SNM215: The Art Of Attracting Dream, High-Ticket Coaching Clients with Michelle Hext

0:00 Nobody else is paying your bills. So, those people that you're worried about who are going to, throw some shade on your Instagram post or whatever it is, are they paying your bills? They're not. So you have to put all of that aside. I just had that tough ,conversation about this is the deal in the work that we do. This is part of the deal. Welcome to another amazing episode of Serve No Master podcast. I'm so excited to have Michelle Hext

1:01 here coming all the way from Australia. She's a fifth degree black belt. She better listen to what she has to say. She's been teaching martial arts schools and other amazing people how to become coaches and start to generate high ticket clients for more than a decade. In fact, it's almost 20 years now, so she knows what she's talking about. We're very lucky to have her here and I'm so excited. Michelle, thank you for joining us today. You are very welcome.

1:32 It's really great to be here and I love the name of your podcast. Serve No Master, I think that's been a philosophy of mine for quite a long time now. Thank you so much. I'm really glad to have you here. A lot of what your website talks about in your books talk about is getting clients and coaching clients and the idea of a high ticket client. And before we dive into that, I'd like to know your definition of a high ticket client, cuz some people

1:51 I talk to it's a thousand dollars. Some people it's $300,000. Yeah. So for me, the high ticket clients are the five figure and above clients. I've never really thought to put a figure on it before really, but I typically, yeah, don't really think about a number, but the clients that I take on board are definitely in that five figure bracket, maybe three years ago, I would've called a $5,000 package, a high ticket package. So, I think it really does depend on

2:16 where you are and what it is for you. But for me it's that 10,000 and above. Would you say your training or the content has changed significantly since your price went from 5,000 to 10,000 and up? No. No, it really hasn't. Yeah. The fundamentals it's so interesting. We spoke a minute ago about like my experience and I started coaching coaches back in the 1990s and the fundamentals are still very similar. Obviously there are different platforms and things out there when we talk about messaging, but essentially

2:45 good packaging is good packaging. For example, very much fundamental driven. So, that dives into my core question, which was often as coach, I know for myself, my very first project I took as the ghostwriter, I was getting $800 and now I charge $40,000 and I put in less stuff right now than I did back then I did so much research and now I can afford to have other people do it for me. The content has changed maybe 5%. I haven't become a 50 times better writer,

3:11 but it's often we think we can only charge so much other people only pay so much. And that's what holds us back. So, I wonder how can people push themselves higher, faster to find their right number? Yeah, that's a really great question. And it's so true. I have a lot of coaches come to me who are still feeling like they need to be more experienced or they need to learn something new before they can charge those high ticket prices. And it's really not about that.

3:41 How you can get there faster is just be confident. And typically clients, when they go to charge those higher price points, they feel like they have to make it fancier and they need to add more and they end up slipping outside their sweet spot. And so what happens is they typically tend to lose that confidence. So, I just wanna remind everybody that the offer that you have right now compared to the offer that you may charge in a week's time, doubling your

4:06 prices is gonna be pretty much the same. It's just your level of confidence and the ability to focus on the outcome. I work with a lot of business type clients, so clients that are here to help other people make money. And I help 'em to get really clear about the outcome. What is the big promise that you're making? What is the outcome that you're delivering? And then once we go through that offer, I have them kind of energetically go through the offer and ask themselves,

4:28 does anything feel out of place? Does anything feel uncomfortable? Is there anything in the copy that makes me feel like I'm overstating for example, and if there's that stuff going on, I have them remove it because the confidence and really fully being able to get behind that offer and knowing that you're good at what you do and you can deliver that outcome. Is the difference between being able to charge 10,000 a month and 2000 a month, really at the end of the day. I think that's

4:55 a really important lesson. One thing I learned, I used to throw in I'll design your book cover as well for my clients. I have clients paying me 5, 10, $20,000 at this time. And then a cover design that costs me $28 would they would hate it and then not pay me. It would lose me thousands of dollars on the deal. And what's crazy to me, at least counter two of is that as I've taken away more from my offer. And raise the price.

