Esther Stewart - Premium Clients Do Not Buy Hype; They Buy Certainty

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast designed to help you level up your game and become the best version of you.

Our guest today built her career inside billion dollar finance institutions before launching her own growth agency, Cotton Owl.

Esther Stewart is a business growth strategist who spent eight years as a Fortune 500 associate training seven and eight figure executives in white glove sales, client retention and institutional grade strategy.

Today she architects high converting paid acquisition systems for businesses who want predictable revenue without diluting their positioning.

Esther's philosophy is simple.

Premium clients do not buy hype, they buy certainty.

In this conversation we're diving into why most high ticket marketing fails, how to attract premium clients without the gimmicks, and what it really takes to build scalable certainty into your business.

Please join me for my conversation with Esther Stewart.

Well, hi Esther, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

Thank you, Michael.

I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, I'm really excited about your approach to client acquisition and building businesses and some of the systems that you've created and you know, based on your experience.

And I think our listeners are going to get a lot of value as they're building business founders, entrepreneurs, even existing organizations, whether you're Fortune 500 or whether you're just small mid size.

I think there's lots of things that we're going to be able to talk about today that are going to really enhance their worlds if they follow some of your advice.

So thanks for joining us.

Let's start with though, Esther, before you got here, you're back in high school.

Where are you growing up and what do you want to be when you grow up?

Let's go back and get establish a little background.

And how did Esther become Esther?

Yeah.

So first, thank you for having me on the podcast.

Secondly, oh, we're gonna go way back.

So born and raised in North Carolina, lived there most of my life up until the age of 30.

Started my first job at the age of 14 making minimum wage.

So I grew up in an environment and around people who only worked minimum wage and then work their way up through the business.

Right.

So not anyone of affluence, no entrepreneurs, no founders.

It was very much you go in and you find one business, which was the old strategy that you're going to work for one corporation and you work your way up.

And from going to that.

I then moved to Florida in my 30s, applied to a position.

They were a little vague around what the position was.

I didn't realize it was actually a post for Merrill Lynch Stepped in, started working with that team, got the job, obviously they asked me if I would start doing all of my licensing.

So fast forward, fully licensed as a financial advisor within a year and then just kept getting promoted and ended up moving from Merrill lynch into Morgan Stanley.

So that was my life up until about four years ago.

And that's when I left Morgan Stanley.

Because I realized as you know, when you are around massive wealth, as I was working with ultra high net worth clients, celebrities, many of whom actually followed me, I have several businesses and they are the business.

But when you are in that room and you're in that much in that proximity to wealth, you really realize how easy it is to make money.

So for me it was just a total flip from the 425 minimum wage when I was 14 to wow.

Making money is actually easy if you know how to do it.

And it doesn't necessarily.

It requires hard work, but it doesn't require an exchange of you physically doing the work.

Right.

Which is what I had always grown up in.

So once I realized that and that door was unlocked, it was like, all right, here we go.

And now I left Morgan Stanley a little over four years ago, started Cottonow, the agency I have now as the primary business.

And.

Yeah, well that's.

Well, you're exactly right.

I think it is mindset when you move from minimum wage.

You know, I remember when I started it was 265 an hour.

It was like, how do you make a living?

You work for a day, make $30.

Yeah, 600 a week or so when I was going to school and dating myself.

And then when you change that mindset and I think it's a different mindset to your point where your first goal back then in my day was hey, how do I make $50,000 a year?

So what's it take to make 50,000?

And probably the same for you.

Yeah, whatever that number was.

And then it was like how do I make 100,000 dol a year?

And it's different activity then how do I make 250 or how do I make.

And each time you move up, it's a change in mindset.

So it's kind of like golfing.

You know, if you're golfing in the 90s, you want to get in the 80s, you got to change your form, you got to change your swing.

And you obviously were able to identify that and navigate that.

And then you realized, hey, I can go work for myself and earn six figures and you can earn less than you work for say Morgan Stanley or Merrill lynch and keep more and lots of entrepreneurs.

People listening to the show feel the same way.

So we'd rather work for ourselves.

Earn less and have your own freedom.

And you live now home for you is I believe you're living in Arizona right now.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, you're a neighbor to us there office in Phoenix, so.

So it's a gorgeous spot.

Well, let's talk about your marketing now.

You decided to go out on your own.

What was the impetus for that?

So you're doing well.

I know you're training high end executives.

You were working on sales culture, you were working on creating white label sales experience.

So you're working on the brand experience as well.

Then all of a sudden something obviously was nagging at you and you decided, hey, I think I can do this myself.

I want to be a growth strategist and I'm going to open up Cottonow.

What was the impetus for that?

Yeah, so that was me working with a really large team at Morgan Stanley, being the relationship manager for the team and in the midst of that realizing that while I loved that it was time for the next step as we all hit that right.

Whether you're the person that owns it or an employee, it doesn't matter.

So working with this big team and was next step in on the wealth management side was to actually now become a financial advisor and have your own book of business, not just working inside of a team that already had that.

So that's what I was looking into.

I came up with this whole marketing strategy for this team.

I went, I did all the research, I found all the different strategies, realized I really loved it.

And then they were like, yeah, thanks for all your work.

