, we don't want to lose you. Why don't you run the job advice for us?" So this is me at the age of 20, kind of fell into my first business. Wow! So really interesting, but doing technology stuff, you know, working with with the systems, IT tech support, you know, the the machines of of you know that that kind of make business go. But I was always frustrated that I could only get them to go so far. Like people would follow me when there was something broken, and you know, I realized that IT is not a it's not a summary of anything. It's IT is it it's broken. It could be the computer, the fax machine, the printer, and again, there's this thing about there's there's what the humans see and there's what's going on underneath, and I realize you know people don't care what you do. People did not were not interested in what created the the the under the the fundamental problem deep in the OSI reference model, right? No one cared that the network driver was incompatible thing. They're like, hey, my thing's not working, and I fix the thing.

Suzanne Taylor-King  7:22  
How many times do people sit at a keyboard and go like it's not working? We we don't care what's underneath that. Typically, it's that end result.

John Daniels  7:36  
Yeah, it it's 100%. And and I think you know, as as as coaches, as experts, you know, it's the we're going to meet people where they're at, and that's it's a consistent theme that's that's that's come through. Now, I had you know, I said, right place at the right time. I was then suddenly IT manager for the World Summit on Sustainable Destination, World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. So suddenly, I'm responsible for this data of heads of state and building, helping to build, yeah, I mean, pretty, pretty crazy stuff, right? Pretty

Speaker 1  8:05  
crazy,

John Daniels  8:06  
but but it's the same. The fundamentals are the same. It's still the same data. It's still the same. It's humans in a system and interacting and interacting in a system. So that was really great experience. Being able to work in a company that started with three people went up to 120 people, then back to three people over the course of 18 months, just to scale up to kind of look after this this this information, all the heads of state where they were staying, all of that stuff was in my infrastructure, and had to look look after that. But again, it was human data inside a system, And from there, you know, my next business was was digital marketing, where I suppose seeing as we're going to go there, I'll tell you, you know, that I'll tell you, but I'll tell you the real shit, right? Okay. So here's me, right? This this path going, hey, I have I have a great I have a tech support business. I had an internet service provider, and with the people I met in in this World Summit on Sustainable Development version, I then met people that wanted to run a conference company with me. And I was like, Hey, running companies is easy. I got three of them, and it was about 12 months later, that I arrived at work one day, and the sheriff of the court was busy changing the locks on the doors because one of the business owners in the in our consortium here had not been paying the rent to the landlord, had been pocketing it, and suddenly I am not able to get into into the into the business where all my servers are. Right, so you run an internet service provider, and suddenly you can't get into where your servers are. It's a bit of a problem. Yeah, and so I was on this upward trajectory where it seemed like everything was just working, and I was like, "Hey, right place at right time." But then I also got to have the experience of what it's like when everything suddenly disappears. You know, all the relationships, all the. Businesses, all of those things. Suddenly, I had signed contracts, personal security for infrastructure that I now no longer had access to. All my clients' websites went down. You know, big ass freaking problem.

Speaker 2  10:12  
Yeah.

John Daniels  10:13  
And you know, and I did what what what what any you know great entrepreneur does is I freak the fuck up. Yeah. You know, but then you know I rebuilt, right? So I got I got the the experience of being able to pick myself up again. You know what? I'm still here. I'm still breathing. You know, all those businesses were you know that the conference business was ultimately fundamentally flawed. That took the internet service provider and the tech support business with it, and I got to start again. But I thought, you know, there's skill skills here. The fundamentals, you know, Alex Hormozzi says it beautifully. It's that you are the product. Yeah. It's not the businesses. You are the. It's the person that you become doing these things. And I thought, you know, I'm still here. If this didn't break me, and I went back to what are the things that are the things I care about? And I thought, I want to rebuild. I want to build systems that don't just, you know, it's not like it breaking and a business getting back to level. But how do we get to the next level? And that's where I discovered digital marketing. It's the same business. It's the same PCP IP based information that flows through systems. But you know, if you get it to work just right, you know the business gets fundamentally better.

Suzanne Taylor-King  11:25  
Yeah.

