The Consulting Digest - Free Trial Issue

sales & how the game changes

Keys to navigating the shifting landscape of modern sales, while still maintaining moral authority

optimizing your sales tech betting on myself

Tech & automations expert Edward Stranks breaks down how to get the most out of your CRM

building a branding business HER way

How Bijal Patel went from “unemployable” to

SALES & HOW THE GAME IS CHANGING

Taylor Welch delivers powerful notes on the new landscape of Sales, and how you can stay at the forefront

OPTIMIZING SALES TECH

Tech and automations specialist Edward Stranks gives you tips on maximizing your CRM

BETTING ON MYSELF

Branding expert and CEO of LAUNCH, Bijal Patel, brings her unique energy and trademark candor to this exclusive interview all about perception, brand-building, and seizing every “creative opportunity” that comes.

table

OF CONTENTS

DEATH BY DATA

4

Information overwhelm is a real threat to the modern entrepreneur. So, how do we cut past the “noise” and focus only on what matters? Our editor, Mike Walker, tackles that and more!

YOU VS. YOU

If you’ve ever struggled with separating your identity from your ability to “produce” as an entrepreneur, these thoughts on creative energy plucked from Rick Rubin’s excellent book, “The Creative Act,” will help you get out of your own way.

THE CONSULTING DIGEST

Editor-in-Chief: Mike Walker

Regular Contributors:

Taylor Welch

Gabrielle Borman

Dane Mohrmann

Mike Walker

Dean Kozora

Design: Dane Mohrmann

Lauren Medley

Payton Welch

Alex Herndon

Editors: Mike Walker, Gabrielle Borman, Dane Mohrmann

WHO WE ARE

“The Wealthy Consultant” is a training & education platform that can help you organize & monetize your skillset, information, and experience. Our mission is to make the world smarter by mobilizing and empowering your expertise, and helping you share it with the world. We do this through a 5 level “model” of interaction.

LEVEL 1 - PRODUCTS

World-class research, training and education products + events to help you build a bigger, better business.

LEVEL 2 - CERTIFICATION

Full stack certification curriculum + community to start or grow a resilient consulting / training company using our proprietary tools & frameworks (offer mastery, revolving pricing, DFY lead generation, etc). You will finish fully certified in our methods for consulting & coaching.

LEVEL 3 - CONSULTING

Access our state of the art consulting products (including all events, all models, all frameworks & techniques) designed to help build 7 & multi-7 figure income from your consulting / training firm. Our portfolio of service agencies perform DFY work to “clone” our consulting model & setup into your business.

LEVEL 4 - LICENSING

License and deploy our proprietary intellectual property in your business. Our licensing bundles are customized to you and your total addressable market, and our license agreements give you access to deploy our training into your team & client experience.

LEVEL 5 - EQUITY POOL

Join our portfolio of education & service brands to scale using our teams, our reputation & our financial infrastructure.

To learn more about any of these please visit wealthyconsultant.com/learn and schedule a call with an advisor.

DEATH BY DATA

EDITOR’S LETTER FROM MIKE WALKER

EDITOR

Mike Waker

The most amazing thing in the world is - is that we even exist at all.

Consider the physics required. Think about the countless trillions of variables that all had to happen in perfect unison and sequence over millennia to produce this current recipe of reality. It’s truly wild that you and I are here…

We find ourselves in the absolute best time in all of human history to be alive, right now, building businesses as modern day entrepreneurs. There truly never has been more access to the tools, information, and other people required to successfully monetize one’s ideas.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the sharing of ideas was limited to ink on paper and multiday horseback rides across the country. Back in 1860 a new technology called the Pony Express was introduced providing a faster mail service option that covered nearly 2,000 miles from Missouri to California. Its relay system of horses and riders cut the delivery time of mail and news from 24 days to just 10 days. A truly life altering upgrade!

Fast forward and compare that to our current ability of being able to stream 4k quality video, in real-time to nearly any corner of the globe from a handheld device and it’s easy to see that we’re living in a period of exponential advancement.

So much so, that in an ironic twist of fate - it is no longer access to information that we lack, but rather - context. Specifically what to do with all the myriad of metrics that flood our screens and minds on a daily basis.

“More” is not always better. In steady cadence - waves of information are helpful and

push progress, but in great volume - information can overwhelm and take with it all positive benefits, scattering our attention like the wreckage left behind by tsunamis. Truth be told…

Death by data is a real threat for the modern business owner.

An important concept to embrace, not just internally for our own sakes - but also when communicating with our market- who is also battling the influx of information, maxing their bandwidth (literally and figuratively).

So how does one reap the competitive advantages of data without getting mired in the weeds of minutiae?

When it comes to building a successful business, there is no shortage of metrics and data points to consider. From the macro economics that impact us all within a globally networked financial market - down to the nuanced intricacies of our individual audiences and product niches…

Everything matters, because everything is connected.

At first glance that understandably may be overwhelming to consider - “Mike, how the hell am I going to deal with

everything if it all matters?!”

The short answer is - you don’t have to. Just because it matters, doesn’t mean you should try to process and control it all. Just because it all matters - doesnt by default suggest that it’s controllable anyway, you wouldn’t be able to even if you tried. The proverbial “Butterfly Effect’’ is always at play.

The key to surviving information overload as a business owner is to narrow your focus towards the measurable and controllable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you can clearly associate as lead indicators. A leading indicator is a predictive measurement, for example; the percentage of people wearing hard hats on a building site is a leading safety indicator. A lagging indicator is an output measurement, for example; the number of accidents on a building site is a lagging safety indicator.