We don't want to do this anymore.

We'd rather just stay with what we're doing, which they didn't like.

It wasn't working, but it's okay.

To each their own.

That was really what kicked me in this direction was okay, I know how to do it now.

I unlocked the door unknowingly by trying to build it for somebody else and then realized, okay, this really isn't that hard.

And actually this sounds really interesting.

So how do I just go and replicate this myself without a team where I don't have to have buy in from anyone else.

Right.

It was just the whole independence factor where you don't have to have seven people that have to buy into your idea.

It's like it's your idea for good or bad, it's your idea and you get to go out and implement it.

And if it epically fails, it's completely your fault.

Lots of failures, yeah, but at least it's yours.

I think that's just awesome.

You're in control of it.

I was equated to making sourdough.

You know, my wife makes sourdough.

Now you can go buy sourdough.

You go to a bakery and go buy a loaf and you can enjoy a loaf of sourdough.

But when you understand the process of sourdough and all the different steps with the starter, because there's multiple steps and if you miss one of those steps, it's a formula, it's a recipe.

And what you did is you uncovered the recipe that the big corporations and in today's world, we've democratized growth because you can have the great state of the art CRM, you can have great AI, you can use all the same tools.

But now you've taken off the sales, you got rid of the sales prevention department and you got rid of that, those handcuffs and now you can kind of create whatever you're going to create.

So I like where you're going with this.

You often say, and I really love this is when this came through in on doing our research about you, that premium clients don't buy hype, they buy certainty.

And such a simple statement boat is so perfect.

So for an entrepreneur used to the fake it till you make it culture of social media, what does delivering certainty actually look like in a sales process?

In a sales process, it's everything.

It's the certainty from.

So just to go back before I go forward, when I think about sales process, I'm speaking whether you're doing organic or paid advertising.

Right.

So online selling in person as well.

But specifically for online selling, right now, when you are doing a social media reel, when you're making a YouTube video, whether even if it's an ad.

Right.

So all the ads that we write for clients and that they record and that I use are mainly video ads because of what I'm about to say.

It's that certainty and the conviction that you have in your offer that really pulls somebody in.

This is why.

And you know this, you can have a speaker who can go on and make an amazing YouTube video and they are so convicted in their offer and what they are selling and their impact on the world.

And then you can have somebody who has the exact same offer and they can speak just as eloquently, but they aren't as passionate about what they're delivering.

Right.

Like maybe they just got this idea and they were like, here in the world of AI, we see this more and more where they get this idea on AI and they're like, hey, I could create this, I could do this.

And so they have the knowledge, but they don't have the conviction behind what they're selling because they haven't actually done it.

So that person, they could take the exact same YouTube video in this example, replicate it, be them on camera and saying the exact same words, and it's going to have a totally different effect on the person on the other side.

So for me, when I think about conviction, it's conviction that you portray through how you're showing up online or through live events or in person.

But it's also how convicted are you in what you're selling and what you're delivering?

Because with premium services, with premium offers, whether it's wealth management, whether it's a bookkeeping service, family office, or a high level coach or executive, you're selling you, at the end of the day, they are buying the relationship and your expertise, but they are buying the relationship that they have with you.

And that expertise is you.

And so you as not you, but the person that is selling this premium service or offer, it's their conviction that is actually selling it.

This is why with premium offers and services, when you have any type of strategy where you're sending them and you have like those timers or any type of, you know, limited time access or all of these different things that flash on the website page or on the YouTube channel or the YouTube video, it doesn't translate because those are for lower strategies.

This, when you're selling your highest ticket service, your highest ticket offer, those are not going to move somebody.

They don't care if your service is going to be at a discount.

And quite frankly, you should never be discounting a service or an offer anyway.

But if you do, that's not going to move them.

You know, a $3,000 discount on a $60,000 service is not going to move the needle for them.

What is the certainty?

How certain are you behind that the deliverable?

How certain are you behind, if you're an attorney, that you can help them with this next, whatever this next legal step is in their business?

If you're interested in estates, how certain are you that you are the person who can come in and help them lay out the entire estate planning for not just their lifespan, but the lifespan and the future generations that are to come, Right?

And then for coaching, it's the same.

So don't mean to ramble There.

But for me, that's the conviction.

It's in all the ways that it shows up in your business.

But that's what they're buying.

Well, you're talking about you've got to be a product of the product and you have to have that experience or product of the service.

So you kind of have to live it.

You have to know it.

It's like, you know, I've been doing this for 30 years, and each year that 30 years of experience goes a long way.

Wisdom, insights, you're, I'm assuming in the millennial generation.

Right.

I'm baby boomer and we screwed up the planet for y', all.

But in social media, we got on Facebook and kind of ruined it for you.

So now you're on Insta and Instagram and some of the TikTok and other things.

But yeah, the bottom line is it goes to trust.

And what you're saying in that certainty, how can we provide certainty?

What are kinds of things that can provide that certainty?

If, say, maybe you're just starting out.

So for instance, you've been doing what you've been doing with Continental for four years now.

Yeah.

What's your one.

Like, what's your now, I know you had 10 years of corporate working with billion dollar industries, but how can we.

Maybe somebody just starting out, maybe somebody's just leaving a corporate world or building their own business, how can they provide that?

