This is Part 2 of my interview with The Online Legal Guy, Bobby Klinck (though we're not talking much about legal stuff!)

I wanted Bobby to share his story because he's a creative, intelligent guy who's brain never turns off!

And in the middle of his business growing, growing, growing, he realized he was over capacity. He'd built a business that was successful, but it was taking everything out of him & his team.

In Part 2, we pick up in March 2020, when his business is about to explode in popularity and growth - and the subsequent results of what that meant for Bobby & his team (and his clients!)

(I'd bet this might even describe YOU! Your brain won't stop creating!)

If you ever feel like the online world is UNSUSTAINABLE, you'll enjoy this entire conversation!

Our conversation was filled with SO much wisdom woven into his stories & rebellious honesty that I cut it into 2 parts to make it easier to consume.

Listen to Part 2 to hear about how his business blew up - then how he had to wrangle it back into control...

What he's doing now that feels more "on center",

PLUS a ton about how to clear up your messaging, how to lift off the weight of what "you're supposed to do", and how to create strategic & purposeful content!

You can find Bobby today as The Online Legal Guy at www.bobbyklinck.com - where he's got tools galore to help keep you safe in your business!

Connect with Bobby

Website: www.bobbyklinck.com

Special Offers:
https://bobbyklinck.com/courseguide/ (How To Create Course Terms)
https://www.bobbyklinck.com/pp  (Free Privacy Policy)

Links Mentioned

Hubspot Academy
https://academy.hubspot.com/

Interview Connections
https://interviewconnections.com/

Amy Porterfield Podcasts
https://www.amyporterfield.com/2018/11/bobby-klinck/ 
https://www.amyporterfield.com/2018/04/gdpr/ 

Entrepreneurs On Fire Podcast
https://www.eofire.com/podcast/bobbyklinck/

 

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Full Transcript

Bobby Klinck

The day that my ads started for this course launch - it was a Wednesday that is very memorable. It's the day that Tom Hanks announced he had COVID, the day that the NBA paused all their games, and it was the day that the President announced that the shutdown of anyone coming from Europe was coming at the end of the week.

That was the day that I started promoting a webinar like I don’t know if this is gonna be great, but it worked out. All that happened in 2020, kind of, you know, doing this small group coaching program and these things then we did this live event at the end of 2020.

I don't know if you mentioned it here, but we had talked about BOMU, which is Badass Online Marketing University which started as this idea with my integrator in the summer of 2021, where we said if we're gonna hire someone who didn't know what we do, how the heck would we even train?

I didn't really have a good answer to that, and so we came up with this idea. Again, here's where I think you would say I was ahead of my time. I had this idea that people don't really want to pay for information or for a course, they want to pay to help with implementation.

So we had this idea that we're going to create this free university with courses that were as high quality as you would get in any paid course, that would teach people marketing, and we're doing this behind the scenes.

We did a virtual event at the end of December of 2020, and that's where we announced this BOMU, but I did a classic Bobby thing, which was I was a little bit of a prankster, so if you ever go to one of these three day live events, there is a very clear structure, you're gonna get pitched something. The pitch is going to come on day two, in the middle, you know, kind of afternoon day two, and you're gonna have a full day afterwards.

I was doing this thing and I got to be very meta when I was coaching about marketing and business, I would be very meta, I would say, watch what I'm doing, because I'm doing what I'm gonna teach you to open about that.

Day one goes great then day two, I announced that we're creating this new program called BOMU. I went through it, and I presented it on day two like you would do a value stack and went through all this great stuff. People are literally saying, how do I sign up? I've got my credit card ready? And I said, but more on that later, now let's go to lunch.

I did that then that afternoon, I presented my coaching program. That day, I think we had, I don't know, four or five people sign up for my coaching program, which at the time was $7,000 for the year. Day three comes, I have more people trickle in, and then at the end, like literally the last session of the day, I haven't come back to BOMU, and people are so confused, and that's when I announced it's free.

Within, like, 10 minutes of making that announcement, we saw, like, I won't get the numbers right, but however many people had signed up for coaching before that, we saw an equal number of literally coming by in the next 10 to 15 minutes after I made that announcement. People were saying, holy crap, if this guy is gonna give us this for free, what’s the paid program going to be like.

That was kind of like, in some sense, I was a victim of my own success. That was the first six-figure launch I'd ever had in this coaching program. I think we fell just short of $100,000 day, but you know, still pretty darn good when you think about that.

It was this amazing success, but then we got into having to do it. Again, I didn't mind coaching - the coaching was fine, and I enjoyed all that. But I'll just be honest, like, nothing ever really matched that energy that first day because part of it was I was running a team of four people, plus some VAs and some other contractors.

But I was running a team before people who were running this coaching program that involved, I won't remember how much, but like probably six hours or seven hours of my time every week.

It involved, like, separate from the coaching, we had committed to creating courses for BOMU, so we're creating those courses and those trainings and doing all that stuff. And by the way, what are you hearing here? What was I not doing during any of this time period?

Jen Liddy

No legal stuff at all? Right?

Bobby Klinck

None of my content was about legal stuff.

We would do one or two promotions over the year, but it was just kind of over here in the back, and I was doing all this stuff. In the end of 2021, we repeated, we did that event - it was a much smaller turnout for the event.

