400: Profitology: Accelerate Your Path to Profit, Identify Your Natural Working Style, and Implement Your Ideal Business Strategy with Kelly O’Neil

Robert Plank 0:00 Marketer of the day number 400 profitology, accelerate your path to profit, identify your natural working style and implement your ideal business strategy with Kelly O'Neill. Hey everyone, and thanks for listening. We're talking right now with Kelly O'Neill, and that's O'Neill with 1l and Kelly is a multi award winning entrepreneur. She's a best selling author, a profit strategist and an affluent brand marketing expert for the next generation of innovative companies and thought leaders. And Her mission is to help her clients strategically design and build businesses that make their competition irrelevant and their solutions irresistible to affluent clients, and using her innovative business process called profitology. So Kelly, glad to be talking to you today.

Kelly O'Neil 0:48 Thanks so much. Thanks for having me here.

Robert Plank 0:50 So, I mean, what's on your mind? What are you working on these days?

Kelly O'Neil 0:55 So I'm on a mission, Robert, and my my mission is, you know, I've been in, I've been in business for myself for 17 years, and I came from a corporate background where I worked on public relations and branding, primarily for high for high tech companies, and then started teaching those strategies to entrepreneurs about how they could have, really, you know, corporate level strategic branding services and create brand awareness around their message. And what I started to learn over the years is that people are they're just doing stuff. They're not operating strategically. And so in order to create an effective brand strategy, you have to have you have to actually have a business strategy. You have to have a way to be able to differentiate yourself from the competition, in fact, in in our markets, to be able to make the competition irrelevant. And I started to realize that not only do people not have a business strategy, they have no plan. And it I'm watching entrepreneurs shoot themselves in the foot, right and left by by not having this done. And so what I've been up to for the past year or so is I am on a mission to save people from wasting years and years and years of energy and time and opportunity as well as sometimes, I mean, I have a client right now that's invested over $500,000 in his business, and he's not making, he's not been making sales and really helping them to establish what I call critical path. And critical path is the specific steps you take in the right order in order to transform your business and rapidly start achieving the results that you desire quickly by doing things in the right order. So that's what, that's what I'm up to.

Robert Plank 2:54 Okay, well, great. I can't wait to unpack some of this cool stuff. And so just to make sure that we're all kind of talking about the same thing. Can you tell us what, what those like missing pieces are like? You said that some people out there, they don't have that, they don't have any strategy, they don't have the branding, they don't have a plan. And so for that sort of person, just so that, if someone's listening like, so that they know that they are the right person to be listening today, like, what, what does a person's day or, what does a person's business look like if they don't have these necessary items in place?

Kelly O'Neil 3:25 Well, that's perfect. So what I'll let me, let me say, let me tell you how this actually, how this occurs, is, I find that, you know, entrepreneurs, they they go and they're doing the right thing, right? They're going to go get some training somewhere, or they're going to a seminar and that sort of thing. And, you know, they're listening to a bunch of experts, which are, you know, everyone is kind of selling their own thing, right? So someone gets up on the stage and they're talking about, you know, the benefits of writing a book, and how critical writing a book is to being able to share your brand message. And that's absolutely true, right? Books are phenomenal. If you are an expert or a thought leader and you're wanting to write a book or, you know, I know you've had a tremendous amount of success with podcasting. So, so, you know, someone gets up and they talk about podcasting and how it's a great way to reach your audiences. And, yes, that's absolutely true. The challenge is, is that people started, they're starting to implement and execute marketing tactics before they even have a strategy, and oftentimes before they're even really clear about what their unique positioning is in the marketplace. Do you know I'm saying so? So they're working on steps 719, and 22 before they kind of have their base foundation. And so how that shows up in a business is oftentimes people, they're completely overwhelmed. They're working on a ton of different things. It's things that are seemingly very important, and definitely they you know, for a lot of businesses, they are. But they just not created that base foundation. So they're not actually operating strategically. So sometimes how this looks is, people are out marketing, right? They're furiously marketing so they can get new clients, but they don't really actually understand. They can't communicate what it is that they do, how they do it differently than everybody else in the market, and why their specific clients need to buy from them right now.

