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Mr. Biz Radio: Upgrading Your Brand to Luxury Status

Unedited transcription of the show is included below:

(00:05):

Welcome to Mr. Biz radio biz. Talk for biz owners. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward, this show is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.

(00:19):

All right. Welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz Radio with me Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth. And we're gonna have a, we're gonna talk to an expert in of course this week and a topic that I know will resonate with all of you. And it resonates with me. I'll tell you that. So selfishly, I'm gonna get a lot of this episode myself, so I'm looking forward to it. But it is an expert this week who is going to help us in being able to sell our offers at premium and ultra premium prices and who doesn't want that. Right? what, what better way to grow your revenue than to be able to charge more for the products and or services that you you offer? And so this week's guest is none than Mrs. Uhathryn Porritt sorry about that. She's a global entrepreneur business strategist and founder of icons incorporated, which you can find at iconsincorporated.com. She's an expert in taking brands to number one in their niche and becoming iconic and is known as the $100,000 offer strategist reshaping. Her client's businesses, sell their offers at a premium and ultra premium price. Kathryn, welcome to Mr. Biz radio.

(01:27):

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I am always here to talk about this topic. We should be charging at the highest possible price. Absolutely.

(01:37):

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny. Well, you know what, let me say that. So I'll say that later, before we get into all that, and we talk about that and you give us some tips on, on how to do that, especially during the third segment and we discuss a little bit more of your approach and everything. Maybe during the second, tell us about your entrepreneur journey, Kathryn, how did you come into this whole space?

(01:56):

Yeah, absolutely. So I started out with my first business was a very successful eCommerce business when I was on maternity leave with my first baby Penelope, who was now just about to turn 17. Oh wow. So I started an eCommerce business. Then it became quite a dominant business in Australia. Won lots of awards. Did the whole thing, you know, was on TV, had hundreds of thousands of followers. All of those things wrote the book literally for, for penguin Viking. I remember a pivotal moment about about nine years in, when I was standing in the warehouse, seeing all of these amazing people in my team, picking all these orders and everything was just flashing by. And I went, you know what? The fun has gone. I don't particularly wanna play this volume game anymore. And so we decided to sell up at that point.

(02:53):

I was very lucky to go through what a lot of people don't have. The you know, know the experience to go through is a, a full sale process. So I exited that business and then didn't wanna sit around drinking my eyes on the beach. That's not my personality. So I spent the time to really think about, without any desperation from a financial standpoint, what do I really wanna create from here? And in that creative state, I really felt that the best piece of my creativity, innovation, all of those things was best placed in, in creating luxury brands for the highest end of the personal brand space. So I wanna play with really intelligent, extraordinary people. And I was lucky enough to launch the business, have a waiting list almost immediately. And then what I found really quickly was that most of the people that I was supporting big names who you think might have this pricing thing down, pat not only needed my advice around branding, but they desperately needed my advice, advice around how to price, how to create offers, and then how to create a sustainable high margin business. And that's really how the icons incorporated business was born.

(04:09):

And so it sounds like the, the transition from, you know, the eCommerce and the volume, it was at the sort of the epiphany moment, you know, like you mentioned, you're in the warehouse and you're like, man, all this flurry of activity. And

(04:21):

It was absolutely a pivotal moment in my life. I go back, you know, you think about those maybe two or three moments that just change everything in your life, having babies, getting married, all of those personal things. But to me, from a business standpoint, that was the one moment that changed everything. For me, I'd been very successful on paper. Everything looked fantastic, but personally it wasn't what I wanted anymore. I wanted to build a lifestyle business where I could be there for my children a bit more. My husband is also very successful, but he'd born a lot of the weight of you know, picking the kids up and running them around and all of those things he's been extraordinary. So, you know, it really was time for me to create a more lifestyle based business. So I took the time to really think through what does that mean rather than creating something out of, you know, desperation. This is what I ought to do. I actually looked inward and went, no, what do I want to create from here?

(05:19):

Well, I guess along those lines and what's the success you've had. Let me shift gears a little bit. What has been during your, your, your business career? What's been your favorite failure? What's the thing that you, you failed at that was maybe ended up being something that was another epiphany type moment in, in business?

