Allan Blackwell: Welcome to your 20 minute podcast with David Brower brought to you by Audible. Get a free audio book download and 30 day free trial at audibletrial.com/your20minutepodcast. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or mp3 player. Now, here’s your host David Brower.
David Brower: Thanks Allan, and this is David Brower with your 20 minute podcast. Our guest today from New Brunswick, Canada. Did I day that right?
Marc MawWhinney: You got her.
David Brower: Marc MawWhinney, the coach for coaches is our guest today. He’s a lifelong entrepreneur who’s on a mission to help coaches build successful businesses. He achieves this with his coaching programs, his podcast Natural Born Coaches, his Facebook group The Coaching Jungle, and his exclusive print newsletter The Secret Coach Club, which is fascinating to me. Marc, greetings from Colorado. Good to have you here, man.
Marc MawWhinney: Yeah, thanks for having me.
David Brower: You bet. You’ve been the coach for coaches for quite a while. How did you get into this? What is your epiphany that said, “I want to help people do better”?
Marc MawWhinney: It’s an interesting story, I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version. I was in real estate for 10 years throughout my 20s, and everything was going great until it wasn’t going great, and then my business closed. I had a few years of, I say, in the wilderness where I was trying to decide what my next steps were going to be. I knew I wanted to go back into business, but I was sick and tired of real estate, finished with that. I was helped by several coaches and mentors through that process, and that’s how I found out about coaching, and that’s why I believe in coaching because I’ve gone through it, personally benefited from it. That got me started, early 2014, I say, officially became a coach, and here we are today.
David Brower: That’s outstanding. What a great story. It’s always amazing to me how most of us, if not all of us, at some point in our lives have to hit the bottom, or get a kick in the butt, or get a wake-up call, or whatever you want to call it. Then, all of a sudden, through the course of many distractions, and many frustrations we find what we’re supposed to be doing in life. That’s always.
Marc MawWhinney: It’s funny before all that happened I had been approached a few times through the good years of real estate by people who were coaches and I thought, “Why would I need a coach? Don’t you see how well I’m doing here? I don’t need a coach.” Looking back, I think if I had a coach then I don’t know that the outcome would’ve been different. I think it would’ve at least been a softer landing for sure because it helps to have a second set of eyes. Regardless, how motivated or accountable you are to yourself it’s really tough to see some things. We all have blind spots, and I think that’s why coaches are very valuable to have.
David Brower: Absolutely right. You help people bounce back from adversity through a lot of your own adversity that you got to deal with. You can share with them life experiences.
Marc MawWhinney: Yeah, it makes me a better coach because I’ve had those sleepless nights, and I’ve been attacked and had people, critics and haters, coming at me, and all this other stuff. I have the battle scars like a lot of entrepreneurs, life as an entrepreneur, right?
David Brower: Right.
Marc MawWhinney: That’s just par for the course, but it has made me a better coach. When somebody tells me they’ve never experienced any setbacks I wonder if they’re trying to do big things or if they’re playing it too safe because there’s a good chance they’re playing it too safe if they’ve never had any challenges and setbacks.
David Brower: Isn’t that the truth? I need to be learning something every day and if that means I have to have a setback along the way, okay, that’s an opportunity to keep growing, and keep moving. I love change and I love setbacks, isn’t that weird?
Marc MawWhinney: That’s a good way to look at it.
David Brower: When you’re working with these people and you’re working with these coaches, and helping them become better coaches a lot of stuff going on today in marketing. You see it all the time and on Facebook and wherever it is, all these funnels, and expensive ads, and all that kind of stuff. You help folks build their online business without that stuff.
Marc MawWhinney: Right. Organically, yup.
David Brower: How does that work?
Marc MawWhinney: It’s interesting because when I started my coaching business I didn’t have that big war chest to throw a bunch of money at ads. In real estate I always had a good bit of money buried, just where I’d been doing well. I had to make up, when I started coaching, for the lack of resources with my energy and efforts, and organic stuff. That’s why I’m such a big believer in the things that I teach, and I help people with because that’s how I grew my business.
