Stewart Bell: Okay, girls and guys, welcome to Friday. You know what, it’s 10 o’clock, and since you’re here and I’m here, let’s rock this one. Let’s get stuck into it. So, thanks very much for joining me. In a moment I’m going to ask you the main reason you’ve come along today, because we can take this conversation in a few different ways, but I’d love it to take it in the direction that’s most relevant to your business.

Stewart Bell: So, I’d love to, to just kick everything off, if the text is working, I’d love you to pop in the chat box, which is how we’re going to communicate, what’s the main interest you have in value and being able have a strong conversation? If you pop it in the box, that’s going to give me a bit of an understanding of where we’re going to go with this.

Stewart Bell: For those of you on the program. Jeff, welcome, man. Glenn, good to have you onboard. If you have yet to register for the accelerator, just a quick reminder before we kick off, I’d love you to jump in there, to the accelerator landing page. Register and get your numbers in because we’re going to be finalizing the numbers with the venue, and by the way, on Monday I’m going to shoot through a teaser, about what we’re going to be covering and it’s super, super relevant, so I want everybody there.

Stewart Bell: Cool. Jeff really did come today, he really needs to refocus on our value proposition. Perfect. I think you may just have the right lady to talk about that today. Can I send you more information on the Gold Coast session? I totally can David, there’s actually a landing page, which is, I think it’s https://audere.com.au accelerator but, Jen would you be able to send David through a link to the landing page, if you don’t mind? Perfect.

Stewart Bell: JC says she’s here and she doesn’t have a specific question, but she’s keen to learn as much as she can. Yeah, me too. I’ll tell you a story about sitting down and having a conversation with Kim in just a second, which I think is really relevant. Glen says to listen to my radio voice, wow, I appreciate that. The wording for the website, yeah that’s great, we’ll definitely make sure that we touch on that.

Stewart Bell: Jordan says his challenge is becoming and articulating value above the tangible benefits and pricing that value effectively, fairly and profitably. Super important, what’s coming down the pike. George he says he wants to know how we best articulate with intangible benefits provided for clients. Perfect. This is good, there’s some great, great, great questions coming up and great things we want to get out in today, so keep the questions coming.

Stewart Bell: If you have something very specific I can ask, I will pull it out at the right moment and put it to Kim and we’ll get you walking out here with answers. Is that cool?

Stewart Bell: Okay, so, how do you introduce somebody that you’ve known for 20 years? And it’s strange because I first met Kim back in MLC days, in the early 2000s, and even back then I remember being super impressed by, you know, her … I mean everybody who used to spend time with Kim will know, she’s just got this energy about her, but she’s also razor smart. But it took me 20 years of knowing someone to actually sit down and have a get to know you conversation. It sounds crazy but that’s the way I worked, and this particular get to know you conversation took place in Melbourne. I flew down there for LTMA, which is a great event by the way if you’re looking for something for next year, and she and I caught up for breakfast, and the breakfast soon turned into brunch which turned into lunch.

Stewart Bell: But there was one moment in that conversation where she asked, she fixed me with her business eyes and she said “Why do you do what you do?”, and I sort of started to answer the question, and I just became aware that she was looking at me. You know when someone’s looking at you and they’re sort of taking things in, how they’re listening to you and watching your body language, and about two minutes into that she said “No, that’s not it.” And I was like, “Okay, so why is it?”, and she … I’m not going to say what she said, but she hit me back with a this is why you do what you do and it was all about the stuff we’d spoken about, sort of upbringing, and we got pretty deep.

Stewart Bell: And in that moment I told her exactly how I felt. I felt like I’d just been … My soul, this insight in to who I am had been ripped open, and she nailed it. And I said to her at this moment, “I feel like I want to run screaming out of this café.” Like someone’s just nailed it. But I actually, I thanked her for it, because she was able to in that moment really connect me with what was motivating me, and it went way back. And I think this is why I wanted to run this webinar today, because off the back of that conversation I ended up crying … And I think a lot of people call her this anyway, but she is an absolute value doctor. She has this ability to go deep, and she’s been doing this a long time, working with businesses all over Australia. She’s got so many hats it’s like an Alice in Wonderland tea party down there.

Stewart Bell: But this is her thing that’s she’s great at, so I wanted to introduce you to her and hopefully walk out of here with the insight from 20 plus years of working with businesses and really understanding this value piece. Because when you spend a bit of time on them you realize how positive energy she brings to it, as well as some deep, deep knowledge.

Stewart Bell: So with no further ado, let me bring the superstar on to the stage and let’s turn the camera on, unmute for us to start the video. Kim, are you there?

Kim Payne: Okay, start my video. Yes, can you see me?

Stewart Bell: I can indeed. How are you?

Kim Payne: I’m good, how are you?

Stewart Bell: I’m very well indeed. Did I do okay with the intro?

Kim Payne: Wow. Oh my God, can I say in all the years doing the work I’ve done, I’ve never, ever had an intro like that. And guess what, I didn’t even pay you for it, so thank you.

Stewart Bell: That conversation we had in Melbourne, I think I actually told you that that inside my hands were just pushing back from the table, I was running for the door but it was just, yeah I literally went back I think about two days later updated my website because it was just so powerful.

Kim Payne: It’s kind of nice when someone just tells you that what you’ve just shared actually makes them want to run and leave you and get as far away as you can, so that’s super encouraging. But no, it was nice talking to in person.

Stewart Bell: In a kind of, you know, I was feeling really vulnerable at the same time, it was incredibly powerful.

Kim Payne: I do. No, thanks.

Stewart Bell: Hey, it’s strange how we’ve known each other for so long but we took a second to actually sit down and get to know each other, I know there’s a lot of people on here who already know about you, but for those who don’t, can you give us just a two minute who you work with, who help, how your business works.
Kim Payne: Yes, so, the kind of advisors that I work with are those that they’ve already got a good business but they’re stuck, they’ve run out of time, they don’t know what to do next, they’re probably feeling a little bit undervalued, they’re probably feeling like they’re not getting paid what they’re worth. And a lot of them are those that go into business to actually have the freedom that they think that they’re going to get, other than being in the corporate world but in actual fact they’re just so tied to the business that they can’t do that.

Kim Payne: So I work with those where they say right, this is my reality, I want more, I deserve more, but I don’t know what to do next, so literally like a doctor I get in there, we work out what’s going on, where some of the roadblocks are and a lot of the time they’re mental roadblocks, so we get in there, diagnose it, and then we work out what to do. Sometimes it’s a treatment plan, sometimes it’s just dishing out a script and they’ve got to go and take the medication, or sometimes it’s like a check in where they’ve got to come like you go and have a health check with the doctor, that kind of thing.

Kim Payne: But all of that is to try and get them to the point where they can work with more clients, where they can get paid what they’re worth and then they can build something that makes them really proud. So that’s kind of the very squeezed up, summary version of what I do.

Stewart Bell: I love the pride thing, because I think with everything that’s going on in the industry right now, I think a lot advisors … It’s hard not to take it on board, and I think … I get what we’re seeing, what we saw in front of the raw commissions was mostly to do with corporate fraud, but I think pride’s really important because I think as an industry there’s a lot of good people who do great things and sometimes you’ve got to click to the side but the media are just going with the 160 character thing.

Kim Payne: And it’s interesting too, what drives a lot of us, especially if you’ve gone out and started your own business is status, and I don’t mean ego, but status that I can put my hand on my heart and say, hey I’m really proud of what I’ve done, to myself, to my family, to my friends, to my peers, to my colleagues. It’s such a big part of it and if you’ve started a business to get that feeling and you’re not getting it, the amount of businesses that I speak to that say, “You know what, I’ve been in business for 10 years and Kim, I’m actually embarrassed that I’m where I’m at. I thought I’d be in a different place.” It’s like right, but you’re here now, let’s turn things around.

Kim Payne: So, it’s interesting.

Stewart Bell: So, let’s go back to the beginning, because I don’t know this whole story, but I’m going to take some notes as we go. How did you end up in this industry? How did you end up, you know, doing this specifically what you do? Tell me the early journey, how it sort of started down this route.

Kim Payne: Yes, that’s really interesting. I’ve always been the numbers, science geek at school. Like that was just my thing, and ironically, I wanted to be a doctor, and I’ll tell you about that story shortly. But after school I did economics and I started working in stockbroking, and I had about the next seven or eight years working in stockbroking and relationship management, but my father had been a risk advisor and had done really well in that space. And as much as I never wanted to follow in his footsteps, and I actually did everything possible to stay away from that, I ended up becoming very interested in financial planning.

Kim Payne: So I did all my studies, even though I’d always studied in finance and investment type of activity, and then I started as a financial advisor. And when I was advising a couple of things came up. Firstly, this is back in the early 2000s so if I tell you I’m 28, you now know I’m lying, but secondly, I was sitting opposite older clients and in particular, couples, and the women would say very undiplomatically, you know, what gives you the right to give me advice, you’re young and you’re female. Kind of a bit of a slap in the guts, and I’ll give you the what happened after that, but what I found is that I was more interested in how the business is running as opposed to how my clients were going, which is not very good when you’re a financial advisor.

