Podcast

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[00:00:00] Kane Minkus:

To me, an advisor encompasses several different critical functions, and one of them is a coach. Another one would be a consultant, and this third one is essentially a confidant, and the fourth one is a systemic thinker.

[00:00:15] INTRO:

This is experts unleashed, revealing how professionals and entrepreneurs transform experience into income while positively impacting the world.

For years, Joel Erway has helped entrepreneurs develop and launch their expert based businesses growing them beyond six and even seven figures a year. Now a professional expert serves their community through paid training education or service. This podcast will help you design and execute your plan to become a six or seven figure expert without a massive team.

To get more information or apply now, visit theperfectexpert.com. Let’s get started.

[00:00:58] Joel Erway:

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Joel Erway here and welcome to another very special episode of Experts Unleashed. I am pumped because today I have a very good friend of mine, very special guest. Kane Mink, and we are going to be diving into all things about how to become a high paid advisor. How to become, you know, expert consultants.

And this is somebody who not only talks the talk but walks the walk. He is somebody who has generated well over a hundred. Million dollars in advising services and advising fees and has been mentoring and guiding other people on, on how to launch their own career in this space. And so Kane Minkus over here is a serial entrepreneur who has built and ran and scaled over 40 companies, many, along with his wife generating over a half a billion dollars in revenue.

Let me repeat that half a billion dollars in revenue. 500 million in revenue in those companies. He’s a three time international bestselling author, and he’s a scale up advisor and have an exit company where they have exited over 200 companies with this team. And he told me before we even hopped on, he’s done over a hundred million dollars just in advising services alone.

So Kane, I’m excited, man. Welcome to the show. Can’t wait to dive into our chat.

[00:02:11] Kane Minkus:

Thank you for having me, Joel. Always a pleasure. And I’m going to try to match your incredible energy.

[00:02:17] Joel Erway:

It’s funny, you know, we, we met at a role in freezer event I don’t know, 3, 4, 5, 6 months ago. I don’t know how long it was.

Time flies, right? And you know, we I was on one of your virtual events and I, I gave a quick presentation and when I hopped on, it’s just like the energy was through the roof. It’s like music was pumping through the virtual event. I’m like, Holy crap. Like, just instantaneously, like just lifted up my my energy, and so actually why I’m trying to match. I’m trying to match that energy level that we had back a couple months ago. So.

[00:02:46] Kane Minkus:

Yeah, I, I felt like we were brothers from another mother from the minute we met on that particular point. All right, so how can we give them great points here on the advisory thing?

[00:02:56] Joel Erway:

Yeah. So let’s, let’s kind of talk about it. You know, it’s this is something that you’ve been doing for what you said 14 years, if I remember correct.

[00:03:01] Kane Minkus:

Well, actually, so, so the way I look at myself actually is I’m really first and foremost a, a, a business owner. I love starting businesses. As you noted in my bio.

I’ve done over 40 plus companies, most of which have been eight figures. The rest have been kind high, seven figure a year revenue companies. So I love building companies. So that’s been my, my main thing. But when I was about 19 years old, I started my first company. And I was originally a musician, so my background is a musician.

I was a record producer and I got this whole it was kind of a showbiz kid. And my very first company was a media company. And of course I started it with the great intentions. I had. Great background in music and all sorts of stuff. And that is a whole bunch of stories in there. We’ll just jump through.

But anyways, I got an advisor, business advisor and you know, prior to having that advisor, we were struggling along trying to figure out how to take our music skills. I say we, because I started with a business partner and you know, I was doing a lot of, you know, the reading and. Work. I was going to seminars doing everything I could to figure out how to unleash, you know, my abilities.

But it really didn’t change until I met a great advisor that I happened to meet at an event, at a conference. And this gentleman name was Brian. Brian Franklin. He’s become a massive friend. We’ve gotten all sorts of great trouble together over the years, running businesses and doing stuff. He helped us take our musical talents and take a media company that we started, that we were doing soundtracks for video games, television, the web, all sorts of stuff, film and everything.

And we took it the top five in the world in four years. Working with my business partner and with my advisor. So very early on in my early twenties I got that. Having a great advisor in your team was huge because we went from not knowing what to do to having an insanely busy production studio or, you know, one of the biggest in the world.

And so that kind of, you know, that sort of like got me started on the fact that this could be a. Huge, huge game changer for people. And so while I was running my own businesses as part of just, you know, extra fun, I started advising other businesses in my early twenties. Right. And I can’t say I knew what I was doing much back then.

But I am 44 now. We figured out a couple of things since then. But essentially I really got that advisors could be critical for businesses. And I was actually having so much fun working on other people’s businesses that although I was starting my own, I never, ever, ever stopped always coaching or advising on the weekends or at night.

You know, or even I started to take time out of the day, which my business partners would go, What are you doing? Well, I’m working at someone else’s business. Why are you doing that? Cause I love it. And it gave us great perspective and it was fun. And over time I started getting very involved in different people’s businesses while I was running my own and before I knew it, you’re wedged into all of these companies.

You’re getting to see all these industries. And in my late twenties, as one of the companies we started was a training education advisory company. From that, we took it around the world. We’ve had 3 million entrepreneurs and professionals come through our training. And we’ve been in 32 countries with our footprint and we’ve been on the largest stage in the world.

Just the point is that we’ve been able to see so many businesses that this advisory thing has just stuck around forever. So that’s kind of the background on it.

[00:05:36] Joel Erway:

Yeah, it’s funny because, you know, I think as you progress in business, hopefully everyone who’s in business has hired at least one advisor in some, in some capacity, whether it’s paid or, you know, just, you know, asking for advice.

But it’s like you. I feel like everybody needs that sounding board like you are as the business owner. Like you’re, you’re just inundated with all day to day tasks. And it’s, it’s like what we talked about before, we’ve talked about this many times, but you know, the ex-experts curse almost like you can’t read the label from inside the bottle.

It’s like you need that outside perspective to help show you, like, to help you see what’s really going on. And so I love, I love advisors and I think it’s a great opportunity.

