Welcome to the Rich Coach Club, the podcast that teaches you how to build your dream coaching practice and how to significantly increase your income. If you're a coach and you're determined to start making more money, this show is for you. I'm master certified life coach Susan Hyatt, and I'm psyched for you to join me on this journey.

Does your business have hidden profits? Oh my god, I love the sound of that. Don’t you? And I’m willing to bet the answer is yes. Your coaching practice definitely has the potential to generate a lot more money than it currently does, and some of the biggest money-making opportunities might be hiding in plain sight. Hiding right under your nose.

They’re right there, they’re so obvious and so simple, but you’re just not seeing them, or doing them. Today’s episode is all about hidden profits. I have the most amazing guest popping by later. A woman named Stacey Hylen. Stacey literally wrote the book on hidden profits and you will love my conversation with her. This is a must-not-skip episode. Let’s go.

We’re starting with a segment that I call your two-minute pep talk. This is the part of the show where I share some motivation and encouragement to get your week started off right, and I try to keep things to two minutes or less. Although, I sometimes go over with the peppy-ness. Don’t complain.

Okay, so what exactly is a hidden profit? Here’s my personal definition. A hidden profit is big money that you could earn easily and quickly without making any big changes to your business. Meaning to get this money, you don’t have to redesign your whole website, you don’t have to hire 10 new people to join your team. You don’t have to make any big structural changes.

A hidden profit is cash that you could unlock right now with the resources and connections that you currently got, boo. It’s the low-hanging fruit. It’s dangling right there, totally within reach if you just go for it. Look, I’m sure my business has a lot of hidden profits that I’m not seeing clearly, and I’m sure your coaching practice does too.

Almost every business owner has these missed opportunities that for whatever reason, they’re just not seeing. Here’s an example, one that might be happening in your coaching business right now. I’ll call this one the okay-now-what hidden profit, and it goes like this.

A client hires you. You help them achieve amazing things. They love you. But eventually their coaching program comes to an end. Say they hired you for eight weeks of coaching and now it’s okay. Okay, now what? Maybe this client loves you and wants to continue working with you. Maybe they’d love to keep going and move along to a new topic or goal.

Maybe they’d like to graduate from your basic program to an intermediate level program or from intermediate to mastery. But you don’t have a clear system for handling what comes next. You just kind of say, “Well, this has been great, thanks for hiring me. Okay, see you, bye.” And then that’s that. No follow up, no further invitations, no next step in the journey.

Oh no, you’re abandoning this client right when they’re the most exciting and prime to keep going. You’re potentially leaving lots of money on the table. It’s a missed opportunity for sure. This is a very common hidden profit and it’s one that’s really easy to correct.

So here’s a good move. As you put together your menu of coaching services, think of your menu as a sequence or journey. Whatever your client initially does with you, always provide a next step in the sequence. Say you help your client to completely change her mindset about exercise.

She’s gone from couch potato to runner. Through your program, she ran her first 5K race. Amazing. Next up, she can get coached to run a 10K or a half marathon. Or say you help your client learn meditation skills and create a calm, clear, focused mind. She’s feeling more productive than ever before. Beautiful.

Next up, she could get certified in your unique meditation technique so that she’s qualified to teach it to others. Y’all, this is something I’ve done with my Bare movement, which is all about helping women to shed their insecurities and feel powerful, healthy, and strong. I invite women to get a little sample of Bare by offering free challenges, free webinars, a podcast, things like that.

From there, there’s a sequence of options. Want more? Read the Bare book. Ready for even more? Join Bare Daily, which is my membership community. Obsessed with Bare and want to keep going? The next step is to become a certified Bare coach. Transform your body and your life while helping other women to transform too.

Eventually, some women even go on to become a Bare master coach. So you can see there’s a sequence that moves in a logical progression. There’s always a next step for the person who wants to keep going. Creating this type of sequence isn’t rocket science. It’s just really simple. Common sense.

And yet, it’s something that many coaches don’t do, and it’s something that I’ve fallen down on many times. So here’s a mini challenge for you. Think about your three favorite clients of all time. People who hired you in the past who loved working with you. And then ask yourself, what’s the next logical step for these people? What comes next? What’s something they would probably love to do with me?

You could put together a really simple offer. Nothing fancy. No webpage, no big deal. Just write down a few bullet points to explain what’s included and email these clients individually and ask, “Hey, do you want to do this?” Boom. Just like that, you might have three enthusiastic enrollments by the end of today.