John Daniels  11:25  
And this, you know, when the first time I ran a Google Ads campaign, I was like, this is this is like crack, because there's no mystery in terms of you can put an ad up, you know exactly what people are searching for. You put 135 characters of text in there, and they can either click on it or they don't, right? So you know exactly if it's working, right? There's no, you know, there's no, there's no uncertainty. And I thought this is this is incredible. So Google Ads took me to a lot of places. Google Ads ran very successful campaigns for everything from the a roof repair company all the way to Edinburgh International Festival. So really interesting data, very interesting experiences. But again, it comes down to there's humans. They're seeing something on a screen and they either dig it or they don't, right? Yeah. So that then led me from Google Ads. I was like, hey, sometimes they click and they become a lead. Sometimes, what happens then? Like, what what happens? Why don't they click sometimes? Then had to learn about analytics. Then from there into a lead into CRM. That whole process. Then from there into sales. Like what happens next? Oh, sales. You actually have to speak to a human, and then a human actually meets some other admins at where they are, where they want to be. And then when I moved, so this was all in South Africa. I now moved to Edinburgh and got involved with this whole completely new class of business called tech startups, funded tech startups that had like, hey, here's a bunch of money, build a product, and got to see in real time the feedback loop between here's an idea that humans want, build it, test it, and then get get the feedback. Learned about lean startup, and I thought this is incredible. Like this is like the secret code to how to build this feedback loop between humans and product and sales. I started to connect all of those pieces, and then in parallel, have my my spiritual life. You know, still, you know, from age 16, had a failed exorcism, and and you know, I made a vow even at that early age that I wanted to try and apprehend whatever you call God, spirit, whatever, directly. You know, pierce the veil and experience that directly. But from there, learned kung fu, qigong, meditation, tarot cards, Kabbalah, all kinds of things. But that was very separate from our business life. But again, we go back to this the the COVID lockdown and that story, and that all where it all came together for me was when you know I had the opportunity to reinvent you know to the chapter because I knew you know in that moment the whole world had locked down. I'm like I know this game. I know how to start from zero.

Suzanne Taylor-King  14:06  
Yeah,

John Daniels  14:07  
I know how to operate here, and I had the tools to be able to go. Hey, let's look inside. Who are the humans I want to help, and let's build something. And that's been kind of the birth of of of connected impact. Is you know all the tools to go and lean into this Lightbringer avatar, to go. What is the journey? How do you go from finding the humans you want, the humans you want to speak to? Find out what they need. How do you serve them? How do you build systems around that in such a way that it is human centric, but also has the spiritual purpose through line? Yeah,

Speaker 3  14:36  
that's big.

Suzanne Taylor-King  14:36  
I think that is one of the hardest things for the spiritual, holistic, if you will, entrepreneur. The number one struggle I've seen over the years is beautiful, genius people who do incredible. Incredible work, and I've experienced so many incredible people in my healing journey, but they don't know how to do the marketing piece, or the client attraction piece, or the even social media, just in general piece. So, but I want to go back to something you said about the ability to start from zero, the ability to reinvent, the ability to lose everything and start over. Do do you think that is actually where you've learned the most in those moments.

John Daniels  15:51  
Absolutely, absolutely. And this is where you know the the. I mean, this is my take on on on spirituality. Is that it's easy to be spiritual when,

Suzanne Taylor-King  16:02  
yeah,

John Daniels  16:03  
you're sitting in a mountain. When you're on a receipt, when you're doing yoga, you know, yeah,

Suzanne Taylor-King  16:08  
yeah,

John Daniels  16:08  
it's it's in those moments where you know shit happens.

Suzanne Taylor-King  16:15  
Yeah, it's so easy to be connected to yourself when nothing's going wrong, right? When money's flowing in, the business is going well, and and you don't feel that stress. It's so easy to be connected to your purpose, to yourself, all the things, and then losing it all. And I've been through that a couple times with different startups. You know, it's it's in those moments. Are you are you still the spiritually connected, positive, you know, high vibe person, or do you let those negative experiences change that about yourself, right? And that was the homework for me.

