Interview with James Hodges of Next Level Coaches-Learning to serve your Existing Clients Well!

Today, I speak with James Hodges of Next Level Coaches, a program that focuses on growing six-figure practices to seven-figure practices. He gives great insight on how to escape the mindset of only focusing on new clients for expansion. James redirected his focus to his existing clients that needed exceptional service which lead to referrals and growth.  If you'd like to brainstorm a game plan together for your business you can schedule a quick free strategy call with us here: http://bit.ly/practicegameplan 

Transcription

james interview podcast

Sasha Raskin:  Hey, James.

James Hodges:  What's up, brother? How are you doing?

Sasha Raskin:  Doing well. I had a good time in the gym and excited to talk to you. You created some amazing things that I think many coaches would be happy to create and counselors who want to become coaches. And I think it's a great opportunity to share your story and where you started, maybe some of the challenges you went through and where you're at today. So a good way to start maybe say something about who you are, who you help and how you help.

James Hodges:  Yeah, great. I'm James Hodges, we help mission driven coaches who are already at six figures or at least well on their way 2X their business in as little as six months without added hustle or fancy technology or having to invest over two million bucks in their business like we did. So that's who we are, that's how we help.

How I got started, when I was 16 I got really into personal development because I asked a girl to prom or the ball and much to my surprise and everyone else's, she said yes. But behind my back all my friends were laughing and saying Tanya is only going to go to the ball with James because she feels sorry for him. But the beautiful thing is that led to this book called Double Your Dating by this guy called David DeAngelo, and that was the first time I ever read anything around personal development and I realized you could be good at anything you wanted as long as you had the right strategy, the right mentor, the right guidance, etcetera.

Sasha Raskin:  Even this weird thing as relationship.

James Hodges:  What's that?

Sasha Raskin:  Even those weird things as relationships you can actually be coached at.

James Hodges:  Oh, yeah, everything. Yeah, everything really. So that's how I got started in personal development. And then when I was 21 I finished school, I went across to London, started working with different start-ups, businesses, etcetera. I kind of like follow this journey and as I grew and got older and got deeper in the personal development realm I realized that a lot of coaches love coaching and great at that, but when it comes to the business, the tech, systems, the details, the structure it's not always their strong suit. So I went to a bunch of retreats, all the stuff, partnered with my buddy Alex Fairman who started chakra school which has over a hundred thousand paying students and we're like, "Hey, let's build software for the coaching space." So that was our original intention.

And we started a mastermind to help coaches grow their business to pay for the software. We realized pretty quickly that it was going to cost us a ton of money to a build software and we're not going to make much money back. But the whole coaching community thing was going pretty well so we doubled down that back in 2017.

Sasha Raskin:  So what are you focusing on these days? So the software idea you kind of put it away and you realized that coaches actually need something else and you can help them more with something different. So what is it these days?

James Hodges:  Yeah, so it depends on where the coach is at, like if you're at early stage clients is that the primary thing. But then, and that's why Sasha's so great, but it gets to a point where it's like, "Hey, you start to get more clients and you're trading time for money and you're like how do I handle this and this feels quite heavy now and how do I balance this and actually create a good life for myself and create the income, the impact and the freedom that I really want." And so a new level in your devil you kind of hit an upper limit when you get close to six figures or at six figures, and so it's usually people who are at that level who are ready for the next level, get their life back to earn more, have more profit, continue to have more impact and then have freedom. That's our core focus.

Sasha Raskin:  So you're saying, and I see that too, that coaches and counselors that grow to maybe 100K or so the journey is hustling, right? And doing everything on their own.

James Hodges:  Right.

Sasha Raskin:  And then something else is needed to grow from there.

James Hodges:  Yeah.

Sasha Raskin:  What would you say that is?