Kim Payne: What I realized is I was just on the wrong side of the fence. So from that I left, and after a couple of other jobs as a training consultant at 360, I became one of their consultants in the consulting team, where we would actually go into all the licensing businesses that were aligned with MLC NAND and literally look at what was going on, what was holding them back, you know, why the profit was plateauing, why weren’t they getting the results they wanted and we would help them do that.

Stewart Bell: Perfect.

Kim Payne: I stayed with NAND for about 10 years, and then I left there and started my own business and have been doing that ever since then. So it came from always loving numbers and finance and maths, into working out where I found my place which is helping businesses use all of that but build and grow a better business that, like I said before, they can work with more people, they can get paid what they’re worth and do something that makes them proud.

Kim Payne: So that’s kind of the very short, long story of my background.
Stewart Bell: So that’s really interesting that you’ve gone from a scientific, analytical background to a place now which is by definition value is notoriously difficult to objectively measure. How does that shift occur? Was it sudden, was there a moment, or has it just been a natural evolution?

Kim Payne: Yeah, it is really interesting because I still have this absurd love for spreadsheets and numbers. However, what really floats my boat is taking that and making it apply to someone’s life, and that’s why going back to what I said about these couples where the women kept questioning how could I be giving them advice when I was young and female. I never really answered it properly when I was advising, when I worked out wow there’s so much more than just being good with numbers when you’re dealing with people.

Kim Payne: Then fast forward a number of years, and this pre getting married, I was dating lots of different guys. Anyway, I was working at MLC still as a consultant, and I was on this date with this guy. He was an older guy, he’d been the CEO of lots of different financial services, companies and that, but then he sort of found the light and left the corporate world. So we’d had a few dates, it wasn’t really working out, and he said, you know, “I’m going to give you some feedback.”
Kim Payne: I’m like, wow, I didn’t really ask for it. He said, “You’re very, very corporate.” And I was like, what? What do you mean? And he said, “I feel that when we’re talking it’s all corporate, you’ve got an outcome you want to achieve, it’s all very almost scientific. Like you knew what you were going to ask when you came in here and everything.”

Kim Payne: And I remember, one, I thought it was an insult, which it was, but I never let it go and I think that was a turning point for me when I realized, I don’t think I’m relating well as a human to other humans as I could be, I’ve got this corporateness about me, and from that day on, I thought I’ve got to lose it. I’ve got to lose the corporate jargon, I’ve got to lose that corporate stiffness that I had, I’m not saying other people in the corporate world have it, but I had it.

Kim Payne: And ever since then I’ve really found my thing is how to help people talk better to humans, how to engage better at that human to human level. Even if you’ve got all technical smarts and you’re a wizard with the numbers, you’ve got to know how to communicate at that level. That’s really for me where it came from, so that date actually ended up being valuable.

Stewart Bell: It’s funny how there’s these moments where people hit you with the whole truth. I mean there’s a great book called Fierce Conversations which puts forward the idea that the quality of your life can be measured by the number of awkward conversations that you have, and I think it’s so true.

Kim Payne: Yes, and crazy dates too. I’ve learned a lot through dating.

Stewart Bell: We both work with Yvonne Nielsen, who’s still a good friend of mine. I’m told she’s going through a bodybuilding phase, she literally went from being not a bodybuilder to national champion or women’s of Oz champion, and she one time picked me up and she asked where something was, and I said look it I don’t know. She looked me in the eyes in the way that Yvonne did and said “Well, don’t you think it’s your job to know?”

Stewart Bell: And in that moment it was like holy moly, it hurt. At the time it had an impact, it’s something that I’ve remembered. It’s interesting about it 14:35 because this thing would be the journey framework, a lot of that used to be going and talking about corporatizing businesses.

Kim Payne: Yes.

Stewart Bell: Talk about okay, we’ve got to have this operation going, HR strategy and all the rest of it, which was in many ways it was good but for a lot of businesses now you look at it and realize maybe it was kind of a step too far, I mean, in many ways. As a result we were talking really corporate concepts that made sense in lend lease environment but maybe weren’t as telling to businesses as certainly in the early stages as they could have been, right?

Kim Payne: That’s right, and I think, if you look at what social media has done too. Like in some respect it’s been great, because it’s allowed us to connect with people that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to, you know maybe because we didn’t have the reach or maybe they’re on the other side of the world, and you can do all that. But what it has also done is taken that personal touch away and I definitely think as a result there’s been a move back to human, how do I get back to connecting.

Kim Payne: Ironically on the news this morning they had a specialist come on, talking about almost digital autism, where younger generations, and in particular females, are so addicted to their devices now that they’re finding it awkward to be now in social situations and social settings. I find that even in the advice space there’s some relevance in that too, that we’ve become so used to just doing what we do, the way we do it, that we have to stop to step back and say hey, there’s another human on the end of this, is this the best way we could be doing things or should we do it differently?

Stewart Bell: Yeah.

Kim Payne: So, yeah.

Stewart Bell: So, we’re coming to an interesting place with, I mean Apple have now got the Screen Time thing, you know where that’s going, it’s a digital no smoking sort of thing.

Kim Payne: Yeah.

Stewart Bell: Can we talk about obviously there’s a whole sort of lead up to this but at some point you would have started to go down this route of really focusing down on the value piece more and more. What was the epiphany of what was A, what was needed and B, what you could best do?

Kim Payne: Yeah so, at the time, when I was working at MLC I was working in the consulting team, and we looked at all areas of the business, from financial management through to everything to do with the client, the offer, the pricing, the marketing piece, the process and particularly the process from efficiency point of view, not so much a client experience point of view, and also a HR, the people management. And when I left MLC and I still did this kind of work with my clients, I found that I was having bigger impact when we touched on the value piece.

Kim Payne: So I’ll give you an example, I’ve been working with a really high profile financial advisor who won many awards and that, and she was quite obsessed with increasing her prices, but we sort of went over this and over this and over this for when I say months it almost felt like it went into years, she constantly wanted to do more spreadsheets to test the price, then rework something, and redraw her offer and then redo this, and she never found that she could justify the price increase no matter what spreadsheet, no matter how many numbers we crunched or what have you.

Kim Payne: Anyway I kind of got to the point where it’s like you know what, you need to get rid of all of this and we just focus on what does she do, how does she help her clients. I got her to write a list of all of the clients’ lives she’s changed over the last 12 months, what impact she had, what difference she made, the conversations that she’s having. I got her to do this and we spent a lot of time working out well what really is your value, because it’s not just your technical ability, it’s not just your ability to put a strategy in place, it’s your ability to really change their thinking, to change their behavior. To get inside and answer questions that they didn’t even know they had.

Kim Payne: So we really focused on this, and this is a bit of a side step but equally important, she had a team of people, and she wasn’t as great at engaging them as she should’ve which also related to her engagement with her clients, so it’s very similar. Anyway she was going to take them all away on a retreat which she’d never done before and we sat down and she said, “Okay, I’m going to buy them all an iPad, so on the night, in between the retreat, I’m going to put the iPad on their beds and give them that little surprise.” And I said to her, “Okay, so they all want iPads, do they?” She said, “I don’t know.” So why would you do that? I said to her, “I want you to now go and have coffee with every single member of your team and find out, secret squirrel, if you are going to spend that sort of money what would you get them, but you’re not allowed to tell them that that’s your intention, you’ve just got to do it.”

Kim Payne: Anyways, so she kind of got very defensive and said “What, you want me to have coffee with them and not talk work?” And she literally sat back, arms crossed and I said “Yeah, I actually do.” To her credit, she did, and guess what, she didn’t buy one single one an iPad but the beautiful part of that was even though I was helping her engage her team she realized that’s also the kind of relationship she had with her clients. She never got deep, she never got personal, she never went … You know I kind of talk about the difference between scuba diving and snorkeling. She’d always snorkeled with her clients, she never went down into the depths of what drove them, what motivated them, what their values were, what their purpose was.

Kim Payne: And when we finally got to this stage and she started doing this with her clients, everything changed. So, back to the original part of the story, when it came to her pricing, I said to her, right, you’re now fully equipped with everything you need to increase your prices. From today onwards you are increasing all prices across the board by 20%. Now after she fell off her chair, she did it, and to her credit over the next 12 months she got better at explaining how valuable she was in their life, they got better at understanding her value and every single new client was on the higher fee, and every single existing client, bar a couple, ended up moving up to the new fee of 20%.

Kim Payne: So ultimately she increased her business revenue by 20% by doing not much difference other than a different conversation with her clients. And that for me was when I realized this is my thing, my kind of superpower, if I can help a business like this, and like I said she had a really big profile, make these kinds of changes, I reckon I need to do more of this. Plus I had a hoot of a time doing it, it was fun, it was fulfilling me, doing all the things I wanted to do with advisors, plus it was getting results.