5:17 The customers are happier. So I give less, I put in less work. It's easier for me, exactly that I add in. I took away all the additional services, tripled the price and people are jumping at it. So, it is interesting to find out that it's not about adding in all the bells and whistle. Sometimes we just want something who's really good at that one thing. And that I find when someone tells me they're good at three things, I start to get nervous that maybe

5:38 they're just okay at all three. Yeah, I agree. Remember, I don't know. And I probably still does go on, but I remember that people were business life, relationship coaches, and I'm like, how can you be a really good business coach and be a really good life coach and be a really good relationship coach. I'm not about it. I'm about being a specialist at what I do. And it's so interesting when you spoke about, the book cover and things like that.

6:02 I used to have this program or I still have it's a digital course now, but it was called The 5k Formula For Coaches. And it was probably one of my most successful coaching packages and group coaching programs, because I basically showed people how to package $5,000 coaching packages and sell them. And when I first launched that thing, because I could do all the things I don't know about you, but I was pretty much self-taught all the way through with all the tech stuff and everything else.

6:27 And so, I decided in my wisdom, you know what I'm gonna build the sales page for them. I'm gonna write the copy for them. I'm gonna do all the things. And I did that because I was really good at it. But I was tapped out in no time. I was very busy. And then I lost the joy and the, it's if I have to write another goddamn sales page, it, I just lost the passion for it. And now I don't do any of those things.

6:49 And I find we get a better result because I'm making my people be resourceful. They have to go out and figure that stuff out and hire the right people if they can't do it themselves and I'll always oversee it and all the rest of it, but my life is so much simpler now. So, definitely my experience is your experience. We, a word of warning to the people out there that wanna throw in the steak knives, don't do it, just keep your offer really simple focus

7:11 on the problem that you're solving and become an expert at that. I think what you're saying is really good about refining to what you're really good at. So, where am I from, and you have similar words, I'm good at different things. So, I was in the relationship in dating edge for a long time, worked with a lot of clients, men and women around the world. And then I got married. I got four kids now I don't wanna do that anymore.

7:32 So, I sold off that business, moved all the assets, still let someone else running cause they don't wanna do it anymore. But if I tell people, I learned this when I first started about dating. If I met someone at bar and I said, oh, I do two things. I run an online business and I'm a teacher. I was teaching at university. They wouldn't know what to do because people don't know how to categorize them. They go, I wanna put you in a box.

7:52 Which box do I put you in? And it's confusing. I used to have this friend when people would say, are you in a relationship he'd go and they would go, I don't have a box for that. And they would run away cuz it's people don't like to be confused. Our greatest fear is to find out we're dumb, to say something and someone's gonna go, what are you an idiot? And so, when we get confused, we pull back. So, I think it's really good to refine.

8:11 I get approached about coaching a lot. I actually only do one small type of coaching. I only coach author. Which is a small part of my business. Most of my business isn't that, but people come to me, I go, look, I don't do business coaching. I'm not as good at it. I'm okay at it. But I'm so good at coaching authors. I've ghost written over 300 best sellers. I'm really good at that. So, I talked to one of my friends.

8:30 I was like, people ask for this, but I'm really good at this. And actually book coaching to me. It's so easy because I've done it so many times. It's not hard. Whereas business coach, I'm always nervous that they'll get confused by something, but I can talk about chapter structure forever. So, I think that's a critical lesson for people. It's okay to be really good. Really good. At just one thing. I would much rather hire a specialist. I hire coaches all the time.

8:53 I want help with my Amazon merch. I just talked to someone who only does Amazon merch. So, I think that is a really good lesson is to refine that one specific thing. Now, we mentioned earlier that pandemic is going on and as lockdowns coming and going all the time, I live on a small tropical island. We have our own whole different set of things. We're not allowed to leave the island until we get vaccinated. So, I had to get vaccinated and I got

9:14 super sick, all of that experience. What I noticed, especially when I spend a lot of time on social audio, is that everyone suddenly became a coach. And I wonder who should, and who should not be a coach? Cuz I've talked to a lot of people who say they're coaches and I say have you done it? And how many clients do you have and where does it come from? Because to me I'm very paranoid. I come to a place where I'm like my

9:37 worst nightmare is someone to pay me a lot of money and it doesn't work. I'm very paranoid about that. And that's the place I come from. That's why my products are always so much graphic, so much design. That's why I spent 30 minutes before this call setting up the lights, moving these lights. I was like, here's the shade of my face. Perfect. Probably nobody cares. 1% of people even know, most people are only gonna listen to the audio. But I think about that because

9:59 I want people to get the best. And so, I wonder about this surge of people that are suddenly coaches and what's the line? Who should, and who shouldn't be a coach, or how should you find the right thing for you to do. I only want people to come coaches they're actually gonna be good at or help people. That's very important to me. So, that's my wonder as someone who's really more of an expert of this than me who should, and

10:20 shouldn't be a coach or how do you know what's the right thing for you? Yeah. I feel like most people that feel like they wanna be coaches typically, they've got coaching in them. They really do. So, I think it really is a case by case basis, I've worked with so many coaches over the years and where most people fall down is the business side of coaching, as opposed to the coaching side of coaching. And we've gotta keep those quite separate.