An extra 1K or 10K or 100K is often hiding in plain sight, right there for you to claim without any strain or agony or sweat or drama. Simple, easy. So coaches, the scenario I just described is one type of hidden profit, but there are so many others. So coming up later in this episode, we’re chatting with Stacey Hylen.

She’s a brilliant woman in my high-level mastermind and she specializes in helping women find their hidden profits. Oh my gosh, y’all, I can barely wait, so let’s keep rolling forward.

Now we’re moving into the part of the show where I give shout-outs to people who took the time to leave me a review on iTunes or Stitcher or tag me on social media. And today’s shout-out is to Legacy Dawn. So Legacy Dawn entitled her testimonial for the podcast, “Every coach’s secret weapon.” “Susan is the no-holds-barred voice you need whispering in the back of your head when you’re debating whether or not to go for it. Download the episodes, subscribe, get what you need. You won’t be sorry.”

Thank you so much, Legacy Dawn. I hope y’all are getting what you need. Tell me about it. If you have something to say about this show, go ahead and send an email to my team at support@susanhyatt.co, or you can post a five-star review or just tag me @susanhyatt on social media. Thanks so much for listening and thank you for those of you who have taken the time to let me know what you get out of this podcast. I love you guys.

Coaches, meet Stacey Hylen. What I love about Stacey is the heart that she brings into her work. Stacey’s dad passed away pretty young. He was only 56. And the saddest part is that he died having worked overtime every day of his life. And Stacey is determined to make sure that same fate doesn’t happen to herself or for you.

She wants to help you find your hidden profit so you can generate way more money while working the same number of hours or less. She’s amazing. She’s been in business as a coach for close to 20 years. You’ve seen her in Entrepreneur magazine and on major TV programs. I could go on and on about her accolades, but let’s just get right into this conversation, shall we?

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Susan: Hello and welcome to the podcast, Stacey Hylen.

Stacey: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Susan: Three things we’re going to cover in today’s interview. Resourcefulness, optimizing what you have, and revenue-generating activities, which are three of my favorite topics ever all rolled into one. Okay, so tell the people a little bit about your background so they can know who the hell they’re listening to right now.

Stacey: So I’ve been coaching now for close to 20 years, so I’m one of the original coaching people as opposed to the Insta coaches. And I transitioned from a sales role into coaching because when I was doing the consult and selling, all of a sudden, I was helping people optimize their business, and I was helping people with their marketing and their sales process.

And one of my clients, when I was in sales, increased her business 200%. So I was like, this is amazing, I need to do this. So then I started seeking out the best mentors and coaches and things like that, and I started working with Chet Holmes, who is the author of The Ultimate Sales Machine, who was partners with Tony Robbins for Business Mastery.

So I was lucky enough to be trained by Chet and also work with Tony. I was vice president of consulting for Tony for his Business Mastery, which was amazing. That really influenced how my business has developed.

Susan: Wow, that’s pretty amazing. And I also like that for all of you listening, Stacey went out and sought a mentor, which I think is really important. I think when you try to go it alone, it can be very lonely and having the right mentor sort of show you the way and teach you the ropes is so critical. So what do you think the number one thing is that you learned from the two of them?

Stacey: Well, Tony Robbins, as you know, is very intense and at the very first Business Mastery, it was in the recession. People were really scared, and they invested $10,000 to be there. So not a low level. And this guy stood up and said, “Nothing is working and I’ve tried everything.” Well, what have you tried? And the guy listed two or three things that he had tried.

And Tony said, “Okay, you said you tried everything and you’ve tried two or three things. How many times did you try it? You must have kept going and going and going.” And the guy said, “Well, I tried two or three times.” And Tony said, “Wait a minute, you’re telling me you’ve tried everything and nothing works, and you’ve tried two or three things two or three times? What happened?”

And the guy said, “Well, I didn’t have enough money, I didn’t have enough team to implement.” And Tony asked him, he said, “Let me ask you a question. It sounds like what’s the challenge here is resources. Have you ever seen anybody else that had less resources than you that’s become more successful than you? Like an immigrant that came to the US that didn’t speak English, didn’t have more than $200 to their pocket, didn’t have a network of old boys network at Harvard and succeed?”

And the guy said, “Yeah, I love reading those stories.” He said, “Well, what is the difference?” And the answer was resourcefulness. So instead of saying this didn’t work, he said okay, that didn’t work, how can we tweak it, change it, optimize it to make it work?

So that whole setting of optimize, being resourceful really helped me create my hidden profits program because my clients were also struggling at that time because all of a sudden, they lost funding for their businesses, their clients lost funding. It was just the whole recession snowball that was happening. So I said, how can I become more resourceful for my clients that I can help them even more?