They got the passion, they're excited about what they do.

How can they provide the certainty or ensure the certainty for the client?

So the core answer there is to have an offer you can actually deliver on.

And that sounds so basic, but I see so many people that are.

Because we're talking to new.

New.

Right.

And they come in and they want to immediately replicate the big name in the industry.

And that's great.

But what they are missing is the journey.

Just like you said, you 30 years in your industry.

Right.

Or more.

So you think about, for example, I'll use Tony Robbins because I think he's just phenome and everybody knows who he is.

So I like to find people we can all relate to.

But Tony Robbins has been around forever.

I mean, not literally, but it feels like he's been around forever.

We all grew up with him.

We know who he is.

He's everywhere.

He's on every social platform.

But you have that person who sees his offers and his price points and his sales pages and what he's offering, and they're like, I can do that.

And then they go out and they, yes, Anyone could put together a sales page that looks like his.

Anyone can go out and say they can do all the things, but have you actually lived in that experience?

And if you're just starting out, I'm going to say no.

And so that's just one example.

I it a lot with business coaches, I see it a lot with marketers.

They want to jump straight to what the biggest names in the industry are doing without putting in the time.

So if you're just starting out and you want to have certainty, find the thing inside of what you want to do.

It doesn't mean you can't still offer that service, but find the thing inside of that service that you do like exceptionally well that you can deliver on and then focus on that.

For example, if you want to help businesses grow, if that's the industry you want to step into, there's so many ways to help businesses grow, right?

So find inside of what you know, the one thing that you are exceptional at and focus on that.

And then that can be the thing that you get really good at.

But while you're getting really good at that and finding clients and being known for that one specific thing, whether it's funnels, whether it's messaging, whether it's all the different ways, systems, automation, ads, while you're building that up and getting known for that life and the world and all the clients that you're going to work with are naturally going to bring all the other stepping stones that you need along the way so that your business can evolve.

So perhaps you start with paid ads, like you're going to be an ads agency, but maybe down the road you then shift and pivot into an all encompassing growth agency.

Whereas now I know the ads.

But hey, I can also help you with funnels and I can help you with this.

And I can help you with this.

Right.

That's just one example.

But it's making sure that you're selling and you're convicted in what you're actually selling in your offer.

I think you have to, I think you're bang on.

You're right.

And it's a challenge when you're first starting out because you have to have the legs to.

We live in a society where we want that instant gratification, right?

Yeah, we want to get the payoff.

You know, I'm reminded of a strategy.

So when I started we didn't have Internet, we didn't have any of those types of things.

And I remember I, I was in my 20s and I created a, I thought was a pretty Good sales program based on a 25 year old's experience, right?

And I started talking to clients and I do the presentation.

And they'd come back to me and they'd say, well, who have you worked with?

And I'd go, well, no one yet.

You'd be one of the first.

They said, go get some experience, come back and see us, right?

And so I was going broke, getting rich really.

And everywhere I was going, how do you get the experience?

Because it's that cart before the horse.

And then I remembered when I was back in college, a concept called lead cow theory, and I think you might agree with this and lead cow theory.

I used to milk 300 cows twice a day.

And I had one time you had to line them up, they wrap their tails with crap all around your face.

It's messy job, smelly, yucky, everything you could possibly expect.

And I had a sheep herder tell me, he goes, animals have pecking orders, all right?

It goes, look at animals like horse, right?

You get 10 horses in a row.

Number five horse gets ahead of number four, they'll nip at each other to get back in line.

So you go, go find the lead cow, line up the lead cow and the rest will just line up.

And I thought, well, how do I find the lead cow?

And he says, watch the herd, watch the market.

So I started watching the herd and I found the lead cow and I spray painted their ears fluorescent orange so I could find them again and easily enough line them up and sure enough, all the cows would line up.

So I applied that model to my career doing what you're suggesting, and I identified 10 companies that I thought would be good lead cows at and T. Bell Labs, loose all a lot of Intelco companies.

And I had some experience with that.

And I'd go see them and I'd say, hey, listen, I got a new program.

Nobody wants to hire me.

And they go, yep, us either.

And I said, let me do the program for you for free or I'll do this session for you for free.

But my payment will be a reference or a testimonial.

And, and you're judge and jury.

So if you don't like it, you don't have to do it.

But if you do like it, then you do.

Well, 10 out of 10 said okay.

9 Out of 10 hired me back for real money once they got to see what I could do and deliver on.

Pepsi was the only company that said no to me.

And by the way, I boycotted them.

I'm still bitter about it.

And I haven't had a pepsi since.

In 40, literally 40 years.

So I boycotted their products.

So drink Coke or Dr. Pepper.

But anyway, moral of the story is if you're starting off your business, it's like you started.

You started with what you know, who are the lead cows?

So this is why you have the Kardashians and some of the.

They're the lead cows in their markets.

Get them using it from a social point of view and all of a sudden you start to build your practice because you're working anyway.

Why not build some clients and offer some.

Something along those lines.

Any thoughts about that?

Does that resonate with you a little bit?

Yeah.

No.

That's what a lot of entrepreneurs and founders do at the beginning.

Right.

So that's a great way to get your name and get your business out there.

