Leading Your Business with Heart
i'm very pleased to be seated next to elliot connie and elliot's been um been become a star of our community absolute star and you've done some amazing things so could you just tell everyone a little bit about yourself yeah and how you ended up here yeah so um you know by trade i'm a psychotherapist and i do something called solution-focused brief therapy and you know when i was in graduate school i had such a burning desire to help people i had such a burning desire to make a difference in people's lives and i i thought the best way to do that was to open a practice so i opened a therapy practice and had a really successful therapy practice it was full for many many years but i realized i'm only helping the people in my local area that could like drive to me and it started making me think how do i expand and make a difference to more people and eventually i got interested in online stuff because online stuff can go any and everywhere and you and i have a mutual friend bill o'hanlon and um he introduced me to the launch world and then eventually introduced me to you and uh your work and your training material actually didn't intertwine your training material and i started using that material to um launch my my training courses and it completely transformed my business and in my life and my lifestyle so you were just talking about so you've gone deep we've talked wait this isn't our first time talking no we've gotten to know each other pretty well and and you went really deep and and you know you're you're you have a history as an athlete you know how to train you know how to focus and you said i'm going to go really deep on this you you just went to school yeah on marketing because you're a psychotherapist you're not a marketer you're not a salesperson no none of that stuff came natural no and it you know i and i want to say like i really honestly want to make a difference in people's lives and and and training psychotherapists to be more confident to be more skilled to be more proficient is a way to like help their clients through them but i was really like bad at it at first like getting getting them to kind of buy into me and buy into themselves and um i just wasn't good at it and in order to fulfill my purpose and my calling i had to figure out a way and you're right i treated it just like mastering any skill i often refer to it as the launch lab like i went into the launch lab and and um worked at it until i thought i could do a good job of conveying to people the value in the material the transformation they would experience from taking material and then in my case the transformation their client would experience from seeing a psychotherapist and seeing a a professional that was really confident and really competent and like once i got good at that like it just completely blew everything out of the water so we were just talking and first i just i've said this to you before i i'm just going to say to the camera is i've get to work with and meet a lot of amazing people your your inner game and you know we talk a lot in our community about the difference between inner game and otter game and outer game is like how to write an email or how to you know put together your pre-launch but the inner game is like the you're what what you're saying to yourself and your inner game is just on point at a level of very very few people i've ever met thank you uh it's it's been extraordinary and we but we were just talking about your first launch and you must talk about it yeah we were like one of my first launch of we were really just talking about this um you know launching is a real kind of psychological you know battlefield almost at times and you know you read this book and you read these case studies and like man when i launch i'm gonna i'm gonna like get a million dollars and and you write down the first ten things you're gonna buy i'm gonna buy a ferrari and i'm gonna buy my mom a house and i'm gonna buy you like a fortress and you know all these things and um i went ahead and i did the launch and uh made 38 thousand dollars in in five days and i was so gutted man i was so disappointed and i called my my friend and um and colleague you know and mentor bill o'hanlon and i he could hear it in me like i was devastated like billy i didn't make ferrari money you know i made 38 000 and bill kind of slapped me back to reality and he said ellie was the last time he made 38 000 in a week and i said never and he said then enjoy this so okay good point look good i'll enjoy this you know it's like you know a lot of people don't make 38 thousand dollars in a year and you just figured out a way how to do it in five days and it kind of reset my my mind and kind of reoriented to me to what the purpose of this all is can you talk a little bit about what it's been like to be someone who is you know a successful psychotherapist but no experience in in selling stuff yeah it's scary i mean it really is scary because um you know people don't like to be sold things so when you are bad at it and as admittedly i was bad at it as evidenced by the outcomes i was getting early on um people say really harsh things you know they reply to your emails like why are you selling and i don't like this and i don't appreciate this and and you you it's so hard to hear that kind of feedback and you take it on because you realize like i'm not i'm i'm trying really hard to convey value to you i'm trying really hard to to show you like what could happen i believe in what i'm teaching like i genuinely believe in what i'm teaching but i'm i wasn't doing a great job of of conveying to people the value and and the impact it could have on their life and it was it was really scary but i mean you didn't ask this and i'll tell you this i will tell you this moment i will never forget this moment uh before the pandemic i traveled a lot like i was on the road uh two to three weeks out of the year and um one of the ways that i worked at this was i wanted to do webinars because i enjoyed teaching and it gave me the opportunity to practice making an offer to a live audience and uh it was really hard like jeffrey you asked