It’s hard to believe we are right around the corner from a new year. It’s astonishing how quickly time rolls by and before you know it, December is in front of you and you haven’t even considered what your goals and projects will be for the next year. Today, as I write this, it’s the month of September, and my team is meeting together right now to discuss the new year. Next week, my wife and I will go away for the weekend to really focus on what this year holds for us and to establish what our priorities will be as a family.

Are you getting ready for the new year? I want you to succeed in 2024, but you’ve got to be ready with your head in the game as you approach January 1. The last thing you want to do is stumble into the new year and take the first entire quarter of the year trying to get your plan together. Do it now! Schedule your Q4 Planning to wrap up the year and get clear on our goals and priorities for 2024. Don’t procrastinate!

Here are 5 areas that my wife and I plan together, and I think this will really help you as well.

#1 Plan For Your Business

What are my financial goals? In what new ways will we expand? Where are my priorities?

#2 Plan For Your Faith

How will we challenge ourselves and grow in our faith and relationship with God?

#3 Plan For Your Relationships

How will we strengthen and enjoy our relationships with one another, our family, and with our friends?

#4 Plan For Your Health

How will we invest in our physical and emotional health so we can thrive?

#5 Plan For Your Finances

How can we multiply our resources to be a greater blessing and to impact others with generosity?

Success will not just happen to you. You have to be diligent and prepare for what you want to see happen in your life and business. 

Here in this Backstage Blog, we have one goal and that is to get you on stages, where you can share your message and see your business multiply. One way we do that is by helping you become a world-class communicator. We want to get you ready to share your message and present your ideas to the world!

Recently, I had a conversation with one of my mentors and friends, Erwin McManus. Erwin is truly a genius and a master communicator and I’m so excited to pass on to you, today, what I gleaned from our time together.

Through Erwin’s personal process, he was able to identify 7 frequency types that flow through human communication: motivator, challenger, commander, healer, professor, seer and maven. Each frequency has a positive and negative side, and people can embody multiple frequencies.

According to Erwin, when we understand these frequencies (and their negative or “shadow” expressions) we can enhance our communication skills and reach our full potential.

Here are just three of Erwin McManus’ frequency types:

#1. THE MOTIVATOR

The Motivator frequency brings energy and infuses self-belief. They love to encourage and inspire and usually will not tell you what you’re doing wrong. Their dominant belief is that people need to realize that they matter.

The shadow frequency of the motivator is that they can become the performer. Although their desire is to motivate, if they are not in a positive, authentic state, they begin to perform for the room. As a motivator, you’re operating in a positive frequency when your focus is on what you can do for the room and you can slip into the shadow frequency when your focus is on what the room can do for you.

#2. THE CHALLENGER

The Challenger frequency brings courage and awakens calling. The challenger is the person who’s the confronter – the persuader. They’re the person that feels like they have to disrupt the status quo of your life. People listen to challengers because they inspire them to be more and to do more. The challenger is the one telling you that you owe yourself more and it’s almost like you feel yourself growing muscles just by listening to them. You know you’re a challenger when people look to you to raise the standard. Challengers are powerful, so the shadow frequency is that they can also be manipulators. When the energy is focused toward themselves, they begin to manipulate people to do what they need or want people to do, and what serves them best.

#3. THE COMMANDER

The Commander frequency brings confidence and offers direction. A commander will tell you what to do without realizing that they are commanding. They command in the simple things of life, like at home and in their relationships – not just on stage. What’s interesting is that people actually do what they say. You know you’re a commander when people assume you’re supposed to be in charge. The drive of a commander is to move people to action. A healthy commander frequency establishes a layer of trust. People are willing to do what you tell them,  because they trust you know what needs to be done. A commander brings clarity when people are cloudy. Sometimes a person doesn’t need options, they need clarity on how to move forward. The shadow frequency of a commander is a dictator. When a commander is focused inward they become dictatorial and oppressive and do not respect the free will of other people. They fail to establish trust, and instead, they set a basis of fear to motivate people to obey.