Kim Payne: From then on in I really started to narrow my focus away from … Yes the financials are important, yes the process is important, and your people are important but if we can get this value bit right and you can embed that throughout your whole business, that’s where the magic happens. And I’d say that to anyone.

Stewart Bell: I mean like, we were talking about scale and the easiest way to scale your business is pricing.

Kim Payne: Yeah, totally.

Stewart Bell: Exactly the same as you’re doing, wake up the next day and you’ve got more revenue. Businesses haven’t got enough profit and they’re too busy, straight away that’s the first thing you look for. And it’s going to become a big issue over the next 12 months because of what’s going on.

Stewart Bell: But no, that’s great.

Kim Payne: But also, a lot of businesses that have first approached me saying I need you to help me with my pricing, then I say yeah, yeah I get that but it’s actually not about the price, it’s about how do you explain value to your clients. How do you help reengage them, how do you get them excited, and they’re like wow that’s going to take a while. It’s like, yeah, it will, but gee it’s worth it.

Stewart Bell: It’s almost like going to your personal trainer and saying I want a six pack, how many sit-ups should I do and you go no, it’s all about diet, exercise … There’s no exercise that’s going to give you a six-pack, it’s a culmination, so it’s the same with pricing.

Kim Payne: Yeah, exactly the same, yeah.

Stewart Bell: Let’s dive into the value thing, because there’s a whole bunch of stuff that people want to talk about.

Kim Payne: Yes.

Stewart Bell: Before we just jump into that, I want to ask, that conversation we had where you were able to listen to everything I was saying and just pick out this Stew, for a whole bunch of stuff that happened in your history, you’re about fixing. How did you do it? Do you just see the moment or is there a framework around it?

Kim Payne: I’m obsessed with this stuff, and I’ve become obsessed with value, so reading all the time, podcasts all the time, and I fell in love with Simon Sinek, you know the start with why concept. I’ve read all his books, all his podcasts, I’ve probably done so much around this space and as a result I started just testing it with clients, and I’d sort of start testing, and I’d think yeah I’m not going deep enough.

Kim Payne: So it happened over time but what was most important too is that I did it to myself and to be honest, I reckon it took me years to work out why I do what I do. But through testing it and testing it with clients and getting some, like what happened with you, getting some wins where someone goes oh my goodness I finally understand why I do what I do. And I’m thinking okay so what did I do with them, oh okay I did this, that works. So there is a bit of a process that I follow to get to that point, some people get there really quickly and some take a lot longer, some resist.

Kim Payne: I’ve bought so many online courses in this space, like I’ve done the research and done the work, so it hasn’t been an overnight, you know, wow this is what you’ve got to do. I’ll be honest sometimes I am working with advisors, and it does take a lot longer to get to that point, but we normally do get there, as long as I follow quite a … Like I said it’s not a strict process but there are certain things that you’ve got to do to get someone to that point.

Kim Payne: You were just very open to the questions I was asking, which was delightful.

Stewart Bell: Very. Which is … No, it was … I learnt something.

Kim Payne: Good, excellent. Yeah.

Stewart Bell: Obviously, you know, you’re going that deep with someone you’re going to get a bit of an emotional reaction but if you get more out of that, that is just so useful.

Kim Payne: Absolutely, and to be honest as well a lot of advisors are helping clients and they don’t touch on this, because they don’t actually know it themselves. They don’t know what really drives them. A lot of people say I really want to help people, and it’s like well everyone wants to help people, why do you do this specifically, why do you do it yourself, why do you it in this business, why this industry because there’s other ways you could help people.

Kim Payne: So, when you start to do that, a lot of that is self reflection and personal development, but when you get that right, then it makes it easier to do with clients. Now you might not be as direct but when you understand why they do what they do, it explains their behavior, it explains the decisions they’ve made in the past, it helps you understand how you’re going to work with them in the future, and so the benefits are incredible. So even talking about the value piece, always for me, the number one starting point is you’ve got to know why you do what you do. Why do you get out of bed every morning, and come and do the work that you do every day.

Stewart Bell: So here’s, we can either just tell people, well firstly give me a rating of one to five. Well actually, how do you want to do this, do you want to put a question out, I mean you’d be good at asking a specific question and get a bunch of answers back. What sort of …

Kim Payne: I’d be curious to know, I’d love to know of everyone out there, who feels that they genuinely understand and can explain why they do what they do quite short and succinctly.

Kim Payne: Yes or no.

Stewart Bell: So give us a five if you’re like I’m totally nailed down, I’m so clear on what I do I’m like Elon Musk, whereas one is you know what, I just don’t know. So if you’re a five, put five.

Stewart Bell: Matt says he’s about a one to two, Jeff says he’s a one.
Kim Payne: Oh some, fours and fives!

Stewart Bell: Yeah Jess’s pretty clear. Cassandra about a two. Jordan’s more on the sort of on the clear. David’s very clear. Glen’s about middling. Okay, Matt, sort of. He sort of knows in his mind but it is hard to explain.

Kim Payne: Yeah, it’s complicated.

Stewart Bell: I’d totally say three is where I was, certainly around before I spoke to you it was probably about a two, and then three or a four.

Stewart Bell: Okay, so there’s a wide range, there’s some people who just aren’t clear. Can I put up … This is a question for you, do you find there’s any link between the length of time people have been in business and the clarity around their why? Is there any?

Kim Payne: No.

Stewart Bell: No? Okay.

Kim Payne: No, no, no. I’ve worked with business owners who have been doing what they’re doing for 30 years and they do it, they love it, and they’ve got a vague idea but they’ve never been able to nail exactly what it is. Yet I get others that are reasonably new in business and they are so clear, they just need a bit of tweaking but they’re so clear why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Kim Payne: So yeah I don’t think there’s any direct correlation between how long they’ve been doing it to how quickly they can have this realization.

Stewart Bell: Are there any factors that you tend to see more prevalent in people who are really clear versus those who aren’t? I know I’m putting you on the spot.

Kim Payne: Yeah, no. No, but there really is. So I know that even when I first started running my own business and a lot of people over the next few years said what’s become the biggest revelation and I said the personal development. I didn’t realize that the scrutiny and the what I would put myself through from a personal development point of view would be so obvious. Those that have been more attuned and engaged with personal development of any description, who read more, who analyze things a little bit more. I find they tend to, that’s a stereotype, but they tend to be those that are clearly in their why sooner.

Kim Payne: That’s a generalization, but I definitely find in those who are into a lot more personal development and you know, whether that’s courses, reading, coaches, a lot of those who are into coaches. I mean I’m a big fan, I’ve always had coaches, and I do believe … A lot of where I came from with my why was I was sacking a lot of coaches because I’d engage them to help me with my business and they kept wanting to dig into my personal life, and I just kept saying I don’t want to talk about my personal life, and my background, and my upbringing.

Kim Payne: There was one, one day, who said to me, “Do you not realize that stuff going on in your personal life is actually what’s holding you back in your business life?” And that sort of epiphany, I’m like, oh fruit. So I went and reengaged the previous coach and you know, it all worked from there.

Kim Payne: So again, you’ve got to be open to whole personal development and you’ll get there quicker. Mind you, there are those that aren’t and they still get there, so I hope that sort of answered that.

Stewart Bell: Yeah that’s useful. We’ve got a coach that, a performance coach that I’ve worked with personally, I don’t know if you know anyone on the program with Ben Elliot?

Kim Payne: Yes.

Stewart Bell: Yeah he’s very much about that, there comes a point in business where you can have the greatest business model but if it’s not working, the only thing left is a mindset problem.

Kim Payne: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Absolutely.

Stewart Bell: Okay, so there’s a bunch of topics that have come up, and please keep the questions going. Some of the things that people want to know about is value proposition, how do you then take that value proposition and translate it to online, your website and that sort of stuff?

Kim Payne: Yes.

Stewart Bell: How do you get really good at articulating the benefits, what’s the link between price, fees, value, you know I wouldn’t mind putting it out there, the whole marketing yourself based on giving peace of mind. For me it’s got that real sort of motherhood statements, I’m really interested to know whether you think we can talk a bit about the danger of motherhood. I’d like to explore a little bit about communications but when do you want to talk about … There’s an overriding sort of framework that you’ve got around this. Would it be appropriate to talk about that now?

Kim Payne: I reckon it would still because the kind of things that I can answer, there is a logical order that if we follow them, it’s going to be easier. There’s no magic bullet, I’m sorry to tell you all, but I get a lot of people just saying hey I need a value proposition, and it’s like oh, I’m not going to give you that because there is certainly a process that you follow. And if you follow the process, you’ll get the benefits, and you’ll end up understanding what your value proposition is.

Kim Payne: I hate the word value proposition because a lot of us think we’ve got one statement that we can use, that’s it, but really a value proposition is around helping people understand why they should work with you, why they should stay with you and reengage you, why they should pay you and why they should refer you. And you can’t do all of that in one sentence. You just can’t.