what's it like it's hard it's scary and it's hard because you're getting feedback that's not warm and cuddly all the time but the moment i'll never forget you didn't ask this i was okay to share this but i remember doing a webinar was in canada and i was sitting at my laptop in this hotel and i had done several webinars and i'm really excited because i'm giving people value for free and and i and i know it was impacting their lives because they would send me emails saying like your free webinar was amazing but i didn't appreciate the art you know that kind of stuff and then i did this one webinar and we had about i don't know 500 people signed up for the webinar and we get to the end and i make the offer and 120 people bought and there were no negative responses there was no there there was no like you know crazy emails it was just people saying they appreciated it and then so not only that there was a financial reward for that and there was a kind of heart reward for that that like 120 people are going to become better at solution-focused brief therapy which means if all 120 people see 20 clients that means you know 200 whatever the number is of clients has gone bad at math but whatever the number of clients 2 400 clients are gonna get better so there's like a heart reward for it but then over the course of the next two or three weeks i got emails from people saying like thank you so much and i worked with this couple and helped them stay together and i worked with this teenager who's gotten off drugs and it's like wow and and i that was the moment i think i realized i connected the importance and the ability to um make an offer in a way that people could buy into it and change their life and it switched for me like i realized like okay now i know how how to do this and so it's hard until it isn't and then it's unbelievably rewarding i think i've heard you say that something along the lines of you you earn the right man to make an offer yeah i i think i think you have to earn the right to make an offer to people um and like in our world we do a lot of free training and i've often heard you say uh the very best training in the marketing field is plf and the second best training is the free series that you do and by by giving people free content and i want to live my life to where every person whom i cross paths with is better for having crossed my path that's genuinely my goal in life i'm not purpose i fail occasionally but that's honestly i want everybody with whom i interact with to be better for having interact with me and that includes the people who sign up for my free events and when you take that attitude like whether you're going to buy or not i want to give you a transformational experience that you can take into your life and make a difference in my case like a psychotherapist you can take it into your clinical room and make a difference and if i can successfully do that then i've earned the right to say and if any of you want to go deeper and get personal coaching for me or an in-depth coaching training experience or whatever i've earned that right because i've shared my heart with them i've shared my true genuine desire that i want you to be better from having interacted with me and once you do that people will allow you to extend even more right and i and i you know you and i were talking earlier and i was saying that um you know there are tactics and strategies but there's a heart in this work too and if you can show up with your heart while doing those tactics and strategies that are that are taught in the plf world uh you earn the right to extend even further into people's lives because they trust you're doing it for a good reason and they trust that you're doing it with integrity and they trust that if they allow you to extend into their life their lives will be even better because to the level you've already impacted their life has made their life better so i know some of the behind the scenes numbers and i know that um that 38 thousand dollars was just the start yeah can you just talk a little bit about how your business has grown yeah my business has grown it's grown quite a bit so um last year we had our first million dollar year um this year we're already right at a million dollars with several months to go in the year but it's interesting like me and my team we don't we don't i mean of course we talk about money but the central part of what we talk about more often is the number of people that are going through our trainers because when you when you have that level of increase in revenue that means you also have that level of increase in audience and um gosh you should see my inbox like i have people emailing me the most touching amazing things and for me like you can't have the million without the audience that's appreciative of what they've gotten from you so my business has exploded but it's also filled my my heart and life with with joy like i it fills my bank account and it fills my my heart and life with joy and the two things are very much interconnected and now you're just about to embark on a an exciting new chapter yeah so up until now elliott is his audience has been psychotherapists and helping psychotherapists become better psychotherapists and learn this solution focus brief therapy and impact their their clients um so where are we going now so now you know the job of psychotherapy is an amazing job i get to watch people like rediscover themselves in my office uh but it's incredibly private it happens in my office behind closed doors no cameras no audience no and you you watch people that have gone through things that like you can't imagine like the stories i've heard people share you can't imagine and in my office you watch them transform and become what i refer to as a hero in their life they they tap into their hero qualities and they become way more than they ever thought they could be and at some point i became not just passionate but like on fire about wanting everyone to have that experience so um you know after some thoughts and prayer and thinking and meditation and talks with people like you i decided to kind of lean into that and um beginning to make