Wow! I’ve given you just 3 of 7 frequency types. What astonishing insight Erwin Mcmanus brings to the table for developing leaders. If you can find yourself somewhere in these 7 types of frequencies, you can understand how to improve upon your strengths and curb those negative tendencies that pull you toward being self-serving.

We want you to harness those innate gifts and abilities and become that world-class communicator. We want to see you selflessly stand on those stages and share that powerful message or that business that will help people. We believe stages are the greatest way to grow your business and advance the reach of your message. However, without a proper understanding of communication and the best ways to connect with your audience, you message will not land as strong as it could.

To catch more of my interview with Erwin expounding on all 7 of these frequencies, watch the whole in the video episode attached.

Do you want to take action today toward your goal of being a master communicator?

Did you know that we have a whole team of advisors ready to help you with just that?

Get prepared to book those stages in 2024!

Go to 10xstages.com and click on “book a call ” where you can make an appointment with one of our advisors who can help you take the next steps on your journey of mastering communication.

Last week was absolutely amazing as we learned from a world-class communicator and my personal friend, Amy Porterfield. Amy shared several of her masterful secrets on how to use digital courses to build your business.

I believe that every business owner has a digital course within them, and these courses can be used as a powerful business card or positioning tool.

Many of you want to create that digital course for the purpose of selling it, but you can also create digital courses for the purposes of using them like a powerful business card or  positioning tool.

Whether you’re in a service-based business, a nonprofit, or a local brick-and- mortar business, you can give away something digital that helps make your potential customer’s life better or easier, and they will want to do business with you.

For those of you who do a lot of one-on-one or one-to-many, or service-based business, there is this component called fulfillment. This means you actually have to go out and deliver the program or the service you have promised. This takes a lot of time and energy, and sometimes you can’t avoid this. But a major benefit to creating a digital course is that you can sell them any time and the fulfillment has already been done.

Today I’m going to give you a shortcut and what I believe is a lead domino to get you started in your journey toward your first digital course, but first, let me give you one important piece of advice.

Remember that you don’t need to wait for perfection to take action! 

When I record my weekly Twitter show, Backstage with PV3, I’m literally on my laptop with ring lights, a whiteboard, and a marker. It just so happens that I am having a great studio built right now and it has the cool whiteboards and the backdrops and the multi-cameras. I’m so excited to use that studio! But I didn’t need to wait for that to be done until I began to produce this show. If I waited for it to be perfect, my audience wouldn’t have received the last 12 weeks of powerful content.

There’s no reason to wait for perfection when I can get my message out there and start helping people now.

Some of you guys need to take action today and not just let the ideas live in your minds while you wait for everything to be perfect.

So what is the lead domino? The lead domino in getting your digital course up and going is called your proprietary process.

Start by building your proprietary process

The proprietary process is so powerful. When I got started in my business, I began to ask myself a question that you may need to ask yourself as well.

What problem have you overcome that most people in this world are still facing? In what area are you a subject matter expert through what you have learned and experienced?

Do you know how to achieve a peaceful and powerful life?

Do you know how to hire and manage a team?

Do you know how to revive your brain or engage your creativity?

This thing doesn’t have to be emotional or deep. It can be anything.

STEP ONE: Get Clear

In order to develop your proprietary process, you must get clear on your message or on what it is that you have to share with the world.

STEP TWO: Name Your Process

Write everything down that you know about that topic. Write down what it is that you understand that other people don’t understand.

This may require that you spend time very intentionally looking through your experience.

For me, it became very clear that I knew how to get people on stages. I had experience on stages and I knew what they did for me. I was certain of what they could do for others. When it was all done, I was able to arrive at four major pieces of my proprietary process.

There are four things I do, and I do really well.

• I help people become world-class communicators
• I help people design their products and services that can change their world
• I help people get on other people’s stages
• I help people build their own stages

This right here is my proprietary process.

Here’s the power. I have four points in my process. For you, it could be three, four, or five. These points are your major categories. As you get clear, you’ll begin to add the rich content that you have to offer. You’ll add your expertise, your insights, and the lessons you’ve learned.