10:47 And I'm a purist when it comes to coaching because back in the day, when I did my coaching training, I trained under a guy called David Rock. And if you Google him he's an incredible brain. And so, this was back in the nineties. And so, I became a qualified coach through him. And one of the things that he always said and really stuck with me is that coaching is not mentoring. So, what I do is technically not coaching. What I do is more mentoring because

11:13 coaching is the purist will say coaching by definition is asking the right questions to draw the answers out of the person so, that they can come to their own conclusions. And offer feedback and things like that. People that come to me and pay me the money that they pay me. They don't have time for that, so there's an element of coaching, but there's also an element of mentoring. And so, we have to know what it is that we are doing.

11:39 So, if you are going to be a coach, you need to know how to ask questions. You need to know how to move people through those challenges and blocks and things like that. You've gotta, I think, have some experience in that place. I see fitness trainers as coaches, as well, personal trainers and things like that. And I remember many years ago now I'm talking, it would've been in the nineties. I did a tour with an organization that accredited fitness trainers and I was

12:07 in a bus and we were going around to a whole bunch of different gyms and personal training studios and things like that. We're looking behind the scenes. And I'm on this bus and I'm talking to these people and I looked to the people beside me and I said, oh, what do you do? Cuz I've got a full on martial arts background. I was a fighter for a lot of years. I had my martial arts schools at the time. And so, for me, this is an

12:28 extension of my passion. And a lot of the people that I spoke to were like, oh no, this just, is the business that I wanna get into. And I'm like hang on isn't this a burning desire because you're into fitness and it shocked the crap out of me that they had no background in fitness. And so, in my opinion, they are not the people that we should be teaching people how to get fit and be excited about fitness. And it's the same with any

12:54 sort of business coaching. There are coaches out there who have created success, right? Say you are a coach and you've written a book and you've got it to Amazon bestseller, because you've got a decent audience or whatever. That does not automatically mean you should become a book coach, a book writing coach. Do you know what I mean? So, it's like. We can't just have an experience or a success of our own and then go out there and tell the world

13:18 that this is what we are good at. I think we, there's no rules, right? There's no one that says you can't do that. That person might be the best person in the world, but you wanna make sure that you've got a framework. You wanna basically make sure you know how to move people from know fricking idea about how to write a book to being an Amazon bestseller. And it's not just the process. You need to also know human beings and know that if it was simply

13:44 a formula of A, B equals C, then everybody would be successful. But the human element comes in and the human element is, I don't think I can do this. I don't think I'm good enough. I'm just gonna procrastinate for a little while, because I've got some resistance and I'm gonna go pretend to do something else. You've gotta know how to move people through that. And a lot of people don't, a lot of people will take somebody's excuse at face value, and we've gotta get underneath that

14:06 regardless of the type of coaching you do. And you would know that from the relationship coaching people have got all sorts of creative, excuses when the rubber hits the road and they actually have to do the real work. And they're faced with their resistance. And what we have to be good at is moving people through that. Now, if you have had a success in something and you know how to do something, because you did it for yourself, and then you decide

14:30 that you wanna become a coach, but you don't know how to do that, then you're gonna be in trouble. Does that answer the question? Sorry. I went on. No, that's wonderful. I'm just thinking of so many questions I wanna ask. One thing, when I was doing relationship coaching was all in person. I would go with someone out and say, let's talk to men or let's talk to women. What I learned from that experience was 90% of people responded a positive coaching and 10% responded negative.