Susan: I love that story so much because I’ve been thinking about - I mean, I consider myself to be a pretty resourceful person and I try to encourage, like you do, my clients to be resourceful and to not just operate on default mode and just sit in a dirty diaper of misery.

So we’ve had some challenges, it’s been a little clumsy behind the scenes in my company because we’re growing rapidly. There’s some growing things happening. And for me, it’s just sort of learning how to create an unstoppable spirit and an unstoppable mindset of resourcefulness where it’s like, okay, what’s the solution? Because there is a solution.

So I love that story because it’s like, okay, so the two, three things you tried didn’t work, the next thing might, so what else is there? Instead of like, nothing works, which I know those of you listening have had those moments. All of us have had those moments, but it’s a matter of like, okay, if we’re not going to stop until we get what we want, then we can’t just say we’ve tried everything because obviously we haven’t tried everything because we don’t yet have what we want.

Stacey: Exactly.

Susan: You’re always using one of my favorite words, which is optimize. And so let’s talk about that. So you’re working with these people in the recession and something that you discovered through being resourceful was what?

Stacey: So I developed what’s called the hidden profits system. So it’s a bunch of different strategies that allows people to quickly and easily increase their clients and cashflow without doing any additional marketing or advertising. It’s free or low-cost strategy, so it’s not like you have to have a huge budget to do it, and they work for any size business and practically any industry.

I’ll give you an example of one. So one of my clients had an auto parts store down south in the recession. He was really struggling because he had all these employees that had been with him for years. They were like, 60, 80 years old, they were his uncles, they were his nephews, and he couldn’t let these people go.

And he had an additional big box store that moved into his town that was doing all of this marketing and advertising, and my first thought was we need to let a bunch of people go because the people that he had weren’t doing their jobs at all. They were family and friends.

And he said, “I can’t hold my head up in church if I let these people go because they’re not going to find new jobs.” So I said alright, how the heck do I fix this? So what we did is we implemented the up-sell. And so we looked at what was his most popular product that he sold and we created an up-sell for that product.

And his sales increased 40% over the pre-recession year before sales. It was amazing. And that was just one question he implemented with his team, the team that didn’t want to do anything that he told them to do. So it was easy for them to say yes to and do.

Susan: I love this example so much because first of all, it’s like, an auto body shop. This is completely outside of the industry, probably no one listening to this works in the automotive industry, although if you do, please email me. I want to know you.

But this is an example of - while you’re telling this story, my heart is racing because I know these people. We all do. We know people who have mom and pop businesses. They’re employing their friends and family. It might be one of the only good things going in that small town. I can’t hold my head up in church. Oh my god.

One question. I love this and I actually am taking notes while I’m talking to you because the up-sell is something that we don’t often think about. Like we already have loyal clients and there’s probably something that we could offer them that would help make their lives better that’s just one question.

Stacey: And I think you’re doing people a disservice if you’re not offering an up-sell. There are people out there that want more of what you have. So most of the people listening here are coaches, right? So they want your VIP program, they want your platinum program, but sometimes people are making the decision for them, and that’s a money mindset issue that you’re saying this person doesn’t have the money, this person can’t do it.

I mean, people will do whatever they have to do in order to invest in themselves, and I think that’s another mindset shift. They’re not investing in you. When they’re investing in a coach, they’re investing in themselves. So by allowing them the opportunity to invest at a higher level through the up-sell really serves them.

Susan: I think that’s so true. And I do think that one of the things I work with clients on all the time is to stop making monetary decisions for your clients because you have no idea. You have no idea where their money is coming from. You have no idea what’s going on in their head, so stop pre-judging and deciding there’s a no without even asking the question.

Stacey: Yeah. It was funny because when I worked with Tony Robbins, I met this woman at the very first Business Mastery that I really connected with and I really liked her a lot. And she had zero business. She was just starting. And turns out she bought a $30,000 a month consulting package. And now her business is like, multi, multimillion-dollar business. So you don’t know what people have as resources.

Susan: You really don’t. And you also don’t know like - and sometimes I’m glad I don’t know. One client a couple years ago spent her rent check on my program. I had no idea. I probably would have had a ton of mind drama about that had I known. But she was serious.

She was like, I am going to bet on me, and she did. She’s like, multiple six figures now. She went from an eviction notice to multiple six figures. And had I had that information, I might have made the decision for her like, no, you don’t need to do this. We can’t take away people’s power.

Stacey: Right. And that person would still be living month to month.

Susan: Totally. So something that you and I have in common is an obsession with making sure our clients are focused on revenue-generating activities. So talk to me about this. What’s your position on this?

