Lessons - The 2x Exited Founder on Why Most Business Coaching Is a Waste of Money | Polina Groman - Co-Founder of The Social Club

In this lessons episode, discover why trust and real results outperform traditional sales tactics when building a coaching or service business. Learn how experience-driven offers can create stronger client relationships, understand why delivering value before selling leads to higher conversions, and explore scalable strategies that reduce burnout while increasing long-term revenue. I come from the view growing up that they're all scams. I mean, it's so interesting. You go industry by industry and people have different perspectives. I know in real estate, they're very popular. Coming from a tech background where I built SaaS companies, you don't do that. You go to conferences, you go to keynotes, you go to panels, and you listen to other leaders that have built unicorns, but you don't go to masterminds. Masterminds were not like a thing, especially coming from a major city. I think that... I think that masterminds really targeted people that were the smartest person in their smaller city. And they didn't have mentors or people around them. So fortunately, I always had tons of access. So I never felt that I needed to do a mastermind ever. And then you come down to Miami and it's like... every two days there's a new mastermind and they're all fifty thousand dollars the thought of spending fifty thousand dollars and we've had this conversation offline before to like get someone get access to somebody it like my my ego can't take it like what what kind of person has the balls to ask me your fifty thousand dollars to talk to me and teach me shit all you know so there's a whole other different mindset so some people are so bought into them because some people go to like they spend half a million dollars a year on masterminds. Some people can never stand them. And then they get like a whiff of like Tai Lopez. And then, and allegedly Tai Lopez's stuff is not great. And then they'll never go to another one ever again. You have to understand that if they all sucked, there would be no marketing. Correct. Logically, it doesn't even make sense to what I'm saying. There are good ones. There are. I've been to really bad ones and I've been to really great ones, right? But they're all new. The concept of a guru is new and novel. And the bar to marketing yourself on the internet is so damn low that it has unfortunately led to the proliferation of shitty coaches. But this gives you a phenomenal opportunity if you're an expert. If you're good at what you do, you actually have a phenomenal opportunity. You never have to shame or say, oh, this person is horrible. You never have to do that because if your stuff is genuinely good and you could get in front of people and produce results, people will rave about you because people are so used to getting burned and people are so used to being like, this is just insanity and Look, there's a market for everyone. There's a mainstream market, and then there's a specialty market, right? I am not, my model does not work mainstream. I'm not speaking about organizing a result for a thousand people live, Tony Robbins style. No, this is not it. What I'm speaking about is if you, again, if you're good at what you do, and you wanna genuinely build relationship with people, and you invite them to a result. So if you're an agency, And you run ads for people. One of the results that you could do, and we've done this with a client recently, is we will write your ads and set everything up for you this weekend and show you how we did it. So if you want to work with us, great. If you don't, everything is done. If I'm busy, that's valuable to me. You're teaching me and you're doing, and I'm not walking away with a to-do list. What happens that weekend is I get to know you because I need to get to know you. Right. And you do, I want to know you as a person because I'm live with you. This is not a Zoom conversation. We're spending time on a yacht or we're going into a mansion or we're doing something really fun. Most entrepreneurs are dying to do. They are dying to get out of the Zoom of the rat race of making videos, of shooting content and be with other people. So you're taking off a lot of boxes. You're taking off what I desire, what I want. I want to meet people. I want to have fun. And I want to get this thing done. What happens during this environment is a person's like, I don't have to go hire more people. Like you're my person. You told me this is what's getting done. It just got done on day one. And on day two, actually got to have fun and meet great people. And on day two, you tell them, hey, if you receive value here, if you receive the result, how would you like to work together for six months? This is what I have specifically for this group. And typically 70% of people will raise their hand if you've produced the result. Not if you came and rar-ar-ed them and just made them feel good. Anybody could go to an event for $200 to feel good. If somebody is paying you, the price points that we found work really well for this model is between $2,000 and $5,000 for the weekend. If somebody is paying you $2,000 to $5,000, you better produce. Because people are not coming there to hang out with you. They're not looking to just network. Because people will be like, yeah, pay me $5,000 to go on a yacht. Why? We live in Miami. There's plenty of boats and yacht charters here that I don't need to pay you to do that. But if you genuinely are good at what you do and you infuse some fun into my life and you brought value to me and I got to know you and you told me genuine stories from your life and now I understand what you're about, I don't want to look for another coach. I'm sold. Whether it's a $50,000 product or $20,000 product, I don't care. Because for a lot of people, past six figures, it's time. I don't have time. I understand how to make money. I'm looking to make more money. I want to scale what I'm doing. I don't have time. So don't waste my time. Don't insult me. Give me what I came for. And if I like you, I'm going to work with you. That's the model. So you're building a relationship. You are honestly giving people what they came for. There's no hiding here, right? This is not, a lot of times I will do an audit for someone and they will tell me how amazing they are, how many courses they've sold and I'll have a five minute conversation with them. I'm like, this won't work for you. You're not gonna be able to give people a result. People are not gonna go and write a bad review. They are gonna go crazy on you live. This is not, there's no hiding here, right? So if I paid you, and I came and you didn't deliver anything, I will ask you for a refund now. Not seven days from now, like now. And I'm not going to be chasing you. I will ask you in front of everybody here, and I will tame this group for you, and it's going to be a problem. So the reason why this is the business model that you've chosen is because it removes the bullshit. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. So you show up, you deliver your product, and you're going to be a problem. The level of trust you build with that group is so strong that it's going to turn into an ongoing customer. Massive lifetime value. And you aren't artificially closing people online. And then basically, because, you know, there's two kinds of coaches. There's coaches that I think are just straight scammers. Let's just remove those out of the bucket. But there's people that I think are better than they actually are. Yeah. And they sell people online because they figured out how to run ads and how to draw attention, how to convert. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with that. You could do both. This is feedback. It's massive feedback. Yes, but it's more than feedback. Specifically for women, women like to chat. We're chatty. We like to tell our friends if we like something or if we don't like something. We write reviews. That's just what women do, right? So if I came to this thing, I'm telling all my friends. I'm telling all my friends. I'm telling everybody that I know. I'm going to take pictures. I'm going to do an Instagram moment. I'm going to do a TikTok moment, right? You're getting so much social proof here. where you don't have to ask people to give you feedback. You don't have to ask for a testimonial. They're doing it live. And you don't have to choose one or the other. A lot of times when people hire us, they do these intensives once a quarter. You don't have to do this every day. But you start to realize that if you wanted to add $50,000 to your monthly revenue, you could do it with one event. And you could stop doing other things or you could continue doing those things. There's no one size fits all. There's no, this thing is the, you know, holy grail and everything else sucks. No, everything works for everyone, but just not at the same time. But this strategy, it allows you to work a lot longer.