James Hodges:  Totally. So usually people hit an upper limit where they're like, "Okay, my time is starting to get maxed out and I want to get bigger and actually free up more time." But in order to grow revenue more but have the same time or even less time you have to rethink how you do things, you have to start to create what we call leverage which is how do you create more with less. And so that's getting really clear on a few things - one is your level of leadership and stepping into this next level of leadership where it becomes even less about you, like I know you care so much about coaching, that's what you're doing it and you're here to help people, but it becomes even less about you and more about the movement. And then figuring out how do you create a more scalable model where you can serve one-to-many as opposed to one-to-one so you're not just trading your time for money and just constantly doing one-on-one.

And so many coaches come to me and be like, "But I can't do this at scale. I can't do this in groups or I need to connect with people privately, or how do I find someone else who's as great as me?" And like all these objections and stuff come up. But the truth is no matter how good you are at coaching you can always create something more scalable and you can serve more people, have them stay longer, pay more, bring more friends and require less of your time to serve them if you build the model the right way. And that's kind of one of the first things that we help people with, is creating a more smart, intelligent business model to create more with less.

Sasha Raskin:  Could you give an example? For people who, and we have a bunch of people in our program who grew 200K, now they're ready to grow to the next level, what would be a model that can work for them? And how does it actually look like? What would they be doing during the week, how would their programs be structured? From your experience in your program because you have a program that helps people to do that, what seems to be kind of a no-brainer, build it in this way and there's a high percentage of chance it will work out if you put in the work?

James Hodges:  Totally. So we call this an RDS process, that's where you start - remove, delegate, systematize. So money is abundant, it's infinite, you can continue to bring in more money. Time is not. So the first thing we need to look at is where are you actually spending your time and what can we remove, what can we delegate, what can we systematize. And typically within the first month or two we can get people 15 to 20 hours a week back to a better model, not doing all the admin tasks, not doing all the tech stuff, not doing all the low value things they hate and help them create smarter systems and the right executive assistant or virtual assistant who can help them with that who's low cost.

Sasha Raskin:  So start growing your team, right? This is needed, right? No way around that. You will be capped in your growth if you don't add at least one team member at that point.

James Hodges:  Totally. So if you're like worth 3 to $500 an hour, why are you doing 10 to 15-hour dollar tasks, right?

Sasha Raskin:  Good question.

James Hodges:  Right? So that's the first thing. And then in terms of the model we get to look at who do we serve, what's the result they want and what are the key challenges that across our client base is occurring again and again. So we can start to pick up patterns, and this doesn't mean that we don't give them personalization or go deep with them and really help them, but most of you I imagine are saying the same things again and again, like you've been doing this for a while, you're probably saying very similar things to people and you realize, "Damn, like I'm just kind of repeating myself again and again in some way, shape or form." And so we had to figure out how do we actually create a model that makes sense for you.

Like, do we create some video content and some resources and other ideas that people can consume? Do we create mastermind calls where we can have five people on a call who are all in a similar place and by me answering Joe's questions Samantha is getting her questions addressed, right? Can we start to create more of a culture where we teach people or we teach our clients how to create transformation themselves and we create different basic frameworks where they can start to coach each other and they have peer-to-peer learning?

Like, people learn from three ways - by learning from a mentor which is from you, learning from their peers and people in a similar situation, and then by teaching other people they also learn too. So how do we create a combination of that as well as systems as well as videos where people can come in and have an amazing experience?

Like, for instance, when people come to work with us most of the time I don't even need to worry about serving our clients because the system's so good. So there'll be some one-on-one coaching with some of our team, there's workshops on different topics so they can go see different experts in different areas, we've got an amazing online resource library, we've got amazing mastermind calls, we have what's called councils which is small groups of really high-level people, so small groups, great minds and deep ideas - that's kind of the theme behind that. So they go and have amazing conversations amongst themselves and problem solve amongst themselves. And then there's also like a power partner where they help support each other too.

So it's for sure not always relying on my time and it's for sure not always rely on my team's time. And we find that when you build the culture the right way and the community the right way, coaching content community, then it can start to take a life force of its own and now it becomes a self-sustaining organism not relying on your time.