Each department in your business should generally have anywhere from 2-5 lead indicators that when monitored regularly will provide you with a high level understanding as to the health status - and trajectory - of that particular area in your business within a set period of time.

Our team here at TWC reviews this weekly during our Executive Calls and assign a simple “red, yellow, green” toggle for each KPI so at a glance we can

collectively see where each department is at and how the company is doing holistically.

Notice the simplicity. (Never confuse volume for value)

By distilling our inputs down to only a handful of high leverage lead indicators - our team can quickly and accurately identify what areas of the business require our prioritized attention. No information overload or analysis paralysis - just clear actionable data-based decision making.

Inside CHAMBER®, our top tier of consultancy - we provide our clients with the exact same tools we use here, inhouse at TWC to operate our business. Downloadable tools, templates, and frameworks that allow them to simplify and optimize their data.

When ready, join us at one of our upcoming events and we’ll show you how to install these for your own business so you can navigate the seas of data using the compass of focus.

PS: Learn more about our 2024 event schedule here!

WealthyConsultant.com/events

Let’s talk about sales.

SALES & HOW THE GAME CHANGES

BY TAYLOR WELCH Chief Executive Officer The Wealthy Consultant

But first — some updates.

Our first event in the books… was a winner winner chicken dinner. Next event is sold out — a ski / snowboard trip to the mountains where we’ll be mixing work with play… if you’d like to get to the next event, it’s in April and I’ll share more details with you later.

2024 is officially “underway” and here’s what I can tell you: If I posted all of our client wins here, you’d drown in wins — page after page after page of experts & leaders in their fields, growing and helping people.

Prepare for some turbulence heading into the summer months but be ready to GROW through the Fall / Winter season… the world will begin to tilt back

into a bit of momentum (momentum always looks like chaos) after Summer… whatever you need to do to prepare now (fixing offers, learning how to lead team, getting into paid, etc) do it.

An update on events.

Every organization goes through “linchpin” changes as it grows and develops. A “linchpin” change is some-

thing that, if it did not happen, the organization of the future would not exist. They are updates, changes, initiatives for companies…

Amazon without AWS (Amazon Web Services), or without the Kindle.

Apple without the iPhone.

John Maxwell without 21 Irrefutable

Laws of Leadership or Alex Hormozi without his first blockbuster 100M Offers.

These changes are to be stewarded, sought after, and cherished.

The Wealthy Consultant is experiencing a linchpin update right now. Let me tell you about it.

It’s important first to note that growth is created from the MARKET. You don’t “force” growth from the business “top to bottom.” I cannot make something get bigger, not sustainably. No amount of advertising or firepower will prop up a business if the market thinks it should not exist.

No.

Trying to make something “bigger” is a fools errand. And making it get bigger faster can be even worse. Speed amplifies mistakes. Picture a vehicle “tapping” into a concrete wall — no problem; racing into it at 80 mph is going to leave a mark.

I frequently ask the question, of myself and of our team leadership, “how can we slow it down?”

Why?

Because quality comes from diligent, indepth thinking and that level of thinking requires time. The first time I showed up to a BJJ class (Brazilian Jiu Jitzu), my instructor put me on the ground in about 3 seconds and I asked if he could do it again, but slower.

It’s impossible to learn at high I speeds — you train at high speeds; you learn by going slow. As we’ve grown, we’ve taken appropriate time to assess the

data. We track everything, both internal and external.

Anonymous surveys post-events…

QBRs (quarterly business reviews) for clientele & partners.

Attendance percentages (we know projected attendance by month, season, quarter, and topic).

Questions logged, support tickets, time to support tickets, NPS & client-effort scorecards, etc.

(P.S. Shameless plug you might have already seen this but, our new book “Excellent Experience” teaches a lot of these metrics — it’s available on Amazon if you want to do a quick search)

Here’s what all this data is telling us:

DO MORE EVENTS.

At first, I ignored it. Argued with it, even. Our curriculum is world class. Our platforms (which host community, curriculum coaching/consulting experiences & ongoing support) are unmatched.

I wanted to double down on those things… people rave about them — clients love the community & the energy of how we build businesses.

But what they love the most?

Getting in rooms, learning advanced

& application-based business concepts, and spending time with quality people who are building LONG TERM relationships.

(And margs, we always have margs at events cause life is better with some tequila)

So in 2024, 2025, and 2026, and likely beyond — we will be doing a LOT more events.

Chamber clients already know this (they’re RSVPing out into the Spring of 2025 already).

In the next 12 months we’ll be in:

• Colorado to ski & talk people/profit/ ops (this month)

• Barcelona to talk customer acquisition & advertising (June)

• San Diego to talk branding, brand health & long term attention (September)

• London to talk selling from stage & speaking/presenting (December)

In addition, we will have regular workshops in our Nashville headquarters (the next one you should consider coming to is in April where we’re breaking down sales strategy, sales teams, and sales operations — there are a few major shifts we’ve made for compliance reasons that you must make in your own business or bear the burden of the consequences).

In May, a book writing workshop — come for 2 days, leave with a book manuscript ready to publish to grow your business. We’re also adding a few events for LaunchKit, just to deliver even more value to our clients.

If you’ve never been to one of our events, I can’t really describe how much fun they are — or how GOOD they are when stacked against how most people are doing them. That is not a dig at anyone, it is a testament to our team…

If at all possible, do your darned best to get “in the room” at least once, maybe twice… maybe 3 or 4 times this year.