(05:36):

Yeah. So similarly with this business, I started thinking as I had this big wait list, what do I do from here? We've got all this momentum in the marketplace. Everyone's talking about what we are doing. We've got this great reputation, all of these amazing people wanna work with us. And I fell for that trap of, okay, how do I, I scale, which was the complete antithesis of what I had said to myself when I started the business, right. And so I found, you know, you're on Facebook and Instagram and you start Googling these things. And then suddenly I'm flooded with all of these scalable, passive income, all of these group mastermind programs. And I went down that pathway again, created something really successful. I'm really good at marketing. So I think anything I sort of put my fingers to is probably at the front end, gonna be quite successful.

(06:27):

But again, I created a mastermind. I created this scalable program and I went, what am I doing? 12 months into this thing? And I love the people we've been supporting in there, but really I've again, taken a really good, hard look at myself and gone this isn't actually what I want. So while it's not a spectacular failure, it's been drinking out of a fire hose. It's not been fun for, you know, fun to execute. We haven't done it in the most beautiful way as we've been finding our feet. It was very green in this area. But we've been very successful at the front end of it. But now again, I'm reminding myself, this business is about what you want from here. Let's selfishly create something that serves you, your team, your clients, and your family at the highest possible level. So so that's a, that's been a, another big reminder about not creating something out of art or should do.

(07:25):

But creating something that I just really want to create and success, I've seen this over and over and over again, and you probably have to, when you're creating something, that's built around that idea of who you are, what you really want beyond passion of a client that says it's about devotion and obsession. If you can get to that point, then success is inevitable. And I've had to learn that lesson too many times and I'm done learning it. I'm I'm ready now. Just <laugh> to take that learning and just, and flow with it from here.

(08:01):

Well, it's interesting. So that, that was like you said, not necessarily a failure from a business perspective, but you know, you're trying to move out of the volume business and here you are scaling and falling right back into what you had been, you know, seeking to get out of. So, so yeah, it took you a couple of tries. It sounds like to say, oh my gosh, why do I keep doing this? And because you're good at it. I mean, that's what it is, Kathryn. I mean, obviously you're good at it. And like you said, you, you get your marketing fingers on things and, and things start to go. And so very interesting. Love that answer. So again, this re we're talking with Kathryn Porritt, you can find out more at iconsincorporated.com And you can also follow on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to find out more. So we're gonna hit a break here, we'll come back, we'll give the Mr. Biz tip the week, and then we're gonna dig into a little bit more about this whole concept between premium pricing and what that means versus, you know, the more volume Walmart type of thing. So come back after break on Mr. Biz radio,

(08:59):

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(09:38):

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(10:08):

Got a question for Mr. Biz. You want answered on air, email it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Now once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(10:19):

All

(10:19):

Right. Welcome back to the show. It's time for Mr. Biz tip of the week, and this one's a short but sweet one and very important. And it is something that absolutely a lot of times is business owners. You get into the weeds of the business and you can easily forget this. And that is to focus on your strengths and hire experts for those things that are challenging to you, especially when you're first starting out, maybe as a solo entrepreneur to start you, you're trying to bootstrap and DIY everything. And it ends up being to the detriment of your business overall, because, you know, first of all, things that you're not good at you probably think you don't like to do your pun not good at right, because you probably don't put in the necessary effort. As Kathryn mentioned during the first segment, the passion, the obsession, and if it's something you don't enjoy doing, you're probably not gonna do it very well.

(11:03):

Why not bring in an expert who can do probably do it way better than you much more efficiently, much more cost effective overall. So that's, that is the tip of this week focus on your strengths and higher experts for your weaknesses. So again, as we were talking with Kathryn Porritt Kathryn, I, I wanted to get into this a little bit in, in the whole concept of you know, I, I've heard so many people that are really successful talk about, and it seems completely counterintuitive to a normal person. But I'm sure you, I'm sure you, you agree with this. They say it's actually easier to sell a higher ticket item than to sell, you know, it's easier to sell, you know I had one guy on that I know reasonably well, and he said for me to sell a $50,000 mastermind, it's actually easier than selling a thousand, you know, know $500 things. He's like, you know, it's, it's just so much easier. And so I'd like to hear sort of your, your, you know, thoughts around that.

