1866 – Improve your Branding with Brook Bishop of Empire Partners

Josh (00:00:04) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach, or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now. Brooke. Bishop. Brooke, you were the co-founder at Empire Partners. You're found on the web at Empire Partners. Oh, Brooke, thank you so much for joining us. Nah.

Brook (00:01:09) - Stoked to be here, man. Super. Super grateful.

Josh (00:01:12) - Absolutely. Well, give us an overview of what Empire Partners is.

Josh (00:01:15) - Yeah. So we help.

Brook (00:01:16) - Coaches, experts, consultants, people that are in the space of helping other people. We help them become profitable business owners. So we help them with their marketing, their sales, their fulfillment and everything in between. So yeah, we are in the business of helping people who have monetized their message, get out there and reach more people.

Josh (00:01:35) - Yeah, well, you help on an area that that I'm quite empathic on, right, is I think that most of us like let's say you're you have a coach and they're a leadership coach or a leadership consultant, right. They probably got into that because that's what they love to do. And I think, you know, let's say they were working full time job. Then they, you know, kind of went out on their own because they had a client or two that they were able to consult with. So they made the jump. And now they might be finding Brooke, that a lot of what is required of them is doing stuff that maybe they don't enjoy as much.

Josh (00:02:12) - And that is generally the stuff about attracting new business. So this is a pretty important topic. What do most coaches and consultants do today when it comes to attracting new business and kind of keeping their business going with some regularity and some predictability?, what's the typical activity that you see a lot of folks doing that maybe is ineffective?

Brook (00:02:38) - It's a really good question, by the way, where I see most coaches that are in the game, most are doing it as a side hustle, right? So they have their job and then they love helping other people and they're like, oh my gosh. Instead of just giving away my support for free, I could actually charge for this. And they go get a certification and they launch their coaching business, and their intention is to break away from the job. Right. The journey of the broke. Their goal is to break away from that and ultimately be a full time coach. The struggle that comes into that is there's two things. Coaching as a fulfillment deliverable is very different than building a coaching business.

Brook (00:03:15) - And so you've got to have a multitude of hats, but have to have a multitude of identities that can come into the game. And where most people drop the ball as they struggle to brand themselves, they struggled to market themselves. When they do start getting clients coming in or prospective clients coming in. The vast majority really struggle in the sales conversation because they're usually trying to coach people into their world versus enrolling people into their world, and those are two different animals.

Josh (00:03:42) - Yeah, I see that you did a lot of work with Tony Robbins and Tony Robbins organization. I did, especially in Business Mastery, which I had the opportunity to be one of the,, one of the speakers on the online summit or the online series that he was doing. So what a great experience that was and what a great organization. And I'm sure that that is really inspired a lot of the work that you do today.

Brook (00:04:04) - Not only did it inspire it, it was a training ground like no other, because when you have a brand, that's Tony's who's been around for forever, but also the amount of revenue that he can play and you can test and you can get into the sandbox with that brand plus that revenue amount that you can you can play with.

Brook (00:04:23) - , there's nowhere else on the planet. I could have gotten the experience and the training that I got to get through, through going through that. So I'm stoked that you actually got to speak at Business Mastery. That was that was actually my my event that I oversaw. So yeah.

Josh (00:04:34) - Yeah, it was a great experience. And it led to some really great connections., because, you know, it looks like this is an area that, that you really value in that is, you know, community and connecting with others that we can all help one another. And it seems like that's a little bit about what you do.

Brook (00:04:51) - Yeah. And to that end, our philosophy is really what we,, what we would refer to as like a fully immersive experience., so, you know, in terms of mastering a specific area of your world or of your business, for the purposes of our dialogue today, you know, if you wanted to go learn a new language, there's a multitude of ways you could go master and craft a language.

Brook (00:05:10) - Right? You can hire a tutor. You can do like Rosetta Stone or Duolingo. You can go visit the country. You can go take a class in a course on something like that. And so the way we look at it is, if you really want to master something, you really want to become fluent in that particular language. The best way to do it is all of those simultaneously. And so that's really how we build our whole world is around that model to be able to help people learn stuff really fast.

Josh (00:05:36) - Yeah. Brooke, if you were to maybe give a couple of warnings to aspiring coaches, consultants and so forth of activity, that they may have heard from a guru that they should be doing in order to drum up business, what would you say that that you would recommend exercising some caution?

Brook (00:05:56) - Yeah. No, really. Good question. So two two things. These are the what I would refer to as the two biggest pitfalls. Number one is don't go be a coach to all people on all things.