[00:06:15] Kane Minkus:

Yep. So you just made actually several really important points that if, if I could jump out, want to actually expand what I just said.

So first of all, it’s funny that you say everybody needs an advisor. I think so too. And I’ve had not only an advisor, my entire professional career for now, you know, 44. So 24 years. I still have advisors today that I meet with regular. But many times, I’ve had many advisors at the same time, you have a board of advisors, and one of the first things we set up when we set up a new project now is our board of advisors, 2, 3, 4 advisors that we’re going to have on.

We give them some equity, we’re paying them, and we just, we find that everything just moves much faster. Whether we’re leveraging their networks, their talent, their experience, whether we’re staying in an accountability structure, or whether we really need tactical executional help with them on a day-to-day basis, whatever.

The funny thing is though, because I’ve now, I’ve been in stadiums for the last 20 years speaking, I will ask the audience, how many of you have never had a world class advisor on your team before?

And by the way, I use the word advisor very specifically because that’s the second thing I’m going to go into is what it means to me and what I think it should mean for everybody.

Because the terms coaches, consultants, advisors, expert, they’ve gotten so watered down and sort of there’s no, there’s no standard, right? So people don’t really know what they are. We’re going to go into that in just a second. But to come back to this is, I’d say to the. Who here has never had a world class advisor before?

Help you hold your hand on building your business with you. And literally between 80 and 90% of every single audience I’ve spoken to, whether I’m in a room of 50 or in the room of 20,000, everybody’s hand goes up with, except for the select few, it’s usually the few sitting in the front row who bought the expensive tickets?

Yeah. Yep. Because their world’s going very differently than the other 80, 90% in the room. And I honestly, even to today, even though I’ve asked this hundreds of. I still ask because I just get shocked every time. To me it’s a core essence of how you build a business. It’s like, Hey, I need to learn how to market.

I mean, you know, like you guys help people attract in the leads, convert, take them to the whole process. You help them build it up. That’s a core essence to a business. Can you ever imagine running a business where you don’t know how to attract a lead and convert them into your product or service, or tech doesn’t happen?

So to me that’s how advisors are. But let’s, let’s talk about the second point, which is, you said it’s important to have a sounding board. Now this is interesting. So we have. Distinctive distinctions around what an advisor is. And I want to share that with your audience here. Yeah. Cause I’d love to change the way people think about these fields because I don’t think they understand them well.

Therefore, they get confused about who they need, when they need it, why they need it, and why they should get it. And most of the time they just go, Eh, I’ll figure it out myself. Why do I need a sounding board, so to speak? Now, sounding board is one component of it, right? But it, to me, it goes much deeper than that.

And in fact, the reason I use the word advisor, because we know all the words, coach, consultant, expert, you know, mentor, advisor, all that. To me, an advisor encompasses several different critical functions. And one of them is a coach. Another one would be a consultant. And this third one is essentially a confidant.

And the fourth one is a systemic think. So we have them like that now. So let’s go through these really fast and feel free if you want to dig into any of these. Just, just break right in and say, Well, what about this? So to me, a coach works with people on achieving the highest potential, right? And we all know probably the most famous coach is Tony Robbins, right?

And he works with people on high performance leadership, you know, thinking the highest levels, how to, things like commitment, integrity, communication leader, all that kind of stuff. That’s coaching to me. And so if a team or an individual is having challenges achieving, I put on my coaching. And we go to the coaching tools and we start everything from human potential stuff to neuroscience and all those things that deal with how we achieve as human beings, how we get in our ways, how we get out of our ways, that kind of stuff.

Then there’s this strategic or tactical, and that is like, what do I do? Hey man, what do I do , right? Yep. And that is the consultants. Component. To me that’s a consultant’s hat, Hey, how do I run Facebook ads? Hey, how do I build a funnel? Hey, how do I put together a great pitch? Hey, how do I network better?

Hey, how do I sell or converter? Hey, how do I come up with a, a great idea or brand or anything that deals with the tactical components of a business? That’s the consultant side. And I think an advisor who can do both of those has definitely got a leg up on one who can’t. The third area is really this confidant area.

You know, for executives and CEOs, the number one thing that’s always said is it’s very lonely at the top and it’s lonely. Not because you know the success thing, it’s lonely because as leaders of organizations, we typically have to put on that game face, and. Everything’s good. How’s it going? It’s great, right?

We’re good except for these bills and the customers that are complaining, and the lawsuits and you know, it’s like we can’t really talk to anybody openly and share, vent, or discuss, or even most importantly think through things. There’s a very, I mean, I have amazing marriage where my wife and I are, where she’s a serial entrepreneur as well, so we can talk at the same level and we’re constantly bringing our thoughts, our concerns, our issues, our fear is everything to our conversations every day, every night we’ll get together and discuss.

And so, I mean, last night we were even, she was like, How you feeling? I was like, Ah, I had all this built up. I was, and we can vent and talk, but she can then help me sort my feelings, sort my thoughts, and actually come to conclusions that are better and faster, which is very important.

I think a lot of times people think when you have those conversations, Oh, I don’t need to pay for that. Why? I could just do that with. Actually, advisors have very specific understanding and tools that can help you sort through all of these challenging things going on. Which brings us to the fourth thing, which is thinking systemically, and advisors typically understand how all this stuff goes together in their area of expertise.

And I say area of expertise because you don’t need to be a general advisor. You don’t have to be somebody who just understands how a company runs At nine figures, you can have a very specific expertise, but you typically know very well how that impacts things and how it all comes. Got it. So the idea here is that an advisor is really helping on all four of those levels, and that is why they are so valuable to a company.

[00:11:38] Joel Erway:

So, just to be clear, the advisor encompasses all of those skill sets and knows how to apply them in the right situation. Right? So like if, if, if one of your clients comes to you and says, Hey, I’ve got this problem, like they know how to diagnose in one of the four. The four realms, right?

