Stephanie Hess’s passion and purpose is being a catalyst for self-employed coaches and leaders to monetize their brilliance and make a huge impact — what she desired most in her own life just years ago. A former Fortune 500 Director; Stephanie feels most lit up helping business owners leverage their intuition and joy to strategically grow their business as founder of Stephanie Hess Coaching.
Stephanie Hess Coaching is based on 15 years of business and marketing experience and coaching over 100 entrepreneurs in her career. Combining a unique background in global cosmetics marketing, professional sports PR and health coaching, with a love for personal growth and spiritual concepts; Stephanie created a refreshingly simple, 4-step, needle-moving process for creating high-value clients online, without complexity, cold selling or overwhelm.
Stephanie is of the belief that you MUST design a business model that suits you; not marketing gurus, mentors or your social media feed. For her and her clients this means building a 6 and multi-6 figure practice working part-time with just a handful of high-value, high-impact clients.
Stephanie calls NYC and Lancaster, PA home; surrounded by houseplants and a growing wine collection.
Jeff Wilkinson is a longtime Austin entrepreneur, currently serving as the chairman and CEO of Keystone Bank. With his personal and unique human-centric approach to banking, Jeff leads Keystone Bank to focus on integrity, honesty and resilience. Jeff has over 28 years of experience in the financial and business industries with a focus on finance and business development. He has led various organizations in their expansion of locations and increased their assets.
Previously, he founded Pioneer Bank in Austin. Under his leadership as the CEO and president, he managed to grow the banks’ assets to $1.2 billion and expanded to 22 locations across Texas. During this time, Pioneer Bank was ranked as one of the largest local banks headquartered in Austin by the Austin Business Journal.
In 2018, Jeff founded Keystone Bank with a successful capital raise of $20 million. He founded Keystone Bank with a maverick and entrepreneurial approach to local banking that ultimately allows for easily accessible financial resources to its community members. With its easy access to financial guidance, Jeff prides himself on being an active listener and problem solver to best tailor the bank’s services to every client.
Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science in accounting from the University of Central Missouri. He resides in Austin where he serves on multiple nonprofit organizations such as: the Austin Habitat for Humanity Finance Committee, the Board of Trails Property Owners’ Association and on the Advisory Board for Qualtik. For more information, please visit: https://www.keystone.bank/
Janet Metzger is an experienced Network Marketing Coach and Consultant with a demonstrated history of achieving stellar results. Having been a leader in various organizations, her experience varies from start-up businesses to Fortune 100 Companies.
She has led sales teams that produce $60M in annual revenue and large teams of over 10,000 members.
She is highly skilled in all aspects of Network Marketing…from A-Z. Whether it be Becoming an Inspirational Leader, Business Planning, Coaching, Development of Leaders. or Sales and Recruiting, she can fulfil the need.
She is a Subject Matter Expert in Network Marketing and Direct Selling having worked at the corporate level for 17 years, and several years building her own business. With a diverse background my other experiences includes Retail Management, Non-Profit Management. Distribution and Industrial Sales, Events and Advertising.
Her first love is Network Marketing and is proud to be a part of this great industry.
They identify the right kind of potential clients, tease them with a preview sufficient to get them excited and into the right state of psychological arousal. At the proper moment, when the prospect is at peak excitement, they make their offer, and the client happily hands over their money for the services they are excited to receive.
Of course, what I am describing is the funnel sales process that many successful coaches use. Only a small proportion of coaches are actually able to use this strategy effectively while most struggle to get clients. If you are in the second group, you will find this article very interesting.
Over the last two decades, Douglas Vermeeren has conducted extensive firsthand research into the lives of the world’s top achievers. He has the success strategies of top business leaders from Nike, Reebok, Fruit of the Loom, FedEx, KFC, United Airlines, Microsoft, Disney, and others to share with you.
He has been called the world most effective wealth coach and the worlds #1 Passive income coach. He doesn’t teach or focus on theory – he gets results.
Today he is the featured expert on FOX, CNN, FOX Business, ABC, NBC and others. Appearing on both television, radio and print to regularly share the powerful wealth strategies the most wealthy use. He has been featured in the New York times, Money magazine, Inc, Fortune, Forbes and the Huffington post.
For his powerful insights into financial and business success the media now refers to him as the modern day Napoleon Hill.
Mark Willis is a man on a mission to help you think differently about your money, your economy and your future. After graduating with six figures of student loan debt and discovering a way to turn his debt into real wealth as he watched everybody lose their retirement savings and home equity in 2008, he knew that he needed to find a more predictable way to meet his financial objectives and those of his clients.
Suzanne Pool, Women’s Sexual Empowerment Coach is a stand for women in their 30s, 40s – and beyond – to have the most mind-blowing sex and enjoyment of their lives! Having broken through her own barren, celibate, career-dominated life of her 30s to living a fulfilling, adventurous and seriously fun (in all ways!) life in her 40s, Suzanne shows her clients it is possible to grasp life by the horns, conquer their fears and live life as a daring adventure – no matter their age, or where you live in the world!
