TCC Podcast #376: Super Thinking with Jereshia Hawk

Too many of us get caught up in the doing of our business instead of thinking about our business. So for this 376th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we are flashing back to another one of our best interviews... this one from business strategist Jereshia Hawk who went deep on selling to high ticket clients as well as what it takes to truly grow your business. She calls it super thinking. We call it CEO time. Whatever you call it, you definitely want to hear what Jereshia has to say about it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Things we mentioned to check out: The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Transcript: Rob Marsh:  Welcome to the New Year. Whether you’re back at your desk today or still taking a few days to ramp back up for 2024, this interview is just what you need… or at least, it is just what I needed to hear to kick off the new year. It is the perfect compliment to last week’s throwback episode with Seth Godin. Because Jereshia is another expert that I love to learn from. When we interviewed her a little over three years ago, she shared a ton of great information about selling to clients with money… what is often referred to as high-ticket sales. And that’s what we focused the title and promotion of that interview on. But we also covered the idea of super-thinking. That is the idea that we need to be creating space for coming up with new ideas and insights and not just reacting to what’s going on. And quite honestly, a lot of us spent the past year reacting to economic issues, artificial intelligence and a lot of other stuff that impacted the way we work. So I think you’re going to like the throwback interview with business coach Jereshia Hawk. Before we get to that, if you want this year to be better than last year, better clients, better projects, and better opportunities, you absolutely need to visit thecopywriterunderground.com and check out the resources waiting for you there. That’s thecopywriterunderground.com. Now let’s get to our interview with Jereshia… Kira Hug: All right, Jereshia, welcome. We want to kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a high ticket sales coach? Jereshia Hawk:   Well, I kind of stumbled my way here. I was an engineer by trade before even knowing this whole online world existed. And I started doing some of my videos, started getting into coaching, just people asking me to give advice or insight on how I was able to navigate my corporate career and how I was able to position myself for upward mobility opportunities in a nontraditional way or in a way that just wasn’t the same beat and path of how you’re supposed to excel in corporate. And one thing I started recognizing during my coaching calls at the very, very beginning, when I was charging $60 for a month of coaching, less than what you would pay for a fitness class, and the biggest thing that I noticed was the transferrable skills that I had acquired in corporate America. I was a lead engineer of a $400 million pipeline project, I was responsible for managing our money on a day-to-day basis, making decisions based off of input and output, and so I understood how money moved from a corporates perspective, but then I also understood kind of a gap that I noticed in the industry, or that I noticed just from people that I was discussing on, how do you effectively articulate your value in a way that whoever is in the other position, the buying decision or the position of authority to make a decision, how do you articulate your value in a way where they get it and that it also correlates to how it impacts the bottom line or impacts the thing that’s most important to them, and how do you position yourself to be able to do that repeatedly. And once I started to recognize that those three things were really my sweet spot and as I started growing in the coaching business, that’s where high ticket sales was my natural zone of genius. Because I think when you are selling offers that are $2,000 to $20,000, it’s usually the range most of my clients are in, there’s just a different way that you have to articulate your value than if you’re selling something for $500. There’s a different way that you have to position yourself in order to attract people to know just know, like and trust you, but to believe you, respect you and align with you from a value base perspective, to want to be able to invest with you at a higher level. So it was definitely a work in progress. It took about two years to feel confident in myself to be able to kind of own that as an identity in this online world before I really dove head in. It’s really recognizing these transferrable skills and also identifying where is the gap that I see in the industry that we’re in and where can I really be adding value from a unique perspective. Rob Marsh:   So before we jump in to all of the aspects of high ticket sales, I want to ask about your engineering background because this seems really unique to me. I talk to a lot of people who’ve built online businesses, who are working in the online space, and I don’t think any of them are engineers. So is there something from your engineering background in education that made you especially good at what you’re doing today, skills that you learned there that you apply to how you help today? Jereshia Hawk:   Yeah. I have clients that joke and say I’m never hiring a coach that was an engineer after working with you now. I think one of the biggest things is that as an engineer, we’re trained to use the resources that we have to creatively solve problems. So I think that was a mindset shift that individually helped me as a business owner in the online space, or just with my business, because I don’t look at problems as, I don’t know, opportunities of failure exactly. It’s more of a big experiment and it’s like, okay, I’m willing to test and try and experiment until I can figure out a solution rather than if I try once, feeling ridiculously defeated if it doesn’t pan out. And I think that’s a mindset aspect that really does correlate to how I coach my clients is really getting them onboard that it’s really progress over perfection. We’re really here. It’s continuous improvement, not get it right on the first time. And so I think that it correlates into how we teach and coach our curriculum. And I think it makes me a bit different but I think the other thing that really has been a huge advantage for me because of being an engineer is I think very process-oriented. So all of my curriculum is designed in a way where if a client comes in, it’s like an assembly line. How can we design our curriculum in a way that moves them through that assembly line so that they are getting consistent results from client to client, and it’s very predictable, it’s very repeatable. And I think that is a huge reason why we have a very high success rate of our clients. We have a coaching program that’s around the $2,000 price point. I’d say 75%, 80% of our clients earn a full return on investment within the first 90 days, which traditional courses or online programs, they normally have about a 10% to 12% completion rate in our industry on average with our higher programs that are in the five-figure price point, we’re just able to help people grow pretty fast pretty quickly, and I think that’s 100% attributed to how we design our curriculum, and that is something I learned from being an engineer. How do you think about the step-by-step process that would guide somebody through knowing when they need to do what and where their focus needs to be, to be able to produce whatever the desired end objective is that was promised to begin with. So I think just how I think about curriculum is more aligned with maybe how Apple thinks about creating a new product or how maybe software companies think about developing software, it’s this alpha beta, delta launch is through this continuous improvement and this feedback loop that you get from clients to enhance your curriculum. And I think even the clients we get to serve, when they start to think about their curriculum and their client experience journey, it really puts them at a huge advantage against their peers because most other coaches or service providers or copywriters in the industry, they may be amazing at what they do but they may not know how to deliver their client experience and the delivery of whatever they do in that predictable of a manner. So I think those are two things that I 100% attribute to my engineering background, for sure. Kira Hug:   Well, let’s break that down even more because I’m not naturally a process person. I don’t have a background in engineering, so if I want to create this incredible experience for my copywriting clients and also with my programs that we run together, I want high completion rates, I want them to be engaged, I want them to perform well in those programs, how can I do that better? What are some really specific steps I can take, especially if I’m not naturally process-minded like you? Jereshia Hawk:   Yeah, that’s a great question. One of the first things that I recommend and I think really what elevates a client experience and really differentiates a person from peers or competitors in the industry is your ability to be able to anticipate your clients’ needs before they know they need them. So I think in sales or in marketing, a lot of us can default to know, okay, I need to overcome some objections to get somebody to buy. And we think that’s the only time that we’re going to have to overcome an objection. Once a client enrolls and pays and signs on for the copywriting services, you still have to overcome objections that they are going to have to do to provide you the deliverables that you need to produce the website. They need to send over the copy… well,