Robert Plank 5:28 Okay, well, so what I'm what it sounds like is that, so by it sounds like maybe, uh, people, they're making things harder than they have to be. It sounds like, if they do, you know, only step seven and 12, maybe they're spending a lot of their time on one or two marketing tactics and maybe sort of spinning their wheels or putting them the time, putting in a lot of work, but then it's not really hitting the market. Sounds like it's like, if someone is speaking, or they're marketing, or they're trying to get their message out, but they don't have that USP, or they don't have that hook, then it sounds like they're doing, they're kind of spinning their wheels and like doing all this work, but not getting the payoff, and not understanding why? Yeah,

Kelly O'Neil 6:05 let me give you Yeah, and that's actually exactly what's happening, is because they've not, I'll give you a great example. I had a client that came to me and, you know, really wants to build his thought leader brand, and so he immediately started. He signed up for programs, started working on media interviews, which, again, media interviews are great, especially if you want to build a brand that's a sound strategy. The challenge was, is that he had not yet honed in exactly how he was going to serve the marketplace. And he had not necessarily honed in on exactly who his ideal client was, or, you know, kind of like that whole, you know, the client path. It's, it's, you know, how are you going to serve people? What makes you different? How are you different than everyone else, doing what it is that you're doing in the marketplace? Because people are always different, right? You just got to find that unique hook. You got to find that unique way to communicate. And so he'd spent all this time and money creating all of these videos, and when we actually ended up doing his strategy, all of the videos were essentially useless, because they actually were never going to get him where he wanted to go. So so critical path and being able to really help people identify in the right order. You know, who are you? What is it that you really want out of your life and your business now, how are we going to develop a business strategy that's going to help you effectively get there very in the quickest way possible. And then what are those, those strategies and tactics that we're going to implement in the right order to be able to create the best result that you want and put you directly in alignment with your right fit clients? Now,

Robert Plank 7:58 okay, so what if someone is trying to figure this stuff out, they think. They ask, you know, who, who are you? What do you want? What's that business strategy? And then, how do I get all those pieces in place? Like, do do your clients, do they all kind of more or less need the same pieces? Or is it on a case by case basis that is for each person,

Kelly O'Neil 8:17 totally different? That's such a great question. So it's completely different based upon what their specific business goals are and life goals, right? Because I absolutely take into account lifestyle, you know, as an example, I love doing interviews like this, because I hate traveling and so, you know, I really I speak a lot, but I really try to hone in my speaking around my local area as much as humanly possible, because I don't want to be away from home. So I take into account their lifestyle goals, their specific business goals, and then also one of the things I do, I don't know if you've checked it out, Robert, but on my website, I actually offer a free quiz called the profitpreneur quiz. And one of the things that I take into account with every single one of my clients is their natural working style. So we all have a natural working style, and I've identified nine different profile types of different individuals. In fact, I would likely guess, just based on, you know, the little the little bit I know about you and how you're building your business, you're probably an influencer and and so when you can align people with the way that they naturally work best, and then show them how to partner with people, or align with people, or hire people that make up for the kind of the dark side of their profile, you watch businesses rapidly accelerate, and then also you're just kind of, you're trying to figure out it's like, if I tell someone like, as an example, you love doing interviews, right? Yep, but if I tell someone who is like, I hate that, but I'm going to base their entire marketing and business strategy around speaking in and interviews we're going to be it's like pushing a boulder covered in value. Vaseline up a slippery, wet Hill. So what I want to do is I want to find out the natural way that these people work and work to their strengths, to help them when we're developing that strategy, it's all about getting in an alignment to all work for them toward what they want and and delivering that message that is so uniquely them that only they're going to deliver it.