[00:11:53] Kane Minkus:

Yeah. And, and they can, and you know, it’s just like languages.
So we, we speak six languages in our house just because it’s, we’ve had a lot of international stuff going on, right? My wife’s Italian, you know, so it’s Italian. Italian and, and English and so forth. But anyways, you know, she speaks French and you grew up in German and all that stuff. But the point is that some languages are stronger than others.

Right. So you know, but 10 years old I got sent to Paris, went to school, learned French, but today my French is kind rust. I can kind of get around, right? But kind of get around enough to, if I have to solve certain problems by, you know, ordering food in France or being with somebody and they happen to speak French, I can kind of get around German much stronger.

Italian super strong because that’s our language around the house. Spanish pretty good. And the point is that you don’t have to be. World class coach, world class consult world class. If you have some facility in these different areas, or even if you can identify and say, Hey, this is really a coaching problem and we should get a great coach in here to help solve that.

This is part of what an advisor is doing is they’re really thinking at the highest levels with the CEOs, the founders, and the executives. But what I want everybody in the audience to know is that. It doesn’t require you having to have anything. In fact, you already have the skills in the area of your expertise to impact a business.

And this is one of the coolest things that people don’t really connect around advising and that I learned very early on. You can take any expertise, anything, and you can affect a business because a business to me is holistic. A business to me is a reflection of the business owner. That’s what it is. And I always say that I say, Your business is a reflection of you as a business owner. All your greatness, all your success. Like you, you know, Jill, you bring this great energy to your business, you bring this great mindset, you bring this great drive like you are a focused dude. Like you’re just, I can see it in everything you do.

So you bring that to your business, right? But then all of the concerns, all of the fears, all of the restrictions, all of the limitations and how we think the sabotage patterns, that also goes into our businesses, right? And so we can take any expertise, whether it’s health, fitness, whether it’s you know, a marketing strategy, you name it, you can bring it in and affect a business because it is a holistic reflection of the business.

What’s cool, so this is not just reserved for people who are just business gurus or marketing gurus or great at sales, or this could be someone who, let’s say you’re a relationship coach right now, but you’re thinking, Hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could be working and affecting a company? Because when you affect a company versus just sort of a set of individuals, both great, but when you affect a company, you affect an organization of people that are now going out and affecting a mass group of an industry, a group of people, they’re bringing a product or service to the world. They’re making a huge difference across the world, and you’re helping be part of that impact.

[00:14:19] Joel Erway:

I’ve never thought about it through that lens. I think that’s a, that’s a really interesting. Mental shift to, to associate with an advisor. It’s like, okay.

Because immediately when we first started talking, I’m like, Okay, cool. Like business advisor, you know, thinking strategically about operations or marketing or blah, blah, blah, blah. Like all your typical business things. But you can take somebody with a relationship. You know, skillset or a health skill and apply that to becoming a business advisor.

So that’s interesting. I’m, I’m, I’m anxious to learn more cause like I’m hooked. I’m hooked now. Cause like that’s, that’s, that’s a new perspective that I didn’t think of.

[00:14:57] Kane Minkus:

And this is one of our main messages when we take, So we’ve trained hundreds of thousands of experts, I think around like 400, four 20,000 experts have come through our workshops and training and the ones that kind of connect the dots on this one have just sore. They’ve skyrocketed, but it didn’t matter what the expertise was that they came in with, but it’s where they apply it. Okay, So lemme, let’s just explore this a little bit. So, naturally in my early twenties when I started advising companies, I wasn’t like some businesses grew.

In fact, I wasn’t really advising on business per se. What I did have is I started performing at five years old. It was just my thing. We had music in our family and. I was a performer, so what I did get is I understood how to communicate with an audience. I did get how to create a great energy, how to craft up a, you know, as kind of a wordsmith I’d been a songwriter.

So I understood how to put together a presentation and powerfully present it to capture people’s energy, to capture people’s attention. And attention’s a massive importance in the world. So what I was doing in my early twenties is I was actually advising CEOs. There were two, and, sometimes even three times my age in their sixties, you know, who were interested in being able to capture better attention, be more powerful on camera, you know, as that, that world was starting to come on how to be great in pr, how to talk to their board, how to deliver meetings, right?

And so I was in Silicon Valley, that’s where I spent a lot of my professional life. And so we had a lot of tech companies of engineers who were not very comfortable or confident actually presenting to. Their teams. And so they were losing opportunities, They were losing you know, funding opportunities and they were having issues with that.

And here comes this kid, you know, who happens to have a lot of experience in presenting and confidence in all the, the expertise and understand that. And there I go, start advising them, not just getting paid, but also negotiating revenue, shares on growth, negotiating equity in their company. All because I had a skill or a talent that could affect the overall business. The fact of the matter is we can map anything to that, you know? And just for the point around relationships, like I can’t tell you how many times with CEOs, the thing I discovered was going on is they were having a difficult time in their marriage or they were having a tough time with their family or at home and

I had to basically turn into the marriage counselor or the family counselor, and I was doing that sometimes for months in meetings. It wasn’t just like one meeting itself. We might talk about that or how things were going in their marriage or at home four weeks or months. And I had, over that period of time, maybe made 50, 60, $80,000 in advising fees.

Plus that is such an important thing that when they got it taken care of or solved and suddenly their marriage got meed and they had this beautiful empowering relationship or something with their children. Designed and the family life was working symbiotically, they would show up as more powerful leaders lead the company, more powerful heights, build more revenue.

And so every single area of a human being can be affected for a CEO or business owner, executive team, or a company. And that turns into tangible, measurable results that you can then wedge yourself into.

[00:17:46] Joel Erway:

I mean, it makes sense because you know, business owners, you know, the business is just one piece of the business owner’s holistic life, and it’s all interconnected. I mean, you and I both know how many hours of the day do we stay awake thinking about something in our business, and even though we might be at home with the family or whatever, like, it’s always top of mind. So it’s always like, it’s, it’s a huge focal appointment of our life and it’s, it touches everything.

It touches relationships. And so to me, like I, I, I knew that that was. I think I think you know, intuitively I knew that there was a connection, but I never made the connection of like, Okay, let’s be strategic with it. So, you might be a relationship coach. One of the best ways for you to kind of accelerate your career is, you know, re is positioning yourself.