(12:02):

Yeah. I fully with all of my heart and soul agree with that statement. So having been at both ends of the market, I can absolutely tell you that is much, much, much easier. There's less sort of frenetic activity. There's less time and energy that needs to go into it. And there's almost no competition because everyone is competing for the $27, the $2,000, the $8,000. And thinking that they're onto a great big winner, if they're charging $15,000. And I can tell you that almost no one is competing for the hundred thousand, the million, the 40 million, the 63 million, like my clients are doing, they're just not brave enough to go there. Or they don't know. They have no evidence that there is that possibility that you can charge that much. But from my perspective, now, having worked with hundreds and hundreds of founder brands, so coaches, authors, athletes, you know, creatives, consultants, agency owners, who can get really clear on who it is that they want to work with and get really crystal clear on who, how they are best in the world, what they are best in the world at, and then can clearly articulate that to the market.

(13:22):

There is a market up there that is willing to pay any sort of price, just to experience that sort of proximity to an extraordinary brand or an extraordinary level of expertise. And I've just seen it in every niche. I just I'm yet to have someone come to me and say, you know, th this niche cannot be sold into the highest end of the market and for my team, not to be able to figure out a way to make that happen. So I fully concur with with your friend there. That is absolutely my experience as well.

(13:55):

Yeah. And what I've even found in my own businesses is that, you know, I'll, I'll be a little dramatic about this and, and humorous about it, but you know, the person who's buying something that's, that's $50 or a hundred dollars versus someone who's buying something that's 25, 40, $50,000, the, the, the, the 40 or $50,000 person, once you are able, as you said to articulate it, well, the question they ask is, so who do I make the checkout to? Whereas the person who's buying a $50 item says now exactly what do I get for $50 now, when will that be delivered? Well, have it by next two, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, the, you know, like you said, the friction in the market is so vastly different between the both of those ends of the spectrum.

(14:39):

Yeah. I was just supporting one of my new clients who sold a million dollar coaching offer in after working with me for five weeks. So that number is real and doable, but I was actually listening to her, pitching the call and giving her some feedback for next time. And the mistake that she made on that call was here's a guy that's worth a really ultra high net worth individual she was selling to. And he said, I want this, this and this. And she said, okay, here's all the things that I'm gonna put in there. And she was giving him the kitchen sink, which I'd advised her not to do, but we get, you know, when he is selling something for a million dollars for the first time, I totally get that. And I've seen that happen all the time, but he, and she was saying, you can have this time with me and this and this and this and this. And he said, you are misunderstanding me. I want less of you. I just wanna know how potently, how powerfully we can work together in less time. And it was that pivotal moment for me. If I can give you any sort of advice about this end to the market, that's how they buy it's efficiency and effectiveness at the highest end of the market. It's all about time. And that proximity to power and expertise in all of those things. So you you're absolutely spot on.

(15:58):

Yeah. And, and I, I experienced the exact same thing is I originally I had a product that was a, a $500 a month product. And then, you know, selling the much higher end tens of thousands of dollars. And it was the exact, I did the exact same mistake. Yeah. <Laugh> yeah, because again, that was the first time I was selling something that was, it was a $60,000 product. And it was like, holy crap. Like, I gotta give so much value. Like I, and again, I'm like, you, you know, I'll make again, be dramatic about it, but I was like, you can call me 24 hours a day. I'll answer the phone in the middle of the night. I'll do anything you want. I'll give you a foot rub. I'll, you know, and the same thing. And, and the same exact scenario the owner was like, look, I appreciate all that.

(16:39):

I don't want it. I want efficient time with you. And I wanna know when we're together, I wanna know you're gonna be on time and we're gonna spend exactly this amount. If you tell me 60 minutes, I don't no offense. I don't wanna spend 90 minutes with you. My time is valuable. I wanna know the 60 minutes is gonna be super valuable. I don't want three hours with you. You know, I wanna make it super efficient and condensed. And so I did made the exact same mistake the first time. So I totally get it. But again, that mindset of man for that price, I have to just, again, throw in the kitchen sink. I gotta give everything. And that's those people, you know, and those and that stratosphere, they, that's not what they want.