Sasha Raskin:  So you're saying the main goal here is to remove yourself as the bottleneck for your organization. And it needs to be an organization if you want to grow.

James Hodges:  Yeah.

Sasha Raskin:  What do you think are the biggest obstacles of someone that wants to transition from one-to-one and build one-to-many model, either group coaching or mastermind online program or combination of all those?

James Hodges:  I mean, the biggest challenge is just not knowing what to do or who to listen to. There's a million things you could be doing, what's the one thing you should be doing and what should you be doing with, right?

Sasha Raskin:  Yeah, paralysis by analysis.

James Hodges:  Yeah, exactly. And so it's like, "What should I do?" Like, what's the sequence, what's the order, what's the right way to actually free up my time and how do I make sure I'm focusing to the right thing? That's what I'd say is the most challenging thing for people, as well as letting go of control and letting go of like what they already have known that's what's got them here because what's got them here won't get them to the next level. So I'll say it's like strategy, being clear on what to focus on as well as like mindset and releasing what they already know and staying in control.

Sasha Raskin:  What were the main obstacles for you for growing your business, for the extent you're wanting to share?

James Hodges:  Yeah, I mean, I'll share whatever. I mean, biggest obstacle is knowing ... I mean, there's so many things I would do smarter like the business model and not constantly trying to hunt for new clients but how do I add more value to existing clients and have them pay more, bring more of their friends and do it with less of my time? How to hire a team? When to hire a team? How much to pay people? When is it appropriate for them to come in? What tasks should they focus on? How should I leverage systems? Those are big things.

And then just creating, like figuring out a consistent lead generation model so I can continue to grow and be able to pay my team and do all those key things, like those are all big pain points. It's just understanding team, understanding strategy, understanding marketing, like at each level and trying to figure it out every time, even though I had mentors.

Sasha Raskin:  What was the most helpful thing for you to figure out all those things?

James Hodges:  The most helpful thing was probably just like understanding fundamentally how strategy and systems tie together and how that relates to our vision. So the framework, if you want to create anything in your life, is start with the vision, right? So like set the New Year's resolution but there's three other things that most people don't have which is why they never make their resolution come true. So there's vision. There's beings so it's like who do you need to be at this next level of your leadership in order for this to happen, like what programs do you get to release inside of you and like what are the new beliefs that you get to instill in yourself so this becomes easily like ease and flow?

So vision being strategy, so what's the simplest and easiest path to get there? And then execution, like how do you set up yourself to win on a daily basis? The right habits, right behaviors, right timing. So the execution becomes easy as well. Those are the four things, four key principles, yeah.

Sasha Raskin:  I love that. Can you say more about the mindset part? I guess strategy-wise and map-wise, you can just basically ... well, for example, go to you and pay for your program and just install a system that's already proven. What do you do about the mindset and your own inner game?

James Hodges:  Yeah, so we created something called the embodiment principles, so there's four key principles. So what we noticed is there's about 100 key challenges that coaches experience in some way, shape or form. As you guys all know, when you coach someone what they say is the problem is not oftentimes the problem, right? And there's a layer deeper and there's a layer deep right under that, it's like an iceberg, there's always much greater depth underneath what we see on the surface. So across all these different problems they basically they're still down to four key principles - trust, worthiness, responsibility and alignment. So trust, worthiness, responsibility, alignment.

And typically any challenge you may be experiencing come to those four things, like if you just increased your price by 30 to 50% and added some more value you would grow your business by 30 to 50%. But what comes up for people when we talk about increasing the price? Like, I don't know if I'm worth that much, I don't know if the client's going to pay that, like blah, blah, blah.

Sasha Raskin:  Exactly.