Marc MawWhinney: I’m not saying that ads are bad, I think if you’ve got the budget for it, and stuff like that great, but there’s a myth out there that you buy ads on Facebook, or paying Google, or whatever, and you don’t. You can build a business without that stuff, but if you’re not doing the paid you’ve got to make the lack paid ads with effort. Unfortunately, a lot of people instead of taking that fork in the road, of either paid ads or a lot of organic content and effort, they don’t do either. They say, “Well, I don’t have the money to put into ads, but then they’re not much out there organically, and that’s where they run into a tree in the middle of the road that they cannot afford.
Marc MawWhinney: You have to choose one or the other, or blend the two together, but you just can’t not do either because that won’t work.
David Brower: You got to have some focus, you got to have some direction, you got to have some commitment, and you’ve got to have some fortitude to stick with it consistently, I would think.
Marc MawWhinney: A lot of people nowadays too, unfortunately the coaching a lot of online businesses you get a lot of get rich quick people because they’re seeing those ads, “Hey, buy my secret system and my fancy funnel, and you’ll be making a million bucks in a week working five minutes a day.” We both know it doesn’t work like that. Unfortunately-
David Brower: No, free lunch thing is alive.
Marc MawWhinney: Oh my God no. It was the same way in real estate. I used to see a lot of people jump in and come real estate agents thinking, “Oh my God, I look at the average commissions that I’ll make per sale,” and they’ve got dreams of dollar signs floating through their heads. The same way real estate was the top 20% were making 80% of the sales principles, it’s the same way with coaching. 20% is making 80% of the business, in probably any industry out there the 80/20 rule applies.
David Brower: I agree. I’ve always lived by the 80/20 rule and it’s just been fascinating to me, no matter industry, or what business, or what venture I’ve gone into it always pans out that way. When I pay attention to that I’m much more successful more quickly than if I leave it off the table.
Marc MawWhinney: Exactly. It’s funny how it can apply across the board.
David Brower: It really is, isn’t it?
Marc MawWhinney: Yeah.
David Brower: I’d like to know who created that, or first came up with that? It’s always been a fascinating thing to me.
Marc MawWhinney: It was Pareto, and I forget if he was … I want to say an Italian scientist, or economist, or something hundreds of years ago, but his name was actually Pareto, I believe, because I heard it in an audio book that I was listening to once.
David Brower: Nice. All right, you made my day. I can go sleep now, I can go take a nap.
David Brower: You’ve got a very successful podcast, Natural Born Coaches, your Facebook group is over 15,000 in it, you got 56,000 Twitter followers, you’re on LinkedIn, you’re everywhere on social media. Has that all been a natural, organic part of how you grow your coaching business?
Marc MawWhinney: Yeah, it’s been easy. Five minutes a day for a month and there I have it, I’m just kidding.
David Brower: No, I know.
Marc MawWhinney: It was a lot of work. My podcast, the first 300 episodes was a daily show. We’re up to 554 now, as we’re recording this, but the first 300 were daily. Everything that I do I go into it, obviously, I’m hoping for the best, but I don’t have unrealistic expectations. With the podcast I wasn’t like a lot of people that do two or three shows, and expect to get a rash of clients. I said, “I’m going to put out the best possible product and it should bring clients, it should be customers in there.” I had Bob Burg the author of The Go-Giver on my show before and he said something that’s always stuck with me. He said, “Money is an echo of value, so if you’re putting enough value out there it’ll be reflected in your bank account. If you’re not putting the value out there it will be reflected in your bank account, you won’t have much money there,” and I’ve always remembered that.
Marc MawWhinney: I think one of my superpowers is patience and consistency. I’m not a get rich quick, expected to make $1 million in the first month. I said, “I’m going to go out there, do what I have to do, and trust the process.”
David Brower: Patience and consistency, no question about that. I’ve been very blessed, and I was in radio for 28 years, and I never ever took a job for the money. I always took the job because I felt there would be an opportunity there either for me to grow, or help other people grow, what have you. Then, the money always showed up. I never worried about it.