(17:14):

No, they absolutely do not. And what, you're a hundred percent right at the lower end of the market. There's, you know, how do I get all of these bits and pieces? And you know, how do I manipulate time? And all of those things, I always get my clients to work at the 80% plus enter the market. So people who are 80% there or above, and then you mitigate all of those problems of, you know, if you're in the business space, you, you're not dealing with people who have a low business acumen. For example, you're not having to deal with the, you know, the, the lower end 1 0 1 teaching part of this, but actually the people who probably could get there without you, but they just want that stretch and that expansion of vision, and for you to give them the expertise to really go at a higher level more quickly and then that higher into the market will pay anything. If you can pitch that, right. You're a hundred percent, right. It's, it's been my experience over and over and over and hundreds of these deals, even ones that are worth multimillions of dollars. I've cl clients that have landed deals that are 40 million for one coaching opportunity. So that's been a hundred percent my experience across the board.

(18:27):

Yeah. It's just, it's just super interesting. I've got one client that I literally meet with. It's almost like a personal trainer. Like I think a lot of people per hire a personal trainer for accountability for themselves. Cause they know if they're paying for a trainer, they're gonna show up to the gym. They could probably go to the gym and train themselves, but they know the accountability and it's the same thing. I've got one client. I meet with him once a month for 90 minutes, we go, I go to his office and we put our cell phones outside and it's just to do strategic session. And he said, I know I won't do it if I don't have you to keep me accountable to this. And again, he pays a high premium for it. So exactly what we're talking about. Again, this week we're talking with Kathryn Porritt , you can find out more at iconsincorporated.com come back and she's gonna give us tips on how to sell our products and offerings at a premium price.

(19:10):

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(20:11):

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(20:20):

All right. Welcome back to the show. So Kathryn let's, let's dive in. So we've only got nine minutes roughly nine minutes. And I know you have a lot to share on this stuff. I know you talk a lot about magnetic marketing and commercializing your influence and things like that, but what are some tips that we can do to start to transform our business and be able to charge those premium prices?

(20:41):

Yeah, absolutely. The first thing to do is actually create from you so true innovators, true creators, the leaders in the market don't look at what the market, where the gaps in the market are and look to fill it and then expect to be paid. These high prices. They're actually brave innovators. So this is probably the biggest tip that I would give you is actually go brave into what do you want to do? What do you represent? What are you best in the world at? And then get very clear on articulating that and positioning it in a way that will resonate with an ultra high net worth individual or the highest end of the market. That's the biggest thing that we need to work on from a branding perspective. It's got nothing to do with colors, logos, personal style, all of those things matter, but ultimately it's about that create from you because mainstream comes from listening to your audience and looking at your competition, luxury and iconic and ultra premium strategy comes from you.

(21:42):

So that's really the biggest one. The other one is to really stand in some arrogance here. So what I mean by that is you can't go into a sales conversation or market yourself as the iconic leader of a niche, the dominant brand in a niche, and sit there all humble in the corner. And oh, you know, pretending that you're not all of those fantastic things, everyone of my clients who are selling at this type of level, you don't land a 40 or 60 million client without really knowing with absolute and utter uncertainty that you are the absolute best person in the world. And with utter integrity that you get those results and that you will be the right person to work with this client or on this deal to get that outcome. So I say to my clients all the time, arrogance is welcome. Here might be the only place in the world that it's welcome, but I'm gonna get you used to stepping into that level of certainty and that confidence so that you can walk into any room and you become this magnetic, you know, brand for any type of deal at the highest end of the market.

(22:50):

I think another one is then also really making sure that if you go to step into this, that you condition your team and you create a magical world because this whole thing can fall down. If you are representative of this end of the market and you're selling at this, you know, this high level, but then all of your team aren't conditioned to the same thing. If they're looking at you and seeing you land this 40 million deal, and then all of the magic around that, the sales, the, you know, the the payment links, the, you know, all of that falls down then ultimately it's not, you're not gonna keep that client for very long. So we talk about this idea of conditioning, a team, magical world, being, making sure that everyone is at peace with abundance and wealth and all of those things. And this goes to really being a, an incredible leader as well for your entire team.