So here are the details for April, and June — our next two events that we’re opening to the public (March & May are both client-only).

• April: Sales Strategy, Sales Teams & Sales Operations. We will be outlining hiring, training, culture, compensation, and compliance processes to build a world class sales team for your business. It’s a full 1.5 days of training… you’ll get meals covered by us and are welcome to come to our client-mixer the night before the meet us and meet some rockstar entrepreneurs. Location: Nashville, TN.

• June: Customer Acquisition & Attention. We will buy 30,000+ customers this year. Last year, our first “full year” in business, we purchased

over 12,000 customers. Customers are better than leads, for a multitude of reasons… this is a 2-day event with meals covered. Location: Barcelona, Spain.

You can inquire about both of these using wealthyconsultant.com/events

NOTE: and this is an important one — if you come to the April event or the June event, please let your rep know (whoever you speak to in order to get information about the workshop) that you are a Digest / Memo subscriber. We apply healthy discounts to customers.

Winning In Chaotic Times

Here are some concepts to ensure you actually win 2024 — rather than trying, failing, and attempting to justify…

What you are afraid of is not something to avoid, it’s something to reconcile and “let go” of

Emotions carry signals that demand an audience. When you are feeling afraid, usually there is something to listen to — but most times it is not from the current moment. Humans carry lessons with us

until we actually pause, recognize them, acknowledge them, and learn them.

The more you love it, the better you’ll be at it

It’s impossible to be bad at something you love — and almost impossible to be good at something you hate. Plan your life accordingly.

When markets speed up, fractionalization wins; when they slow down, centralization wins

We have a dense collection of training on TEAM and organizational structure. This is because “The Wealthy Consultant” is not the guru-Taylor show. Our faculty & leadership team is exceptional, with over 100 years of experience across all leadership staff. To enjoy speed without compromising quality, invest in team.

Better offers, not “more” offers

As we tip into a faster environment, the firms with the most appropriate offerings (that match their market demographic and psychographic) are going to scoop up the wins. We have a training on offers

that you should watch — if you hop into the private Digest community (free for you as a subscriber) you can search “Offers” and the video should pop up.

If you’re not in the community, it’s hosted on Circle and you can get a link by emailing our team at support@wealthyconsultant.com!

The Art of Sales & How the Game Changes

Years ago I created a sales training called reflex. It was perhaps the first sales curriculum that taught the psychology behind leadership in sales. Reflex was not a simple “say this, then say that” training — it was a deep look into the MIND of the greatest sales professionals who ever lived.

A few months ago I was at an event with my friend Dan Martell — author of the excellent and #1 best selling book “Buy Back Your Time” — and his audience asked him for his favorite sales training.

He said “Reflex,” but laughed and said they’d have to try and get me to sell it to them. That’s because it’s not for sale anymore — and hasn’t been for some time. We offer it to private clients now. But I want to outline some training for you now that will help you become more effective at enrollment, sales & persuasion.

The two main parts of Reflex are the “pocket” and the “3 rules of sales.” Let’s cover them now. First, the 3 rules.

Rule #1: your only job is to help the prospect make the best decision for them.

Not for you, not for your business; for them and their business. This means

that we are not trying to get the prospect to do anything that is not good for them. We cannot manipulate this. It must be a hard and fast RULE.

Rule #2: what’s best for the prospect will usually be OUTSIDE of their comfort zone.

This is usually the case. Why? Because if it was inside their comfort zone, they would’ve already done it. Loss aversion is real; and this loss aversion can keep us stuck inside our comfort zones for far too long. When I hired my first coach, bought my first car, moved for the first time to a new city, etc — it was scary. Moving outside your comfort zone is scary.

Rule #3: the prospect will fight to stay inside their comfort zone.

Because of this, we have an issue. This is why sales can be tough; and it’s why people shy away from it. But we are not going to become adversarial, not at all. We are going to lead. Leadership is not about being popular, it’s about improving the lives of the people who follow you.

Social media has created a weird situation. It’s created a competition of sorts, everyone wants to be the most popular. But the key to mastering sales is learning this simple truth: influencing people is about making their lives better. Your popularity only serves one purpose and that’s to bring value to society.

When you get these rules intertwined with your psychology, you begin to approach sales differently. You start realizing that uncomfortable situations (whether it’s on a sales call, during a conversation with a friend, whatever) are not to be run from. People are

searching for other people who will hold them accountable to their highest & best versions.

In April we will be going a lot deeper on this. We will not only be covering scripting, objections, and other nuances to becoming more effective at sales- we’ll also be diving into team structure & management.

The Pocket

What is required for someone to buy from you?

A vision of their future that is bigger than their current situation

A “gap” or a chasm that is more expensive to cross alone than with help Trust that you know how to get them through that chasm

And as a bonus: they must believe that now is the proper time for them to finally jump the chasm. If your market is experiencing problems, pain, or obstacles that are time sensitive, then this is easy. Because every delay makes it more expensive for them to get the outcome they want to have.

If it is not time sensitive, you must have the ability to communicate in such a way that helps them commit to their own timelines. As a bonus for sales event attendees, we are sending Reflex (the old and new curriculum) to ticket holders.

You can apply by going here, selecting April and filling out the form:

WealthyConsultant.com/Events

YOU vs. YOU

THOUGHTS ON “THE CREATIVE ACT,” AND SEPARATING YOUR IDENTITY FROM YOUR ABILITY TO PRODUCE

BY DANE MOHRMANN Marketing Director The Wealthy Consultant

DIGEST

YOU vs. YOU

LESSONS FOR ENTREPRENEURS FROM RICK RUBIN

Earlier this year, I was having a bit of an identity crisis. Specifically, I struggled with divorcing my value as a person from the results I was able to produce as a marketer.