14:53 And negative coaching is where, how afraid they are to talk to someone. Once I get the shame equalized, they go do it. And that's how I operate. I actually responded that in the same way. And if I didn't I would've never met my wife. So, that's what worked on me. But most people like you can do it. You're amazing. You're wonderful. And so, that was one of the first things I learned that was so surprising. Oh, some people need to be told

15:12 good stuff, and some people need to say horrible things to motivate. And I know that's true in personal training. My trainer, one of my previous trainers once told me one of my clients, when we're on a call wants me to call her like fat cow and stuff. He's I can't do it. I was like, I understand not wanting to do it. Some people are motivated that way, which is one of the first challenge. And I'm sure there's so many more,

15:29 but one of the things in book coaching is that people just disappear. So, as ghost writing, one of the things I learned is that maybe 40% of my clients never read the rough draft. They pay me a huge amount of money. I do all these interviews put in all this work and they never read the rough draft book never gets published. And so, what I did is I raised my fee. So, I have an additional number in there that covers the nobody ever sees my work.

15:55 And so, I added in these fees and that's of course the service, but for my book coaching, and what I notice is that they just disappear, cuz they gotta write the book. They have to do it. And every time they message me, I respond 10 minutes later cuz they can text me and I'm shooting 'em videos and all that stuff. But there's this thing inside of me at first it was like, it's my fault they're not putting in the work. And it's not really true.

16:16 They're both doing two massive things. One of them is working on a massive event at a Ted talk and the other one is doing a huge launch in their business. So, I understand people being busy, but there's this thing inside you, that goes, it's my fault they're not taking action. So, what's the right way to deal with that? Cuz I shifted to I'm there if they need me, but I'm not gonna chase them because then I become, or I come

16:32 across as needy when really I'm just trying to give 'em the best results. So, what do you think about that? I think that's an awesome question. So, I think for me it comes down to initially setting the boundaries at the very beginning and letting people know this is how I, most people that come to work with me, they know how I work. I'm a hard ass, it's if you say you want something, you better mean it because I'm gonna mean it.

16:56 I'm gonna make sure that you get that thing and so, I think what it comes down to is we have to be so confident in ourselves that we have to have the courage to have the tough conversations. And sometimes the conversation is something like, so when someone goes missing, which doesn't really happen for me anymore, but I remember it happened a lot in the day. And I would've taken it on board and made it about me. We all do. It's oh, it's my fault, whatever.

17:18 So, now I'm really clear with the question. I'm like, what's going on here? Are you avoiding something? Are you really busy? Let's have a conversation about why this thing hasn't been done. And it's just a lot of the time. It's really simple it at saying what you're thinking. And a lot of people won't have the courage to ask those questions and sometimes we've gotta have those tough conversations. What you said before is so true about some people respond to having their butts kicked.

17:45 Other people respond to being told how amazing they are. I'm never gonna be the coach that is all about the praise. Like I'm definitely, I will give credit where it's due and I wanna be encouraging, but so much of what I do comes back to my martial arts training. And my head instructor, Mr. Chung was never heaping the praise on me. It was like, you might get the odd kind of nod every now and then when you fought to the death and you came

18:06 out bloodied and you didn't die. And he's oh yeah, that was okay. Sort of thing. So, you get used to not having a lot of praises. And then I remember when I was training a lot of my students and training people to be black belt, you spoke about people going missing. I would have people. So, in my style, it's WTF who knew that was gonna be a thing, but world TaeKwonDo, Federation TaeKwonDo. So, the Olympic style. And you start at white belt and then you

18:31 grade three stripes on a yellow belt. So that's another three gradings, three stripes on your blue belt, three stripes on your red belt. And then black belt is after that. So, it's 10 gradings and people will get to the red belt phase and then they'll go missing the same thing. And back in the day, I used to think, oh, I suck as an instructor. Or the rest of it. And then one day it dawned on, it's oh, they're scared. Oh, suddenly they're faced with

18:56 the fact that they're gonna be a black belt and it's such a big deal because they built it up. So, what I started doing when people were going missing, I'd give them, I'd call them. And I'm like, you need to come in and talk to me about what's going on. I'm like, why are you like, why what's happening? And they're like, oh, I just don't think I'm good enough. And I'm like, oh, okay. And so, I would have this conversation

19:15 and I was able to move these people. To grade through to their black belt and beyond. And that has served me so well in the coaching that I do now, because when people go missing or when they start making excuses, I know what it's about. I know that they're scared. They're being confronted with reaching the goal, whatever it is, there's some human nature element at play. And I know it's not my fault. And that's what makes the difference between a good coach and an exceptional coach.