Robert Plank 10:22 That makes a lot of sense. Like, just like, like, if so, if someone coached you and said, Oh, you need to go all around the country, do all those kinds of speaking gigs, you'd hate that. But then I imagine some people would like doing that, right? Some people love it, checking out new cities, things like that. Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly O'Neil 10:37 And it's not to say that I don't, because I do travel around the world, but I very much limited it. I mean, I used to be on the road about three weeks of the month, and now I kind of do little spurts. So once a quarter, I'll do a speaking tour, and I'll hit four or five engagements in a row and come home, because speaking is one of the ways that I create the most profit in my business, and I love doing it. I just don't like the travel. So the way I've aligned my business strategy as an example is I do these quarterly speaking tours, and then now I, you know, I have two houses. I have a house in Las Vegas and I have a house in Vancouver, Washington. So I primarily try to book any other games engagements around one of my homes. So it's so works with me. Does that make sense? So I'm always aligning people's strategies to work with their strengths, with their preferences, so they become more prof profitable faster, and they're enjoying and loving what they're doing in their business. So

Robert Plank 11:35 do you have any interesting stories about like, the the pieces that you've set up for some of these clients? Because I feel like sometimes I'll see someone's, I don't know we'd call like, their their funnel, or their, their their client path, or whatever we do want to call it, where I'll see that maybe they're doing some speaking, or I'll see that they have a book. But I feel like, with a lot of these sort of like, like thought leaders, influencers, people like that, these, these marketers, I feel like I only see some of the picture. I'll see, like, there's the book and the speaking, but I don't really see, like, everything that's set up. So do you have any interesting stories like that, of like, someone where, like, you set up, like, all these different pieces that work together?

Kelly O'Neil 12:12 Oh yeah, absolutely so. And by the way, Robert, part of that is because they're doing what? And I know that there's like a brand out there. They're duct taping their business strategy together. That's why it actually feels like, well, I know they have a book and I know they speak, but how does it all fit together? So yes, I actually went into one of my clients is a naturopathic physician, and she called me because, number one, you know, the way that she had grown her business worked really well until she she couldn't manage it anymore. It's really hard when you've got a full practice to be able to manage um your practice in three minute increments in between patients. And so one of the things that I did with her was we created an entire um strategy and and funnel where everything is working completely in lockstep. And it's kind of like, Have you ever seen one of those champagne glass funnels that they do sometimes at weddings, where you pour in the champagne at the top and it trickles all the way down into everything else?

Robert Plank 13:15 Yeah? Like the the pyramid tower looking, yeah, like pyramid tower. So

Kelly O'Neil 13:18 what we that's kind of how I will set up people's strategies. And so what I did for her was I created an entire funnel that starts with this amazing book she specializes specifically in endocrinology and autoimmune issues. And so her lead magnet on her site is the nine hidden reasons that you're sick, fat and tired. Which people are like, am I sick? Am I fat? Am I tired? Yes, I need this book. And then what we do is we've created an entire sequence behind those that one book. So all we really do is we'll go out and market the book, but we've created an entire sequence that at every step of the way, it aligns them to create a for them to have the opportunity to have a complimentary consultation. This is actually something that she wasn't doing before. So we hired someone, a patient concierge, that can help people find out, you know, kind of what, what's ailing them and what their next best step is, and it's completely complimentary. And just by putting in that step where it was completely automated, someone downloads the book, they they get a hey, are you suffering from any of these reasons? Schedule a complimentary consultation, and then it's so easy for them to do that. And then what happens is, when they when they do the the form, as an example, it they outline, they click on all the things that are bothering them, that they'd like to talk about. Well, that then generates a variety of other kind of like um marketing, based on what it is that they're what, what they're. Challenges are their self identified challenges are, and sends them into a variety of funnels that eventually loop them back into, you know, having a complimentary consultation Robert in six months, just by putting in this simple strategy and really being clear about who our patients are and what was missing on the back end, and automating the entire thing, her revenue jumped 70% and she was already a seven figure business crazy.

Robert Plank 15:29 So I really like that idea of the complimentary consultation, because, like, I have to admit that, like, you know, I didn't, I don't have much of a strategy when it comes to, like, the podcast or speaking or the book. I just kind of put some stuff out there. I hope that's okay, but, but I'm always, you know, interested to hear like, the the better way of doing things. And as far as like, the books, like, you know, people told me I needed to have a bunch of Kindle books and things like that. And I put those out there, and I put like, you know, links to my websites, or I put like, you know, the the page in the book that says, Wait, stop a second. Here's this free thing. I didn't get a lot of clicks, so I really like this idea of the complimentary consultation. And so it sounds like the way that you kind of described it is they go to, like a form or a quiz, and then they they answer some questions, and then that, depending on their answers, it puts them into a different autoresponder sequence or a funnel, and then eventually gets them to sign up for, like, a free coaching call. Is that on the right track? Yes,