Maybe you can relate.

Seeing as how a majority of coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs consider themselves high performers, the odds are that you absolutely can.

I, rather generally, consider myself a “creative person.” As a marketer, I often find my days filled with writing copy, designing graphics, building systems, and coming up with strategies for everything from ads, to content, to email (to name just a few things). When those things work, I feel happy, fulfilled, and motivated. When they don’t - well, I feel like a fraud.

It got so bad at one point, that my demeanor throughout the day would often go hand-in-hand with the performance of our ads, funnels, and email promos.

Which means, I was a roller coaster of a person to be around.

During this period, I was chatting with a friend and fellow marketer about this very topic, and he recommended a book to me that helped him weather the same storm himself. It was “The Creative Act,” by Rick Rubin. (Thanks, Blake, if you’re reading this.)

When we started outlining the content for this issue of The Wealthy Consultant Digest, and we knew we wanted to include a book review, I volunteered - just so that I could have an excuse to talk about this book and compile some

thoughts that really impacted me, and began to help me reshape the anxiety and sensitivity I had toward my results into an appreciation for getting to play the game.

So, with that in mind, here are some valuable lessons from “The Creative Act,” along with some quick observations about how these lessons took root in my mind. My hope is that you’ll feel inspired, uplifted, and challenged. Oh, and make sure you pick up this book at some point.

LESSON ONE:

“Self-doubt lives in all of us. And while we may wish it gone, it is there to serve us.”

Self-doubt is a powerful (and, to some extent, necessary) tool for creative people.

In the book, Rubin talks about how some of the most lauded and respected performers of all time are also the least self-assured in the quality of their abilities. For some of them, it is precisely their ability to grapple with their selfdoubt that ends up producing their most

amazing and enduring works.

For these folks, their output is an indicator of how long they are able to “go to war” against their demons. And, in a few cases, this is why some truly remarkable talents only ever manage to put out a couple of “hits” to the public in their entire careers - because those were the only two times they were able to withstand the internal pressure long enough to actually produce anything they were comfortable with releasing.

The trick, Rubin posits, is in directing those doubts in a healthy way, and accepting that what you have to give the world is truly unique to you. No one else can be you or do what you were put on this earth to do in the exact way that you can. This quote sums it up best:

“The making of art is not a competitive act. Our work is representative of the self. You would be amiss to say, ‘I’m not up to the challenge.’ Yes, you may need to deepen your craft to fully realize your vision. If you’re not up to it, no one else can do it. Only you can. You’re the only one with your voice.”

One of the most illuminating sections of the book for me, came when he broke down the two different types of

doubt in the creative process. The first is doubt in your ability to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplishTRUE self-doubt (“There’s no way I can possibly do this”). The second is doubting the quality of your work (“I can do it, but I don’t think it will be any good”).

Rubin makes the observation that the first form of doubt is far more dangerous than the second, as having doubt in your ability to accomplish something AT ALL can paralyze you from taking any action, robbing the world of what you are actually capable of. The second can hinder you, but can also push you to innovate and find new ways of doing things that no one has ever thought before.

In short, if you’re going to doubt, doubt the quality of your work but NOT your ability to do it.

LESSON TWO:

“The key to navigating this phase of an artistic journey is learning to tune OUT.”

It can’t be overstated how critical it is to guard your inputs.

The world of coaching and consulting (especially) is rife with what I call “copycat-ism.” Hormozi starts doing a particular thing in his Instagram reels.

Every other marketer in the space sees it, doesn’t even pause for two seconds to wonder why, and starts doing it in their reels. Within a couple of weeks, 90% of the space is doing it. And the cycle goes on and on and on.

But, let’s go a step beyond that for a second. There’s another, more danger-

ous, level when it comes to distractions from within your industry. And that’s COMPARISON.

It’s sort of an “open secret” at this point that every business owner and guru on the internet loves to misrepresent their success (a.k.a. - lying). Looking at their social media profiles, it’s easy to begin to believe that every campaign they launch succeeds, every product they publish is an absolute banger, every month is up and to the right… they never lose, never recede, never falter…

And, once you begin to believe that, it’s easy to begin looking at your own journey, and wondering why you don’t seem to be experiencing the same level of success.

When this happens, it’s a clear indicator that you’re spending too much time paying attention to the wrong inputs.

Rubin refers to these distracting inputs as “outside voices,” and states that the best way to protect the purity of what you’re trying to accomplish is by tuning them OUT. For you, this might mean muting or unfollowing inputs from inside your own industry and looking for inspiration elsewhere that can help reinvigorate your excitement for what you do.

Maybe this means that you spend more time around people with bigger visions that your own, and allowing their energy to lift your own.

Whatever you do, remind yourself of the love you had for the work at the very start. That initial spark of excitement.

Hold onto it, and push away the inputs that try to make you feel small, belittled or confused.

“THE KEY TO NAVIGATING THIS PHASE OF AN ARTISTIC JOURNEY...

... IS LEARNING TO TUNE OUT.”

LESSON THREE:

“It isn’t popularity, money, or critical esteem. Success occurs in the privacy of the soul. Success has nothing to do with variables outside of yourself.”

Oh boy. This is where the sh*t gets real (at least for me).

To some degree we all crave validation. We feel that we need certain external things to happen in order for us to “feel” successful.