All you need to get started is a quick mini-course with an introduction, your main points with 20-30 minutes of training on each point, then a closing. And there you have your digital course! 

From here, you’re ready to continue to develop your signature course. In a mini course, you’re just going to talk about each one of your points at a high level. But when you move on to your granddaddy course, you’ll have subprocesses under your points. For example, I have loads of material and subprocesses to support each one of the four points I listed for you. I can do multiple workshops on each one of my points.

Here’s what I want you to see.

As soon as I got clear on my proprietary process, I didn’t just have my signature talk. I didn’t just create my digital courses. Once I had clarity, I also had all of the content for my workshops. Then I had all sorts of stages opened up to me. 

So when you get clear on your proprietary process, there is a lead domino effect.

When people buy into your process, they buy into your products and services. Many of the gurus and internet marketers out there actually have a large demand on them for fulfillment. They have to be at every workshop to deliver because people have bought into their personality rather than their process.

People don’t buy into my personality because I have such a clear and reproducible process. My process gets people results. What’s your proprietary process that will not only become a digital course, but will also lead you to your own workshops, podcasts, webinars, and stages?

I hope that you will take action on this lead domino.

For more info on this topic go to 10xstages.com/mycourse

— Pete Vargas, III

Every week, we talk about four things. First, we talk about – how to become a world-class communicator, and how to craft the message that the world needs to hear. The second thing we talk about is – products and services, and how to put them out in front of people powerfully and effectively. The third thing we talk about is – how to get on other people’s stages (OPS) to grow your business. And then the fourth thing that we talk about is – how to build your own stages (OWN).

Today, we are going to hone in on the topic of products and services. Whether you’re just getting started, trying to gain some momentum, or you’re trying to scale up your business, I believe one of the greatest things you can do to go to that next level, is to create a digital course. The amazing thing about digital courses is that you can take your genius, your expertise, and your knowledge on a particular topic and capture it one time. But once it’s created, you can sell that course over and over again.

In 2015, I decided to create my first digital course. I started looking at the numbers and realized that it could be incredibly lucrative because there is very little cost involved. So I went for it. It took me close to a year to get my course created because I put pressure on myself to put everything I knew into this course, and I wanted it to be perfect. Come to find out, I did it all of the wrong way. After a year of preparation, I took it to launch. I didn’t get advice on the best way to do it. I just wanted to get this thing out. So when I finally launched, we ended up getting one sale. And the one sale I did make, ended up getting refunded. That was an opportunity to be very discouraged, but I knew it was a make-it-or-break-it moment. I had to decide if I was going to give up on the whole thing or continue to pursue this. I knew I had made mistakes, but I was determined to make this work because I could only do so much one-on-one coaching. I could only be at so many workshops. So, I went and sought some friends who had done this before and I was able to do it the right way.

Just a few years later, we have tens of thousands of customers and we’ve generated tens of millions of dollars and it all started with digital courses.

As I sought out advice on how to go about releasing a digital course, everywhere I turned, people were talking about Amy Porterfield. Amy is a proven expert in this area of digital courses. She’s truly exceptional and has an amazing story. I had the wonderful privilege of sitting down with Amy this week because I really wanted to learn her secrets and share her expertise with the audience here.

I want to save you from doing what I did. I don’t want you to get inspired and go run out and waste time and energy like I did. We know that a digital course has the potential to greatly impact your business, but I want you to have a roadmap.

If there is anyone to learn from, it’s Amy Porterfield. Amy has sold 50,000 customers and has generated over $85 million from her courses. I think we should pay attention!

Amy calls herself “an ex-corporate girl turned accidental entrepreneur.” While working for Tony Robbins as his Director of Content Development, she was continually learning from phenomenal leaders who were the best of the best. One day, she had her own epiphany moment where she realized she was trading time for dollars, and she was determined to figure out how to break out of that mindset.

A year later, she started her own business.

Digital courses have been the primary part of her remarkable success and I want to share some of Amy’s advice with you today,

Amy’s FIVE easy steps to getting started on your own digital course.