What I did is not what you did, but I think it's the same concept.

So I didn't have the testim.

Testimonials.

Right.

Because it's going from corporate into this online space.

Yeah.

What I did is I just looked at the offer instead of going in with working for free, which I would never do in Morton Stanley because that was just.

We just didn't do that.

Right.

Like, I remember the teams that I worked with when they were going to put together a presentation, the sales process with the team was three, three different calls.

Call one was a specific thing with the prospect.

Call two was a specific thing.

And then at that point there was nothing actually given a value.

And so you had to make a Decision by Call 2 if you wanted to move forward.

Like, was this a verbal yes, I'm ready to move forward.

And then we get into the fees and what that looked like in Call 3.

So that was the mindset that I came in with.

So the concept that you're describing, which is very familiar to most of the people that are listening, is not anything that I had ever been around.

So for me, in no way was I going to step in and work for free.

I'm not saying it's wrong, but this is my mindset, just having been in the wealth management industry.

So what I did was I came in and I looked at, okay, if this is the offer, this is what I'm putting together, this is what I'm doing for clients at the time, how do I make this one intangible but risk free?

So I looked more at the risk.

So not guarantees.

So what I did is I just spun it.

We'll do this for you and then we'll Work with you until X, Y, Z.

And I was able to do that by just doing market research and seeing what my competitors were doing in the industry.

So if everyone else that was in my industry was doing and selling this specific way, I knew that my offer needed to be the same offer, but it needed to go above and beyond.

So my offer was huge.

It was all encompassing.

It was too much for what we were charging and I knew that.

But it was just another way to over deliver, do more in a way, probably still doing it for free, but at least getting compensated on the front end.

So that's how I started.

I actually, for the first year of my business, not because I didn't have them, but the first five months of my business, I had no testimonials because we were brand new and we were building that up.

Once I had the testimonials, I still refused to put them on my website.

So I grew my business for the first year without testimonials or anything on there.

But I was also, for anyone that's listening, I was also willing to hear no.

So just like you, I did hear no's.

Like somebody would get on a sales call and say, well, you don't have any testimonials.

And I would tell them why and then I would say, and if that is a deal breaker for you, I absolutely understand.

But I was really comfortable with just stepping back and being willing to lose that sales deal.

I didn't lose as many as I think people would think I would have in that it was really a small amount.

But I did lose some clients just because I didn't have them.

So that's how I navigated it.

But either way, I think it's a. Yeah, you have to start at the beginning.

We live in an age of entitlement where we all want to come in and have all, you know, well, I tell you I'm great, therefore you must know I'm great, therefore you should pay me premium prices.

Because everyone else in my industry is doing this right.

So if you're just starting out like as you know, you have to do the work.

And I think for people that are my age that have been in corporate or that have always had a specific income, it's not the easiest thing to feel like you are going back to square one.

Because quite frankly, that is what you are doing right when you are now navigating your pricing, navigating how somebody's going to value the work that you do.

And it feels like you're taking a step back.

But when you transition from one thing to the other.

You have to be willing to do that and you have to leave your ego at the door, which is really hard for a lot of people, myself included.

I'm not saying that it was easy.

Five generations of us out there in the workplace still, and it's still an issue.

And like I say, there are just other approaches.

You know, I've always adopted the value first or at least demonstrate the value.

It's even like from keynote speaking point of view, my first 100 were basically for free.

I didn't even know it was a business.

And then finally out of, just because I was busy, I said no.

And that's when they offered me money and I didn't even know you could get paid for it.

Right.

And it was like.

But that's what led to it.

So I always, even in our writing, and I know you post, I know you give information, you're.

You're producing, you're producing your content, you're kind of getting it out there.

That's why I think social media is so good.

You have a lot of things where if I see value from Esther, I'm going to go, oh, okay.

Hey, this is somebody that I want on my team because I know you, I like you, I trust you, and I think you capture it.

So that's why I think we do the social media part of it.

Right?

Yeah.

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And now back to my conversation with Esther Stewart.

You've spent nearly a decade in billion Dollar finance institutions.

What would you say is the number one institutional grade habit that small business owners or independent consultants or coaches are usually missing?

So many.

But I would say leaning on advertising.

Yeah.

So one thing that still continues to surprise me is so many, especially if we're going to speak to the ones that are just starting out, the beginners, they are so reluctant to leverage advertising because there's this online bias with marketers and I'm not sure where it came from that you should never advertise your offer until you've sold it organically.

And that is not how I built my business.

I went straight in and I built my business with ads, with meta ads.

Right.

So for me, I was able to be really comfortable with advertising because I knew that's how Morgan Stanley acquire their clients.

Like that was their branding.

They ran ads on the different platforms, but they also of course relied on referrals when you're at the wealth management level.

But I knew that for the corporation, not the wealth management, but for the corporation, the reason that they were so well branded and people knew who they were is because they were leveraging paid advertising in some way, shape or form.

So I would say that would be the one thing in terms of marketing that I see small business owners reluctant to step into, which is paying to be seen, paying to get more visibility.

And right now is online social media is phenomenal.

As you said, I am on all platforms as are you.

I use it as a digital business card.