Kelly O'Neil 16:24 except for, I mean, it's not a coaching call, because it's a medical practice, but they sign up with a complimentary consultation with our patient concierge, who can really identify where they are, what they really need, and what the best service or provider is within our practice for them, and and kind of what you just talked about, Robert, is this, I think, and you know, is the challenge is, this is kind of the way that we've been taught to market, and is we kind of just, you know, someone said, Do Kindle books? So we threw Kindle books out. Or someone said, you know, do this. And not that those are bad things. But I actually like to intentionally walk a client through a predetermined client path that is going to be not only in the best service to them, but ultimately lead to the specific result that you as a business owner desire.

Robert Plank 17:12 Okay, so, um, so as far as like, like, getting, getting someone down that path. I mean, how does it, how does it work with this, with this doctor and this sort of consultation, like, is it from the like, from the book directly to the the quiz, and then it's like, the next the thank you page, is book, your your consultation, or is there a little bit of a wait? Do they have to earn it? How does that work? Yeah,

Kelly O'Neil 17:33 so, because it's a medical practice, specifically, like, we're not selling stuff online at all. So every single piece of marketing that we do leads back around to book a complimentary consultation, okay? And then we've got a entire, you know, a page on our site that says, you know, here, here are the three easy steps to get your consultation. There's no obligation, you know, we'll talk to you. We let you know. And then, in all of our marketing, it leads them back to that consultation form. So no matter where they come in, whether they're watching one of her video blogs, or whether they're reading an article, or whether they've got the book or it's in the book, or whether she's doing an interview, everything always leads back to that complimentary consultation. Okay,

Robert Plank 18:18 gotcha. And so, so I imagine that that this sort of ending point, or this call to action changes depending on your clients, right completely,

Kelly O'Neil 18:27 and also some of our clients, especially, I don't know if you have a lot of online marketers that listen, we might have like as an example, I have multiple different entry points. So what I'm doing is I create a strategy for my clients that I call it a locking loop, meaning that no matter where they get in, they're eventually going to either fall off because they're not an ideal client, or they're going to end up where we want them to go. So all of the pieces always work together.

Robert Plank 18:59 Okay, so, um, so, all right, so you work with these clients, and basically, so it sounds like some of them are, are a lot like me, where there's like, kind of, like, a lot of activity, a lot of action, and all these different places. And so is there kind of one, one area where, when you work with these clients, do you see, like, a common, number one, universal, like, just repeat mistake or repeat, like missing thing in their business over and over? Yeah,

Kelly O'Neil 19:23 it's that they're that they're just doing a bunch of stuff and it's not strategically linked together. I mean, that is the number one thing. So they're just creating more stuff or doing more stuff and throwing it out there and seeing what sticks, as opposed to making sure that everything is kind of leading and leading to the open of opening of the funnel of the ideal client path, and then walking them through it and giving their higher end clients a way to immediately jump to the top. Yeah, so I'll give you, I'll give you an example that differentiates from what a lot of people in the industry say when I, when I'm doing a like a webinar for a client, or for myself, for higher end clients. And you know how they like one of the kind of tips that people give is, you know, don't let them skip through the webinar, make sure that they watch the whole thing. That is like the worst advice ever for an affluent client. So what I do is we do a 45 minute webinar. We keep it to 45 minutes. We let them stop it and start it whenever they want, and we constantly provide them with the out and the out is, if you've heard enough, schedule your appointment right now.

Robert Plank 20:44 Great. That makes perfect sense. And I've definitely seen webinars like that where I was just like, just let me click the button. Just let me buy from you. I can't I'm not interested.

Kelly O'Neil 20:51 Yes, so, so kind of some of those things. It's like, we're anticipating that this client might need to listen to the whole webinar, but we're not going to force them to and we're going to give them an opportunity to take the next right step, to move forward immediately, right now. And because we have a predetermined client path of how all these things work together, we know exactly where they need to go.