Marc MawWhinney: [inaudible 00:09:18].
David Brower: Oh my God, what a gift, yeah.
Marc MawWhinney: I think Les Brown did that with the radio station. He got in sweeping the floors, and stuff like that, doing gopher work just to get his foot in the door. Now, look where he’s at.
David Brower: Yeah, my first job in radio my nickname was gopher because you go for this, go for that. I painted the inside of a bomb shelter, so I can relate.
David Brower: Your Secret Coach Club is fascinating to me, secretcoachclub.com, and I was reading the letter that you send out to prospective members of that, and you really discourage them don’t you?
Marc MawWhinney: Yeah, it sounds counterproductive to do that, or counterintuitive, but I don’t want the get rich quick people in there. I also don’t want people … That newsletter’s, a 16 page hard copy newsletter, no digital copies, no PDFs. I don’t want people to look at it and say, “$97 per month for 16 pages? What a rip-off.” Instead I want the person that says, “Oh my God, $97 and this will help me make an extra couple thousand bucks this month or turn it into something bigger,” people that can see that. I’ve been doing it since March 2017, it’s been going really well with it. I love that format, it’s very fashioned, but there’s different reasons for it. We could do a whole show on that, but doing a hard copy format I think the secret sauce is there, not having any digital copies.
David Brower: I was fascinated by that because so many things come back to us 25 years later or whatever that is. The way businesses succeed, and even bell bottom pants for crying out loud, everything has a way of coming back at some time or another. For you to be ahead of the curve, in my opinion, by bringing back this old school style of marketing, and coaching, and teaching, I just love the heck out of it. I think it’s brilliant.
Marc MawWhinney: There’s actually more print newsletters out there than you would realize, they’re hidden under rocks. Kennedy has a print newsletter, and I’m a subscriber for a couple different ones, and that’s what motivated me to set this one up for coaches, there about over a year ago. There are more out there, it’s just you have to pull up the rocks, and look underneath to find them. I think they’re great.
Marc MawWhinney: Now, these people are just used to if they’re getting anything in the mail it’s either bills or junk mail. They’re not used to actually getting anything that’s of value, but they seem to like that.
David Brower: Yeah. I think the other thing is because we’re in a world of instant gratification we want that, I want it now, I want to be rich now. I want an ad on Facebook because that’s what everybody does. I want to have 25 million Twitter followers because that’s what everybody does. If you slow down, like you were saying, and be patient, and consistent, and put the effort, the authenticity of what you’re doing out there that’s the best way to grow.
Marc MawWhinney: I agree.
David Brower: Fascinating. How do you get do you solicit people, if that’s the right word, to get notice, and to sign up for your secret hard copy newsletter?
Marc MawWhinney: I have three ways I get business. Those three are podcasting, so that’s on both sides of the mic. My shows, I have a few shows. Then, going onto shows like this one. There’s podcasting, there’s Facebook, and the Facebook group’s a big part of it. Then, there is email marketing. I do daily emails from my list. Those daily emails will hammer that message, the call to action for the hard copy newsletter. If I’m doing those three things and I talk about the newsletter enough that’s going to get new subscribers coming in.
Marc MawWhinney: I get a lot of my subscribers at the end of the month because, of course, with the end of the month approaching is where the deadline’s coming to get the next month issued to the printer, so I really hammer it hard the last month of the year … Sorry, last week of the month, and that’s when most of the subscribers rush in.
David Brower: How fascinating. Do you tease them? Do you give them little nuggets that makes them jump under the rock, for lack of a better term?
Marc MawWhinney: Yeah. I think people like to be teased. That’s all the reason why horny guys drive to Vegas and pay strippers without even-
David Brower: That’s right. No, that’s right.