John Daniels  17:05  
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I would love to say that I could be, you know, high vibe and spiritual and cool and groovy all the time. And I got to tell you, like, you know, this. I mean, the reason I have this picture up behind me is that was actually, you know, my journey with with rage, right? And you know, being able to find because you know there's a spiritual truth, like the yin and yang says that you know you've got all energy in this plane is has a polarity, positive and negative, but that's just it's not good or evil. It's just that perception that makes it so. So any situation has the same amount of energy in it, but it's up to you to decide how much of you're looking at it. So it's like there's yin and yang, which is the whole of you know the whole of the situation. But we're looking at it through a straw, right? So if your straw is only looking at the black, but you're like, oh, I say that this is negative, and you know, and those those those those those pieces, you know, it's easy to be if you're like in the white area, you know, the positive area, to be like, hey, I'm going to be cool and spiritual. I'll tell you some of the most interesting growth has been in those moments where, like, you know, in in the depths of the shit, to be like, is there power here too? Yeah, is there spiritual power in my rage, my shame, my anger? And being able to incorporate that whole side of me as well, and balance that has been has been the journey for me. Because I think, I mean, this is my my personal take on, but it's been my personal journey is that the the the way I see, you know, call it spirituality, consciousness, whatever. It's it's how to get access to more power when you need it, how do you know extract the juice from those those areas, from those you know? When my dad died, that was like like absolutely crushing. But out of that, you know, there was a message there, which was don't die with the best stuff left inside of you, right?

Speaker 4  19:02  
Yeah.

Speaker 5  19:03  
So

Speaker 6  19:03  
yeah,

John Daniels  19:04  
that lesson wasn't free.

Suzanne Taylor-King  19:07  
No, and I I think the fact that you understand that lesson, I it took me years after my mom passed away very suddenly to actually understand the the gift in that in that happening because if I was to stay in the place of the horribleness of how it happened, when it happened, why it all the things, or I could choose to see it, and it took years, mind you, it wasn't instantaneous, but I I could actually then think about well, I'm I'm not going to limit myself like my mom did, or what did I take away from that experience? And actually, it was a really spiritual experience that lined up. To allow me to be there with her when it happened. Well, that just doesn't happen. Like somebody, somebody, you know, spirit, whatever you want to call it, lined up that day so that I could be there with my mom when that happened, right? And I think about that she was very young when that happened, and I think about that. And if I can allow that to motivate me to, you know, exactly what you said: don't don't die with the best stuff still in you. Don't don't not learn the new thing because you're turning 50. Like go learn the new thing. Go do the new thing. Be brave. Be fearless. No matter how old you are, and I think that message that you're sharing is really really powerful, and probably part of your why, why you enjoy helping other people so much.

John Daniels  21:05  
Yeah, because you know, and I want my my stuff to be. It's taken a long time. I've spent about six years working with, you know, my my light brain avatar coaches. From going, hey, I feel the urge inside me to, hey, I want. How do I turn this into something I can sell? How do I build systems

Speaker 7  21:23  
around

John Daniels  21:23  
to leverage time? How do I scale impact? I almost like spent been resisting going, "Hey, I know the way," until I've lived that whole piece of doing the NLP master practitioner training, getting actual clients, doing things not because I want to be a coach, but because I want to and be able to say I have done this, and I've been there, and and add that that thing. So if I say, hey, you know, here's stuff that's worked. It works not on a good day. It works on a bad day as well. It works provided you have you know you've meditated in all those days. It should work you know on your worst day as well, be you know a system and an infrastructure and and a community that you know I came into this honestly thinking, hey, I'm going to build a bunch of cool IT stuff for my life bringer avatar that'll do it. Turns out that that's not enough. Yeah. In fact, not only is it not enough, a lot of that technology stuff can be a distraction from the work, which is at the fundamental level speaking to the humans you want to help, speaking to the humans you care about. Right. Then, if if that's happening, then we can build infrastructure off the back of that. You know, there's all sorts of of you know you know building an email sequence, creating a webinar, updating my website is a fantastic way to avoid. There's there's no emotional cost to that.