Brook (00:06:07) - If you're throwing your net that wide, it's too hard to narrow in that scope. You know, as they say, you know, the riches are in the niches. Really get clear on who do you truly desire to serve and support. And if you only had one client and they were the best client on the planet, get really, really clear as to who that person is and cater to that audience only. Yes. Okay, so that that's the first piece. The second is when you come into the game, don't start with paid ads. Yeah. This is where I see a lot of people burn out, literally right before this conversation. We're just almost somebody who she had the right product, she had the right audience. But no one ever talked to her about runway. So it's like, here you've got the plane, you've got fuel on the plane, but you got a really short runway. You're going to keep crashing, and you don't have the ability to get off the ground and you're going to be out of business.

Brook (00:06:55) - So if you start with paid ads as your first piece, it's a game that requires a lot of knowledge, and you have to have really good targeting, and you have to really understand that play. So don't fall trap to a lot of the gurus that are out there. They're saying, hey, we're going to get you paid ads right now and you're going to have clients tomorrow. I will just throw caution to the wind on that.

Speaker 3 (00:07:14) - Yeah.

Josh (00:07:14) - Oh yeah. Yeah. No, don't throw caution away and be very cautious. Yeah, I completely agree. You know, I've been at what we do for five years. Even if we were to begin advertising and we have a really good track, like we've been doing what we're doing for quite some time, like advertising to me can be exceptionally risky. And so here's I think what I think, you know, maybe I'm guessing your empathy stems from is like, we want more coaches and consultants to to thrive and be able to do what they truly love.

Josh (00:07:51) - , so yeah, I mean, and then also too, I think, you know, the dynamic of advertising, it's just a completely different kind of because you're interrupting people with something. So I mean, if you're doing that, you better try to maintain relevancy pretty quickly. Otherwise, the thing that I'd hate to see is someone throw a bunch of ads out there, they get a bunch of people saying,, don't, don't advertise to me or this blah, blah, blah. You know, they're just they don't care who you are. They don't know you're you're interrupting them. So they're going to interrupt you. And I would hate for the coach or consultant who does that to then say, I guess it's not for me because I just don't have the the iron will to be able to, you know, deal with those slings and arrows out there.

Brook (00:08:34) - Yes. Yeah. No, you're spot on. And the reality when you're in the game of coaching the whole thing, you want to be focusing.

Brook (00:08:41) - On is momentum. How can I build consistent steady momentum versus how do I hit the lottery out of the gates? Right. You want to have this piece of going okay, I want to put actually since you went to Business Mastery, just a quote. One of the pieces with Tony there, you want to build a Parthenon when it comes to your marketing. So you don't want to be a one trick or one legged stool. You want to have multiple legs underneath that approach. The thing I love that you're doing with podcasts really, really intelligent way to generate and build up clientele through through having exposure and building an audience that you can add value in and they get to know who you are, you know, doing affiliates, doing JVs, doing partnerships, doing organic doing. You know, your the easiest one, honestly, and this is the one that people throw out the window is your referral network your sphere of influence. Right. So build momentum in those areas first and get things cook in. And then when you have runway then jump into the paid strategy because that's where you you can absolutely crush it if you've got the runway.

Josh (00:09:38) - Yeah I've asserted this often. And that is it's like, you know, if you get to a point where you have 100 leaders out there and this will take some time, it just will. Okay. But when you get to a point where you've got 100 leaders that when asked, hey, who do you know that does XYZ for ABC, right? So they do this for this particular like they're someone that's looking for a niche and you know where you can very communicate like, look, I'm very, very good. My zone of genius is this particular outcome for this particular population in this particular instance. And then you are now top of mind, you know, across 100 or so potential referral partners, unofficial or not. They just they know you and they say, oh, Brooke is my friend. And Brooke is really good at this. Like, if you can get 100 people to that level, it's kind of game, set, match. So, you know, what I would argue is like work on what I call your whisper network, right? It's like, who knows you? Who do you know who likes you, who trust you, and who would say nice things about you? Because once you get to that point, then it's like you just have to show up and keep being generous.

Josh (00:10:53) - And that's that's an easy gig to get to. Getting the the beginning part sometimes feels like it takes a little while.

Brook (00:11:00) - Well, but that also goes back to the piece of don't be all things to all people, because you can't be the best at all things to all people. There's just no way to to play that game, and it makes it really hard for people to know who and when to refer you if you're not the best at to your point, if you're not the best at solving that bleeding neck scenario, it's going to make it really tough to get that perpetual referral business coming out of the game.

Josh (00:11:23) - Yeah. So, Brooke, help me understand the structure of Empire Partners. Like who would be a good fit and where does it begin and what does it look like?

Brook (00:11:32) - So we have two really strong ways of supporting people. So one is if you're in the game, you're already there as a coach and you're looking for a community of people. We have a mastermind that really digs in on the marketing pieces, the sales pieces and fulfillment.