But I rely on the ads to find the clients for me because I do not want just like, just like corporations.

And this is what I learned in corporations.

The the value that you bring to your clients is the relationship.

If I am spending all of my time on client acquisition and not delivering to the client on the back end, then I don't have a business that's really going to make me happy.

So if I to spend all of my time on social media content and making sure that I'm producing this video and this reel and this YouTube piece and this podcast and then I have to go and work one on one with my clients or inside a group.

However the it's structured, it's exhausting.

So I would start there.

In terms of what I learned, I've.

Got to confess, Esther, I'm one of those, I have a hard time.

So what I've understood.

So I've always worked off of referrals and I built a nice business based on referrals which keeps us busy.

But yeah, we do the social media thing.

We do the podcast we're on season six.

You know, I write the book, so we're busy, which is good.

But from what I understand with the advertising.

So let's unpack that a little bit because I think it's a blind spot for me and I'd be curious on insights because what I've heard is that you find where your audience is.

So let's say it's on LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever it has.

My audience is business audience, so I'm assuming It's mostly on LinkedIn.

And I've looked at LinkedIn ads and they're pricey, they're expensive.

And then you start off with a formula, and then once you get that formula working and you've got the right roi because it only works on higher ticket items, I think, not like a $50 item, but on thousands of dollars per item, then you scale it accordingly and it's putting faith into that because we're looking.

So if you're starting off your business and you've got limited budget, maybe you're a small SaaS company, you're starting, you're hiring a salesforce.

What's a good place to start?

And how should we define if we are going to go that advertising route and put faith into that?

Yeah.

How does that work?

Can you unpack that for us?

Oh, yes, absolutely.

I love this question.

So when you're thinking about paid advertising, there is a. I'm not sure where it came from, but everybody believes that you need to spend a lot of money on ads.

And I'll tell you a little story because I think it's going to segue into why I am passionate about this.

So when I was still at Morgan Stanley, still making a cushy salary, I was investing.

And I still continue to invest in my business and myself.

But one of the first investments I made was in an ads agency.

And now I'm a big advocate of not doing this right.

We have to learn through things so we can now help people not go through through it.

I hired this ad agency and I'll never forget I was sitting at my desk at Morgan Stanley and I had to step away for lunch and my ads person called me and said that your ad account has been shut down and we can't get in there.

So I'm totally naive.

No idea how ads work at this point, because I just hired somebody.

Right.

Which is now why I'm a big advocate of, like, you can hire people for certain things, but there are certain things in your business you should always know and this is one of them.

So I got home little naive thinking this was going to be a quick fix.

It wasn't a quick fix.

Long story short, my ad account got hacked and I was never able to get it back.

When that happens, Meta basically puts a restriction on your account and says, hey, we don't trust you anymore, even though it's not your fault.

So in the midst of me, so it was a $30,000 loss because now I can't run ads and I had to build up trust with Meta for a separate ad account.

So in the midst of all of this, had no revenue coming in brand new in my marketing experience.

And like I said, I was fortunate to still have income coming in.

And with that I could only spend for, I think it was two years, $50 a day in ad spend.

So when I tell people that you don't have to spend a lot in ads to see success, you do not.

Because I'm living proof of that.

But what that forced me to do, which actually is what has built my business and helps me build my clients businesses as well, is this knowing that I only had $50 a day in ad spend, I had to get really clear on what is the offer, what's the messaging, who is this for?

And then the hook, how are we going to stop the scroll?

And with $30 a day in ad spend within just five months of turning on the ad, making sure it was working, refining and tweaking the funnel on the back end.

So where were they going?

After we clicked, the ad was all that buttoned up.

I hit my first $40,000 month with that one testimonial on my website.

So when I talk to the power of advertising, that's what I'm talking about.

Now that said, I'm not going to say that's easy to do.

It does require copy skills, understanding psychology, knowing your market inside and out.

But I was willing at that point to take the time to invest in learning all of those different strategies so that I could turn on an ad that was high, converting that got a lot of clicks that got people to the next page, that then moved them through so that they booked a call.

And then on the back end of that, got really good at learning how to sell one on one on sales calls, which is very different than selling at Morgan Stanley to very wealthy families.

So I'm really careful when I tell people that it's part of my story, so I'm not not sharing it, but I'm really careful when I share that that I'm clear That none of this was easy.

And it took me getting really uncomfortable to get good at what I was doing.

For example, once I got everything working, the reason it took five months isn't because the funnel wasn't bringing people through.

It was because I think month four, I was getting around 30 calls booked a month with $30 a day in ad spend, which is phenomenal.

At that point, my offer was $7,000 and the price was fully disclosed.

So every single person that was getting on a call with me knew the price.

So there wasn't even a price objection.

And everyone was saying no, Every single person.

So after 30 calls, we're hearing no, no, no, no, no.

I'm like, okay, it's not the offer, it's not the price point.

It's me.

There's something I'm doing wrong on the sales call.

Most founders from my experience would then tear down the ads, tear down the funnel, say, it's not working, it's not bringing through qualified people.

For me, it was never, hey, it's not working.

It was like, okay, I'm not doing something right on the sales calls.

So made another big investment and I hired a high ticket coach who had closed hundreds of millions of dollars.