Robert Plank 21:17 Okay, that makes sense. And like you're making me, I think back and realize that, like, you know, a lot of activities that I've done, a lot of people out there have done are, like, you know, building the list, and, like you said, seeing what sticks, which is sounds like, pretty wasteful. And then after building that list, giving the list some offers, and again, seeing what sticks, as opposed to getting them in from the book, or getting them to make these micro commitments, or getting them to kind of, you know, walk up the ladder or watch a webinar or schedule a call, just kind of like it sounds like the way you describe it is, everything fits together, and everything is just kind of pushing them forward to the next thing, as opposed to just kind of seeing if they sign up, seeing if they click, kind of just like waiting around and knowing that maybe some people out there have these lists with these untapped clients, or people they could land as clients if only things were a little bit more organized.

Kelly O'Neil 22:06 Exactly when you design a strategy where all roads lead to results, you are going to spend so much less time marketing. You're going to have a better client experience for your clients. You're going to have a better experience with your clients, and you're gonna watch the you know, you're just gonna stop wasting, wasting time, energy and money, right? Because everything's going to lead to the same place.

Robert Plank 22:29 Perfect. So, so people want to stop wasting this time, energy and money, they want they want to see the light. They want to start making a change. You said that at Kelly O'Neill dot com, there's that, that quiz, that test to figure out someone's natural working style is that a good sort of starting point, that

Kelly O'Neil 22:46 is the best starting point. So the best thing that you guys can do if you want to start working smarter and not harder, is go take the quiz. You go to Kelly O'Neill, dot com, forward slash quiz, and we will, in literally about five minutes, we can identify what your natural profit preneur style is. And we talk to you all about, I have a video there, and we have a page there that's, you know, talks about, where are your profit accelerators? So what can you do working in your natural style to hit the gas? What are the your profit pitfalls. Where are you going to fall down based on your natural style and who do you need to partner with in order to really be able to, you know, utilize your strengths and the strengths to someone else, someone else to be able to catapult your business

Robert Plank 23:36 forward. Super great. It sounds like we all need to know that, and so am I correct in assuming that once, when someone goes to Kelly O'Neill dot com, that's O'Neill with one l.com/quiz and they fill that out, and they they get in your funnel, then they'll pretty much get what they need, like, once they they take the quiz and they figure that out, like they'll be on a sequence on a funnel to kind of keep walking them up so if they need more from you, they'll Get it. That's

Kelly O'Neil 24:00 absolutely correct, because what we've done is I walk my talk, so all of my stuff is completely set up to be able to find out where people are in their business and help them identify the next right step for them to be able to take their business forward. Perfect.

Robert Plank 24:15 So if you guys listening right there, if you if you feel like you've ever been stuck or things are harder than they have to be, or not moving as quickly as they have to be. It might be that you're setting yourself up for failure. You're shooting yourself in the foot. So there is a better way, and the better way is to go to K, E, L, L, y o, n, e, i, l.com, forward slash quiz. Fill that out and figure out, like Kelly said, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, where you're going to fall down, who you need to partner with, and where you need to go. Because, I mean, you kind of have two choices in front of you right. You could either hope for the best and cross your fingers and hope that what's gotten you here will keep you going, but there's no guarantee there, or take this quiz and and kind of know the real truth. To figure out what you need to do moving forward, so that you can be strategic, so you can work smarter, not harder, and all that fun stuff. So Kelly O'Neill, dot com, slash quiz is the place to be. So as we're kind of winding down, signing off here. Kelly, any just like Final thoughts for listeners today.

Kelly O'Neil 25:16 Yeah. You know, I really believe that when people have the plan, it creates so much more confidence and ease, because they know exactly what they need to be working on. So you guys, I know sometimes it feels like you just got to get you know, you got to get stuff done. You got to get stuff out there. If you could take a little bit of time to plan it out first, you are going to see such better results. You are going to have so much ease, much more ease, and you're not going to be wasting much time and money. So take the time to plan it out first and be strategic.

Robert Plank 25:50 Super. Great advice. Be strategic, and we'll see you over at Kelly O'Neill dot com, forward slash quiz. And thank you. You