(23:47):

So I feel, I think that that's incredibly important culture is, is very, very important part of your brand and how you sell and how you how you work with your clients in the longer term and keep them for life. Another one that I feel is the most important is invitation style marketing. So most mainstream businesses sit there and wait passively for a lead to come through. So if you imagine just as a coach, as a really good example of this, you know, most of the mainstream marketing methodology will have you run, say Facebook ads to some sort of webinar or some sort of lead generation SFO funnel, et cetera. And then you're sitting there waiting for them to go through some sort of automation and then passively, you know, I put my hand up or pushing them towards a call. And that was how I used to run my eCommerce business.

(24:52):

And my mood was based on a daily basis. <Laugh> on how many leads were coming through, how many sales we were doing, right? And I'd be up and down and all over the place. And I must have been a nightmare for my team to be around what I really like about the way that we market and that we teach our clients to market at this highest end is that it really is about picking and choosing who you wanna work with. There's probably this very small handful of people or companies that you wanna work with or organizations that you wanna work with at this level. And so going and researching them and understanding them, creating a dossier, and then figuring out how to pitch to them is really, and then fighting them into your world in a really beautiful way when you are standing in that arrogance.

(25:39):

And you're standing in that level of confidence for them to be chosen by someone of your ilk and pitch to actually feels amazing versus that sort of spammy LinkedIn, you know outreach sequence stuff. That's, that's so big at the moment. This is really choosing the people that you want to be working with at the highest level. And I literally have a talent acquisition manager on my team whose job full time is to look at the market and pick out the up and coming icons. And that's our entire marketing strategy is just go and find the up and coming people, and then tell them about what we do, bring them to a workshop or an event or something that we're running. And then our conversion rate is ridiculously high because we've, pre-qualified before we even bring anyone into our, into our world. So I think if you were just to implement those things, you could land some pretty significant deals.

(26:46):

So it's, it's, I mean, the things you mentioned as you were talking through those Kathryn, I'm thinking about people and brands and businesses across many different industries that are that upper echelon type brand, and they fit all the things you mentioned, you know you know, especially one of the things that, you know, the standing in arrogance, you know Lamborghini, they don't have commercials, right? Cause they don't need 'em mm-hmm <affirmative> right. And people, they, they have a wait list for, for cars, you know, $300,000 plus cars rolls Royce. I mean they do very little marketing you know, spending money on, you know, you don't see a television commercial for Rolls-Royce because for the most part, people watching some sitcom at eight o'clock at night, that's not a Rolls-Royce customer. And so they know their brand. And then, you know, the, the magic world meant thing you mentioned, I think is very powerful because when you are paying a premium and you're, and you're willing to do that for a rolls Royce level experience, it better be a rolls Royce experience, or you're going to go out of business. It has to be completely flawless. And so I think that's another big, really important aspect of this that, that probably some people don't really get as they move into this, you know, sort of premium pricing mode.

(28:06):

Absolutely. And when I started this business, I spent a lot of time really looking at, you know, a mainstream model versus a premium model versus a luxury model and being a, you know, an entrepreneur who's had decades of experience. Now I'm really interested in the way, the ways that work for other businesses. And I wanted to sort of mitigate the time and energy put into this business to make it really work really quickly. And what I realized at the luxury end of the market is that there's so much certainty and control in the way that these brands are set up. I was like, no, one's doing this. And for personal brands, this makes perfect sense to me. So you are absolutely a hundred percent spot on and it's, it's just worked at socks off over and over and over in every niche that we've ever been involved in. So if you can take some of that luxury business strategy and implement that for yourself, you'll be it so far above everyone else in the marketplace. You there's every chance that you'll be that dominant brand.

(29:07):

Yeah. I mean, again, there's so many commonalities between those luxury brands and there's again, a lot of lessons to be learned and you touched on several of them, but again, this week we've been talking with Kathryn Porritt, you can find out more at iconsincorporated.com Kathryn. We are out of time, but thank you so much for coming on. Very insightful. We really appreciate you coming on.

(29:29):

Oh, I appreciate it so much. This has been so much fun. I really, really do.

(29:33):

Awesome. Awesome. Well guys, thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and don't forget as always cash flow is king

(29:41):

To become part of Mr. Biz nation, follow him on all social media platforms or never miss a show by going to mrbizradio.com. If you prefer free video content, visit the Mr. Biz YouTube channel or check out his streaming channel, which is available on 100 plus streaming platforms at mrbiznetwork.com.