Stewart Bell: I prefer to talk about it. What’s the promise you make about the result you’re going to help me get.

Kim Payne: Totally, yeah, much better. Love it. If we go through the framework that’ll probably give you some guidance.

Stewart Bell: You showed me this last time we were in Sydney. I’m going to do my best to draw it.

Kim Payne: Yes, beautiful.

Stewart Bell: We’ve got, is it four?

Kim Payne: Four, yes.

Stewart Bell: Alright, let’s go. The halfway thing. There we go.

Kim Payne: So kind of the concept of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, where we start at the bottom, we get that right and we work our way up. Don’t jump to the top because you can’t sort of self-actualize if you’re worried about where you’re going.

Stewart Bell: So generally this is a journey that most people go on.
Kim Payne: It’s a journey, yeah.

Stewart Bell: So the whole thing about certain journeys you can’t cut corners, you can just accelerate the speed of which you go up.

Kim Payne: Spot on. Absolutely.

Stewart Bell: Which is also the client marketing funnel, as well, you can’t skip.

Kim Payne: Totally, yes.

Stewart Bell: Walk us through it.

Kim Payne: Okay, so let’s start from the bottom. I call this the value curious space. This is where you start to become very curious about value full stop, so part of this is understanding your why and why you do what you do, but also starting to get a lot of research and feedback from clients. Again, if you’re going to do this properly you’ve got to know what your clients value and you can’t assume what they value. Too often I see advisors put their own perception on what they do because they think this what clients see, so you’ve got to test it.

Kim Payne: So little things like a value survey, and I say a value survey not a satisfaction survey because it’s not just about are my clients satisfied with how quick we return their queries, it’s if you could get inside their minds and ask the questions that you’ve always wanted answers to, what would those questions be? What do they value? What don’t they value?

Kim Payne: I was reading a book the other day called What Customers Crave, and he talks about you got to know what clients love and what they hate. So when I say love and hate it’s like for instance I love it when I call up and you’ve already got all my information there, ready and waiting for me, so I don’t have to waste any time. I hate it when I call up and you kind of bumble away and it seems like you don’t know who I am.

Kim Payne: So you know, get into that. But you’ve got to do the research, you’ve got to get the validation, you’ve got to get in there and be curious. You’ve also got to put your own self in the shoes of a client in general. This is where I started, where I became very aware of … Very curious sorry, curious is what this space is, very curious about why would I go and buy something over there, yet it wasn’t always the cheapest. What was my own behavior as a customer, out in the real world? And it’s made me a terrible client or a terrible customer anyway, because I’m always looking at what’s in it for me.

Kim Payne: And so the first part in really understanding your value and getting to a point where you can clearly articulate it is get so super curious. Ask questions, dig deep, get validation from clients, get inside their minds and find out what they’re thinking, do the research, put yourself in their shoes, and just get that information. That is absolutely the first stage.

Stewart Bell: Give us one killer question to ask clients, that people really want to know and one just to stay away from, if you could. I know it’s put you right on the spot now, hasn’t it.

Kim Payne: Yeah it has. One of the best things I think here is, “Tell me about what money meant to you growing up?”

Stewart Bell: There you go again.

Kim Payne: Yeah. The insight you get from that question, nothing even compares, and this is kind of back to when we did our why thing, Stewart, is what was life like and how did you behave, how did you see your parents use money because that shapes every decision you make and when you get in tune to that, you do that and it answers so many other questions around value.

Kim Payne: So that would be the number one question. I hope that helps.

Stewart Bell: Yeah.

Kim Payne: And you said one question to stay away from?

Stewart Bell: Yeah one that you just see time and time again and go, you will not learn anything from that questions.

Kim Payne: Well there’s another question that I liked. The other question is just you know, what do you want financially, what are your financial goals? Because I don’t know about you but I don’t have financial goals. I have goals, I have things I want to do in life that I need money for but they’re not financial goals. And yet so many advisors, you know they send out what are your financial goals, short term, medium term and long term? And then they wonder why they don’t get the answer.

Stewart Bell: Like I like the question, if you had a bank account full of money, what are the first three things you’d spend money on?

Kim Payne: Beautiful.

Stewart Bell: And by the way, you knew that that money would just refill next time.

Kim Payne: Absolutely. That’d be nice, yeah.

Stewart Bell: I’m trying to write a book about that but I haven’t quite got far enough.

Kim Payne: Do it, do it, that’d be so cool. The other really good question too, that I love, is what do you want your money for? So a lot of people come in and say they’ve got financial goals but the advisor never links it up with what do you want that money for, so you know you’re talking about you want 10% returns on your portfolio, or you know you want to have this lap of … But what do you want it for? Because that is going to then drive all of the other decisions and that the advisor can help the client make and some do it really well, but there’s a lot of advisors who still I think don’t get a grasp of that early enough in the conversation, which means that you’re taking that why away. Money is a means to an end, it’s not the end itself, for most people.

Kim Payne: You’ve got to know what that end is and it’s usually not just the dollar value, so they’re my two favorite questions.

Stewart Bell: There’s a great piece of research by Dr Steven Reiss called the 16 Motivators of All Human Behavior which is really interesting, talks about how some people are motivated by status, revenge, security, family, legacy, honor and ultimately every time I’ve run advisors through it and I go is there any of those that you do not service and some will go well I’ve got nothing to do with food, and I go really? Last time I checked there’s a whole bunch of people who love going to real expensive restaurants around the world. Anyway.

Kim Payne: Yeah, love it. Cool.

Stewart Bell: It’s a research paper by Dr Steven Reiss, I think it’s called the 16 Motivators of All Human Behavior.

Kim Payne: Cool. Will you … I want to get a copy of that.

Stewart Bell: I’m actually going to drop this question and then we’ll talk about step two. JC wants to know, it’s really good, if you ask a client or prospect these questions, how do you show them that you listened and understand? Do you follow up with a letter, summarizing for example or you know? What’s the best way to do it?

Kim Payne: Yeah, okay. So really good question. Firstly is the whole questioning, listening kind of skills, so when you are listening doing the whole acknowledging so what I hear is, so that you get that right, and then at the end of the meeting again summarizing what you found and always, you need to follow up with the client the next day or two.

Kim Payne: This is where I see a lot of advisors, they do the follow-up, which is the formal stuff, the technical stuff or whatever. I mean follow up on a human level, so the three key takeaways from the meeting was that we worked out you need X, Y and Z. They’re either outcomes or benefits to the client. That is one thing that should be a must really after nearly every meeting you have, and that’s where you would test it to say you know so growing up the things that really held you back were that money was really limited so you started to think money would always be limited, you’ve never been able to spend without guilt and you kind of think you’re never going to be that person that has that money security because you’ve never seen it before, so working together they’re three of the things that we need to conquer, we need to get around and then you can go into the formality.

Kim Payne: So that’s how I would go about recognizing, and if you’ve got that wrong, you’re hoping that the client would come back and say, ooh not quite, this is what I mean.

Stewart Bell: That was wrong. Okay, so let’s talk about step one is in the way you go down this journey. First you start digging deep, really having a look, understand personally, asking a lot of questions. What happens next?

Kim Payne: Okay. The next stage I call value aware, this is where you’ve done the research and now you’re looking at the passion, you’re looking at the language that people use, the way they’re doing things. I had to help a guy, this is years ago, do a video that he was going to put on his website. And he was an older advisor, he’d been around for quite a while, and so we sort of started doing a role play and I said okay, we’ll get the camera started rolling now, tell me a bit about you. It was the same stuff every single person says, I’ve been around the industry for a while, there’s nothing I haven’t seen, you know, I’m skilled, I’m qualified, blah, blah, blah.

Kim Payne: I said no, no, this is not going to work. So I said to him, “What I want you to do now is go home and over the next week I want you to ask clients, family members, friends what they think you do and what it is about you that they find endearing.” Anyways, so he went off, to his credit, did all of this and he came back and he said to me, “Kim, they called me a bulldog.” I said, “Interesting, how are we going to make this work?” And I said give me the reason why, he said, “Because whenever I work on anything in my life I’m like a bulldog, I will clench on and won’t let go until it’s completely done off, finished, or resolved, whatever.” And I thought yes, that’s exactly what we need.

Kim Payne: So then he started, you know, the video, it was all about people call me a bulldog and this is why. But the key there was he became, through doing the research that I made him do, going and asking people what they thought he did, what it was like working with him, he became then very aware of how he did follow through all the time and he did hold people’s hands through times when it tough. So he was able to then start to change his conversation, all off the back of the fact that people call him a bulldog. They recognized it, he just had never recognized it enough to understand, so when you become really aware of your value, and that’s through doing the research and everything, you start say okay, so people think this about me.