Suzanne Taylor-King  22:49  
Oh, can we talk about that for a second? Because great, I'm gonna have a transparent moment here, people. I had a obsession with creating things. I I love the creation, the creativity, the new funnel, the new sequence, the new offer, the new opt in, the new oh my god, never ending. And one of the things you pointed out to me was how much shit I had in my CRM, and was any of it actually like leading to the conversations I wanted to have? And I, in radical honesty, you know. People see me from the outside, and they're like, "Oh, she's been doing this for a long time, and she's uber successful, and all the things." But I had 47 funnels and email sequences and things that went with them, and I wasn't passionate about any of them, so none of them were really working well. There's no focus there, and you showed me something that was so simple and so in alignment with how I understand myself now, and I I think that is really so not standard marketing recommendations of you know landing page tripwire upsell email sequence. I I don't have any of that any longer, and I have double the amount of clients and income because I simplified the magic, and and you saw that you know my magic is in conversation with people. That's where my clients come from: referrals, conversations, much like you. And if that. That's what works. Why have anything else? And I actually felt in that moment very fearful of deleting things. I mean, I was a health coach 16 years ago, and I still had a funnel out there somewhere, that was a meal plan you could download for $27, and so right before I started working with you, somebody had actually bought it, and I thought to myself, where the hell is that? Like, how did somebody buy that? How did they get to that? And it wasn't in alignment with my current brand because I never deleted things as I was growing, as I was advancing. So a lot of the power in working with you was that simplification, and then deleting the old stuff that no longer served me,

John Daniels  26:08  
and it's hard, right? Deleting the stuff because it's like

Suzanne Taylor-King  26:11  
hardest thing ever, ever. It's like you know, I have this pair of jeans that I I think they were over $300. This pair of jeans, and they are from I don't know how old I was, but they are small, small, tiny little things. They're still hanging in my closet. I I will never wear them again. I will never be the size I was that when I was in my 20s, right? But those jeans are still hanging there because they were an investment, right? They were over $300, and I think to myself, this is the same exact thing we're talking about. Is as you grow, as you develop, as you change, as you learn yourself more, we have to be willing to get rid of those old things. So I put those jeans in a pile to go on Vinted website, and I'm I'm really stoked. It's the same exact thing as deleting those old funnels.

John Daniels  27:34  
Yeah, and I think you and I have both converged on a way of using tech thoughtfully for our avatar is that it's as you say you get to delete the old you and a lot of the time you know we reflect these these things who am I who am I I mean I have questions all the time about who am I how do I fit myself into a description and it's about you know this what kind of funnel do I create? And but if you look around and and be like, okay, look in your CRM. And I've been building go high level funnels for for for for coaches for years now. But I've seen the backends of these $100,000 a month coaches. And like you get into the deep the data and attribution and all of that stuff. It turns out that the beating heart of all of that stuff is the actual relationships with the humans that then power the the social media engagement, the the the you know the visible pieces that you see. We think that they're successful because that's what is visible. But behind the scenes, it's about who are the people that you want to spend time with, and who are the people you're going to help, and how much time are you spending with them? So when I look at at you know go high level, it's not about how many funnels and things like they. It's look at the contacts and who are the people that you actually have tagged as your most important people, and are you spending time with them? And what if you get that feedback? We can then build systems around that. We were just talking about Grok and about these kind of things, where it's like the automation to pester me, right? I want to pester those brain tools.

Suzanne Taylor-King  29:06  
Love AI, and I love automations, and everybody knows that, right? But if you get an email from me, I was just telling you before we went live that my my Croft bot went through all of my past clients from the last two years, and wrote a personal email to them about how I enjoyed working with them. I'm looking for more people like them, so it's basically a referral email. And because of the way I have it set up, it's not going to just send cold emails. I reviewed every single one, and I edited every single one and hit send. The advantage of having AI or automations is that. You can do personal at a whole new level, right? And I don't know about you, but when I'm able to verbalize, like pick up the microphone and say, "Hey, I I want to send out a request for referrals because December and January my biggest months of the year, and I want to start with the clients I've made a difference for in the last two years. Many of them are referral partners. Let's craft an individual email to each one of them, and it was such a nice email. I believe you have one in your. I do, right? And I don't want it coming from an automation, even though I'm using an automation to help me. Who are those people write the emails? It gets me out of procrastination mode and overthinking mode, and I think if if we can look at automations that way, you have your clients do something, and I don't even know if you know you do this, but you had me think about each stage of my pipeline, you know, new person comes to me. What do I want to happen? I have the first conversation with somebody. What do I want to happen? And that can be automated, but it can also be really, really authentic and really human. And I think I think your clients benefit from that thinking behind the CRM and the automations.