A former Lawyer with a wry sense of humour, and the willingness to get down and dirty, Suzanne coaches from a place where your dreams are possible (and feeling sexy is an everyday occurance!) – and the only thing preventing you achieving them is something you haven’t yet seen.
You want your orgasm back? And it’s been missing for more than a decade?
Nathalie Plamondon-Thomas is the EXPERT with a PROVEN SYSTEM to get you transformational results. She works with people who want to find confidence so they can unlock their full potential. She also works with entrepreneurs who want to find the clarity they need to make money living from their passion. She is a No.1 International Bestselling author of fifteen books on success, communication, wellness and empowerment. She is the Founder and CEO of the THINK Yourself® ACADEMY, offer-ing leading edge online courses, one-on-one coaching and business mentorship. Along the past 30 years, she has inspired over 100,000 audience members and empowered thousands of clients internationally to get rid of their nega-tive self-talk. She combines over 10 years of experience in human resources, 25 years of experience in sales and over 30 years in the fitness industry. In 2007, she was “Fitness Instructor of the Year” for Canada.
And, as if that’s not enough she just recieved the Canadian Presenter of the Year for 2021.
We’re often warned about the dangers of instant gratification. In the infamous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, schoolchildren were presented with a marshmallow on a plate. They were given two options: eat the marshmallow now and get not get any more, or wait for a certain amount of time and then receive two marshmallows as a reward for their patience.
2020 was going to be my year. The year I broke the six-figure barrier. The year I began living my best life. I had never heard the phrase “Covid pivot,” but I was soon to learn it very well.
It had been three years since I wrote my first book, The Guy Who Knows a Guy, sharing how I had built my network in my local area. During that time, I had connected a lot of people, helped a lot of people, made money for a lot of other people. The time had come for all the work I had done to pay off.
As the sun rose on the first day of 2020, I was a publisher for Best Version Media, running two magazines in Southeast Connecticut. Over the previous years, I had laid the groundwork. The magazines were established and popular. All that remained was to line up two new sponsors per month, and I’d be serving the community and making a good six figure income by 2021.
January: two new sponsors. February: two sponsors. March: two more. On track.
For a few months, I’d been hearing news of some new virus out in Asia. It was just a bad flu or something. The media was doing their usual catastrophizing, calling it a pandemic to get ratings.
There was talk of closing our local schools. Closing the schools, for a new kind of bad flu: Ridiculous!
On March 10th, 2021, I thought that holding up this Corona bottle at a networking event was funny. Three days later, I wouldn’t be laughing anymore. This was the last in person networking event I would attend until May, 2021. No single photo represents the value of humility in my life more than this one.
On March 12th, I had a conversation with our state representative who had been briefed by the state health officials. This wasn’t a bad flu.
This was the real deal. This was serious. The Novel Corona Virus, which had recently been officially named COVID-19, required a profound and immediate public health response.
Covid Pivot Online
While I had been blissfully ignorant of the coming pandemic, Dave Durand, the CEO of Best Version Media, had his ear to the ground. In January, he was also following this Novel Corona Virus. As a CEO, part of his job is to look over the next hill and know what might affect the business.
The magazines I built continue to bring people together and share good news to this day.
He learned that COVID-19 could spread asymptomatically, and that’s all he needed to know. Lockdowns were coming.
Best Version Media had always been an in person, face to face kind of company.
They created community magazines serving hyperlocal audiences. The only way to build such a publication was to get out in the offices and coffee shops, face to face with our partners and sponsors. There was no other way to to do it.
Until there needed to be.
Upon learning of the coming threat, BVM immediately began the development of a Remote Guided Presentation. What had been unthinkable was now necessary, and the company would be ready.
Best Version Media was ready. By the middle of the next week, the Remote Guided Presentation (or RGP) was ready to go. While many companies were caught flat footed, we were ready to keep the engine running in changing times.
This was a very good thing. The BVM publications are positive, local magazines that make people feel happy and connected. If there was ever a time that such a thing was needed it, was the spring of 2020.
While there would be dramatic adjustments with remote learning and locking down in our apartment, I could continue my business… sort of.
Networker Gotta Network
I’m a networking guy. I wrote a book on networking. I went to every networking event I could find. That’s how I connected in the community. That’s how I found prospects and new business.
Over two thirds of my sponsors in my magazines came from in person networking.
Opinions vary as to why networking was so crucial to my success, but it was. Regular cold calling, which serves many other publishers very well, did not work for me. Whether it was my style or this particular market or my own limiting beliefs, I could not replace prospecting by networking with prospecting by cold call.
My pace of two sponsors per month became one sponsor per quarter.
While I did find some interesting virtual networking events, none of our local networking organizations were doing much in the virtual space. There was no platform that would allow me to make the connections I had been making through live networking events.
I tried hiring call setters, but that just filled my calendar with low quality appointments.
Some businesses were paralyzed by the fear of Covid, not knowing what would happen so they would not invest. The larger issue was that it was a certain type of business that was a fit to be a sponsor, and the best way to sift through to find the right ones was a conversation. A conversation which was easy to have face to face at a friendly networking event and difficult in the space of a cold call.