Kim Payne: Like the other day I’d done this with an advisor and just done a survey, and one of the things that people came back and said is that she’s really thorough, to the point of annoying. That she’s really thorough. And she said, “Do you know what, I just thought every advisor was like this.” Now it’s like she’s aware, so how can we use that skill, and she’s an ex-engineer, so it kind of makes sense, but how can we now use that and start to pull that into things like her website copy, into her email and marketing communications, into her everyday language with clients. That part of working with is, you know, I’m an engineer, I’m really thorough, that I’m going to get right into the nitty gritty, I’m going to dig deep, I’m going to scuba dive not snorkel. And we’re going to make sure no end is untied, or loose end is left.

Kim Payne: And that gives her clients a lot of that peace of mind, to get them more motherhood, just by taking a word that clients use about her all the time and then looking at how she can really scale it across her business, and it’s done wonders.Stewart Bell: I love the one word thing, literally if you can find one word, and I think when we started talking about this it’s like, you know, when you start everyone goes I want a value proposition and they, hopefully they do a bit of the research, this how to understand what the clients are looking for, they’re help buttons. But the really bit where you start to kick it up is when you start to recognize, you know, they’re taking interest but there’s that thing that’s your truth, it’s your strength, it’s your unique ability, whatever you want to call it.

Kim Payne: Superpower.

Stewart Bell: When you connect with that suddenly it just, and this is the point you made is, I’m going to write this down because this is when you were speaking, you feel the discussions starting to click.

Kim Payne: Absolutely. She was the same thing, she was like oh my gosh, I am and didn’t realize it so, you know she’s extremely good with follow up, and follow through, and ticking boxes. And to the point where one of the questions in the surveys was do you want to have our longer meetings once a year or would you rather more regular meetings of less duration, right? And interesting clients said I would normally say shorter meetings of less duration, except I don’t want to say that because it means I’m going to have more homework to do, because after each meeting she would give them or allocate them homework, or action items, and they didn’t want more of that.

Kim Payne: So this again is beautiful, by being aware of it, that I said well okay, what can you do to try, and take away some of that homework, and you do it yourself. And I said let’s list all the things, and everyone can do this, list all the things that you make your clients go and do, now there’s some things they have to do, like you can’t go to they gym and get someone else to lift your weights if you want to get stronger, right? You’ve just got to do them.

Kim Payne: But things like collecting the rent statements, you know, how much rent do they collect every year, their payslips, their information on their insurances. What are all things you get the clients to go on and collect, what could you do instead? And this is all stemmed from now being more aware of what that value is that she brings to the table.

Kim Payne: This is where, like I said, you start to get the findings from being curious and you start to inject them into your business, start to workout okay, clients are using these words, how can we use these words in our business? How can we use their language? And that awareness can start to translate into the next step, which is about being value competent.

Stewart Bell: Okay. Let’s talk about that.

Kim Payne: Yeah. Okay, so this is where you start to really embed your value in. So at the end of the day a lot of the value that you provide is that you help clients live a better life, you just so happen to do it by helping them make decisions around their money, but that impact every single stage of their lives. That’s my generic version, everybody would have their own version, but when you get really clear on that, and then you can say okay so this piece of work I’m doing is actually about helping them have a better life, how can I now make sure that’s in my website? How can I make sure that I’m talking to them and not about me?

Kim Payne: So most jumped on to the website, I know that was one of the questions. A lot of website copy is written about you, and how good you are, and how much experience you’ve got, and how many years you’ve been in business. But in actual fact, if I’m the client reading that, where do I fit in? Where am I? And when you start to become value competent you realize you don’t need to describe how good I am, what I need to do is to help clients realize that I get them, I get the problems they’re facing, and I get the challenges that are ahead, and I know how to help them fix it.

Kim Payne: So even your web copy, if I jumped on your website, and I was an ideal client, I should see, you know, Kim, do you feel like you’ve got so much going on in life that you feel like you’re on autopilot, that you’ve got competing priorities for your money, competing priorities for your time, you’re trying to do too much, and you never feel on top of anything? Well that’s where we can help. You know, we make sure that you prioritize what you want in life, we make sure that you’ve got a plan to follow, we make sure we’re going to be there along the way.

Kim Payne: This is the stuff I want to see on a website, this is the stuff I want you to communicate with clients, and when you get to this step three, you start to be able to do this more easily because you’re now more aware of it than you’ve ever been before. And that’s why this is definitely a stage process, you don’t get to that point overnight, sorry.

Kim Payne: Does that make sense?

Stewart Bell: Beautiful. I actually wanted to ask a question because Glen just made a comment. He said that previous staff used to call him the sledgehammer. Good, and if you look at Glen, Glen’s probably done more work on value proposition in the last 12, 18 months than a lot of people I know, and he will tell you it’s been a journey for him, just to get really clear. He’s getting close to that, and it is total of the sledgehammer, it’s about, you know what, he’ll give you the information you need to know with no BS.

Kim Payne: Perfect. Nice.

Stewart Bell: I used to know a business coach slash psychologist and her nickname was … She was known as the velvet sledgehammer. Kim, you’d really … Because she’d sort of just ask a bunch of questions and you have your nice, and then she’d just hit you with that’s not the truth is it, it’s actually about this. And you’d be like, no place to hide. It was perfect.

Kim Payne: I love that. Yeah, beautiful. And that’s why, and that’s a little bit left of what we’re directly talking about, but when you become value competent you can almost come up with I’m that person. I know Stewart, you know we talked about you being the fix it guy kind of thing. I’m the value doctor, where anything to do with value that you want help with, and improve on. And when I started using that language with clients they’d be like, oh, I get it, so I said if you want help scaling or automating, I’m not your girl. But if you want help to really understand your value and weave it through your entire business, and get it across to more clients, so you can grow then yeah, that’s something we should talk about.

Kim Payne: And everyone’s got their thing, it’s about wanting to, firstly recognizing what that is, but then how to do it without being corny. How to weave that into something that then can go right across your entire business.

Stewart Bell: And I think, this is really important, and when we spoke about it, it sort of hit me that some people, they put a label on themselves and you might look at it and think, oh, how could they do that, that would feel funny. It’s because they’ve stepped into it, it’s not unusual because they know what they’re good at and therefore they can do it. What’s more when you meet people and they’ve got that sort of reputation, when you speak to them and they’re really good at what they do, you realize, actually no, that’s what they do, that’s what they’re good at, and they’re comfortable with it. So it doesn’t feel weird, it doesn’t look weird, because it’s true.

Kim Payne: No. Yeah. That’s right. And the thing is we can’t be all things to all people. And I know we all know that but I don’t think enough of us in this space are confident enough, which ironically is the next stage, to actually say hey, this is our thing, and go so deep with that thing that you’re really good at, that you get known for that and people come to you for that. You know other things can off the back of it but that’s where I think the real value is, and I’ll be honest, when I did value my own business and I really started to say, hey you know, this is really my sweet spot, this value piece. And everything I do now is around that value piece.

Kim Payne: I got more work and more queries, than I ever did before, because that’s suddenly what people got. Or I’d get people like you Stewart, who’d go alright, this is what you want to get, she’s your girl. Or if I now know people that need scaling, automation, and growing at that level, I know Stewart’s the guy.

Stewart Bell: Yeah.

Kim Payne: So I found that more business opportunities came out as a result, and you’ll notice in there I’m not talking about a niche or a target market, or anything like that. I think it’s so much more than that. It’s just something you become known for that summarizes and captures who you are.

Kim Payne: You know like a horse whisperer. If I say that, you kind of get that that’s somebody who can almost read the mind of a horse. It’s that kind of thing, so the label, but being value confident, which is stage four in the process, this is where you’re so comfortable you can also say yes to certain clients and no to others. Because not all business is good business, so really, if you’re going to do your best work, there’re certain clients that you can do it with, and certain that you can do it but you’re not going to be the champion that you could otherwise be.

Stewart Bell: Perfect. That’s good. Hey do me a favor, I just want to check in, has this been useful so far for everybody out there? We’d love a bit of feedback. What’s been most useful about the discussion so far? The model? Just pop in the chat box, because I know I like a bit of feedback and I’d love to know where people are at with this.

Stewart Bell: Hey, that’s a great model. The first time you showed it to me I was like, yeah that’s really clear, and what I love about it, it’s probably the best explanation I’ve ever seen of showing people that actually you know, it’s a journey, and if you do it the right way it lines up and it makes sense, and it sort of jumps in.

Stewart Bell: Is there anything else you want to … Matt says it’s a clear process that you go through, with a start, a middle and an end. Is there anything else that you want to touch on that or should we go back and just quickly maybe go through some of the categories and touch on it?

Kim Payne: Yeah, we can do that. And the other thing is, that too many people are not willing to put the time and effort in, so they again want this proposition that they can use, they want that magic bullet, and it’s not like that. There is the process but if you stick to it and you follow it … Like I said, I’ve become the biggest nightmare of a client anywhere, mind you I’m sure my advisor likes working with me, but because I’m so acutely aware of it. I think that makes you better in business anyway, and if you’re looking at then increasing your fees, if you’re looking at making changes to anything that you’re delivering, or offering a new service, then this is always the foundation for you to be able to do that.