John Daniels  31:48  
Yeah, because if you start with the human first, it's like who do I care about, and then build stuff for them. It starts to it has a different energy to it. I mean,

Suzanne Taylor-King  31:55  
it does.

John Daniels  31:56  
Someone asked me the other day, "How do I get more people to go to my? How do I get more people to enter my funnels, and I'm like, it's like it's like saying, how do I get more people to come to my birthday party? You know, you're just thinking about it all round.

Speaker 8  32:08  
Yeah, you

John Daniels  32:08  
know, if you're trying to get people to do something, it's it's you you you study. I'm like, how about like, how do we make the experience amazing? So when I think about automation, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to, and I'm not trying to handle something that I feel a bit icky about, like you know, I want to. How do I? How do I use automation so that I give everyone I care about me on my best day?

Speaker 4  32:32  
Yeah.

John Daniels  32:32  
How do I consistently have a fantastic experience? So if you think about it, it's not about most people when they think about marketing or getting clients. Cognitively, we suddenly, you know, we think about talking to strangers. How do I sell stuff to new people?

Suzanne Taylor-King  32:45  
More and more and more people. More, yeah,

John Daniels  32:47  
exactly. Whereas if you think about the other way around, is like who are the people I already have that I care about? Let's let's let's. And it's not about automating, but how do you give them the best level of you? How do we build systems so at the best level of you? You know, like yes, I'm living in a house, which is amazing. And like, did they automate building it? Yes, there are template-based processes, but it's to build up to a standard. What is the standard of interaction? And you start with the best people. So if when you then go from the best people out, that energy then goes goes through it. You know, think about your Zoom calls. Think about your your your you know how people book calls with you; those emails are going to get used far more than anything else. Like, start with that stuff. Start small, and move from from from you know from from inside out. And I mean, this is you know the the beginning of the like what I call the connected impact way is you start with the people you care about, and then serve those people. It can just be as simple as you know what kind of people are you looking for? Yeah, you know the simplest funnel in the world is start with the people you actually trust, and have the conversation that says, "How? Who are you looking for? How? Who can I refer you to?" And guess what? You listen deeply. You you you you listen to be able to help. And guess what happens in the next half of that conversation? The person then will go back and say, "How can I help you? Who can I introduce you to?" Yeah, man. That's the entire marketing funnel compressed down into that thing. Now, yes, do I have automation to make sure that every single conversation I have, the action items of that are tracked to make sure that I keep track of that that that person? You know that can you extract content ideas from that? Absolutely. Can you leverage that? And everything that you then leverage from that is built on solid ground.

Suzanne Taylor-King  34:37  
Yeah.

John Daniels  34:38  
You know, so you build your systems, and it's just got this idea from Lean Startup, which is Customer Problem Solution Hypothesis. I got to I got to spend time with with so I live in Edinburgh, originally from South Africa. But in Edinburgh, there are three companies that that reached the billion dollar valuation, and I got to spend time with one one of the founders of the of one of them. And he said that the single most and it's an app, much like Vinted, which was then acquired, but not Vinted. You know that kind of. It was called Molzy, but it's much like Vinted. But he said the single most important thing that they did, the single thing that leveraged the the company more than anything else, was they spent time in Starbucks buying coffee for students and watching them use the app,