Stacey: So one of my original coaches, and I’ll give a shout-out to Chris Farrow, he did a program 20 years ago that I was in and he talked about the BS funnel. And then the marketing funnel. And he said so many coaches are stuck in that BS funnel, and it doesn’t matter what kind of business you have, that you’re always looking at I need to make this look pretty or I need to do more research or I’m just going to do this little thing behind the scenes, instead of taking action that will lead to revenue.

And so what I look at is what are the revenue-generating activities that you can do each day in your business, and not just the revenue-generating activities but focusing on the top 20% of the activities that are giving you 80% of the results.

So for example, I look at my business, the top 20% of my business that’s giving me 80% of my results is when I do speaking engagements. So if I know that speaking engagements are getting me 80% of my results or a LinkedIn marketing is getting me really, really good results and high-end clients, then hello, what am I fooling around on the other networks?

Because we can fool ourselves to say we are working in the coaching space, and the other one is always learning without implementation. So what are those revenue-generating activities that you’re going to take today that are going to focus on that high-end result?

Susan: I love this so much because it really is true. I love, and I’m totally going to be teaching this, the BS funnel. Because I mean, I work with entrepreneurs all day every day and they’re busy and they’re tired. But when you see what they’re so exhausted about and busying themselves with, it’s usually social media but not the money-generating things that social media can offer. What are some of the others that your clients are talking about where you’re like, that’s a BS funnel activity?

Stacey: Well, they’re always trying to get things to be perfect. And there is no perfect. And so one of the things I always tell my clients is, first of all, ask them, do you know who the richest man is? Have you ever heard of this Bill Gates guy?

They’ll say yes, and then I’ll say, what is the most common thing that happens when Microsoft releases a new product? It has all of these problems and bugs, right? And they have to do caches, they have to do updates, they have to fix it. So I tell my clients, if Bill Gates, the richest guy, he might be number two or three now, but if he cannot release a product that’s perfect with his team, with having the best people in the world, with having billions and billions and billions of dollars, then who are we as small entrepreneurs to judge ourselves to this level of perfection?

So I always tell them, put out version 1.0. If Bill Gates can put out Windows version 1.0 and 2.0 and 3.0, then we need to be able to put out webinar version 1.0, webinar version 2.0. Just do it.

Susan: Oh my god, this is so brilliant because you’re right. I mean, there are so many people, myself included, that are like, it’s not ready, it’s not ready, it’s not ready, and you’re always waiting to get ready. It’s never going to be perfect. I mean, my Go Time Planner is a good example. There’s typos in it. Guess what? It’s better that the planner ship with a couple typos and some issues than it just still sitting on my designer’s desktop.

Stacey: Right, and it’s helping people.

Susan: Right, it’s helping people.

Stacey: Like right now I have my planner on my desk and it’s helping my stay focused. So if you hadn’t released it because there’s typos - and I haven’t seen any yet.

Susan: You’ll find them. There was a lady so angry about these typos. She bought a Go Time Planner for herself and a Go Time Planner for her sister for Christmas and she could not believe it. And I was just like, oh my gosh, to be that angry about some typos. Here’s your money, go away.

I tend to talk about it, something I borrowed from Brooke Castillo, she wrote a book, Self-Coaching 101, and it was sitting on her hard drive. And her coach said, “What grade would you give it?” I think she said a B-. And he said okay, release it. We’re not going to sit around and wait on the A. That book could be out helping people, just like you said.

And so I tend to think of it like, we can produce B work, B+ work even all day long and help people. It does not have to be an A. We want to deliver the highest possible caliber work as we can, but when you’re a perfectionist, that is like death, and I love this Microsoft example even better because you’re so right. There’s going to be bugs, there’s going to be kinks. And we’re still going to do business. It’s all right.

Stacey: For sure. And the fact that somebody can be a billionaire doing that is like, okay, we have no excuse. Get on it.

Susan: I would argue that that’s part of the reason why. It’s important what you produce and the speed in which you get things out to the marketplace. And if you’re sitting around - it’s funny that we’re talking about speed. When you’re in the mode of helping as many people as possible and producing as much content as possible, there are so many things that can slow you down if you’re trying to do everything the right way. That’s going to slow this roll. No thanks.

Alright Stacey, so what’s next for you? How can people engage with you and learn more? I know you’re working on your book, which is amazing. Tell everybody about your book.

Stacey: Yes, it’s called Hidden Profits: More Clients and Cash, and it’s all the strategies that we were talking about today that are quick and easy to do, low cost or free and work in any sized business. And so that is out with my agent right now being shipped to publishers. So I’m very excited about that.