Kim Payne: There’s so many benefits about doing it, but yet you’ve got to put the time into doing it, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Stewart Bell: Can you give us an idea, like if you were treating this as a project in your business, and you go right, I’m going to start at the bottom, what sort of time frames at each stage should you be investing?

Kim Payne: Yeah, okay. There’s a couple of ways I work with clients, sometimes I just do what I call a value clarity day, where for one day we just go and talk about all of these four steps but it’s only over one day. It gives you the framework, and the background that you need, but where the real value actually starts is after the day when we start implementing things. We get you to do a survey, if you’ve done that we then start to look at the copy that you’re doing, we start to look at conversations that you’re having with clients, paraphernalia or supporting documents that you use. What’s the language in there? And then we do that, we start looking at tools that you can use, templates, even things like video. So I do that.

Kim Payne: The other thing that I’m doing, I don’t know if this is the right time to talk about it, is I’ve been threatening for years to create an online course, which goes through these four stages.

Stewart Bell: Yes.

Kim Payne: But what I want to do now is actually pilot doing this over a six-month period, where for sort of one month, so four to five weeks, we look at each stage in detail, and we work on it together as a group. We get you to do activities. We get you to go out and do the value curious stage, do that bring it back, what does it mean? And then we go through each of the four stages. That’s certainly something I’m looking at piloting at the moment. I don’t know if there’s anyone on here that might be interested, and tell me when it’s the time to talk about that.

Stewart Bell: Let’s talk about that, because I’ve noticed we’re at almost five to eleven, so chat about the working group and then what we can do is sort of circle back and run through each of the questions.

Stewart Bell: So you’re starting a working group which is all around this. How many people do you want on the group? How’s it going to work?

Kim Payne: Okay. So what I want to do is I want to start it after the financial year, I understand people are really strapped for time right now. But anyone who is really serious about this, and they want to give it a go, and they don’t want the magic bullet … So what I want to do is over the six months from July to December, is have … It’s going to be online, so to speak, but live. So each week we would jump on a webinar like this, and we would discuss each of those stages, and the activities to do. I’d then give you action items, where say if it’s a survey you’ve got to go away, you’ve got to build it, you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to get the feedback, you’ve got to come back and then we discuss it. And each stage of the four steps, we’d have about four weeks of calls together where we work through it as a group, you get feedback.

Kim Payne: Because it is a pilot group I want feedback, I want to know what’s working, I want you to engage me throughout, saying that works, this doesn’t, I need more help with this. And we would do that for each of the four stages over the six months.

Stewart Bell: Got you.

Kim Payne: I want it to be very practical. Look ideally I’d like a maximum of 10 people, because I want to work quite closely with you to develop … And this is instead of doing the digital online course, I think this is going to be a better way. It’s great to learn online, but to get the feedback, this is where I get a lot of my benefit. People come back saying hey Kim, I’ve had this conversation with a client, and I’m just getting nowhere, what could I do differently? And it’s like okay, why don’t we do it like this instead, why don’t you send this email instead of that one. Ideally I’m looking at charging about 3000 for it, in the new world, if it is something of interest. But for the pilot group to do the full six months, weekly catch ups, all the support, templates, dialog, get their feedback, get their testimonials and what have you, I’ll do it at 50% off. So 1500 for the entire six months, if anyone’s interested.

Stewart Bell: Working with you personally?

Kim Payne: With me personally? Absolutely.

Stewart Bell: I think you mentioned it’s covering a lot of stuff, the value proposition, what you should put on your website, how to talk about it, price, fees, all the rest of it.

Kim Payne: All the documents you need to support, the conversations you need to have, so that involves scripts, that involves templates. Everything that I’ve got, everything that I’ve done, and I’ve worked on over the last 20 years in this value space, I’m literally bringing to the table. And you know if it works, and it goes well, I might try three grand for it next year.

Stewart Bell: People are interested now and I guess once you’ve filled it, that’s closed. How should they … Like literally put up their hand and say I’m interested?

Kim Payne: Absolutely. Just say you’re interested. Like I said, I’m in working stage at the moment, putting it together. So if you are interested I’d love to be able to bounce some ideas off you, you know. Do we have weekly calls? I’m very much in the pilot stage and I want, I’m going to use this term, I want guinea pigs to participate with me, and help me build this so that it’s exactly what you want but at the end of the day, you get to work through it in your business at the same time. That’s ideally what I’m looking for.

Stewart Bell: If you’re interested, Elizabeth’s interested, just pop your name in the box and I’ll make sure you get to chat. Definitely interested, Cassandra. Okay, so we’ve got a couple of people interested. I’ll make sure we follow those ones up. And yeah, Brian Perronne’s interested, I believe you’ve worked together.

Kim Payne: Oh. Hi, Brian. I know Brian, yeah, hi.

Stewart Bell: Jess. Jeff Wynn’s interested as well. So okay, cool. I’ll connect you with those guys. Perfect. David Murdoch interested as well. Okay.
Kim Payne: Oh, good. Awesome.

Stewart Bell: Perfect. Let’s chat Ben Black two, let’s talk about these pieces, so that’s the framework which I think is really good to sort of run through. Let’s talk about value proposition, what’s your best insight you can give to somebody who’s asking, and I’ll pull out a specific question … What’s the best way to approach articulating the value, in this value proposition thing? What’s the best tip you can give?

Kim Payne: Okay, wow. That’s a massive question.

Stewart Bell: I’m so sorry.

Kim Payne: Yeah. No. So, firstly there is no one answer, but what I really love is that I did this little mini course a little while ago, and it was a woman walking you through an intromercial, so not infomercial, it’s an intromercial, and I’m actually going to test that process in this pilot course.

Stewart Bell: The program.

Kim Payne: The program I’m going to do, because I haven’t tested it on other people yet, I’ve only tested it on myself. But what it does is it highlights, I would say something like financial advisors choose to work with me when they’re at a point where they’ve already started their own business but they’re struggling with, and what are the three problems that they’re struggling with. They’ve got no time, they’ve got no head space, and they’ve got no capacity to work out what they do next to grow their business. Then through working with me and looking at a formula around value, we’re able to solve their problems, and then there’s three things we solved so we can get them more time back, more clarity, whatever it might be. If they can do that then they’re able to live that life, they can work with more people, they can make more money, and they can build something that makes them really proud.

Kim Payne: So that sort of … And she does it in 17 and a half seconds. But what I love about this is one, it talks about who she works with. Two, it talks about the problems that they have, so if I was a financial advisor on the other side of that I’d think wow, that sounds like me. So you’re sort of weeding out the ones that would be a good fit and ones that aren’t. Three, it starts to highlight the work that we do, so we work together, we work hands on, we work one on one, we whatever it might be. And it also shows and highlights some of the solutions that you provide.
Kim Payne: At no point in any of that is we do investments, we do insurance, we do superannuation, etc, do you know what I mean?

Stewart Bell: Yeah, absolutely.

Kim Payne: And then from that intromercial, you’re able to then snippets of it. Like understanding what business you’re in, you know, so we’re really about helping people live a better life, and helping them make decisions around their money because money impacts every single part of their life, and that’s what we do. The way we do it. So you can get these captions, that you can then use as one liner or elevated rants, not pictures, rants. I think that’s just beautiful.

Kim Payne: But it gives you the material that you need to then take the bits and pieces, and put it where you need to whether it’s in marketing, whether it’s in a conversation, but all of it answers the who, what, where and why, in 17 and a half seconds.

Stewart Bell: Yeah, I love that.

Kim Payne: Yeah.

Stewart Bell: I’ve got to figure a cheat sheet, which has got 17 different ways but that’s the one I always come back to.

Kim Payne: Yeah, absolutely. And where you get a lot ammunition for what you put in there, is when you do the survey with your clients.

Stewart Bell: Yeah. Absolutely.

Kim Payne: Yeah.

Stewart Bell: Let me … Glen’s got a good question, and I know why he’s asking it, so I’m going to put it to you. Glen, he would love to hear your thoughts or some examples of how advisors who are good at this are articulating their value in such a way that it doesn’t come off as I’m awesome, look at me, fig jam, you know?
Kim Payne: The best way that I see advisors do this, is when they tell a story about a client they’ve helped. So instead of just why me, it’s like when someone say what do you do? It’s like, you know what, I have a client, they were in this situation, and you outline the situation, and through my help, and making some changes, tweaking their decisions, changing their behaviors, we were able to get them on this path. I still believe to this day there is nothing more powerful than telling a story to help people understand what it is that you do.

Stewart Bell: I totally agree.

Kim Payne: And, just if I can share on a really quick note. This almost is like a value proposition. I was in Thailand with my husband last year, and we’re swimming in the ocean, surfing the waves, and there’s two other guests with us. Now one owns a really big real estate agency in Turangi, one owns a big construction company. Mike, my husband, sorry backing up, is risk advisor. So these two guests would be ideal clients, because they’re both sort of in their late 40s.