As an advisor to business owners, like rather than just going after maybe helping, maybe you’re a divorce coach, right? A relationship coach for individuals. There could be huge opportunity for you to take that skillset and now do that for. Business owners, CEOs, entrepreneurs.

[00:18:49] Kane Minkus:

I think that’s, Yeah, I mean, I’ll give you three other really good examples that are off the beaten track.

Cause everybody always thinks, Oh, you got to be a marketing genius. Oh, you got to be a sales agent. Actually not. And in fact, those things actually never appealed to me to work with business owners on because it’s just, I just want to work on other stuff. But I’ll give you a few examples. So we have a woman that we trained actually in Mexico and she is into creativity and she actually spent her whole life doing creativity with children in different schools.

Came to our. And said, I want to do something more. I want to make more money. I want to have a bigger impact. I love working with kids, but I’m just, I’ve done it so long, I’m just kind of over it and had no idea what she could do. Right. And showed up to the event. A little bit lost, but with lots of years of like creativity, talent.

And so I connected a adopter and I said, Hey, what if you went into companies that needed to innovate or become more creative or they. Topped out or their hit plateaus and they need new innovative solutions and they need new techniques to innovate with their teams. Could you go in and do creative exercise?

Could you teach them creative distinctions? Could you help them implement those things? Could you coach them to the process? She’s like, Of course, I’ve been doing it for 20 plus years. I said, Great. Had you ever thought about that? Nope. never thought about it, never connected that dot that she could go into company.

So we helped her, you know, brand herself, package herself up, price herself, position herself into that market, understand how to lead, generate to those people, close the deals, negotiate the deals, and go in and do the work, Run the sessions. Before you knew it, she had tripled her income. Would never, ever go back to you know the elementary schools she was doing just because it just, it didn’t, this allowed her to get involved in all these different companies.

Plus she learned how to negotiate components beyond the rev share or beyond, beyond the retainer because although it’s nice to get paid a lot of money to do your thing, there is a a point where they’re like, Well, we’re only willing to invest so much in cash up front, so then you can start to go into all the other parts.

Leveraging that business. There’s opportunities. Sometimes they run events, They’ve got PR channels they have got they’ve got revenue shares, they’ve got profit shares, they’ve got equity, and on the list goes on and on on. We teach our advisors to negotiate about 20 different things that can continue to give them more value outside of just the retainer.

But when you’re in the public world, many times you simply, I should say the B2C market, if you’re a B2C advisor, coach, or anything like that, many times you’re quite limited in what resources or value can get outta that relat. So that’s one. That was one great example. Yeah. Another, and I won’t, I’ll probably take too long to go through all the examples, but another one would be basically a personal development.

We have a, a woman that we work with in personal development. She was doing meditation right to the B2C market, making almost no money at all, barely surviving out of Switzerland. And we actually reshifted her into the B2B market. We had her go and start doing mindfulness, resilience, productivity, and she started using the exact same expertise.

Repackaged, repositioned, you know, repriced, everything for the, for the market. She went from essentially making 35,000 US dollars a year. She now does over 2 million a year between running workshops, doing day events, doing coaching, consulting, advising for these different companies, and negotiating all these different packages.

That’s just in the cash. That doesn’t even start to scratch what she has negotiated, you know, in other, other parts that I was talking.

[00:21:36] Joel Erway:

I’m always curious, Right. With, you know, those industries, you know, b2c, personal development, mindfulness, meditation, et cetera, et cetera. You know, shifting them because this will, this will resonate with a lot of my listeners because I get a lot of people who come to work with us and they’re in those similar markets.

Yeah. And. You know, I advise them to do something similar. Like, I want them to go b2b. You know, B2C is fine, but like it’s all about, you know what they’re used to paying and if they, they’re comparing you to somebody that they paid $40 an hour for, for like a, you know, a one hour session to do a, a meditation, like it’s going to be, it’s going to be tough to, to really scale that to any sort of meaning.

So how do you help them? Generate leads for an offer like that if they’re in the mindfulness space? Like how do you, Maybe it doesn’t have to be specific about generating leads, but like how do they get the attention of business owners with that type of offer.

[00:22:27] Kane Minkus:

Sure. So, well, this is a great question as an advisor right now.

Yeah. Yeah. So there’s two things that, that everybody listening should know. One is, is that the price points are very, very, very different than the business consumer market. Okay? So you know, business, business owners or entrepreneurs would kind of laugh at 40 bucks an hour. Like they wouldn’t even trust that, that you know, what you’re doing and really just because of the price perception.

But the good news is, is that there’s six figure, seven figure, eight figure, nine figure, and 10 figure businesses. And all of them are purchasing, advising, consulting, coaching, all, all this. They’re all buying it, right? Because it’s one of the most understood things for business owners. If they want to rapidly grow, they need to surround themselves with great experts.

Right now, if someone listening is going well, I really feel more comfortable just as a consultant. I, I do my thing. I go in and I, Okay, no problem. You can still use all the principles that we talk about and we teach in these programs to be able to just accelerate your career to essentially a seven figure a year consultant.

But I think that as they start to understand how they can position the. You know, as a bigger, broader contribution to the company. Because here’s the thing, one of the biggest costs in every business is customer acquisition cost. So the idea is to have the longest tail of a lifetime value of your customer ever.

And so when we help people reposition themselves and understand how much value they can add holistically to a company, their lifetime value of their customer goes way up, way up. My average time in average, coach usually loses their client within three to six months. An average consultant, an average. An average, whatever, that’s the average number.

Three months to six months, they’re in, they’re out and they’ve lost a client either because they’ve run out of value to add or whatever. They didn’t understand how to manage the session, or there’s a number of things that coaches and consultants do to sabotage the, the experience. And I don’t mean like it doesn’t go well, I just mean that it just ends, right?

So then they got to go find, they got on this constant hamster, well, they got to find more and more clients. My average client length is around three years. And so what happens is, is as they learn how to take more parts of themselves, package it up and affect this company, they have got really an endless amount of work they can be doing with the company to be helping it grow.