And I brought him in and I was like, okay, this is what I'm doing.

What am I doing wrong?

And so we refined things and after working with him for a couple weeks, we shifted how I was presenting.

It wasn't even the conversation at the beginning of the sales call, it was how I was presenting the offer.

So we flipped that and then I started getting.

Almost every single person was saying yes, right?

So now I went from having a 0% close rate to an 85% close rate.

So that is the power of ads.

Now, to answer your other question, I did meta ads, so Facebook and Instagram.

Because one thing you said, which is really interesting, but it's also a common.

I think it's a misconception.

Everyone believes that you should start with LinkedIn ads because they think that their ideal client is on LinkedIn, right?

Because they have a very professional service and their ideal client is absolutely on LinkedIn.

But and this is where it's just a little nuanced.

Their ideal client is on LinkedIn, but they also are on Facebook and, or Instagram.

And so the only difference between somebody, it's the same person, they'll open up the LinkedIn app and they'll scroll through LinkedIn and they are there to network, they are there to sell their offer and build their relationships.

And so they're not there to purchase.

That same person will close down the LinkedIn app.

App, open up Meta, be on Instagram or Facebook, scrolling through and they'll see your ad and something in them says, oh, this looks interesting.

And they will click and they'll move through and they'll book a call with you.

It's the exact same person.

It's just the mental state that they're in when they're in LinkedIn versus on a social media platform.

So that's why I always recommend starting with meta and focusing there.

Because the other benefit of meta ads is not just the audience size, not the fact that they're more inclined to purchase, believe it or not, than they would be on LinkedIn, but is also you can go in with very small budgets with the targeting that meta has with the advancements that they made with Andromeda, which is their AI app that runs all of the AI systems on the back end for advertising.

But with those advancements, meta can find your ideal client more quickly and get your offer in front of them.

And you can confirm that your ad hook is converting, that your funnel is converting.

And you can know if everything's working in a month and then within that month, if it's not working, it's very rarely the offer is just tweaking and optimizing.

So if the ad is working, most of the time, it's really not the ad.

It's actually what happens after they click the ad.

So then you can just hone in on that.

So I think that answered your question.

Yeah, no, those are great insights on that.

And is there a starting point for most businesses?

So let's say you're a coach or business coach or an entrepreneur.

Is there a.

If you don't have this much to start?

So let's say we started with meta.

You're coaching me and you're going, okay, Mike, we've got, you know, your new books coming out.

Let's market your new book.

Let's do this thing.

And it appeals to general business audience.

So Meadow could work.

What's the minimum if we can't spend this much or invest this much in your advertising?

Don't even, you know, save your pennies until you get to this point and then expect this kind of thing, say over a 90 day.

And again, you're optimizing as you go.

Is there a good starting point that we should keep in mind?

Yeah, minimum would be $10 a day.

We have, Yeah, I have a lot of clients who have actually come in and said, hey, I only have a budget for $10 a day.

And we set it up because the way I think about ads, and this is where marketing, the ads agencies have really muddied the waters and people are so confused.

The only difference between spending $10 a day in ads and $100 a day in ads on Meta is how many people you reach.

That's it.

So you could still see success with a $10 a day campaign on a high ticket offer.

But what that looks like is if you have never, especially if you have a brand new ad account, then it's going to be a little bit longer because Meta has no data on who's come through.

So you have to take that into consideration.

But even if you have an established account and it's $10 a day, it might go a little bit more quickly.

But what that looks like is if you spend $10 a day, maybe, and you mentioned a book, then perhaps you might get, you know, a couple of purchases in the first month, but it's not going to be, you're probably just going to break even on the ads in that first month.

But at that point you want to think about that as one your book, probably the intent there is to upsell them into something on the back end.

So that's where the funnel is important, making sure that you have that in place, whether that's an email sequence that goes out after they purchase the book to re engage them and get them to move and work with you at a higher level.

So that's where you hear a lot of founders talk about, well, my ads are just break even because they don't care about the revenue.

I mean, we all care about the revenue, but in this case they don't care about the revenue because what they're looking at is like the length of the value of that client.

Yeah, great, great insights.

And that's because it's new technology.

As baby boomers, we look at it, we're, you know, think ad man.

We put on an ad like in my retail businesses, we'd spend a ton of money on ads, we'd sell a ton of stuff.

We got traffic, we drove traffic.

And it was, you know, B2C marketing.

But usually we ended up just paying for the traffic.

In other words, it paid for itself.

But we did a lot of work and didn't really get, but it gave us awareness, it gave all of those things.

So from an exposure point of view, but with today's tools, there's just like you said, there's the funnel, there's the upsells, there's controlling things.

So interesting conversation.

Let me ask you this question.

Why do high ticket marketing or when does it fail?

So many founders try to scale their high ticket offers using traditional Legion tactics only to see their brand equity diluted.

Where does most high ticket marketing go wrong?

I don't think it goes wrong, but I think what happens is a lot of, and I just did this myself in my own business.

A lot of founders have that one like they have one entry point into their business.

So give you an example of me when I'm currently navigating and just navigated at beginning of 2026.

So up until the end of 2025 for my business specifically, I only use one funnel because it works really, really well.

It's still in place and that was it.