Kim Payne: So while we’re surfing the waves, there’s a parasailor flying over the top, and the other guests were say oh I’d love to do that, parasailing. And my husband said, you know what’s funny, this is true, a client of mine was here at Club Med Phuket last year, doing the parasailing and the parachute came down and hit the water so hard that she broke her foot.

Kim Payne: And then he goes on to say, and it was interesting, so one night I’m sitting on the couch and I saw that she had a broken foot, he is actually her risk advisor, and he said I knew that she had a broken bones clause in her income protection policy and I was able to get her 13 grand tax free when she got home from her holiday.

Kim Payne: So he told that story just while we’re surfing the waves. All of a sudden this real estate agent and this construction guy said oh my god, how do I get me some of that. Now he if had of said, I’m a risk advisor and I put in place protection strategies that help people mitigate the risk of life throwing you a nasty what if, blah, blah, blah. I reckon they would have caught the next wave back to the shore. So when you can get a story that can capture what you do quite succinctly, my husband tells that story way better than I do, and it’s a real life story, nothing makes a better value proposition than that, in my mind.

Stewart Bell: And presumably, I’ve seen a lot of people who fall into the trap of they’re telling a case study, and they dive deep into so we rolled this money over here and we did this, they don’t care, all they care about is that…

Kim Payne: Yeah. Not yet.

Stewart Bell: They were in this problem, here’s the outcome they got, and bang.
Kim Payne: Spot on. That’s exactly right. It’s getting that fine line between enough information that somebody on the other end goes oh my gosh, that sounds like me, whereas if it’s too much information where I go, wow, I’m bored.

Stewart Bell: That’s perfect.

Kim Payne: Yeah. So getting that really succinct. Everyone, every single advisor has got a story where they have literally turned someone’s life around, and if they can get really good at telling that, that’s the best value proposition you could ever come up with, if you get that bit right. And the beautiful thing about that is you could have a number of different ones if you work with different types of clients. Again that’s part of what I do anyway but it’s certainly part of what I want to really tighten up with advisors in this program.

Stewart Bell: I’ve thought of something you could put in there, and I reckon this is a little value for people who are here. Grab a notebook, one that you’re going to carry with you, and every time you come out of a meeting or a discussion with a partner, or any sort of discussion with clients, write down one story that you can tell other people that came from that.

Kim Payne: Yes.

Stewart Bell: I think if you had a structure to it, you’d find that every day there is at least two or three great stories that you are taking in, that are just appearing, and most of the time you’re not even aware of it.

Kim Payne: Oh, so true. So true. And even another one, just write down a list of all the people’s lives you’ve changed over the last 12 months, okay, and what it is that you did to change it. You just do that, and you keep adding to that, and I tell you, I get a lot of advisors that question their own worth and their own value, you do that and you’ll start to go wow, fruit cake, I really am valuable, and I’m worth it. I really am worth putting my prices up.

Stewart Bell: Jeff is actually one of our original program members, he’s, honestly if you want to see a man with passion, get him talking about some of his clients. He fires up, when he’s had stories of people he’s had to clip around the ear and give them. So yeah this is gold for you Jeff, you are a man full of stories. No doubt.

Kim Payne: Yeah. Love it.

Stewart Bell: This has been awesome. And I know we’re sort of running over, we’ll keep going as long as you want Kim but I also sort of don’t want to take the mick. There’s a question that came up from Greg, which I think is relevant. He’s curious if there’s any great advisor websites that you recommend, that appeal well to their target market?

Kim Payne: Oh, man. I’m laughing because I’m obsessed with advisors websites, and I don’t see enough of the really good ones. But there are a couple that I love, and the reason I love them, let me explain. Firstly, they use a language that’s all about me. Secondly, they talk to me as a person, it’s not just how good they are. You’re testing me. There’s an accounting business, yes this is accounting but still their website’s beautiful, there’s an accounting business in Brisbane called inspire dot business.

Stewart Bell: I’ll bring it up.

Kim Payne: Yup, I love … This is one of my favorite websites, and I actually spoke to the people who created it the other day to find out, you know, all about it and potentially using that with some of my clients. And I said who did the copy, thinking it was them, and they said the business did it. It was like … Inspire dot business.
Stewart Bell: Is it inspire financial or?

Kim Payne: Do inspire dot business.

Stewart Bell: Dot business, they would have paid a fortune for that.

Kim Payne: Yeah, but it’s beautiful.

Stewart Bell: Let me bring it up.

Kim Payne: And for anyone who’s interested, I’ve got a whole lot of nice saved websites, as a hobby.

Stewart Bell: That’d be awesome.

Kim Payne: For when I’m looking for something, I’ve got a whole list of them. I’m just in a struggle to think of them off the top of my head.

Stewart Bell: That’s alright. I’ve got one I’ll share as well, inspire … What am I doing here? This is me trying to do two things at once, not one of my strong points. I’ll share, we’ll bring that one up, then we’ll bring that one up, and let’s share this one because I was in the San Francisco last … Is that that one? Yeah. I met with the guys who started the business called Levanto Financial. What I really liked about them is because they’re a tech startup thing, they’re all data driven. So their whole approach was just to look at what actually works from a numbers point of view.

Stewart Bell: So I’m just actually a little bit ahead of this, but it’s just catching up. Here’s the inside.

Kim Payne: There it is. Oh, yeah.

Stewart Bell: Oh, wow. Yeah. How do you like that, you get a pre-reaction before it comes up on screen. This looks really good. Let’s wait for it to catch up. So what do you like about?

Kim Payne: I love that … Okay, so, I’m a business owner, and ironically if I’m in the market for an account, this speaks to me. It speaks my language, it talks to me, it uses … I’ll wait till it comes up.

Stewart Bell: Sorry, I’m going to re-track it.

Kim Payne: And even if it doesn’t, Stewart, if anybody jumps on. Even the navigation bar at the top, they’ve got like problems we solve, the problems are … Oh, is it coming up now? You know, make more profit, better cash flow, more time with your family. Like it’s just beautiful. Yeah, there it goes.

Kim Payne: So look at the top at the navigation bar, it’s got problems we solve, but everything through the entire website is like it’s speaking to me. It’s like I get on this website, and I don’t want to go off, and I go on it all the time. And even on the problems we solve, in the three sections, they’ve then got a little one minute video explaining what that’s all about.

Kim Payne: They use an analogy or a metaphor to make it really clear. Like one of them, on the cash flow one, I think it’s that most businesses are running their business like they’re blind, it’s kind of like in an airplane navigating without the GPS. They use beautiful mix of analogy and metaphor, it’s all about the fact that yeah, you’ve got a business but most of us also want to have more time with our families. It’s just beautiful.

Kim Payne: And the most encouraging thing about this website, like I said, I’ve been in touch with the guys that put it together, the owners actually wrote the copy. So you can imagine what their methodology is. To me, if I’m looking to move accounts, who am I going to? I am going straight to these guys.

Stewart Bell: I want to ask you a straight question on this. Do you think, if you’re going to get good at this, it’s possible to outsource the copy production or have you got to do it yourself?

Kim Payne: Oh. Okay. If you’re clear on your value but not necessarily a writer, you can outsource it, as long as, two things. The copy writer is not going to have free rein to do whatever, that they interview you, they understand you, they understand your language, and do all of that, rather than write it yourself. Now these guys did write it themselves but they might have had some help tweaking it, but they knew exactly what they wanted to say. And they didn’t get that overnight, they’ve done a lot of course, I did ask, they’ve done a lot of personal development, they’ve done a lot of courses, and stuff that we’ve been talking about. They knew what their value was, they knew the message that they wanted to get across, so it made the copy easy.

Kim Payne: Most advisors don’t get to that point so website copy just becomes more words on a page. I don’t think you need to do it yourself but you’ve got to know what your value is, the language, how to say it, and then get a copywriter that can actually capture that in essence.

Kim Payne: Susie Monroe, who doesn’t do web copy anymore, she was brilliant at doing this. Absolutely brilliant. Although …

Stewart Bell: She’s with us. Hey, Susie.

Kim Payne: Oh, hi Susie. Oh my god, that was handy. I don’t know, Susie, if you’ve still got your offer, where she will look at someone’s website and give them tips around things that they should do differently, and that.

Kim Payne: And Glen, absolutely less is better. I’m busy, I don’t want to read lots of text, that’s why video is really helpful. Give me less, but if you’re going to give me less, make sure what you’ve got is valuable and meaningful. I want more white space, I want less words, but I want words in my language that are speaking directly to me, not about you. The amount of websites that say we’ve been around 50 years, we do, this, this, this and this, it’s like, where am I in that? I need to be in it if you want to get me.

Stewart Bell: Love it. I subscribe to the Japanese idea that perfection is when you can no longer take anything else away.