Speaker 9  35:22  
right? Wow,

Suzanne Taylor-King  35:23  
wow! I, you know, I just, I just said to a client the other day, who, who works from home, speaker, coach, I said, I'm going to challenge you, which I love to do, to go and work from Starbucks one day a week, And talk to strangers, and he he did it two weeks in a row. He has a new client, a new speaking gig, and a bunch of new connections. People who are doing the same or similar businesses or networking, and it it got him out of his house too, which was incredible. And I want to go back to something you said, um, and what it made me do. Yeah, I I love I love the practical aspect of what you're sharing, but I want to break it down in actual like what is this thinking and what does it do? Well, last year I had 97 clients, 97 paying clients, all in different capacities, right? Some one-on-one, some laser coaching, some members of my group coaching, and I actually looked at all 98, and I said there was 12 that were more successful than anyone else, and they all possessed the same psychographics, the same mental outlook on business. Okay, so that was check mark number one. They all have this. What was the commonality between those 12 that was different Than the others, and guess what it was? Proximity to me. They got more conversation. They got more WhatsApp messages. They also asked more questions of me. They actually put themselves out there and said, "Tell me more about this, or what do I do about this?" And other people don't do that. Wow, isn't this so? It actually informed me of what the floor needs to be for next year, and that felt like freedom for me as a coach and as a human, right? If those 12 people were getting a WhatsApp channel with me because they asked for it, then that needs to be the standard moving forward, and all of a sudden, I felt more connected and more freedom at the same time.

John Daniels  38:31  
And it's it's a funny thing that because it happens when you look at the data. In in in lean, it's one of the the principles: gidgey gimbletsu go and see for yourself, right? Where it's like you're not allowed to have, you know, and in marketing stuff, there's like so much. Hey, you should be on Instagram. You should be on this stuff. It's just it's just statements that are not based on fact,

Speaker 10  38:53  
right?

John Daniels  38:54  
You know, and in lean, you you you know you who are the actual humans? What did they actually say? And it's an absolute breakthrough because in the coaching space, the product, the messaging, all of that stuff is in the conversations, right? It's in the conversations. Your product development, your customer research, all of that stuff is in conversations, which then lends itself to this this kind of data. And you try to, you know, you kind of think, who's my ideal client? And your brain, you know, takes you over there, right? But when you turn around and look at the data, look at what's in there. Who spent money with me? How long? What did they say? You have the data, and you look at that. The customers will tell you what they want, and and it is it's it's. I mean, I did, I did. So I said we're we're so like in parallel. I did the same thing. I was like, I went like, and I was like, how do I? And I got told, and I was like, okay, well, now what do I do? What do I do with this new powerful thing? It's like, here's the work I've always wanted to do: is run this process on myself. And and and I came to a very similar. Guess what? In the work that we do, the people I spend the most time with stay the longest and get the best results. And as you know, as a as a like bringer, as a. You know, in our space, what people are buying is access to us. It's the stuff that comes through

Suzanne Taylor-King  40:05  
us,

John Daniels  40:05  
and it's reflected in our market. It's reflected in our people. We can close that feedback loop. I think this is, you know, this is not just AI proof, but AI accelerated.

Suzanne Taylor-King  40:15  
Yeah.

John Daniels  40:15  
Be the person that people want to spend time with that actually moves them from where they are to where they want to be, and we can use the tools that we have to get the signal to the noise through the you know separate the signal from noise. But the mission you know has always been help humans, like help the humans. Who are the people that you want to care that you want to help? Where are they now? Where do they want to be? What's in the way? You know, and then help them. Help them. Yeah,

Suzanne Taylor-King  40:42  
and I I think the idea that you you gave me, and I you know I have tons of AI ideas, but you said something a couple weeks ago, and I went to Claude, and I said, pull all of my transcripts from all of my coaching calls, and tell me about what I do. That was it. Very simple. Tell me about what I do, and it it was beautiful, inspiring. I was like, hell yeah, this is amazing. And then I can use that in my marketing. I'm not good at talking about Myself, like I, I don't talk about my past accomplishments. I, I don't. I struggle with that. But this really helped me see what I'm actually doing on all those calls. And then I took it one step further, and I said, "Tell me every single compliment that someone gave me on all of those calls, and I know most women are like this. We brush off compliments. We and and men are better at receiving compliments for some reason. But you know, my husband this morning said, "Ooh, I love when you wear that sweater," and I was like, "This old thing, right?" Like trying to be humble or something instead of receiving it and saying thank you. I love this sweater too, and you know, business is the same exact way we we receive so many compliments and we don't actually hear them. And AI has helped me hear them, see them, read them, and actually allow it to change your vibration and how you feel about yourself, because that's what we're saying here, right? That that actually your best day, your highest vibe. That's how we want to feel and be all the time, and we have to really understand that about ourselves to get to that point,

John Daniels  43:02  
yeah. And don't don't be afraid of of you know feeling feeling what's what's in the way. You know, like that that it's okay to feel shitty. Just don't pretend you're not feeling shitty, because then it's going to come back. You know, if you feel that feel it all the ways, but then you feel it. Yeah, yeah. If you feel you know, just feel it all the way. I mean,

Suzanne Taylor-King  43:20  
yeah, feel it all the way.