1) Decide What Your Course Will Be About

Amy calls it your 10% edge. A 10% edge means that in some area of your life, you’ve gotten results for yourself or for somebody else – a client, a customer, a family friend – and now you’re willing to teach others how you got those results to others. You don’t need more time, more experience, or more education. You already have it in you. You need to be 10 steps ahead of those you’re going to teach so that you can say, “Hey, come with me. I’ll show you the way.”

You can write about things you’ve learned in your profession.

One of Amy’s students works as an accountant for someone else, but he had the idea to create a course that teaches resellers – like Etsy and eBay, how to do their taxes so they don’t mess them up. He recently hit the million-dollar mark and he started just two years ago!
Every entrepreneur should have a digital course. Grant Cardone has sold hundreds of millions of dollars of education. He started the year off with over $30 million of recurring income just in one of his courses.

Look for the themes and patterns.

There are questions you answer all the time. There is a framework that you teach over and over again. Think about those things you explain like a broken record when you have a bunch of clients. Now take that and make it into a digital course!

You can write about your interests and hobbies.

Don’t limit yourself to professional expertise. Amy has a friend who was a Banker, but she excelled in a certain niche of photography as a hobby. She created a digital course around what she had discovered in her photography pursuits, and she made hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Don’t think that it can’t be you.

Everyone wonders if they are qualified when they step out to create a course. But there are success stories everywhere. Put your mind to it. Get to work. And keep it simple.

2) Decide Who Will Be Your Audience

Who is going to buy your course? Who are you appealing to?

You will need to grow an audience, have social media followers, and an email list. However, you don’t need hundreds of thousands of people. You always start from zero.

Start growing your audience while you create your course.

While you’re working on creating your course, start growing your email list so that when your course is ready, you have people to sell to. But just remember, again, you don’t need a huge email list. Amy suggests that if you can get 500 people on your email list, you’re ready to launch your first course.

3) Get Yourself Committed by Pre-Selling Your Course

One of the big things that gets in the way of starting is that people start to think, “What if I put the time, money, and energy into it and no one buys it?” They go right to the negative, which is very normal when we’re new at something. But Amy is a big fan of pre-selling your course before you make a single video.

Build the outline. Get clear on what this course is all about. Then pre-sell it before you create anything.

If you can get 10 people to buy your course, then that’s 10 people validating the course idea. Now, go back and start creating it.

4) Sell Your Course By Utilizing Webinars

Amy immediately started using webinars when she left her corporate job 14 years ago, and she swears today that they still work better than anything when it comes to selling her digital courses. Here’s why. Webinars give you right to promote. You are offering immense value for free which earns the right to sell. And once people see the value you’ve shown them in your webinar, they WANT to buy your digital course.

5) Find Someone Who’s Had Success

Find someone who has had success in this area and is willing to share their road map. Don’t hunt the entire internet and hope you get it right. Don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to do this on your own. Imagine if someone were to teach you every step of the way, step by step by step. Stop wandering around and take action! Find your guide, follow success, and get your course done so you can create more freedom in your life.

So, there it is. Tips from one of the best who has ever done digital courses. This conversation with Amy Porterfield was eye-opening to me and I believe it will be transforming for you, if you implement the above.

I encourage you to listen or watch the entire episode of my conversation with Amy and her Backstage advice, linked here on this page.

— Pete Vargas, III

Here’s the thing. Most people don’t want to pull back the curtain and show you what’s working. Here at Advance Your Reach, that’s what we are all about! We are constantly pulling back the curtain to show you what you need to do to be the BEST. We want to show you what is working and put you on that path to being a world-class communicator. We want you to understand the products and services that you could be taking into your market to see exponential growth. We want to help you build your OWN stages and see you begin to get yourself on other people’s stages (OPS). That’s what this whole thing is about – getting your message out to the world because your message matters!

Are you trying to figure out how to go to that next level in your business?

Do you even know what that next level looks like from a revenue standpoint?

Are you shooting for a six, seven, or maybe an eight-figure income?