Kim Payne: Yeah. Absolutely.

Stewart Bell: Where you’re just condensing, condensing, condensing, you shouldn’t be adding.

Kim Payne: And it’s hard.

Stewart Bell: Yeah, it’s super hard. And sometimes you need to do a bit and step away, and then do a bit and step away, which is why it can take a while.

Kim Payne: Absolutely. Yeah. So you find someone like a Susie Monroe. There’s another girl that I’m using, here in Melbourne, called Ruth, and she’s really good at this stuff too.

Stewart Bell: Yeah. Susie’s one of those very gifted people, who are yeah, so gifted. She just ends up super busy. I’ve spoken to her a few times, she’s good at this. Anyway we won’t discuss Susie, but I know it was something she had in the pipeline or something.

Stewart Bell: Anyway. This is another one, I met with these guys when I went over to the States, they are what seems to be appearing more and more in the US, is financial planners bringing in cashflow coaches.

Kim Payne: Yeah. Yeah, perfect.

Stewart Bell: You know, I can bring this coach in and within six months we’ll get it sorted, and Levanto they saw a market in this two years ago. And the reason why I really like this site is firstly, because it’s completely online alpha, but the other thing is they tested this. And the conversation we had is they started off with we are your own personal book keeper or own personal concierge, and it didn’t work, and they went and tested why, and the reason was so simple. That people, the kind of target market they were after thought that a book keeper is someone who has to take direction. They wanted someone who could take the lead. So they flipped it over to, I think the second one in there, no. Yeah, Levanto is everyone’s household CFO.

Stewart Bell: It changed everything.

Kim Payne: Beautiful. I even love things like gift of time, and you know, things that really are going on in peoples lives.

Stewart Bell: Yeah, exactly.

Kim Payne: Stewart on that one too, there’s another one over in the States too, it’s … They target millennials, and it’s called Stash Wealth, and again for the same reasons that we’re talking about, it speaks directly to millennials using their language. Everything is about millennials they offer. But their website is just golden.

Stewart Bell: Home of the Henrys. Love it.

Kim Payne: Yeah, Henrys, which is high earn and not reach yet.

Stewart Bell: I love it. Is there one you’d recommend for businesses that target an older market?

Kim Payne: Yes, yes, again it’s another American one, but it’s called the Retirement Answer Man and it’s all about retirement. No surprise. He does a brilliant podcast all for retirees.

Stewart Bell: Roger Whitney?

Kim Payne: Pardon?

Stewart Bell: Sorry, keep going.

Kim Payne: Oh, Retirement Answer Man, just type that in and see what comes up. But his whole website again, it’s … If you’re thinking, oh sorry, if you’re about to or planning to or at retirement stage, this whole website just talks to you. And he’s got different ways that you can engage, you can have the full kit and caboodle, you can just sign up to his membership program, which I think is $40 or $50 a month, and he’s got an incredible amount of content out there.

Kim Payne: But this is talking just to those who are planning on or already retiring. So it wouldn’t be of any interest to me, but my parents? Amazing.

Stewart Bell: Look at that. Find your best retirement conversations, not equations. That’s a generational value thing.

Kim Payne: Yeah, totally.

Stewart Bell: Glen, you got your pen out? Put your idea of retirement in here.
Kim Payne: It’s gorgeous.

Stewart Bell: So good. So easy. This has been really useful. We’ve still got a bunch of people still on the line. Just do me a favor, just type in the box if you’ve taken one thing from this discussion that you think you can grab and implement, and put into play, I’d love to know what that is. Yeah, Glen’s listened to a lot of this stuff.

Stewart Bell: Look, we’ve already spoken about the program you’re running. We’ve got a bunch of people who are interested. Jeff’s interested, David, I’ll put you guys in contact. Ben Black, Jayden’s interested.

Kim Payne: Oh, I know Jayden. Hi, Jayden.

Stewart Bell: There you go, Elizabeth’s keen. Sandra’s really interested.

Intromercial, says Jeff. Brian Perronne’s really interested, so we’ll connect you guys.

Stewart Bell: I guess yeah, give us sort of, other than the program, what else is going on in your world? What do you see coming up over the next few months that you think is really important for people to get their heads around?

Kim Payne: I’ve got another business called 3Genies, and we do at this stage animator explainer videos, but the whole premise of 3Genies is around simply communicating. So getting your message across easier. We’re starting to expand that, not just the animated video, but to also, for those who want to communicate with their clients through podcasts. So we’re helping them set up and run a podcast. We want to do normal face to face videos so helping them get that ready, and helping them do all the editing, and everything.

Kim Payne: And then we’re looking at putting the copy piece in there as well. So if you’re looking at putting your website together or you need blogs written. I’m real excited about this because a really big piece of value is being able to deliver value to clients on a regular basis, and do it on scale. Either by doing podcasts, doing videos, or writing, they’re the three main ways of doing it.

Kim Payne: And again it’s not a key strength in a lot of advisors, so it’s how can we help them do that, that’s kind of floating my boat, a bit too.

Stewart Bell: Sounds good. I was thinking you’ve got what, because I know you do a lot of work with Danielle?

Kim Payne: Yeah, she’s my business partner on Three Genies.

Stewart Bell: You’ve got 3Genies, 9Rok, 5 Elk …

Kim Payne: Five Elk’s Danielle’s business, and 3Genies.

Stewart Bell: You should come here and call a Fibonacci group, and just, I don’t know, chose something else. But yeah. This has been awesome, and I hope everybody else has really enjoyed it as well. As I said when we sat down and had that chat, I just yeah, I really enjoyed spending time with you, and sort of the discussions we’ve been having and the ongoing work. I was really pleased we could sit down and talk about this stuff, because I think that the gift that you have and the ability to work with people I think is something, yeah, a lot of people need both on a business level, but more importantly with everything that’s going on I think people just need to be able to step into this and feel confident. And not feel like understanding your value is something that is unattainable, that there’s steps to go through and you get there. Eventually.

Kim Payne: Oh, no, no. I love it. Thank you. And Stewart, just equally on that, so I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. I’ve been wanting to put together this online course, and do all of this, and it’s thanks to Stewart that I’m actually sitting on this webinar talking about it because I would’ve postponed this otherwise, just because I’ve got a fair bit on at the moment. I would’ve postponed it, so ditto back to you. You are such an enabler of change and getting people to take action, that I can’t speak more highly of you, and what you’ve done to me to get me to get a move on and do things that I should have done ages ago. So thank you for … This is a wonderful relationship, I’m looking forward to more about what we can do together.

Stewart Bell: I love it. Literally I took off your website, started social media marketing, do you know what Jen, we should probably tell her about this, just confirm that she’s doing it, and I was like no, let’s just do it and I’ll speak to her next week. It’s been super fun, and thank you for this. Thanks everybody for turning up.

Kim Payne: Thank you.

Stewart Bell: If you do have any questions, shoot them through. If you do want to connect with Kim, the address is kim@9rok.com.au. Other than that, for everyone on the program stay tuned we’ve got the accelerator coming up, please register for that, as well as a bunch of other stuff. If you haven’t got the monthly snapshot, please let me know, so we can send it through.

Stewart Bell: Other than that, everybody, have a great weekend. The insight webinar will be back at the end of the month, 30th of May. I’m doing a session with Chris Yanna on systematization, and X plan, automation and the rest of it.
Stewart Bell: Kim, have a great weekend, what are you up to by the way?
Kim Payne: Thank you. Kids sport, all weekend. Basketball, football, running around, taxying, that whole thing.

Stewart Bell: It could be worse, it could be swimming and cricket.

Kim Payne: Is that what your weekend looks like?

Stewart Bell: My weekend is I’ve got a friend coming down from Canberra, I’m having a wedding at the beach which is two streets that way, so that’s going to be fun.

Kim Payne: Cool.

Stewart Bell: But other than that, I actually was driving down the street back from a coaching meeting the other day, and I’m just driving down our street. And on the corner someone had left, you know those arcade sort of like a steering wheel and the chair, and sort of stopped, got out, there’s this guy sat there. I was like, what’s going on with that? They guy said, Brazilian guy, he said, “Someone just dropped it off.” And I said, “Do you want it?” And he said no, so I picked this thing up, put it back in the car. It doesn’t work, but obviously Nate, my two year old, two and a half, just loves cars. So I walked in with this bucket seat, car, pedals and he’s just like … So we’re going to set that up in the lounge this weekend.

Stewart Bell: Basically a drive in, you know, that French escape thing, and I’m just going to sit in there and be dad of the year.

Kim Payne: I was going to say it sounds like you’re going to have just as much fun as he is.

Stewart Bell: I’m going to try and get it to work.

Kim Payne: Fix it. That’s your thing, fix it.

Stewart Bell: Fix it, exactly.

Kim Payne: Awesome. Well, thank you again.

Stewart Bell: Kim, thank you so much, and have a great weekend, and I’ll speak to you soon, okay.

Kim Payne: Bye.