James Hodges:  Worthiness, right? And then there's all these other surface level challenges that come up, impostor syndrome, all these things, but they all come down to those four principles. And so just like we have embodiment training, we not only like have a belief call like within 24 hours of working with us so we can help people get super aligned on their deeper mission, their deeper movements, something beyond themselves. And we also train our clients on the embodiment principles and how do they bridge it with their clients too.

Sasha Raskin:  I love that. Well, it's a little vulnerable question, but what do you think is some of the mistakes you made that you as a tip would love to save that headache for others who are embarking on the same journey?

James Hodges:  Yeah, so we are all source, so source like S-O-U-R-C-E. So any problem that we're seeing consistently across like through our clients or through our teams is usually created from ourselves, right? As we grow our shit gets magnified.

Sasha Raskin:  Nicely said.

James Hodges:  So every time you rise to the next level like there's going to be stuff that comes up, like worthiness has been a big part of my life, that's what happened with the 16-year old story, but then also it's like we've had more team and stuff like that, is I was like, "Am I really worthy of growing this to the level that I want to?" And then I kind of overcompensated by having a team in place but then I would get in scarcity because then I was paying them a ton and I was into our margins and it was making it really challenging and I'd like wake up with a pit in my stomach because I was spending so much money every month paid for the team. And it was like this like self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

And so I would say like we've got so much data on coaches, like every coach thinks their biggest problems lead gen, well, most coaches, and most coaches think they produce really good client results and they've got a really good mindset. Like, that's what most coaches think. And the truth is most coaches only are scratching the surface in terms of what's really going on with their mindset and their embodiment. And as they go on to the next level all their shit's going to come up they're not even aware of, so my vulnerable share would be get to know yourself like really, really well and hopefully find someone who can help you uncover those things because we can't often see the nose that's right in front of us, so coach gets to have a good coach.

And become like aware of your ... your self-awareness - strengths and weaknesses and what could be getting in the way of you getting to the next level because oftentimes strategy is really important but it's really the mindset and the embodiment.

Sasha Raskin:  Ouch. Can totally relate. I remember a conversation I had with one of my past coaches about lead gen, how to create more clients for one of my projects, and he's like listening patiently and then less patiently and then he was like, "Well, let's talk about what you believe you're worth," right? And some success mindset. And yeah, it's so on point - how do I actually stop myself from creating the results that I want, right? Because what happens if I do succeed, for example, right?

James Hodges:  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Sasha Raskin:  Could you give a few examples of, well, some success stories of your students? I think it's very helpful at least for me. And I know that for the members of my program, the 6 figure practice, to see what is possible in the future, right? Just in terms of inspiration and also real life examples of what can be done. So maybe a few stories of what's possible.

James Hodges:  Totally, yeah. So super quick, if you guys are already at six figures or close seven figures it's totally possible for you even if you think it's a stretch. And life at seven figures is way easier than life at six figures, like if you do seven figures the right way it's actually way easier on you, you have more team handling all the day to day, you're just doing the stuff that you love and you make a bunch of money and you have way more impact. Most people just get really scared about them, they're like, "I feel like I'd be more busy." But if you do it the right way it's actually way easier.

So our client Jesse he started with us in like July of 19, he was seven weeks late on his rent, he's got a seven-year-old boy, he's about to get evicted. Somehow managed to figure out how to get a deposit to work with us. And we're like, "All right, ready to go?" He's like, "Yeah." And he's like, "How do I make my program scalable and how do I take this thing to the moon?" So he released everything about his current circumstances and stepped into his vision and what he actually want to create.

He went out and interviewed 30 people to really get clear on exactly what his messaging should be for his market. He was a health coach and he wanted to shift into being more of like a spiritual coach that focused on the quantum, physical, spiritual, mental, emotional. And so he went out and interviewed these people and got clear on how does that messaging actually attract people to want to work with him in that niche. And then he created a three-week, 21-day challenge. Got 30 people in there paying like 200 bucks each. Interviewed him at the start and interviewed him at the end and he enrolled like 15 of those people at 4K each into the group.