19:43 I think having that understanding of human nature and being able to move them through it. But when it comes to that whole conversation about coaches thinking they suck because their clients are quitting or going missing, or they're not getting results. And what I always say to my people is you are gonna absolute cuz the question comes up, right? What if I have a client and I don't get a result, especially if we're talking at high ticket space. And I'm like, oh, I can put

20:08 that to bed straight away. You are gonna have a lot of clients that don't get results. That's just gonna happen. So, now that we know that's gonna happen, let's not worry about that. And I said, and most of the time, it's not gonna be your fault so long as you can hand on heart say this is my offer, this is the big promise that I'm making. This is the outcome that's gonna be delivered. If you do the work hand on heart,

20:28 I know I can deliver this if you do your part, that's all you can do. What the other person does on the other end of it. Is gonna be up to them. A couple of years ago I had a client, she paid me a lot of money to go through a six month mentorship program that I was running at the time. And she was just, it was like, the donkey being pulled along, like just no, they just don't want to move. And the person's like dragging

20:53 them and, I did what I could, but I wasn't gonna go chasing them. That's not how I do it. And towards the end. I just had many conversations with her where I basically said, I don't think you're cut out for this. I don't think you have the courage to be able to do what you need to do. And she said, oh my God, thank you so much. I don't think I do either. And I'm like, that was a very expensive lesson. Something that you probably knew

21:18 already, but I would rarely say that to somebody, but it's like you're probably gonna be okay with the coaching side of things, but you are not gonna be okay with the business side of things. And she agreed and she went and got a job and now she's happy working in a new job and some people just are not cut out for having those tough conversations and they're not cut out for the business of coaching, which is completely separate to the art of coaching. Yeah.

21:44 My experiences with almost all the business models I deal with or the online business model, whether you're starting a t-shirt store or drop shipping from China or coaching or doing what I do, email marketing and all of that, people think there's no effort component. And I find like a lot of my students as we get them an audience, they don't wanna email them. So, that was a hurdle I worked over a long time. I'm like you have a thousand people that

22:06 I know are spending money because I know this audience, I know where it came from. And I have two people, one person's making a ton of money, and the other person. And they always, like I say how many emails did you send last month? One. That's why the other person sent 30, 30 more shots, but there's this people always find their inactivity point. And I learned in my course where it is, everyone hits this wall. They, because they're afraid of being.

22:32 I know, maybe annoying isn't the right word, but they're afraid of invading someone's house with an email. I've never been offended by an email. I get a lot of spam. I get, because I have a public email address cuz I have a public website. I get so many emails from Nigeria saying they found hundreds of million dollars. I didn't know that scam was still active. I got 10 of those emails today. I've never been like, this hurts my feelings are upset or I hate this person.

22:51 And but there's this fear people have and this inactivity point. So, how can people, whether it's becoming a coach, I find like people, they start a t-shirt store, they don't upload any designs or they don't share the link with anyone. I teach a lot of people to start making money online. I say, start ghost writing. There's so much work for blog writing right now. It's crazy. I know hundreds of people hiring and they pay a lot more than minimum wage.

23:13 It's the fastest way to a hundred dollars an hour than I know of. They don't tell anyone like how they go. How do you get ghost writing clients? Here's how I get ghost writing clients. I just tell people I'm a ghost writer. I don't mention it on my website at all. People have to cold email me and say, do you still ghost write? Or it's a referral. That's it. And they don't do that. People are afraid to say what they do.

23:32 I think there's this fear of judgment of going, how can you be a writer when you haven't done anything? Or how can you be a coach? You haven't done anything. And so, how can people at those different barriers or fear points, how can they overcome those things to find out if they should be a coach or maybe they should be doing something else? And it's okay to be in a career. Yeah. I feel like the inactivity, like you said, it's not about the

23:53 email because they have time. They know how to write the email. It's not about the email. It's, what's underlying that and it's I think I'm annoying people. It's people have this little thing called unsubscribe button. If they don't like it, then, they will unsubscribe. So, we're not gonna worry about that. We've just gotta do our part. And so, one of the things that I always say to my clients is nobody else is paying your bills. So, those people that you're worried

24:13 about who are going to, throw some shade on your Instagram post or whatever it is, are they paying your bills? They're not. So, you have to put all of that aside. Also just had that tough conversation about this is the deal in the work that we do. This is part of the deal. Coaching is a component of it, for sure, but the visibility stuff and all the other things that we do. It's definitely, a bigger part of it. And if you're not prepared to do that,

24:39 then don't bother because really you are wasting everybody's time and you're just gonna put yourself through misery for however long until you realize that I'm not cut out for this, but usually I'm always gonna explore, like, why are you not doing this? I think I'm annoying people and it's okay, why do you think, and then. We dig around in that for a little bit until I basically make them see how stupid they're being and then they realize, okay, you're right. I'll just go do it.