Marc MawWhinney: They like to be teased. What I should mention with the newsletter is the content that’s in there is all exclusive content. It’s not just repackaged blog posts, or Facebook posts, or anything like that. I treat my subscribers … I treat it a really important thing, it’s not just microwaved, reheated content. I treat them like clients really. Every issue is either 16 to 20 pages and there’s usually a bonus report in there as well, so it could be upwards of 5000 words, but it’s all actionable stuff too. It’s not fluff, it’s stuff that they can put into action through that month.
Marc MawWhinney: Yeah it’s interesting. I find everything I do I’m not afraid to sell, so I say you got to ABO, always be offering. If you’re giving enough value out there people will give you a wide berth and they’ll be cool with you selling. Where people run into trouble is if they’re just promoting, that’s it. It’s like the Home Shopping Network, and people are going to tune out. I mix], I guess, entertaining type content, but then every email, for example, has a call to action at the end of it. That’s what you have to do.
Marc MawWhinney: There’s too many people out there, I see them coaching, all they’re doing is sharing famous people’s motivational quotes, Les Brown, Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, and so on, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, and then they’re wondering why they’re not getting clients. They’re not putting their own stuff out there, and they’re not making offers, so not inviting people to take the next step that can help them.
David Brower: Makes perfect sense. You’ve got to be creative, you’ve got to have great content, you’ve got to be, I keep going to back to what you said, patient and consistent, and then always giving a call to action, and you put all those pieces together. A lot of people don’t. They do the scrape off the top from other experts, and hope they can make a buck, but there’s no authenticity to that.
Marc MawWhinney: No, people can go on Google and type in motivational quotes, and get 7 trillion results in less than a second. There’s nothing special there. I do something called The Last 10 Test with the coaches I’m working with because I’ll hear that. I hear people say, “Gee Marc, I post five times a day on Facebook, and I don’t get anything. I don’t know what’s going on.” The Last 10 Test is when you pull up your social media platform of choice, whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever, and you look at your last 10 posts, or let’s say tweets if it’s Twitter, or so on.
Marc MawWhinney: You want to see ideally at least seven or eight of that being in your own voice, in your own message. Then, one or two can be the other way, but you don’t want it to be flipped. Most of them when I go in and I look at it I see that 80% of their stuff is just they’re sharing a Gary Vaynerchuk video, or someone else’s quote, a motivational quote, or image. That’s why they’re having trouble, it should be flipped the other way. I always say do that last 10 test.
David Brower: You’re right back being very close to that 80/20 rule, aren’t you?
Marc MawWhinney: There we go, that’s the theme today, Pareto. You know what I should’ve said is, I should’ve said, “Yeah, actually I created Pareto principle there David.” I was born in ’78, but yeah I created it.
David Brower: I’ve come back to life many times and I’m doing well, thanks for calling. That’s awesome.
David Brower: If people want to reach out to you, obviously, they can get your catch your podcast in all the usual places, iTunes, and all the different things, Natural Born Coaches. Your Facebook group The Coaching Jungle, and of course your exclusive print newsletter The Secret Coach Club available at secretcoachclub.com. Is that the place to start checking you out, or all those places? What’s the best way to get a little more informed, and contact you?
Marc MawWhinney: The home base is natural born coaches.com, that’s where I’ve got everything, or links to everything. Actually, the Facebook group is where I spend a lot of time, thecoachingjungle.com will direct you directly to the Facebook group thecoachingjungle.com is where you can pop in. There’s lots of great people in there too. I’ve had people tell me that that group is giving them more value, than things that they paid for, and it’s a free group thecoachingjungle.com.
David Brower: Fascinating, thecoachingjungle.com. You get him on Twitter at Marc MawWhinney, there you go, Marc MawWhinney, and the main website naturalborncoaches.com. Marc, it’s been a real pleasure, man. Thanks for sharing a few nuggets with us today and your process in stealing … I’m sorry, creating the 80/20 rule.
Marc MawWhinney: Thanks David.
Allan Blackwell: Your 20 minute podcast with David Brower has been brought to you by Audible. You can listen to any of David’s podcasts anywhere podcasts can be found including iHeartRadio, the Spotify mobile app, and at davidbrowervo.com/your20minutepodcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.