And the the second thing that I want them to understand outside of the budgets and the ability to actually have a much longer term customer, because you know most, most. B B2C customers, they’re like a few months. They might be in a mastermind for year, and then they’re kind of done. You’re having to constantly sell those people when it gets into businesses, you start creating monthly recurring revenue and you can go on for years never needing to even replace a client or even think about your income every month, because it’s just every first of the month.

Your Stripe account is running their cards and you’re doing the work and everybody’s loving it and it’s just going awesome. But the other side of this is that I don’t want people to think that, Well, I like this sort of more casual or the like, I don’t want to get into a suit and tie and be a corporate or for a woman.

I don’t want to have to get all buttoned up or. Play in a man’s world. The best part is I don’t either and you can go into any of these businesses, we find businesses and verticals that we love. Like I love technology because it’s usually fun young, you know, a lot of millennials or a lot of just, you know, kind of young thinking, progressive for thinking people.

I love eLearning. This is another area that I am, I do a lot with coaches, consult advisors and eLearning systems and, you know, we have, we do alternative energy as a sector for us. And then inside of those, I find businesses and teams that I resonate with personally. I mean, when we start to lay out the numbers, you don’t need more than about 10 to 20 clients to be creating a seven figure a year business when you do this whole thing correctly.

And so we only carry, I carry between 20, 25 clients and then there’s all sorts of other fun, ancillary, ancillary stuff. Like they ask you to run workshops, so they want to do a date with you here and there, and then you charge a whole bunch of money for just a short little thing. Then you go back to your advising monthly, you know, throughout.

And so it turns out you can be exactly who you are. You don’t need to. Some button up or in a suit or anything, and I think Covid just totally made. Even more profound than it was happening beforehand. Beforehand, I was still kind of putting on a jacket and going into their offices. Now I show up like this Mr Cash on their Zoom, and we’re billing them just like we were five, 10 years ago. Being completely casual. Actually, actually after this, this this podcast, I’ve got a couple of guys that are flying in from a company that it’s an eight figure business that I’m advisor. They come to me, they fly in, we, we go for lunch, we have our meetings for the day, and boom, they’re back off, They head back off to Utah.

And that’s it. Like it’s become a, you can find the clients that suits your personality, so you don’t need to package yourself up into some sort of serious executive thing. Like, Hey, that’s not the company for you if that’s not who you are. I mean, I’m, my background was in music performance and rockstar.

So when I meet people, I speak on stage, I say, Don’t even approach me if you’re not ready for like to this rockstar experience. That’s who I am. I want to find those right. 10, 20, 30 clients a year that I work with that generates us a seven figure flexible income, plus all the rev shares, the equity, all the other opportunities.

So we could be exiting at five. I mean, we’ve done some, some years we’ve done 5 million to 10 million a year because companies have exited that we have had equity in. So it’s just, it’s a really, really flexible thing and I don’t think a lot of people are connecting those dots. And that’s, that’s what we love to do is connect those dots for people.

[00:27:08] Joel Erway:

Yeah. You know, it’s kind of like the ultimate lifestyle business because it, for people like me, like I’m, I’m I fit the mold of that, of that type of advisor who, you know, wants to find the perfect clients that, that match with my personality. Because I know like if you can match with the right personality, like you can go so much further.

But if your personality is conflicted, it’s like, You’re kind of like, you should just kind of kill the engagement immediately because like, they’re not, like, it’s just, it’s just not a good fit. They’re not going to, your perspective isn’t going to match with their perspective. And so it. I love this approach.

I love the advisor. Like I’ve never, I’ve never associated what tru an advisor truly means. I’ve always been of the mindset of it’s kind of lumped into the coach, the consultant, the right,

[00:27:54] Kane Minkus:

you know, And you see the energy, you see the energy. You see, it’s like the coach, the consultant, like, it’s like, oh you know,

[00:27:59] Joel Erway: you’re on, you’re on social media.

Look at all the ads. Hey, if you’re a coach, if you’re a consultant, if you’re a course creator, if you’re a service provider, if you’re this person like. Holy crap, man. It’s like, it’s like 10 different industries, but like, we don’t really know the difference, . That’s right.

[00:28:13] Kane Minkus:

You know, it’s, Yeah. I, I actually got lucky enough to get involved in this industry back, it’ll be 25 years ago, and it was a very, it was, it was different then, you know, now it’s become like a, A buzzword, then it’s like Kleenex, like nobody even knows, you know, it’s , it’s not clean, it’s tissue actually, but it’s just become like buzzwords, right?

And so very few people actually understand what it is, and that’s why we do have very specific distinctions. But most importantly is that everybody can participate in, and it is the. I think it’s the most lucrative side and it’s the most flexible side. Speaking of flexibility, you know, my wife and I, since she’s Italian, we live in at an island called Sarnia outside of Italy for, you know, several months of the year.

We take our kids with us, we homeschool our kids so that we can educate them the way we want them educated. And then they also can enjoy and travel around with us. And then we had been living actually the winters in in the Caymans, in, in the, the Caribbean. And. Now we’re moving over to Costa Rica to do the winters that are places there in Costa Rica.

So we actually live in different parts of the world and that way we can take the kids, we can go experience things, and of course all we need is a laptop. Now I like to have really, you know, nice to just like you, we have these nice mics and these cameras, but I don’t know for. Maybe another couple thousand if you’re, if you’re invested in your business, you get a nice camera, you get a nice laptop, and you get a nice mic.

Okay, so now you’ve uped your production level and you know, we just have this all over the world. You know, I have a little office in each place, in each house, and we just go at it and we don’t miss a beat, you know? Mm-hmm. . And we have clients, you know, we’ve got clients who are $500,000 year tech companies all the way up to, you know, 25 million a year home service companies up to, you know nine figure companies that bring us in for certain parts and pieces of things.