Today, we’re going to pull back that curtain and let you in on an interview we had with one of the most brilliant business minds out there, Mr. Brandon Dawson, who recently wrote a book called Nine-Figure Mindset. He didn’t just write the book. He’s actually done it – and more than once! I sat down with Brandon and asked him several questions about his journey to creating a nine-figure income. Here are just a few points he made that will help you reach your revenue goals.

Brandon saw outstanding business success, even at the start of his career in his twenties and early thirties. But he had to go through some significant trials and he had to challenge limiting mindsets to become the giant that he is today. I wanted to know about some of the struggles of Brandon’s early years and what processes brought him into a Nine-Figure Mindset.

While Brandon was just catching his stride in business, he faced an enormous betrayal and disappointment. In a very sudden move, his private equity partner sold his business and fired him. He wasn’t prepared and he was left angry and floundering in confusion and a lack of purpose. He went through a season of loss as he looked back at the 10 years of research, the dreams of doing something bigger, and that feeling of “Taking the Hill” every day and winning. All of a sudden he had nothing to do. Brandon had to readjust his thinking to accept what had happened and to use it to propel him forward.

The concept of The Four A’s is a result of what Brandon learned on his journey from disappointment to seeing his dreams come true. Maybe you are reading today and you’re in that place of frustration, anger, or disappointment. Maybe you are stunted by uncertainty on how to reach your goals. Here are some tried and true points to help you get out of the struggle and into clarity.

The Four A’s: ACKNOWLEDGE, ACCEPT, ACT, & ATTACK.

ACKNOWLEDGE
Wherever you are, just acknowledge it. Are you frustrated, angry, sad or disappointed? Take a moment to figure out what’s going on in your mind and emotions.

ACCEPT
Brandon shared how his brother once explained to him that there’s the way it could be, the way it should be, the way you’d like it to be, and the way it’s supposed to be. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. As soon as you acknowledge and accept what is, then you can ask yourself the next question: What would I like it to be? John Maxwell talks about the Law of Picture. This is so important because devoid of a picture, it’s easy to get lost. You can’t create directions when you don’t have a picture of where you’re going.

ACT
Stop talking about what’s wrong or what you don’t want, and start creating the picture of what you do want. As you get a clear picture of what you want your life to look like, you will eliminate confusion. When you know what the target is, you can begin to take action.

Brandon says, “What you think is what you say, what you say is what you do, and what you do is what you’re known for.”

If you’re thinking and talking about what you want then you activate the Law of Attraction, and you’ll see those things begin to happen. You don’t attract because you hope it comes to you. You attract when you move towards the stated objective. When you start taking action towards what you want, you’re going to have more success than you would just sitting around talking about what you don’t want. As you start to get a little bit of momentum, you’ll be ready to go all in, and you ATTACK.

ATTACK
When you get into ATTACK mode, your intention is set and you are thinking things like:
How many people a day do I talk to?
What do I say when I talk to them?
How do I move them to the next level of conversation?
How do I teach my team to do it?
How do I find remarkable people?
How do I train them?
How do I set those goals and teach my team to set goals?

Your entire focus will shift and you’ll just start attacking it and obliterating it.

For many of you, you’re ready to ACKNOWLEDGE and ACCEPT, but moving forward to ACT and ATTACK can seem overwhelming.

Truly, it’s not. Here are a few action steps you can take today.
Write it down. If you have seven things you know you need to do to ACT, then write down those seven things.
Order the items in the sequence of what you will do first.
Start with one that will be easiest for you to do successfully.
Make a decision. You can’t do the second thing if you don’t do the first.
Go do it. You will build momentum in the direction of success if you just get clear and take action.

So, there you go. We’ve made this as easy as possible for you.

My question for you is, can you take advice from Brandon Dawson who is on pace to do over 135 million in revenue with no debt, no deployed capital, and from a pure startup with no employees? I sure hope so!

Brandon is one of the most brilliant business minds on the planet. If you want to gain the Nine-Figure Mindset, go to 10xstages.com/brandon. You’re going to learn the exact process that Brandon Dawson went through to become who he is today. I promise you, this book will change your life.

Capture more of Brandon’s success story and insider advice on Episode 10 of Backstage with PV3.

Until next time,
— Pete Vargas, III