Our measuring stick of success is often a scoreboard and a pat on the back… the dopamine hit of achieving a short term target, or the acceptance and recognition of others.

But Rubin points out that such things are HOLLOW, and often contribute to future feelings of inadequacy (when we

don’t get the applause, or we don’t hit the target).

“Most aspects of popularity are not as advertised. And the artist is often just as empty as they were before, probably more so.”

Man, does that ring true. I started this article by referencing a period of time where I felt like my brain was on a roller coaster that went up or down as my results did. Reading this part of the book felt like a splash of cold water on my face.

I felt as though my identity as a person, my value and worth as a human being, needed to be VALIDATED by the things I was able to do. If not, what good was I?

My measurements of success were all external, and not internal. I began to make a massive shift in how I defined what “success” was for me.

If I didn’t hit this target or that target,

was I still pleased with the effort I put forward? If I didn’t receive recognition for the quality of my work, was I still proud of it?

Did I magically “snap out of” my funk overnight? Certainly not. But I did start to slowly, gradually shift away from the things that were making me feel “less than,” and toward the things that made me feel empowered and unstoppable.

If you’re needing to make a similar shift, I highly recommend you pick up Rick Rubin’s book. Even though he wrote it with creative artists, musicians, and the like in mind, the principles of protecting your creativity and putting forward work that you are passionate about and INTERNALLY proud of will resonate with any entrepreneur on the planet.

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR SALES SYSTEMS

Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Their CRMs - And How You Can Avoid Them

BY EDWARD STRANKS Chief Executive Officer The Moderate Genius

What is it that most businesses want?

If I had to take a wild guess, I assume you would say “MORE SALES”.

That’s often the initial response I hear, but what most are actually wanting is more predictability, stability, and certainty (and more sales just seems like a

good way to get this). What’s more important than just “more sales” is actually attribution on what is bringing the sales; what is working and what’s not. That is what will truly give a business more predictability and certainty.

As Taylor Welch says: “Winning and not knowing why is just as dangerous as losing and not knowing why.”

This is where your CRM (Customer Relationship Management software) should come into the picture. Your CRM should give you more data (attribution), more clarity, and more consistency in processes, all of which produce more certainty for your business.

Unfortunately, the opposite is normally true. Many business owners find their CRM confusing, too complex, and hard to understand.

They misuse it, mess around with it,

and then blame the platform itself… and ultimately use a broken system, or just drop it entirely.

It’s kind of like a kid getting a new fancy video game. They get excited but soon become overwhelmed because they don’t know how to play it properly.

They start mashing a bunch of buttons without knowing why, they lose on level 1 or 2, and just give up (or play without knowing how to master it).

I’m going to fix that for you today, because your CRM should be (if implemented properly) a place you go to get more clarity and more certainty.

Not where you go to get frustrated and confused.

I’ve dedicated the last four years to building sales systems and CRMs for clients (HubSpot is our fav, but we’ve

LEADS FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS IS A SYMPTOM OF POOR PROCESSES

worked with just about everything).

Here are some of the most common obstacles our prospects are typically facing with their CRM when they call us in to help:

Team uses it haphazardly

This happens when the team is not following the processes, or only part of the team is. This leads to incorrect, and therefore unusable, data, and a general messiness and confusion.

“Too complicated”

The process of using the system is not clear. We see this all the time — a sales person will go rogue and not update the CRM at all because they were not clear on how the CRM would benefit them, and just “feels too complicated”.

Does “stuff”, but not what you actually needed

“What problem are we solving?” This question is absolutely foundational —

without it, all systems get messy and bloated, and then they begin to feel hard to use (and feeling hard to use is the point when it stops getting used)

Poor processes

The CRM is only a system that works on top of existing processes in your business. It’s not a magic bullet and it will not fix a poorly run business or sub-par processes.

“Leads are falling through the cracks” is a symptom of poor processes.

I am going to teach some ways of thinking that we use when building out a sales CRM for our clients, so that you can avoid the mistakes above.

(Sorry, not giving you the tactics. Tactics are useless without informed thinking.)

At a very basic level, whether you use HubSpot, GHL, Pipedrive, Close, whatever it is you use… all sales CRMs share some very basic features. Here’s a super-quick review (because so many people get this wrong).

Contacts are an individual person

Deals are an opportunity to convert a Contact into a Customer and collect money

Pipelines are the stages a Deal moves through on the Contact’s journey to becoming a Customer

Pretty simple, yeah? Let’s dive into the actual thinking lessons.

Here’s how our team thinks before we press any buttons.

1) Clarity

We always start at the very end. I care about the feeling a client wants to have when the CRM is set up properly, when the team is using it well to their advantage, when the data is accurate, and business is running ideally. How do they feel? That’s the starting place we want to build backwards from, but you have to know the end goal in order to reverse engineer

that. It does not matter how good a solution is if people do not feel clear and confident while using it. Nearly everyone (excluding Ops and Finance) is looking for every reason to not follow a process. Make sure the process, and more importantly the benefits of following that process, are clear to the members of your team.

(A trick we regularly employ is to make sure the different teams/departments feel like they are involved and able to contribute to the setup of the processes, as this increases their buy-in and adoption.)

I also try to stay away from specifics at this point. The specifics will change over time, but the vision and desired feeling does not change in the same way or with the same frequency.