I mean, it could be all over the board. And it really is just when people say to me, Who is the right business or what, who do you want to cut? I go, It’s about the person, it’s about the energy. I want to find somebody that I’ve just, I want to spend my day with, because I spend a lot of time, all day long talking to somebody and helping them on their business.

Think three things through things, apply my expertise, add value, add energy, help them. So I, my days fly by and my wife voice says, How was Dale? I was like, Awesome. Like, you know, I got the chance to just talk to amazing people about amazing projects and products and techs and services that they’re getting out there and who they’re helping and help expanding their missions and, and they loved it.

Everybody’s. Awesome. And at the end of the day, you get paid handsomely.

[00:30:25] Joel Erway:

let me ask you something, because I, I’m going to make an assumption and I would love for you to tell me, yes you’re right, or no, you’re wrong. Just being in this world, the, the consulting world, in the coaching world for so long, I, I serve so many of those.

What I find to be true is a lot of times people are afraid to charge what they’re worth and to go out on their own because they, they don’t feel like they have enough expertise or they don’t think that they, they lack confidence. That’s really what it comes down to, is they really lack the confidence.

And what you’re explaining here and or what you’re really talking about is you have experience, you have expertise. Whether you believe you do or not, most people will believe they have some sort of expertise in value. Do you find that most people, like if they’re just venturing out into the advising world and they’re in X, Y, Z and niche, doesn’t matter.

Right? We’ve already explained it can be in any single niche. Yeah. How long does it normally take for somebody? Do you find it that a, a big hurdle for them is lack of confidence in being able to approach business owners if they’ve never done this in the past? Like is that a big hurdle?

[00:31:29] Kane Minkus:

So lack of confidence is super normal.

So if people are feeling like, Oh, I’m like, I mean, that’s a, it’s a fun, it’s a function of just not having a lot of experience and doing something. And the only way you really get confident is you’ve run the race many times. Like, Oh, I know the curves. I know where things are going to happen. You know? About six years ago well, so about 10 years ago I started spending time with Richard Branson.

We were doing events that bringing him in and doing, you know, a whole bunch of things with him. And he mentioned that he loves kiteboarding. And so I didn’t know anything about Kit board. He’s like, You should come kit board. And I was like, I don’t know anything about kit board. And so it kind of just, you know, didn’t ha nothing happened because I wasn’t a kit boarder.

And he’d go off on kiteboarding, you know, adventures with the groups and I was like, I want to go. And so about six years ago I was like, I’m going to take up kiteboarding and I, we even had a guy who worked for us who was like a champion. He’s like championship. Kite porter and so they’re like, No problem.

Take one week of lessons, you’ll be up. Right. So while we were in the Caribbean for our, our winter there, I started taking kiteboarding lessons and I am pretty athletic and I’m pretty good sports and I sucked at this whole thing. I must have swallowed more seawater in that week than I ever have in my life.

And, you know, I just, it was always, it’s always fun for me to get humbled back to something that I’m really not good at. Because you know, I’ve always, a lot of times you get reliant and you get focused on the areas you are good at. Right. So I like to challenge myself each year and take on something that I’m at Because it reminds me of, first of all, when I’m training and teaching people that feel like they’re getting into something new that can feel a little complex to have the patience and the empathy for understanding. Yeah, it does take some time to just get into that. But the thing is that I loved, and I actually after it took me about four weeks, not one week.

And, and lots and lots of money invested in private lessons. But having an expert, someone who was patient, who could show me exactly what I needed to do, eventually did get me up and I could be soaring across the water and I could then go out with friends and do kiteboarding. I haven’t kit boarded with Richard.

But I did tell them I’m ready to get up and Coco, I have a little embarrassed, which is pretty good and I’m not so good. But the point is, is that working with an expert and having them hold your hand allows you to accelerate that process very fast, which is why I do believe in advising so, so much. Even for just this thing, how do you become an advisor?

Will get an advisor. Yeah. But the main thing that you said I want to hit upon, which is pricing themselves. So I think that this is an un a misrepresented conversation in the community of coaches and consultants. It is very complex to price oneself. And the reason is that if you are trying to do what this class thing is, is charge your value, well, you’re going to have no idea what that is and it’s going to be a very confusing, and it’s a amorphous conversation that really means nothing.

Your value is, there is no value is made up. It’s all a perception. Your value to a company or a person will be completely different than some other company, some other person. So one of the things that we take them through and we teach them is there’s a very. Measurable way to understand how to charge a company, and it doesn’t come from you or your value.

I mean, to me, if I’m not the right fit for a company, I’m valueless. They don’t, They don’t need me. They don’t want me. I can ask them for a gazillion dollars or $1 and it just, it doesn’t matter. So to me, it’s never about what I’m worth. It’s about the impact I think I can make on the organization and how the organization is working.

And so one of the things that we have discovered for ourselves and really engineered over the. 20 plus years is exactly how to set your rates, your retainer, how to negotiate the rev share, how to negotiate the equity side, how to negotiate all the other components to it. Because I feel a lot of times people just say, Go do it.

But actually we have found that without an understanding of how to understand the value of, of impact in the organization and understand how to talk to the owner, you can, you can basically spend months just trying to get the negotiation done on the pricing. And many times it’ll fall apart if you can’t, if you don’t actually understand how to say, This is what I’m going to charge you and this is how we’re going to justify.

So I think that the, everybody listening can just take a deep breath. That you don’t have to discover what your value is. And there’s no, there’s no like, I’m sorry, but you’re not cool because you’re charging people more money. Like my advisors and my coaches, we’re not looking to squeeze every dollar out of everybody we’re, we’re trying to find the right fit for sustainability in the ecosystem because sometimes I do a smaller retainer with a higher rev share equity or other value that’s involved because that’s what the company needs.

They might be scaling and they’re reinvesting everything and they’re really cash poor. But my gosh, They’re doing something super amazing and I want to be part of it, and I can see that it’ll be very valuable. So it might be a longer term play. And then in some other projects I work in, it might be, well, there’s not as much assets involved.