And I used relatively low cost in ads and booked my calendar and that was the means of client acquisition.

However, when you want to scale.

So in this case, advertising spend.

Right, because yep, I'm going to speak to ads only because if you're doing organic and if you're doing all the organic strategies, you're already capped, right.

Like what you're currently seeing with organic is what you're going to see.

So in this case you would have to look at paid advertising to some degree.

But let's say that now you're, you're spending more on ads.

When you expand how much you spend on, on meta ads, and I just tested this, when you expand how much you spend on meta ads, the exact same ad is now going to go to a much, much broader audience.

And while that people say oh that sounds great, it's great.

But what happens is now you have a very diverse level of that buyer journey.

So you have some clients that are going to, they want to book a call right away.

You have some, excuse me, prospects.

You have some prospects that are going to see your ad and not actually move for three to five weeks.

You have some that are going to come through and go into your email sequence and they're going to wait a year.

Right.

So what you want to have in place at that point, if you want to scale to the next level, is you need to have different entry points.

You need to have multiple funnels.

So that looks like keeping the funnel that's working.

I see that mistake a lot.

A lot of founders just tear down what's currently working, like keep what's working, but now you need to add on to it.

So for example, in my case that looked like adding in a webinar funnel and then a challenge funnel and then a low ticket offer so that I'm running ads to a lower ticket offer that they can come in and see the experience of working with me.

But now I'm appealing to people who are ready to move today, ones who are ready, but they need that trust.

They need to spend time with me in a virtual room.

Whether that's a challenge or a webinar, or those ones that are like, hey, I'm okay to invest with you, but I want to invest low ticket to see what that experience looks like.

And then if it's a good experience, then I'll go into your higher ticket offer.

So when you're thinking about scaling your revenue, you want to have more ways for your ideal client to come in.

And then, like all things, nobody wants to hear this, but it's the truth.

Like all things, it's never just a matter of just sending it in your business.

It's now you have to look at the data.

So if you've never had a webinar strategy, for example, is the webinar actually converting?

Right.

And if it's not converting, then you have to dissect it and you have to find out, okay, what's being said.

Just like I had to do on those sales calls, right now, it's, what are we saying in the webinar?

How are we guiding the client through?

Is it clear the value, what we're teaching in the webinar is just even what they want to hear.

It's all these little nuances that get lost in the marketing world because you see so many ads that talk about, hey, just put up a webinar and all the clients are going to flock in.

You're going to have a hundred thousand dollar day.

Like in.

In theory, yes.

But what they're not showing you is all of the optimizing and then the refining.

And just like you have to do with organic, right?

The founders who are very successful with YouTube didn't just get successful with YouTube because they had one video that went viral.

Was it Stephen Bartlett?

He talks about this.

He dissected his YouTubes, his YouTube channel, his watch time, his hooks, his thumbnails.

Like, his team went in with a microscope for years before he finally saw the success.

Because they went in and pinpointed, okay, at this point, views spiked and then this is where they dropped off.

So they were like, okay, well if this is where they dropped off and this is what we're doing inside of the YouTube video at this point, let's not do that anymore more and let's do this and that's where most founders don't want to hear that because it's not fun and it's not easy.

And we would all just love to have that webinar that just goes viral and it all sells.

Right.

But yeah.

Oh, it's interesting.

Let's talk about transitioning from organic to paid.

So many of our listeners have built great businesses on referrals and organic content, but then they're hitting the ceiling.

And we're a good example of that.

Even our organization.

When is a founder truly ready for paid acquisition?

I think from day one, because that's what I've done.

Yeah, I don't think there's ever a time where you're not ready for paid acquisition.

To be honest, the only time would be, and this even then I would still say just get good at it.

But the only time would be if you have a high ticket premium offer or service that you're selling and you don't do well on camera.

If you don't do well on camera, then I would say don't just throw up an ad.

Make sure that you get comfortable.

I'm not saying you have to take public speaking lessons, although I'm not saying not to.

But when you are the founder and you're running an ad, and you should be in that ad, if you're selling a service that's 10,000, $60,000 or more because they need to engage with you via that ad virtually, you're still building a relationship.

It may not be one on one, but they're building a relationship.

Like, what are you wearing?

What's behind you on camera?

How are you articulating what you do?

That conviction.

Right.

Like that's where it all comes in.

So that would be the only time.

If it's somebody who has never done well virtually on camera, then I would say pause and start getting really good.

Like just open up your phone and start doing little mini speeches and recording yourself.

And you know, I'm sure all of us have a friend who can help with that if needed, to give you some feedback.

Right.

Sometimes it's posture, sometimes it's how you're communicating.

Again, it just all goes back to conviction.

That would really be the only time, believe it or not, would just be that.

But even that, it's just that you can power through it, you can get good at it.

And now that you are comfortable on camera, then do it.

But the reason is the founders who are the most successful right now, and I'm not going to name the names because everybody throws names but think about anyone on ads frequently.

They all the ones I'm thinking of right now, and I can think of Ten.

They all have millions of subscribers on YouTube.

So even with millions of subscribers, they still feel the need to run ads.

So I would argue that everyone should be running ads.

I'm not saying to break your budget or your bank.