25:07 But if that keeps resurfacing, we know it's a bigger problem. We know it's never about the business. It's about the human underneath the business and we gotta figure it out and then we have to figure out whether they're you know whether this, because it's supposed to be fun, right? Having the solo entrepreneur life, where we get to work from our laptops, wherever the hell we are at the time and, have the freedom and all those sorts of things. Like right now I'm dressed, I'm

25:29 party up the top and work out, gear down the bottom, cuz I'm gonna fly straight out to go with my trainer. And we love this lifestyle and it's fun. It's meant to be fun. There is definitely parts of it that are challenging. If you wanna do the best personal development program on the planet, then start your own coaching business or any online business, because you gotta figure stuff out about yourself. If you are just miserable and scared all of the time, then

25:55 that's not the life for you. Like we don't wanna live life like that. It's supposed to be rewarding. Yeah. I think that there's a lot of people who like the idea of what we do. For example, about five or six years ago, travel blogging was so hot. There were all these new blogs about traveling around the world. And I was following a lot of them because I live internationally. I traveled a lot before I got married. I was traveling full time.

26:17 And what I noticed is once they made enough money to start being able to travel, all the blogs died because they didn't know how to travel and work. And so, when they were traveling, they stopped doing all their work. So, that's why I missed every travel blog. They're all dead. And it was very interesting to me. We don't prepare for all the eventualities. A lot of my friends, we started when I did back in 2010, that's why I really launched my business.

26:39 They bought office space, hired 10 or 20 employees, and started building agencies and building that business model. I was like, guys, I'm gonna live on an island. And they were like, shocked. I was like, guys, isn't that why we do this? I thought we got into this business. Like I live on a tropical island. My front door is 88 meters from the beach. I measured it. I walk across the street. I was swinging the ocean about a couple hours ago. I'm that's what I always wanted.

27:00 My friend visited me one time. He goes what do you do when you wanna go to a nice restaurant? I was like you don't live here. And someone else once said, what do you do when you wanna go to the opera? I was like, we don't have that in this country. So, it has to be what you want. And I think that a lot of people want some part and not all of the parts. I think what we do is like being on a

27:16 trapeze with no net, like every month I have to make a certain amount of money to pay all my bills, to pay all my employees, buy my kids, all the Christmas presents they want and it's all on me. When I have a bad day, it's all on me. When I have a huge day, it's all on me. And I feel like I'm in the game. There's this feeling. And I know you, you said you used to fight competitively and I did a little

27:41 amateur Taekwondo when I was in high school, I fought in some competitions. And there's this feeling when you're in the ring, when it's you and it's nothing else matters, either you win or you lose and you can't blame anyone else. And there's that feeling, but it's very stressful. It can be very stressful if it's not what you're meant to be. I think that's okay. The rest of my family's all employees. I think it's great. They're all very successful, but I totally understand that there's this

28:07 feeling that people aren't ready for to realize no, it's all on you. If one of my kids get sick and we don't have enough money to pay for the hospital bill, it's all on me. And that is either you love that or you hate it because I can understand why it's so stressful. It's such a nightmare. We don't have money for rent this month. Maybe I should just get a job and go back to work. Cause I used to have those feelings

28:25 a decade ago, but how can people figure out if that's right for them? If they should be in the game, because there's this new language now that I don't use, which a lot of people are trying to start a side hustle. Which can be anything from driving Uber to starting a coaching business, which to me are very different. How do people know if they dive into the pool or maybe dabble with a side hustle? Don't you do what you in your knower though?

28:48 I am, I think completely unemployable. Like I have been doing this I, so I'm 52. and I have been employed by myself since I was 22. So, we're talking 30 years. And, I did the thing where I worked in hospitality and stuff like that in the early days. And it was okay, but when I had to do split ships or anything that required me to be somewhere at a certain time or stay for a certain period of time, it's just like, this can't be life.