It may not be an equitable company, but I love the person, I want to work with them. So it might be a little bit a higher cash thing. So every deal becomes different and it becomes an art. And we do have it down to a science and we teach them how to price themselves. But just in relationship to your comment is people can relax for this.

If they work with us, they’re going to learn. They don’t need to discover their value or worry about pricing themselves for themselves. They’re going to learn how to. Inside of a business it’s like a formula. They’re going to learn the formula, how to go into each deal and say, Okay, here’s how it works. Here’s what I’m going to suggest, and they’re going to say yes to it because it makes sense, not because I’ve decided I’m worth a half a million.

It’s like, Well, go f yourself. Like we don’t have that money. So that kind of thing. Yeah.

[00:36:07] Joel Erway:

You know, it’s the biggest thing that I, I would probably just let people understand is like, if you’re new to this and you’re considering. Hey, this advising thing looks, it sounds pretty cool, like, sounds like it’s, it’s appealing, you know, just to understand like, the expectation of business owners is much higher.

Like they’re expecting to pay more, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that you charge whatever the hell you want. It just means like, you just have to understand and, and keep it in the back of your mind. You’re probably not going to sticker shock them. And I think that’s like a deep fear of like, Oh, well what if it’s too much?

It’s like we’ve worked with so many people, like they sell low ticket courses that for 97 bucks and they’re afraid to charge $1,500 when these people are used to paying like. 10 grand . So like, it’s just kind of aligning expectations. Yeah.
[00:36:56] Kane Minkus:

Well, and here, here’s an important thing just to get a little bit more like into the, the distinction of how he teaches.

There are different markets. There’s commodity markets, there’s intermediary markets, and there’s value markets, right? And it all depends on how you position yourself. And unfortunately, most coaches, consultants, and advisors, mentors, facilitators, experts, position themselves as commodities and the way they talk, say things or do things even unconsciously.

And in the communication, they design a world where they’re getting commoditized and it becomes how cheap can you get it? What we train our advisors, coaches, consultants, you know, whatever they want to use as a label, once they get done with our, our program center is because by the way, I’m, I’m not adverse to someone saying I’m a coach.

I actually had brilliant coaches and I love it. I’m not adverse to someone saying I’m a consultant sometimes. That’s exactly what it needs. We use the term advisor cause it just fits well and it resonates with a lot of the people we coach. But the, see I use the word coach, a lot of people we work with, I should say.

But the point is here is that that they can essentially. They’re going to learn how to position themselves, use language, and work through the deals so that they are actually in a value market conversation. Okay? And the difference is, is that the decision making in a value market is based upon the value and the impact you’re making in the situation, not based upon price.

Price is the number one determining commodity, right? Hey it’s, it’s, we eat a lot of hummus around our house, right? So, hey how do we get the Jeep as hummus? Right? Well, you know, you can reposition that to say, Well, I’m going to. The most I can for hummus because this hummus is advertising and marketing me in a value market.

You know, with a high quality hummus, I would pay 5, 6, 7 times what the rest of the commodity price oriented Homo Hummuses are going for. This is maybe not the best example, but you know what I mean is that you can change the way you’re positioned in a marketplace, and that’s one of the things that we teach people to do.

When I started, I was charging a hundred thousand a year to be working with companies. That’s, that’s kind of, that was the price point I set. And to your point is, yeah, they’re expecting more and the reason they’re expecting more and the reason they can justify it is they can. Here’s the measurable impact.

We can actually measure somebody’s impact. Doesn’t matter what the starting places, health, fitness, relationships, mindset, peak performance, marketing, sales, on, on, and on, on. They can measure the output and the impact. And since a business is in business to create a profit, that’s the definition of a business, which by the way, we also coach a lot of nonprofits.

We also advise a lot of, a lot of nonprofits because they’re able to look at the numbers. They can know exactly what difference they need you to. You are making and have made, and those three things which we’ll talk about. You know, as when I train people, I talk about how to position yourself in those three conversations.

What do we need you to make? Here’s what we need to change here. Here’s what we are changing and here’s what we did change. And in those worlds, there’s, there’s very specific ways of looking at it where they’re okay saying, Okay, you want to charge me 50,000, 80,000 a hundred or 2000 a month, or 5,000 other 10,000 a month?

Like all those conversations start to become very logical. They don’t have to become, what am I worth in the world? You know? Yeah. And so now, now I charge 250,000 a year plus rev shares, equities, all sorts of other components to it. And I’ve one of my advisors like, Why are you not charging a million a year?

And he’s got me working on, you know, I, we did a million dollar pitches, you know, I haven’t closed a million dollar pitch yet with all the other stuff. But part of it is, you know, my, my, my market is scale up. So I love seven and eight figure businesses. That’s why I advise the most. I have the most fun with them.

So that’s what I choose. And we’ll get there. But the point is, is that it’s really. Whenever I close a two 50 deal or a hundred or a million or whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s understanding what is the value that we need, that we need to make, that we are making and that we have made and that makes the deal work.

[00:40:19] Joel Erway:

Yeah. You know, it’s, the way that I kind of think about it is like, you know, I relate to home services, because for me it’s like ease and really comprehend. It’s like the home services space is so broken and bonkers and backwards. Like I have to call seven people. Just to get one person to show up to my house.

Mm-hmm. . And if I were to tell any of those people, like, if you just show up, you’re going to get the job. Because like, I know, like, it’s going to be like pulling teeth just to get x number of quotes. And so like, usually the first person, as long as they like, as long as I trust that they’re actually going to get the job done, they, they show up, you know, somewhat professional.

Like, I’m just going to. Whatever they quote me like, I’m just going to pay it, Right, Because it’s value, because the rest of the, the rest of their competitors just are not showing up. And it’s like that can be relatable to so many different things in terms of like, not going down the pricing and the commodity, the commodity route, but it’s like that’s value.

Like they show up like, I just want it done. I want it done as fast as possible. I don’t want to sit with this hole in my kitchen because we had a leak, you know, You know, from the bathroom above. It’s like, I just need to get it done. That’s, that’s the value, and I don’t want to do it myself. Yeah.