I have my profit optimization system, which is the online class that actually teaches that, and that actually has coaching. So you learn about the different hidden profits, and then you’re like, okay, how do I do this in my business? My business is different, like everybody says. You actually get coaching from me to show you exactly how you can apply that to your business.

Susan: So good.

Stacey: Yes, and you can find me anywhere online as Stacey Hylen. And my last name is Hylen. Help you leverage everything now.

Susan: Listen, I could listen to this all day. I’m all pumped up. I’m like, who can I up-sell? Stacey, you want to do the ultimate?

Stacey: Exactly. That’s the thing is like, if you’re not offering it, you’re not serving people at the highest level. And you’re making that decision for them.

Susan: I’m going to send out an email today and I’m going to be like, hey, boo-berries, I got one spot left for the ultimate, who’s in?

Stacey: That’s it.

Susan: And then I can attribute myself to you and this podcast episode.

Stacey: That’s awesome, and see, that’s a hidden profit. That’s money right there that is sitting in your network that who has my money? And so it’s funny because - so the thing is that when I do my hidden profit live programs, the average company finds $85,000 in hidden profits.

Susan: 85K? Y’all listening to this? 85K hidden.

Stacey: Yeah, because just doing one up-sell, that’s a big bump for you because it’s an ultimate package, but now if you look at alright, what are all the other programs I’m doing, I’m going to add an up-sell for them, I would think just with one hidden profit you could easily find $85,000. When you start stocking the hidden profits and do a bunch of different methods, then somebody that’s already at seven figures, you can add another zero to that $85,000.

Susan: Stacey, I want you to come talk to all my groups about this, seriously. It’s amazing. My question to you is where’s your hidden profit? What you are going to go ask for today?

Stacey: What am I going to go ask for today? Oh boy. What I am working on improving is follow up.

Susan: Fortune in the follow up.

Stacey: So that’s another one that I’m working on a lot.

Susan: Oh, I always ask this too. Stacey, what makes you feel rich that either is free or doesn’t cost very much?

Stacey: Walking by the water or being by the water. Anywhere. Like, it doesn’t matter where I am. I always search out the water.

Susan: Me too. I live in the mid-west, which is only an hour and a half from some lakes. We have a river but kind of a muddy, ugly river. But I am with you. I like to be near the water and I love seeing pictures of your beautiful lake house that you paid for yourself from hidden profits.

Stacey: Exactly. Exactly.

Susan: Alright, thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Stacey: You’re welcome. Have an awesome day.

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Hey, one more thing before we finish up today’s episode. So you heard from Stacey Hylen and I’m sure you’re hungry for more from this amazing woman. So check this out. She generously put together a free kit called Discover Your Hidden Profits, so head on over to businessoptimizercoach.com and peek towards the righthand side of this site. That’s where you can sign up to get that kit and you can start figuring out where your big money is hiding.

And another thing you could try. Get together with two or three of your friends, ideally people who also run businesses or who understand your business very well, and ask, hey, do you think there’s a money-making opportunity that I’m missing? Something I could do quickly that I’m just not seeing? Or maybe a really simple improvement I could make?

See what they have to say. There’s so much power in bringing together two or three smart brains who can look at your work with fresh eyes, or five brains, or 10, which is why I freaking love my masterminds. If you’ve never done this before, do it. Put together a panel of smarty-pants people and ask them for their input.

It’s so valuable. This is one of the main reasons I love running my groups, like the On the Six mastermind, or my higher level mastermind. I love bringing people together like this because inevitably, these new people see things you’re not seeing and help you find the cash that’s been hiding.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Have an amazing week. Get out there, go digging and find some hidden profits. I know you’ve got some and I’ll be right there with you. I am hot on the trail of my own hidden profits in my business.

Thank you for listening to Susan Hyatt's Rich Coach Club. If you enjoyed today's show, please head over to susanhyatt.co/cash where you'll find my brand-new money magazine. Now listen, we designed this magazine to be entertaining, educational, and help you make serious bank.

So you can download the magazine, there’s a money quiz inside, there’s an interview with one of my favorite clients who went from making no money and being served eviction papers, to making over six figures in a very short amount of time. So the magazine includes that feature, lots of resources to help you do it, lots of resources about creating wealth and investing money.

It’s pretty robust, y’all. So head over to susanhyatt.co/cash to get that magazine. And you’ll also find a link to join my free Facebook community, especially for coaches called Rich Coach Club. So bring your coaching practice and your income to the next level at susanhyatt.co. See you next week.