29:20 This can't be the life that. I remember working jobs until I had enough money, so I could go travel and things like that. And so, for me I don't think there's anything else that I could do. And so, I think, do the side hustle, if you don't know, like you either know, I think, or you don't know, and I don't think you are necessarily born with it. But I remember my son, I remember he's 26 now. And I remember waking him up for work.

29:48 He started an apprenticeship and it was like, no, the third or fourth day or something, and I'm waking him up. He was maybe 19 or 18 or something. And I'm like, Cody, you've gotta wake up. You've gotta go to work. And you go, he looked at me and he goes, I can't believe that I have to do this every day for the rest of my life. I'm like, yeah. And now, and I remember just thinking the exact same thing, going to jobs and

30:12 just watching the clock the entire time thinking there's gotta be something else I can be doing with my time. And so, my son is an entrepreneur now he's a tattooist and he's, making a lot of money tattooing and he works his own hours and all the rest of it. And I remember saying to him at the time, why do you think I do what I do? I could never be sitting there watching the clock. I think sometimes, because you know that what you're doing is

30:35 never gonna be right for you. You're not gonna be the person that is able to punch the clock from nine to five. You're just not that person. You might not necessarily know it's something else. Dabble out there, try the things. And I don't think there's anything wrong with, for example, launching your coaching business on the side and then saying, I'm gonna give this a go. And when I've got enough money coming in, I'm gonna jump. But so many people, they don't make

30:57 the jump and they're trying to do both and they don't do both well and you have to make a decision. And I'm always making like the bold move. I will always be the person that just says, what, if I'm gonna do this, I'm going all in on this thing. And so, if I was talking to somebody who had the side hustle situation going on in their job, I'd be like, get some savings behind you, give yourself a month's worth of savings and then, cut the umbilical

31:23 cord and go for it because that's what I would do, but without the savings, probably I would just go screw it. I'm just gonna give it a crack cuz I know what I know. And this feels like the right thing to do and I will always trust my instincts. Yeah. That's very interesting cuz you're definitely at more like jump at the end of the spectrum. One of my other guests on the podcast, one time said you should have two years worth of savings and replaced your

31:47 full-time income before you quit your job. And I was like, that is very conservative. I definitely didn't do that. I was fired. That's why I had no choice. I was like, I don't wanna do this anymore. My experience was, I was driving home. I bought a new car. I signed a lease on a new apartment and I was fired that Monday. And I was like, perfect timing. And I realized that I don't want someone else to be able to affect my ability to

32:10 feed my kids, pay my rent, live my life. Like I realize your boss has so much more power than you realize. And we often see this sense of security in the job until everyone lost their jobs in the last year. It turns out if it's you or your boss they are gonna watch out for himself. I'm the same way. Like it's how we all are. So, how can people I guess find the right path for themselves. What's the best way for

32:33 people to learn more from you? I know you have a few books, you have a website, what's the best place where people can continue to learn more from you, Michelle. Cuz this has been amazing. And I know they're gonna wanna keep following you. Oh, thank you so much. So my website is Michellehext.com. So if you go to Michellehext.com/insta, I've got a page set up there. So, I have some freebies there. So, I've got a freebie there and there's two of them at the moment.

32:56 Actually, you don't even need to opt in. You just go and watch them. And one is basically, if you wanna unpack the knowledge that you have and launch an online academy. So, it's basically helping them to take the big idea, create a syllabus around it and launch it as an online academy of some description. The other one was a training that I did yesterday. Which was about really how to back yourself to play bigger in 2022, which I know is don't you cringe when you're

33:21 like, oh, next level you in 2022. And you're like, man, if I have to use that sentence one more time and we try to be creative, but it is what it is. Even though everybody's saying it, so there's a bunch of stuff there. I'm definitely on the Instagram. And, but yeah, the best place to, to find me is on my website and you'll see these buttons there. I have my own podcast as well. So, that's the high ticket coach podcast. And so, they can go along

33:45 and follow that too. That sounds amazing. I'll make sure to put some links in the show notes as well, so people can find you. Thank you so much for being here, Michelle. It's been amazing. And another amazing episode of the Serve No Master podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for listening to the Serve No Master podcast. Make sure to subscribe so that together we can achieve true freedom.