[00:41:25] Kane Minkus:

Now think about all the things you just said, all the problems in that situation of all the different people with their talents that could actually change the revenue. And eventually the equitable value of that company. One is someone who come in and work on integrity communication. Just as a leader, how do they, you know how do they make sure they’re, they’re booking things and showing up, all that kind of stuff.

They can work on customer service. If someone has expertise in customer service, someone could work on their systems. How do you actually track a lead? Make sure it’s getting managed and all that stuff. Someone who’s got good systems. Someone who could say when they show up, if they, if they show up at looking professional, well, someone could work with them on their brand.

If they have someone who’s a stylist who can actually come in and say, I’m going to make you look way more professional. So when you show up, people are going to want to refer you more like, and we can go on and on and on and on. All the components that actually make up lead generating somebody. Managing that lead, closing the lead showing up, doing a great job.

And then even at the scaling, do you get like, Hey, I know what, help build cultures or help you get the team so you don’t have to show up. Because obviously you’re not really wanting to, because you’re not showing. There’s so many impact points that anybody that has any expertise can go into that company. And with the right packaging, pricing, conversations, and understanding about how to close these deals can use your area of passion.

The thing you love to talk. That’s what I love about this. This is what I do. There are things I love. So my wife is totally different. Like the things I talk about with my clients, she talks about totally different stuff. She’s passionate about teams, she’s passionate about leadership. She loves sales teams.

And she like, very specifically, she like, I like to work with companies that have sales teams where I can work with the teams and build a great sales culture and work with the, like I, I love like startup world and I love, you know, let’s build the brand and get it to the market. And so we can both do and we bill the same.

We’re both billing seven figures a year, talking about the things we like to talk. From our expertise. So there’s no like, am I a fraud? Am I, you know, will I really be like, it’s just what we love. It’s just, it’s what we’ve researched what we talked about. Now, the one thing is you do have to have some expertise, but I think that people, they undervalue, if you want to talk about value, they undervalue their expertise, their, their wisdom, their experience.

That’s what they really undervalue. Price is all made up and can be just figured out based upon the value and the impact of what you’re going to do at the company. Yeah. But please stop under valuing your experience. I mean, if you got experience, I mean, yesterday we went and visited, We have a three year old with three kids, but our, our youngest is a three year old and he’s getting ready to, to you know, we thought we put him in a Montessori school.

Cause although we homeschool the older kids, we thought, well, it’d be nice to get him a little bit of social environment since we’re at home. So much. And so we went over and we were talking to. The educators about the Montessori system and how they work with children. And of course my brain’s always going, Well, how does this relate to educating people and all that?

And I think about the years and years and years of raising children and how much I understand about how education can come in and get used. Think about all the consulting that companies buy. They never use. If you’ve raised children, you have the valuable experience of understanding how to go into a company and help them use all of those tools that they have that they’re not using that could be your whole advisory business, working with teams and integrating the education they’re surrounded by and not using. So I just, that’s where people undervalue themselves. They undervalue their wisdom, their experience, because nobody’s ever said, This could go impact a company. Let’s just package it up a little bit.

You know, you can’t just walk in there and be like, I know a lot of stuff. There has to be a bit, a more sophisticated approach to it. That’s what we teach. But at the end of the day, every person listening already has the capability, the tools they just need the, you know, the drive to go do this and they can crush it.

[00:44:45] Joel Erway:

Dude, Kane, this has been an amazing conversation. I mean, like it was. It was eye opening for me to just, I think intuitively I knew it was possible, but to see. The opportunity of somebody being able to relate almost any of their expertise, almost any of their experience, and translate that into a business.

And, and, and seeing that opportunity and connecting the dots and, and saying, Hey, listen, like there’s people who will pay good money for this. Like, that’s what an advisor does. It opens my eyes to the world of what can really be created for people who might, you know, who want to get in, who want to get started with this, and they, or they’ve been trying and failing, or maybe.

They just feel like they’re just a coach or just a consultant. I’m going to put that in air quotes because hopefully we’ve crushed that, crushed that, that thinking. Throughout this conversation where can people find out more about, you know, working with you or working with your team to learn how to become a high paid advisor?

[00:45:37] Kane Minkus:

Absolutely. So we have got a high paid advisor program. Okay? So they can certainly go online, do some research on that. They can just Google us. I mean, we’re all over the place. So honestly, if they just put in our names, Kane and Alesia, that’s my wife, Leia. Just put in Kane Alesia. You can Google our company industry.

That will bring you to a plethora of great pages at first of all. Can go researchers and see if we’re full, full of bs. That’s the first thing I think everybody should, you know, could know. And then once they go, Wow, these guys are real and they, they seriously crush it, then just find one of our funnels, landing pages.

Anything you know, we’re working with Joel right now. If you’re on this list, you should be working with Joel. His team’s amazing and he’s amazing at helping understand how to craft these and get the word out there. And so we’ve got a lot of stuff online and they can just really go find it right.

[00:46:18] Joel Erway:

So industry rockstar is what they should be Googling, right?

Do you have the URL that we can drop and we can leave?

[00:46:22] Kane Minkus:

Yeah, And they can go to www.kaneandalessia.com. It’s k a n e a n d a l e s s i a .com. That gets us right to our site, and then it’s got all the parameters to shoot off to all the different landing pages and the free stuff that we give away and all the cool things around the topic.

[00:46:37] Joel Erway:

Awesome. Kane, you’re amazing, man. This is really inspirational. This is really exciting. As somebody who’s been part of this industry tangentially for a long time, it just opens my eyes to what’s really possible. If you wanted to go explore this type of lifestyle, this type of opportunity in turning your expertise into a very lucrative opportunity, highly recommend you go check out www.kaneandalessia.com.

We’ll link that in the show notes. And until next time, we’ll see you. See you on next episode. Thanks, Kane. Thank you, Joel.

[00:47:07] Outro:

Thanks for listening to this episode of experts unleashed. If you are looking for new and innovative ways to design and execute your plan to become a six or seven figure expert without a massive team apply now at theperfectexpert.com.