The Hot Seat Sessions

A Crowd Sourced & Funded Marketing Consultation

How you can get 90-minutes of my personal coaching time, and get utterly unstuck on your #1 marketing sticking point without spending a penny.

Dear Entrepreneur,
Here’s the pitch.
You’ve got an issue in your marketing that you can’t seem to solve. It’s the nut that won’t crack.
You’d love to hire personalized, one on one professional help but it’s expensive.
But this issue isn’t going to solve itself and, frankly, it’s costing you money.
So, aside from the costly approach of ignoring it, what are you going to do about it?
Option #1: Go into debt to get it. I see this all the time. I can’t tell you how many people have come to me over the years and told me about spending $10,000 on expensive coaching packages. I have heard stories of people paying $10,000 — $100,000 (even taking out second mortgages on their home) on premium coaching packages and year-long mastermind programs, and yet barely getting the kind of 1-1 mentoring they need. It’s brutal.

Option #2: Self-Educate. Read blog posts. Search on google. Do everything you can to learn about this issue on your own for free or for not much money. This takes so much time. There are tens of thousands of youtube videos on marketing. But who do you trust? And where do you start? A central challenge with this approach is that people are often wrong about what they think their main issue is.
There don’t seem to be a lot of alternatives.
But, the other day I had the idea for this which I wanted to share with you.
Again: this is a way you can get 90 minutes of my one-on-one time (genuinely) without paying a penny.
Here’s how: your friends pay for the time.
Let me back up and share where this idea came from.
Let’s say you wanted your yard redone to grow food and medicines and be more beautiful. So, you go to a permaculture designer and they quote you $10,000. You’re despondent. You’d been so excited about the idea. They tell you that the design actually only costs $2000 but it’s the installation that is the most expensive – that’s the other $8,000. You’re about to either give up or try to figure it out on your own when they offer you another possibility. 
“Why don’t you host a permablitz?” they ask.
The explain how it works. A date will be set to do the installation. It will all get done in a single day (or maybe weekend). You’ll invite everyone you know to come and help. The permaculture company will do the same. Everyone will work for free for the day. Your responsibility will be to play host and feed them. Everyone wins. You get the installation done cheaply. They get paid for the design and the day and everyone who comes gets an experience that’s both incredibly educational and community building. 
In the design community, they call these types of events charettes.
In the rural world, they have work bees and barn raisings.
Many people come together, in a structured way, to help solve a particular problem.
To bring this back to your business: You need help. You have a lot of friends with limited time who want to help and support you but have no idea how to do that… but they would happily spend a couple of hours to help you out if they thought it would really make a difference. This idea brings together your need with their desire to help. It gives them a practical way to support you.
So… Let’s step back again.
Why are you stuck?
You’re stuck because you can only see so much. You have a limited perspective. What you need is more eyes on your situation.
So, here’s how we do that.

Step One: You hone in on the issue you’d most like support with.

Step Two: You make a list of all of your friends and colleagues who you think would contribute $35 and 60 minutes of their time to helping you out and who you think would, if asked, have useful advice for your business.

Step Three: You email them and ask for their support. 

Step Four: You figure out the best date and time that works for yourself, them and myself. 

Step Five: You collect the money from them and pay me for the time. The session costs $400 (90 minutes of my time and so you’ll need 12 friends to step up to cover the whole thing). 

Step Six: We do the call together. Note: The call will be recorded and so friends and colleagues who can’t make it can listen to call after but being on the call is far preferred. 

Why do your friends need to be on the call? 
Here’s where it gets really good.
The format of the call is this:

• 2 minutes – You will have two minutes to articulate the core issue and question you’re wanting help with.
• 25 minutes – The friends and colleagues you’ve gathered will ask you questions and reflect what they’re hearing. There is no advice allowed in this portion of the call. They will be digging into what’s underlying your issue and making sure it’s as clear as possible so that whatever advice comes is relevant.
• 5 minutes – They will give advice (I’ll tell you how in a minute but I predict you’ll love it). 
• 30 minutes – I’ll give you my best ideas and advice.
• 30 minutes – After the call, I will take 30 minutes to polish up my feedback to you and ensure I include links to resources that I think could be most useful to you and send them in an email to you with a copy of the recording of the call. 

Crowdfunding: Money, Wisdom and Support
Here’s the format of how they will be giving you advice. While they are listening to you share, they will be taking notes either in an email or in a shared google doc (depending on their level of savvy and their and your preferences). 
They will be asked to divide their notes into the following categories:

1. Advice & Ideas: What do they think you should do? This is where they tell you.  
2. Resources: maybe a website you should check out, a local person to connect to, a magazine, book or movie to look at etc. 
3. Personal Reflections: What are they most appreciating about you? Are their some personal reflections that they’re wanting to share with you about a pattern they see in you in this situation?
4. How they can help you personally: This is where they’ll put commitments of what they can do for you personally and by when. Can they come over and help you out? Can they read over your sales page? Can they introduce you to someone? Can they come over and help you tidy?

What’s Can You Expect of This Process?

• it will be easy: you’ll be given email templates to make the invitation process easy
• your friends will be guided well to ensure that the advice that they give you is genuinely worthwhile and helpful

What’s Expected of You?

• to pay me, in full, before the session
• to gather as many of your friends as you can (again, it will take twelve to pay the full amount at $35 each). The number isn’t just about the money. I don’t want to do this with less than six of your friends on the call. The more eyes on your situation the better.
• that you schedule 30 minutes before the call to sit down and prepare your thoughts (I’ll send you a prep sheet to help)
• that you schedule two hours within 24 hours of the call to review the notes people sent you
• that you schedule two hours within the week of the call to implement and act on the advice you got
• that you send a follow-up email to everyone who was on the call (myself included) thirty-days later with an update and one final request or ask that could help you take the next step
• if you want to be a super keener then there’s an additional ask which will double what you get from the process (which will mean everyone who participates in the call, at your request, will feel much better about spending an hour of their life helping you). What is it? I’ll ask you to spend the week before the call tidying your home and office and clearing our your physical space. This might seem like not much but it is actually a very big thing. It’s optional but highly recommended.
• that you are committed to using people’s time well. If you get 12 of your friends and colleagues to show up, that means there will be 14 of us on the call. That means 14 hours of human life are being spent on your issue, so make good use of it.  If you were to show up late, not listen well and do nothing with it, those 14 hours would be wasted. 

What’s In It For Me?

• I charge less because I record these sessions and use transcripts for content (it will be anonymous and, if your name or website is associated with it, I will check in first). These conversations are also a source of stories for my workshops. 

Important Caveats:

• this is just one session. There are, of course, many deeper issues involved in growing a successful business. We’ll just be laser focused on one of them.
• the one issue we can’t handle is niche or ‘what do i want to do with my life’. it’s too big. you must come with a business or project you’re passionate about.
• not everyone will be able to make the call. That’s okay. The call will be recorded and they’ll be able to listen to it and share their thoughts with you after. They’ll be asked to commit to doing this within 48 hours of the call. And, frankly, if even six of them participated that’s six more perspectives than you would have had without this process.

That’s all! If you have any questions, please drop me an email.
Warmest,
Tad.
p.s. Not ready for a Hot Seat Session but still need help?
If you’re struggling with your niche – go here.
If you aren’t sure where to find your ideal clients (even though you know who they are) go here. 
If you’d like to take the baby step of a tiny, five minute version of this process go here. 
If you have a voice somewhere saying, “I do not deserve to have that much time being spent on my business.” then watch this.