Here’s what that looks like, as an example:

All the leads that we get are stored in the CRM, and their full journey is tracked so we have attribution

The SDR’s know who to call/sms, and when to do that, based on the type and recency of their last interactions with the company

The AE’s know exactly the status of each prospect, hot/warm/cold, who to follow up with and when, with all relevant info one one screen

When a deal is won, the fulfilment team knows how to easily take over from there, have all the details they need to onboard successfully, and the journey is tracked in HubSpot There are reports for each department with numbers relating to their performance and ob -

jectives, as well as an overall dashboard for the leadership

CEO wants to be able to log in each day, look at one report that tells them where things are at, then log out and go do what they need to do for the day. If you’re the one in charge of managing the CRM, it’s your job to be able to take these loose and random ideas listed above and work backwards to turn those into actual detailed, implement-able, technical solutions based on the specific needs of each team.

2) Simplicity:

Once you have clarity, you need to keep it simple.

Your team’s roles are not always CRM-specific, so it’s important that when they do have to interact with the CRM, the experience is as simple and straightforward as possible.

That, however, makes the implementation of it more complex. The system itself (the CRM) should bear the weight of the complexity and do the heavy-lifting so that your team benefits from simplicity. We’re removing complexity from the user and putting it on the sys-

tem. This isn’t easy at all. It takes skill and forethought.

How does each team or team member need to use it to create more leverage?

How can we simplify their role as much as possible?

What is currently taking them the most time (or is super repetitive) that we can take off their plate and let the system do the work rather than a human needing to do it?

How do we do this in such a way that we have all the data and attribution needed for future decisions?

Once you have that captured, always keep this in mind: Complexity does not scale well. Anything that is built in any system should always be reduced to its simplest and most dynamic form. Anyone can build something overly complex... the trick is building simplicity that scales.

3) Dynamic Thinking

You can’t know the future, but you can plan for it in your CRM. Build what you need today, while planning for

adaptations and variables tomorrow. The way we do this is by thinking dynamically, not statically.

Quick example (this is kinda technical): If there is a workflow that handles assigning a deal to an AE when a call is booked… Static thinking builds branching workflow logic for each AE to assign the deal owner. The downside is this means that every time there is any change on the sales team, the workflow must be updated manually too (along with all the other admin required when bringing on new team).

Dynamic thinking builds one workflow, one path, and uses variables from the call booking info to assign the deals to the right person every time, without needing to touch the workflows.

Another very simple example would be adding all SDR’s to a “team” in the CRM, so that every time there is turnover in the SDR team, you simply need to add/remove from the “team” without needing to manually go in and adjust workflows that perform lead assignment, etc.

Again: It’s easier to think static than dynamic. The future however, is not static, so your thinking shouldn’t be either.

These are just some of the ways we employ proper thinking in our agency before we even push any buttons or do any “stuff” for our clients. Everything we do has to get us closer to the desired outcome, it all has to solve a problem, and it needs to be as simple as it can possibly be.

Simple scales, complex does not — and your ability to push the right buttons will always be limited by your ability to think.

BETTING Myself - on -

A Candid Conversation

With Branding Expert & Founder of LAUNCH, Bijal Patel

If you’re not already familiar with this month’s featured client - then you’re in for a real treat. Bijal is unquestionably one of the most impactful and giving-first people we have inside of CHAMBER here at TWC. She is a constant source of value and support for everyone in the community and lives out what it means to be a contributor. Her story, her passion and journey all serve as an exemplary example of the heart-driven entrepreneur. Her expertise in all things branding have not only provided a major upgrade to everything we do here at TWC - but also to hundreds, likely thousands, of other businesses all over the world.

This is an interview worth reading twice and taking notes from. So grab a pen and pad and let’s dive in!

Tell us about your background and what inspired you to build the business that you have today?

I had ZERO aspirations to be in Branding and LESS THAN ZERO (I guess that’s negative haha) desires to be an Entrepreneur / own my own business. That was never the goal. Never the desire.

I was perfectly happy to work at a huge corporate business, dress the part, learn the dance, talk the lingo, and climb the corporate ladder. I was well on my way to doing that, too… and then BOOM

But I’ll get to that part in a second.

Let me start with how I was brought up because it’ll make it all make more sense. My parents immigrated from India in the 80’s with $8 and a dream. At that time, America was seeking brilliant minds to immigrate in from India (and China) in particular because they wanted to get ahead with the science, technology, and math talent. But there was a caveat - you were limited to the cash you could bring over.

Once they came over, they ended up borrowing money from other Indian families ahead of them who had immigrated over and jumped into the “Hotel-Motel-Patel” trend that was starting (and which is now a mainstay). My Dad didn’t have the opportunities in the professional workplace, because in the 80’s things were… well let’s just say DIFFERENT. Less open, less diverse.

I was brought up in a mostly Indian household that happened to live in America. My parents, and culture at large, did not value anything within the arts because “we didn’t come here for you to be a broke, starving artist.”

I received that message over and over and over again as a child.

Luckily, I was left and right brained - so I leaned into the left side and got a degree in Computer Science, like I was told to do. It was either this or be a pharmacist, and I got fired from my Walgreens pharmacy job after 4 months, so I figured that was a NOPE.)

I went and coded at a big company for close to 2 years and while I was an amazing coder (who dressed very different from the majority of male programmers wearing old Dell t-shirts), and I still enjoyed the logic, reason, and beauty of programming an algorithm... I was miserable on most days.

They wanted to move me into “Sales” and to become “client-facing”. The company saw a 23 year old, attractive, charismatic woman and thought $$$$.

Looking back - I don’t blame them. I would have seen that opportunity too. I was a “rare breed” amongst programmers, and stood to make the company a lot more money in a role where I could be seen, rather than shoved behind a computer.