Brook (00:11:46) - And then the other biggest one, this is one that's not the sexiest thing, but it's probably the most critical. It's the psychology of the leader. So that's a huge piece of that puzzle that we really help people focus on their paradigm. So we have the mastermind side that supports there. The other one that is really our gift or our niche or our expertise, right? Our laser focus zone of genius is helping people enroll in an integrative way. So our sales training for coaches is second to none, in my opinion, the best on the planet. And we had since you mentioned Tony, we had 15 years of running sales calls when I had four different teams that I got to test the heck out of it. So our sales training is by far the best, and it's all built and predicated on integrity selling in a consultative way. So yeah.

Josh (00:12:31) - Can you tell me a little bit more about that and that what that might be different from?

Brook (00:12:37) - Yeah. So for most people sales is a bad word.

Brook (00:12:40) - Right. And there's this element of feeling like you have to sell your soul in order to sell your services. And for us, we've devised a way that you can just truly, authentically be who you are and serve people to a yes that they want to enroll with you in whatever it is that you offer. So if you have a consultative space, we have a step by step process., we dig deep into the psychology of sales and we dig into, you know, as an example, we don't see objections. And the same way that I would say every other sales trainer on the planet sees it, we see them as limiting beliefs. And so from that perspective, if somebody goes, I don't have money. Okay, great. We see that as a limiting belief versus this is something I need to now muscle them into. Yes you do or let's go find the money. It's no there's a limitation. There's a part of the brain that's going I have fear surrounding this thing. So how do you coach them through that limiting belief and so that they can navigate it on their own in the course of that conversation and come to a yes.

Brook (00:13:38) - So at a high level, it's a seven step process. We take them through and it's just it the recipe works.

Speaker 4 (00:13:47) - .

Josh (00:13:47) - So Brooke your website is Empire Partners. I oh any like eye level like resources that you'd recommend. You know maybe someone that's interested. They've come across this podcast or listen to our conversation. And now they want to do a little bit of a deep dive. I see that you have a book that might be a great also next step.

Brook (00:14:08) - The book is a great overview of our philosophy., if that's something that somebody wants to look at of like, okay, how do I get my marketing and my sales, how do I put end to end?, but if you're in that space where you're going, I've been all things to all people. If you need to narrow that scope of who your avatar is, if you go to Empire Partners bio slash avatar, we have a free tool there to help you really get clear of who is this person, what are they going through? What are the components? So you can narrow that instead of being a light bulb, you can be a laser.

Brook (00:14:37) - , the other is if you go to Empire Partners bio, if you want to do our we actually have our seven step toolkit for the sales process. So if you want the full recipe of step 1234567, here is the recipe. We give both of those away for free. For anyone who's looking to,, to level up.

Josh (00:14:53) - What was that? Where? How did you access that second resource.

Brook (00:14:56) - Empire Partners bio on the main page? There's actually a spot if you're looking for the seven step recipe that's there. So the toolkit actually I think it's Empire Empire Partners slash toolkit is actually the toolkit.

Josh (00:15:07) - Oh that's wonderful. Great. Yeah. And then the other link was,, slash avatar. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more about,, again, it's kind of like, you know, knowing yourself and knowing exactly who you serve. I mean, once you know exactly who your avatar is, like, every decision in business is so much easier. And if it's like, well, who do you work with? Well, we work with the world.

Josh (00:15:31) - Like,, first off, you're going to get commoditized to hack., but number two, like you're because you're so generic on your audience. And by the way, you can serve a, a bigger demographic pool, like, for example, like you serve coaches. Right. But if you're like, but we serve coaches who believe in this, this, this and this, right. So that certainly makes it easier. Okay. So again, I was going to give one.

Brook (00:15:56) - I was actually just going to mention one little nugget just because there was right within within what you just mentioned. If you over service the under service markets in that niche then it's game over. So if if you take an under service market, you over service the heck out of it and you are the best person in that space, you're done. You're good. Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to connect the dots on those two pieces.

Josh (00:16:19) - No, I love that because in many ways, you know, again, you're going into a blue ocean and you're the only one out there, and people are probably really happy to have you, by the way, because not, you know, everyone else, they you know, I know what it's like to feel lost.

Josh (00:16:33) - Like, where are my people?, and it's really nice to say,, they're speaking to me. They're speaking to the things I'm concerned about. So I'm excited for the coach and the consultant who has the inkling of that and can kind of clarify that hit the world., because I think you're going to soon find your people. And when your people find you, they're going to express their gratitude because you certainly seem to get them. Well. Brooke Bishop, again, co-founder of Empire Partners, your website, Empire Partners, oh, the resources that you share. We have linked up in the podcast app. So to our friend that's listening, just kind of click around look and you'll see we've got a show notes and we have those direct links. Brooke,, to your website. Thank you so much for sharing your insights.

Brook (00:17:13) - Oh, thank you for having me on Josh. And,, yeah, man. Look forward to next time we chat.

Josh (00:17:22) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur show.

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