And that's why I'm a big advocate of not working with ads agencies, because they have really excessive fees and really learning how to run them yourself.

Because ads, and I'll close here, ads are really easy to run.

They're not the most fun thing.

And most people look at the dashboards and they're like, oh, this is intimidating.

But I'm in a program right now.

So I've always run my own ads, you know, since that agency issue.

And one of the big investments I made this year was beginning of the year, working with a really good ads training program where I'm learning refined strategies, elevated strategies from Meta, but also learning LinkedIn ads and YouTube ads and Google search ads and all these, and Spotify ads so that I can have an omnipresent ad strategy for my business.

So you can find somebody who can teach you very easily how to navigate within the ads platforms to set up your own ads and still go in with small budgets.

Because even though I'm in those programs, I'm still not going in and spending thousands of dollars a day or hundreds of dollars a day in most cases.

I'm going in with really small budgets.

Well, you can scale when you need to, but what I'm hearing you saying is you're ready for paid traffic when you've got a proven conversion mechanism.

In other words, when you do get leads and referrals, you have the ability to convert.

And if you're doing well there, then the next step is just to increase that traffic flow and go from it, which like in our old days, we use direct mail direct.

We used to look at a 1 2% response rate.

Right.

And you just publish it and dump it into their mailbox.

With this, we can get right into your.

I can get right in front of your eyeballs and my demographic and whatever.

Esther, this was absolutely insightful.

Great insights.

If you were looking at the marketplace, you know, going into 26 and beyond, how do you see it over the next two to three years?

How do you see it evolving?

So is there a.

Is it an easy entrance point for companies that want to get in?

I'm assuming they can contact you if they want to get some coaching or learn the sourdough recipe.

Rather than go through that tough learning curve, they can engage with you in your organization over at Continental.

How do you see it over the next couple of years?

Is it just getting more of the same?

Is it expanding?

How's AI impacting it?

Yeah, good question, I believe.

Well, I know because there's a lot of people that are now even saying this as well.

I've said it for years, as I'm sure you have.

You, the relationship is never going to be replaced by AI.

AI can build funnels.

Not very good yet, but I'm not conceited enough to believe that in a couple months or maybe even a year, AI might be able to build funnels that are exceptional at the level that we're seeing people manually doing them.

They copy all of those things.

So AI itself is not going away.

We still have to navigate within that.

So what I look for is where are we as founders?

Irreplaceable.

And we're irreplaceable in two places, sales and building relationships.

So I would say anyone who's thinking to the future and looking at their business and thinking about where they're driving their business to and whatever that looks like for them, whatever their big revenue goal is making sure that they're still keeping the relationship in the heart of the business that they're doing.

And for me, that's not just on one to one conversations.

The relationship doesn't happen as you know, when they become a client, the relationship happens to well before they become a client.

So this is where you build the relationship with social media content with your funnel.

It's important, as you know, to have the relationship with your funnel and then to get really good at selling your offer in webinars and in challenges.

Because with the advancement of AI, the conversations that I'm hearing and whether or not it's true or not are yet to be seen.

But as you've seen, we're hearing that AI is going to get to the point where it can just replicate us as humans, where we can have our AI avatar that looks just like us and it can create YouTube content and LinkedIn content, and nobody's going to know if it's us or an AI bot.

So when I see that, and what I'm seeing others in the industry do, which I think is a great thing, is to also start incorporating live events where we prove that we're human.

That said, this is what I'm hearing in the industry.

And so sometimes it's all hype and sometimes it's not.

But regardless it is is making sure that you're keeping the relationship in what you're doing and then in the selling component in your business.

Because those are the two things that are never going to be replaced by AI.

But if you're thinking about 2026, 2027, it's also about getting in front of more people than you're currently getting in front of.

And that doesn't have to just be with paid ads.

That can be live events.

We're seeing a resurgence in live events.

People are going back to.

It's kind of funny.

During COVID we all got excited because we didn't have to do it anymore.

And now we the 2025, the end of 2025, but now 2026, everybody's doing live events, which is great because everybody's like craving that in person connection.

So looking to those, maybe that makes more sense for the strategy that the person has.

But yeah, yeah, oh, I agree with you.

I think AI can help you with strategy, it can help you with process, it can help you with funnels, you know, ops, those types of things.

The admin aspect of it.

But the human to human AI can't be responsible.

It can't be empathetic, you know, can write a poem that'll make you cry, but it's never experienced heartache.

So I think our human personally, I think our EQ becomes the new mba and that's what makes the difference.

It's not about just facts and figures and numbers anymore.

It's that human to human.

Esther, this was fantastic.

Thank you so much for being our guest today.

The website, so the website that will help put everything in the show notes but it's continental official.com and we'll put all that and we'll have all of that in the show notes.

People can reach out to you if they want to have a conversation and possibly engaging you in your organization.

Thanks for being our guest today.

Thank you Michael.

I've enjoyed it.

As you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard this caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you?

And who is one person who you can share that with either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is that premium clients do not buy hype, but they buy certainty and the deep conviction you have in your offer.

Or maybe it is that you do not need a massive budget to see success with advertising.

You just need clear messaging and a high converting funnel.

Thank you for listening, for learning and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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Goodbye.