I was driving one day to work in Atlanta, begruding another day of sitting in an all-beige cubicle, with beige carpet and beige walls... when I saw a HUGE blue neon sign for the “Savannah College of Art and Design.”

I VEERED off the exit and popped in. It was like a fairy tale.

I still remember the feeling I had when I walked in. All the beautiful designs and colors. Everything about the space screamed “creative possibilities.”

I found out I could quit my job, use some credits from my Computer Programming B.S. and apply it towards my Masters. Boom - I was in! Two years later, I graduated at the top of my class with a Master’s Degree in Interior Design and a job that was created for me because of a competition in which I had successfully placed.

Ironically enough, instead of starting off doing corporate workplace design (which is what inspired me to get into Commercial Interior Design), I won a competition for a hotel franchisor and immediately headed off to design a hotel. The tie back into the “Hotel-Motel-Patel” was strong and my family had also been in the business.

Of course, I didn’t want to do it (naturally). But I did. Because, it felt like yet another “creative opportunity.”

Fast-forward to a few more winding roads with switches of industries, jobs, and cities... I ended up doing Commercial Interior Design for the #1 design

firm in the world (for 30+ years and counting).

After 13 years of working closely with many household names and Fortune 500 companies, helping them develop their headquarters and spaces, I got abruptly fired after having my second child.

The company felt “I had changed” after having a second baby and wasn’t the workhorse I had previously been. It was a total and utter shock, because I had just helped my 2 bosses win a $25MM highly prominent renovation downtown in a class-A, high-rise building. I had also been the “favored” designer. I had come into the company having won multiple prominent design awards, but after I won a huge one in Houston, the writing was on the wall.

Once I got let go, in the seconds that followed after the shock -- I felt an amazing and overwhelming sense of peace and an inner voice that said, “You’re going to be okay - MORE than okay!”

I grabbed my stuff (quietly and with pride) and walked out of the building on top the world!

Then, two minutes later -- in the car I am hysterically bawling and thought I was going to die. I called my husband utterly ashamed that I had been “fired” from a real job and I couldn’t imagine this level of failure.

I had always been a straight A student. Failure didn’t compute for me.

He simply responsed, “Don’t worry - you were ready to move on!”. Sometimes those that love us and support us see our potential more than we do. After interviewing all over town at prominent architecture and design firms, I realized I would be living in “Groundhog Day” over and over if I didn’t make a change.

I’d have the same type of boss, galavanting around town and networking... while I would be the overworked, miserable workhorse who went and won all the awards for said boss and company.

That was the moment I realized that I was “unemployable.”

I made the decision to start LAUNCH in October of 2018, and look another leap of faith that would turn into a quantum leap for myself, my family, our wealth, our freedom, and our life.

Yet another “creative opportunity” had shown up, divinely placed and right on time for me.

Can you share a significant challenge you encountered early in your business development journey and how you overcame it?

When I first started my business in January of 2019, I was doing what I had been doing for the 13 years prior, Commercial Interior Design for corporate offices, hospitality spaces, restaurants, coworking spaces, etc.

By the time COVID hit in March of 2020, I saw the writing on the wall. Commercial interior design, as a market, was about to be decimated.

I saw another “creative opportunity” right in front of me. I was going to do “branding” for 90 days until this whole “pandemic thing cooled off” (because it was totally going to just take 3 months, right?). I dove head-first into a whole new field that I had NO formal training, certifications, or degrees in.

But, to my surprise (and it still surprises me to this day) that knowledge was divinely within in me, and some of my lateral experience designing beautiful high-rise buildings and headquarters for Fortune 500 companies allowed me to speak intelligently to these companies who had paid hundreds of thousands (sometimes more) on their “branding.”

At that first major fork in the road - I learned that “adapt or die” could be reframed as “creative opportunity”, and I continued to venture out and find those special moments that created quantum leaps.

All in all, the biggest challenges I have overcome have been my own. Healing my inner child, working on releasing trauma, and personally developing into becoming a better version of myself, relentlessly.

The hardest, and most impactful growth I have experienced is because I have been willing to be radically vulnerable, ask the questions that most shy away from, and

receive the answers and put them into action.

How has your business evolved since its inception, and what key milestones have you achieved along the way?

How has it NOT evolved might be an easier question??? As a visionary -- I change my mind every 2.5 minutes. (Or, at least, that’s what my team think.) But after being in business 5 years, I have learned to put constraints or rules in place that I try things for 1 to 2 months prior to switching again.

• Started in January 2019, hit my first 6 figure revenue year.

• By March of 2020, saw the COVID writing on the wall, and did a tempo -

rary switch over to “branding” since the brands I saw small business owners posting about were atrocious (and I am being kind here).

• By July of 2020, I hit my first $45k revenue month. Oops.

• By October of 2020, we bought our custom home and I started adding my first team members (two VA’s).

• In June of 2021, I had my first $100k+ ($140k) revenue month by selling my first 6-figure offer.

• By December of 2021, I won a prominent “Houston Power Woman” award.

• In April of 2022, I turned the big 4-0 (I call it Bijal 4.0, so I upgrade every de-

cade and year like a software would) and took my entire extended family on a dream, luxurious vacation in a massive private villa with a private beach I rented in Turks & Caicos.

• In March of 2023, we threw and sold-out our first live event and received an NPS score of 9.5, and by December of 2023, I had thrown 4 in-person events. I launched my podcast “Own your Brand” and spoke at 10 live events, 2 as the keynote speaker and got my first standing ovation.