He went and did that again and the next time he enrolled like 30 people, so he created 188K in the first like two and a half months. And then that was ... so 2019, ended up doing a few hundred grand. Last year he did like 650 or 700K and this year he's on track through seven figures. So pretty amazing considering he almost lost his rent, his apartment.

Another one right here, he was already further along, this guy's a genius, like super smart guy, he was a senior patent attorney at Apple, went out on his own, he was coaching one-on-one, tapped out on 150K a year, he was like there's no way I can scale this type of coaching, no one can replicate me like blah, blah, blah. And we're like, "Bullshit." So the first thing I did is I was like, "You need to double your prices and remove a few clients so you can free up your time but have you earn more." And he was really resistant, but he did it. No one ended up saying no and everyone just paid double. So we found other ways to free up his time. And then we created a scalable model, much what I was sharing before, and last year he did 550K and this year he's on track to do 800 to a mil. He's already done 250K this year so far and it's February 24th.

Sasha Raskin:  And I think it's important to remember that the figures, the money, is just the result of the impact, right? So how many people did those two people help and the impact on other people's lives when they freed up their time to help actually more people.

James Hodges:  Yeah, like Jesse's got 19,000 people in his Facebook group now, right? Most of them get like free stuff from him and get amazing value. And then right here is different, his is much more of like a ... kind of a laser approach as opposed to like a machine gun type of approach. It's just like he just goes deeper with less people but it's still done in a scalable way. And so he does do workshops and like events with a few hundred people online, it's amazing, but a little different than Jessie. But, yeah, I mean, when you get so clear on your mission and your movement it's no longer about you, money just becomes a byproduct.

Sasha Raskin:  James, what would be three biggest tips just from the top of your head right now for people who maybe are thinking about going from one-to-one to one-to-many but maybe are scared or don't know how? Three main tips.

James Hodges:  Yeah, so I would say three things - first one time, like get clear on where you're spending your time. Look over the last couple of weeks and see what can you remove, what can you delegate, what can you systematize. That's the first one. Second one is your business model - ask yourself like what are the things I'm saying again and again and again and how do I create some processes and ways to not have to do that again and again. And figure out how to scale myself so I'm not just constantly trading time for money. And then the third one is look at your prices and the lifetime value of your client, like what can you do to serve your clients for longer and get them to pay you more and add more value to them so you don't have to constantly hunt for new clients.

Sasha Raskin:  Yeah, nicely said. James, if someone is inspired to work with you, how can they reach out or find you or how can you help?

James Hodges:  Yeah, you can share this link with everyone so they've got it. We actually have a test drive process, so if you are at six figures or at least well on your way, you can actually come work with us for free for three weeks and actually experience us. We do a refundable deposit, it's super easy. I think I'll share it, next-levelcoaches.com/testdrive2.

Sasha Raskin:  Yeah, can you repeat that real quick slower?

James Hodges:  Yeah, I just put in the chat, but ...

Sasha Raskin:  Oh, because it would be on the podcast as well.

James Hodges:  Yeah, sure. Next-levelcoaches.com/testdrive2.

Sasha Raskin:  Perfect.

James Hodges:  And that will be in the show notes or wherever hopefully. So you guys knew that, but you can also search for our Facebook group, Next-Level Coaches on Facebook and see all our free content there. You can come, literally come work with us for three weeks, it's a great process. We get to get really clear on your time, your model, we will show you some lead gen stuff and give you a ton of value. And then at the end of that you can be like, "I'm good, I'm set." Or you're like, "Hey, I would love to go deeper with you guys," and we're so confident in what we do and who we serve that if you're the right coach we offer a full money back guarantee. You can opt out after the first month working with us too.

Sasha Raskin:  Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

James Hodges:  Sure, yeah, lovely.

Sasha Raskin:  James, thank you so much.

James Hodges:  Cool, awesome, man. Thanks for having me and thank you guys for listening to me on the show.

Sasha Raskin: Awesome.