content for people about you know one of the things that we all experience is we all get knocked down like none of us are gonna get through this life without being knocked down and i want to help people realize that you're capable of getting back up and moving forward in a way that's even grander than you were moving before you got not get knocked down so as we're shifting from just talking to psychotherapists to talking to everybody and helping them all realize that um there's a magic in you um that once you get knocked down you can tap into that magic and um live a life that's beyond what you thought even pre being knocked down and it's really exciting and amazing and scary and all these things but it's it's where i have to go because that's just where my heart is leading me right now if you know me you know i uh i follow what my heart leads me towards so uh just a few minutes ago elliott interviewed me for uh for his video series and you kept on asking me hard questions so i'm going to ask you a hard question so in june [Music] just a few months ago you came to our mastermind meeting and you had you had genuine is trepidation a good word yeah yeah sure trepidation about about sharing this vision and asking the question about about can what do you think of this can i do this and this is what i want to do am i crazy or what should i how should i do it yep could you talk a little bit about that trepidation yeah you know the hardest thing anyone can ever tell someone is what they want to achieve because the most common response you get when you tell someone what you want to achieve is a response that comes from the listeners limitations so when you tell someone what you want to achieve the most common response is a response of doubt is a response of doubt in you is a response so it's really scary to say out loud hey jeff i want to i want to change the world i want to i want to inspire like every human being walking on the planet i want to let everybody know that just because you get knocked down you actually become stronger from getting back up like i want i want everybody and and you're so you brace yourself like now that i've said it out loud i'm gonna get told how hard it is and how impossible it is and you're too young or too old you're too this or to that um so it's a really really scary thing to say out loud it's the scariest thing you could ever say is what your what your heart truly wants we hold that tight because we don't like for people to to to squish them and i was definitely afraid that if i say this out loud but it was on my mind and heart like i think i texted like we were texting about and you were like you're gonna say this and you should say it today it was not an easy thing for sure it's hard to say those things that your heart is most desiring because people are going to tell you why you can't do it and that's a difficult thing to hear that's not what that happened in that room that's not what happened in that room no no no this is a room i found this is a room of really amazing supportive people um and it was it was a moment i'll remember for the rest of my life with um but that's what you fear you know you fear being told what your limitations are yeah no you you don't there there aren't any i'm not seeing any limitations for you on this path right now maybe maybe they're going to come soon but um yeah i'm very excited uh to see someone who just has the the chops you've got and has already impacted so many psychotherapists and you're going to be able to to you know there's a lot of people out there telling people how to live their lives and how to live better lives and and sometimes i slip into that myself but someone who's got the chops that you've got and experience looking forward to it so what's the next step yeah i'm i'm looking forward to it too the next step well first there's like a super secret big deal next step that is in the in the works um that i'm not going to say here but let's just say it's a potentially really big deal uh and the other next steps is i'm going to be publishing content that is designed to inspire everybody like i'm going to be publishing content on my website my youtube channel and social media pro platforms um that's not just about psychotherapists but i really honestly you know what i want honestly the next step even like the super secret big deal thing i want people to watch my content wherever it is they see it and say i think i'm capable of doing something bigger than i thought that's what i want i want people to visit my social media platforms my youtube channel website and beyond and and consume something and be a bit better and believe in themselves a bit more regardless what they what they had been through so that's the next step for me you know as a professional coach really someone who's coached so many people like what you just said with 99.9 of the people i'd say don't do that because it's like you want to help everyone be empowered to know that they can get back but but you i think can do it thank you jeff and i just said that publicly i said that to you i've said that to you many times absolutely because um there are not very many folks like you around um so i am looking forward to this where can people find that content where are some of the channels you know go find me on on facebook and instagram and twitter at elliott speaks you can find my website uh eliakani.com two l's and two t's by the way uh eliakami.com and um and two ends yeah two ends connie with twins and um hopefully pretty soon you'll be able to find me in some other places too elliot thanks for joining me thanks for having me i'm looking forward to this next chapter thanks for having me and and thanks for being the opposite of what people usually experience when they tell you tell people what they want i got a very different response and it's sent me on this trajectory already i can't wait to see it thanks man i'm supposed to say i always end these videos with hey let's go get em this week go check out elliot's l8 stuff it's fantastic he knows what he's talking about he can he can move mountains go check out elliott and let's go get him this week
2021-09-19 12:10