Go Ahead, Make My Data
As I was struggling, I spoke to a fellow publisher, and she referred me to a site called Make My Data. They sold lead lists. Lists of business information to call.
I signed up to buy leads from them, and I was contacted for an onboarding call which would change the course of my business and my life.
They had an interesting arrangement with a coach named Brandon Tillia. Brandon would handle their onboarding calls, finding out what the client wanted to do with the data, making sure it was something legal and ethical, explaining how the site worked, and helping them use the data strategically. In exchange for talking to all the new clients, Brandon got to talk to all the new clients.
Pretty brilliant arrangement, actually.
My intention had been to simply take the data from MMD and grind away on the phones, but Brandon taught me about some other technologies that might be effective.
I put them to work, and I was able to book more appointments, but I still was not getting effective results.
He then taught me a selling system, which I would later refer to as Solution Oriented Marketing. It was a powerful selling strategy for coaches. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a coach. I was a publisher. It didn’t work well for me as a publisher at all.
You’d Make a Great Coach
I shared with Brendan that the system seemed great but wasn’t doing anything for me to get sponsors for the magazines.
“I think you’d make a great coach,” Brandon suggested across the Zoom link from his New Jersey home.
“I have always wanted to be a coach,” I replied, thinking out loud. “I have always been the person people came to when they had problems because they knew I could figure them out. I do have two decades of varied business experience. I certainly have the knowledge. I just never had an effective way to get clients.”
Brandon allowed me to continue my line of thinking.
“But, I do now, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do,” he said.
Continuing to plug away trying to find sponsors for the magazine, in July I took some time to put this new strategy to work.
Around the same time, a few people who had known me for a while and followed me on social media actually reached out and asked if I did coaching, and I took them on as clients.
I didn’t have any kind of business structure. I didn’t even know what I was going to charge to how I was going to collect payments. I was jumping off the cliff and building the airplane on the way down.
And it was starting to fly.
Around the World Without Leaving My Chair
When the lockdown first began and everything went online, I saw an opportunity. I was a member of BNI and our group had gone online, as had every other group.
I had made the rounds many times, visiting all the chapters in our area. Of course, that was limited. There’s only so far you can drive to a 7 AM meeting to visit.
But not anymore!
A screenshot from my visit to the very impressive Millennium BNI chapter in Malaysia.
I made a post in the BNI Members Facebook page saying that I’d like to visit groups around the world, and many reached out to me. One of the first I visited was Millennium BNI in Malaysia. It was an incredible meeting. They were so well organized you would have thought there was a producer in a booth managing the whole thing.
I visited groups in Australia, Washington state, Canada, England, and beyond. I made connections around the country and around the world.
I was evolving from The Guy Who Knows a Guy in Southeast Connecticut to The Guy Who Knows a Guy everywhere.
I joined a coaching group called Envision and Thrive Academy, run by Michelle Jacobik, through which I made connections which would lead to larger and larger communities. It was through there that I connected with Nicole Majik who would introduce me to Strategic Alliance Live in 2021. It was there that I met Amy Flores-Young who would introduce me to Matt Ward whose networking event would connect me to many of the people who would become Conference21 speakers the following year.
I had taken a step into a wider world, and there was no turning back.
Following the Path Laid Out Before Me
By October, two things were clear about my publishing business. Nothing I was doing was getting traction. While many other publishers were thriving in the new situation, it was not working for me. At the same, time my coaching business was taking off.
I was making more as a coach than as a publisher. I also felt that I had found my calling. I have always enjoyed helping people. I love solving problems. I am driven to bring people together and create connections. Coaching is all this and more.
It was time for a transition, and in October of 2020, I resigned as a publisher to become a coach full time.
My path since then has not been a straight or simple one. I have had many false starts and corrections, but I have learned from each one.
While I knew a great deal a year ago, today I would say I know many multiples more about the world of business and the opportunities and pitfalls that entrepreneurs face. In the past year, I have had conversations with and learned from over 600 entrepreneurs, experts, and authorities. I have learned what works and what doesn’t.
I now find I can be very helpful to others following the same path, whether they have been in business for 10 weeks or 10 years. I have accumulated an encyclopedic knowledge of business. Like the encyclopedia, I know a little bit about almost everything. I don’t have depth, but where depth is needed, I have my network to lean on and refer to.
One year after I left Best Version Media and stepped into coaching full time, I am putting that knowledge and network to work serving other entrepreneurs with my Inner Circle program and the new Power5 Podcast. In the Inner Circle, members can bring any challenge or distraction that they are facing. I can save them time and money. Rather than having to spend days or weeks researching an obstacle or opportunity, I can skip them to the end by directing them right to the answer they need.
While the pandemic has been tragic for many people, for me, it has been a great opportunity to step into my calling, to live my best life, and to serve others at the highest level.
I’d love to share with you what I have learned. Here is a link to my calendar. Let’s schedule a call and see how what I’ve learned on my journey can help you on yours.