John Daniels  43:22  
Feel it all the way, because then you only then you only deal with it once. You deal with those emotions once.

Speaker 6  43:26  
Yeah,

John Daniels  43:27  
the you know opera went. I got a pro win for you. What's you must deal with deal with things while they're still still whispers, right? Because the universe will give you a chance, and then you yeah, and all that. That's like okay, I'll come back with a stick.

Suzanne Taylor-King  43:40  
Well, I I think negative or emotions in general. I remember learning years ago, learning that you can only experience an emotion for 90 seconds, and anything longer than that is you ruminating about it,

John Daniels  44:02  
yeah. That that's on you.

Suzanne Taylor-King  44:04  
Oh, oh! I was offended, you know, because my my saboteur, hyper vigilance, hyper achiever, got to do more, do more, do more, do more, do more, and my saboteur was offended in that moment, like, oh, you mean, you mean if the problem's me? I'm just ruminating on stuff, and you know, again, we have to get out of our own way and simplify our business so that we can do what we're here to do. Not like I didn't start a coaching business to write content for Facebook. It, I, I didn't want to do that.

John Daniels  44:52  
What you want to be a marketer? You want to be a website manager?

Suzanne Taylor-King  44:55  
No, no, no. But I build a damn good website. Let me tell.

John Daniels  45:00  
That that you do. Yeah, that

Suzanne Taylor-King  45:01  
I do,

Speaker 6  45:03  
I do.

Suzanne Taylor-King  45:03  
But I don't want to do that for a living.

John Daniels  45:06  
100%.

Suzanne Taylor-King  45:07  
Yeah. Is

John Daniels  45:08  
that all right? Three minutes. Three minutes till the top of the hour. Then

Suzanne Taylor-King  45:10  
okay. Then tell us about your networking event once a month. I'm a huge fan. I canceled my own networking event to invite people to your so if that doesn't tell you about how great you are, tell us about that and then how to reach you.

John Daniels  45:30  
Amazing. So how to reach me? Connected Impact. That online that's got all all the goodies. The main thing to do if you want to come and experience what we're about, I have a networking event called Networking Event for for conscious entrepreneurs, but you're going to go and meet people and have connection. I believe you know having an experience of what I do is going to be way more important than anything I say. Come meet some actual people. Yeah. Um. You know, meet people because that's the I say the foundation of everything is meet cool people, help them. So here's a place. Come meet cool people. Um. Grab grab some time with me. I'd like to find out more about you and see how I can help you connect with the people that you want to connect to, and and and create the impact that you want to see in the world. Yes, I do take one to one clients where I help you meet you where you're at and help you navigate the path from make some damn money to building systems that leverage your time so that you can impact the world. Connected impact of online. It's all on there, and it's been incredible to spend this time with you

Speaker 11  46:30  
today.

Suzanne Taylor-King  46:30  
Thank you. It flew by, and so if you want a personal intro to John and you know me, you know what to do. Just reach out, and I will make that connection happen. If you want to start with John's networking event, I invite all of my people to that event. So love to have you. Thank you, John, for being here, and thank you for who you are in my world. Appreciate you.

John Daniels  46:55  
Thank you, Zen. Appreciate you too, and I'll see you at the next event.

Speaker 10  46:59  
All right,

John Daniels  46:59  
and on Monday for our regular call.

Suzanne Taylor-King  47:01  
And on Monday for our regular call. Have a great day, everyone, and a fabulous weekend. Thanks for listening to Unlock Your Way with STK. If this conversation surfaced something for you, a question, a pattern, a realization you can't ignore, don't sit with it alone. Reach out. The first step is always a conversation. Book a private call. Visit suzannetaylorking.com because clarity doesn't come from more information. It comes from seeing the constraint you've been missing.