• By January of 2024, we hit 5 years as a business (only 50% of businesses make it this long) and we sustained year-over-year growth. I also have transformed as a leader, thinker, entrepreneur, wife and mother.

While I track and am proud of all of my quantitative achievements -- I am way more proud of the human I have become from a qualitative perspective. The journey really is the win, and the way I have evolved allows me to dream even bigger and become more impactful in how I help people. I’ve created ripple waves of impact and I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity to be able to grow and see potential in both myself and others.

When it comes to your area of expertise - what do you feel is most surprising to clients when they first begin working with you?

They have NO IDEA (despite thinking they know me, having heard me speak, or having talked to someone I’ve worked with) just HOW GOOD the experience actually is going to be.

They don’t expect the transformation. They can’t believe how their vision ex-

pands and their identity clarifies. They view me as being able to “passionately see their future self” while being relentless (and at times tough) to make sure they get to the vision they have entrusted me to get them to.

As trite as it may sound, they literally transform as humans into their high potential versions of themselves. When they unlock this version of themselves, they are in flow, high-energy, ready to dream bigger and take on the world. Huge opportunities start to present themselves and they begin (and sustain) wins in business they hadn’t experienced before.

They ALL say “I had no idea this is what Branding is.” I remind them -- most people don’t do branding, or brand strategy the way we do. We are truly world-class.

Could you highlight a particularly successful client engagement or project that showcases your business’s strengths?

Given the digest is for the Wealthy Consultant - I think that would be the best example.

We were able to dig deep into the brand strategy for TWC, by analyzing all the other brands within the larger portfolio through our “Strategic Brand Architecture” exercise.

Knowing what sub-brands should be related, or coming down the pipeline, we were able to plan for and anticipate any changes in the brand prior to it happening.

This allows for “Brand Congruence” which is the basis for what creates brand trust. You must have brand trust

for people to buy your products, programs, and services.

We also analyzed the tone of voice of the owner vs the brand at-large, so the rest of the team didn’t feel they “had to sound” like the owner. When this happens, the team feels more empowered to own their voice, social media, and content because they can use their personal brands to promote the business brand.

It also adds literal dollars to the multiple of a business, if it were ever up for a sale because it has “decentralized risk” since it is not all wrapped around “one attractive character” or Founder / CEO.

Lastly, the brand design helped to evoke exactly the feelings we were looking to achieve in the market. It is unique, looks modern yet timeless, but with enough of a range to accommodate any future products, groups, programs, funnel

pages, or sub-brands.

The branding guidelines saved the team a TON of hours (countless) while preserving the look and feel, so that brand congruence continued to build brand trust.

What are your long-term goals and vision for the future of your business?

LAUNCH, my world-class Branding firm will continue to evolve into training, consulting, events, and agency services. I love the idea of having a full-stack portfolio to serve different clients who are different points in their journey. We have always served a variety of clients and a variety of niches because we solve a “target problem” rather than focus on a “target niche.”

I want to solve the biggest, hairiest problem that most small business owners face - which is not being able to fully deploy their brand power into the market place and be positioned so they are in a “category of one”.

This creates 3 things for small business owners / entrepreneurs / coaches / consultants / service providers / brick and mortars (you name it):

1. Brand Legitimacy (attracting best fit, higher quality clients who are attracted to what you stand for)

2. Brand Congruence (feeling like everything aligns and looks put together and cohesive in messaging and design)

3. Brand Affinity (raving fans who buy everything you offer and spread brand awareness on your behalf)

The second biggest challenge is the time and strategy it takes to build an amazing brand with lasting staying power and a growing raving fan base. The solutions for both of those are clear

in my mind as a visionary -- but I’m not going to spill the beans on my business plan here for all to see... you’ll have to wait and watch me. ;)

All I know -- is it will be:

• A gamechanger

• A trend-setter

I know it’s my responsibility as a leader in this niche industry of Branding (which is a subset under Marketing) to raise the standards and bar, just like I did with Interior Design when I won a national competition for the hotel design I did for that franchisor I started my career with. Literally, the rest of the hotel industry copied us after. I got to learn “copying is the greatest form of flattery” early on.

What advice would you offer to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to embark on a similar journey? Are there any valuable lessons you’ve learned that you’d like to pass on to the next generation of business leaders?

Too many to share! I’ll leave my favorite gems that I would have needed to hear:

1. It is okay to have a new dream. It allows you to honor your previous book, while re-writing and re-inventing the next one.

2. Your friends and family are likely not going to be the first ones

jumping up and down to support you. I was fortunate enough to have mine be really supportive; and even then I get the occasional “What is it that you do anyways? Why do you post on social media all the time? How do you know what you’re doing?” haha.

3. Get high-ticket paid mentorship and coaching / training EARLY. Don’t overconsume free content, books, reels, FB groups, and YouTube and think you’re “learning while bootstrapping.” My quantum leaps forward have all given some attribution back to my personal board of advisors, mentors, and peers.

What is the best way for people to learn more about your and your business?

I love connecting with people and talking Branding!

For social, I’m the most active on Facebook and Instagram - shoot me a DM and say hey!

• facebook.com/bijal.launch

• instagram.com/bijal.launch

We also have a podcast, Own your Brand, which you can find by searching it on Apple Podcasts.

Or, check out our website: welaunch.design

They say, “Entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart.” And I don’t disasgree…

What, I say is “When you are fulfilling your soul’s purpose you will never go wrong. Bet on yourself. Dream BIGGER. The world needs more of YOU.”