I think a part of that was in 2021, people love virtual events because it was something to do. So we sold into our coaching program, this past year's program was about the same size. But we were doing the same kind of thing, and it was mid-2020 that it just hit me this is not sustainable, and it wasn't sustainable.

We were running too hard, we were pressing too much, we were trying to do too many things, and the really kind of the breaking point was we decided to sell our house and move from DC proper into the Maryland suburbs.

I won't bore your audience with this, but it was a nightmare. The process was a nightmare - everything that happened, there was a ton of stress, and then even the move. So all of a sudden, I was kind of absent from the business - I would show up for coaching calls, I would do those things, but I was kind of having to let my team do everything else.

It was putting way too much stress on them, and it just kind of hit me that I had built this business that I couldn't be absent from, like, even for things like that without putting too much stress on my team, and I said this just doesn't work.

Jen Liddy

It's like you built yourself a job.

Bobby Klinck

Well, not just a job - a high-pressure job.

The highest pressure job possible, and all of these things I just said, I don't want this. So we tried to figure out what it was, and by the way, separately, I had created a membership for which the idea for that was the coaching.

So in 2021, the first year of the coaching, I'd kind of discovered that part of the problem was a lot of people who joined the coaching program weren't ready for coaching. What I mean by that is they didn't have a business and built the foundations enough that it made sense for them to pay me or anyone else that kind of money.

I'm going to create a membership, which is kind of the lower tier, to get people to close that gap so they can get to the point they need it. I’m running a membership and a group coaching program and doing all this marketing and creating content doing - all this stuff separately.

It was just so much, and so I started talking with my integrator sometime during the summer, and I said this isn't sustainable, what can we do?

We toyed with combining the two, the coaching and the membership, into a single program. We toyed with the idea of shifting back to the first business stuff that I was really known for, which is email. I've written a book and launched the book.

The book content was already out by the time we'd made all these other decisions or not the content, but we were already in the process. We talked about it, but when I really thought about it, the problem was none of those things was going to solve the ultimate problem, which had a lot of things.

My message was fractured.

All of a sudden, I was, I was no longer the online legal guy I was. My messaging was I help serve first entrepreneurs build and protect business? And what the heck does that mean?

Jen Liddy

It’s word salad.

Bobby Klinck

People are literally confused.

I think the tagline on my website, if you go to the top, it says, “Hey, I'm Bobby. help entrepreneurs protect their online businesses quickly, easily, and affordably.”

People know what that means.

Jen Liddy

Yes, and they don't have to learn anything to do it.

They don't have to, like, take a class or a course or a mini course or anything. They can buy it and download it and plug and play what they need.

Bobby Klinck

Right.

There's all of that stuff, which is now it's very easy for me to say, what do I do?

But also, let me be clear, Bobby's going to Bobby, and what I mean by that is I'm always going to have a big vision. When I was talking with my team, it was after we made the announcement, after we're doing this, we're kind of doing our planning.

My vision is that we become the go-to resource on all things legal for online business owners. When it says, that includes to get answers to things that we don't have a paid offer for. The reason for that is I understand if people say what is the legal side and say go to Bobby, then when they need this stuff that I do sell total sell?

Jen Liddy

That's always been part of your philosophy is a lot of goodwill and a lot of information sharing in a very transparent way, so that doesn't surprise me about you.

Bobby Klinck

It's funny you say that because when I think about, you mentioned goodwill because goodwill is one of these terms that people with a business background understand what goodwill is.  Goodwill is one of the most important assets that a business has.

If you want to know why Tiffany and Company can sell that bookmark paperclip for $1,500 - it's because of their goodwill. It's because they built a brand, they built expectations, they built all of those things, and that value can then affect your pricing.

If I build all this goodwill, guess what? I like to say that, well, the way I try to position my business is I am Costco. I'm not the cheapest. I'm not the most expensive, but you know, you're gonna get value. When you come with me, you know, you're gonna get quality, and it's going to be worth every penny and more.

That's the way I wanted to approach things, and as I build goodwill, guess what, people won't think twice about my price. If another lawyer is out there selling stuff more cheaply because they don't really necessarily trust that person, whereas they trust me.

Jen Liddy

That's right.

It's ironic, well, I don't think it's ironic, I think that people think it's ironic that the more truth you tell, and the more rebellious you are, and the more you kind of rage against the online machine that has been built that it repels people who don't want to hear that message anyway.

We're never gonna get through to those people, but it really just endears you to them. The other thing, you know, if this is what's happening with his low-cost stuff, and it's so effective, imagine what the higher-cost stuff is like, those are just things that we can build in.

I really am always trying to get people in their content to be more concerned with their voice and how they show up for their audience, meeting their audience's needs, which doesn't mean giving everything away, but it does mean finding out what your voice is, and really getting clear on your messaging.

I think that with this turn back, you've done a great job of being super transparent about this is why I did it, and this is what it looks like now.

So now that you're kind of in this lane, and it's 2023 - how are you feeling? What's going on with the business? How's the messaging happening?

Bobby Klinck

It's great because I'll just tell you, when my team and I formally made the decision, even before we did announce it literally, I felt a weight lift.

Once I made the decision, but again, I'm one of those people once I make a decision, the decision is made I don't look back. When I made the announcement, people were happy people and were saying nice things. A lot of people said, “Well, I'm sad for me, but I'm very happy for you, and this is clearly the right thing.”

Really the other thing that I, since we're talking about content here, the other thing that I think needs to play into this is we had made a push on legal content early last year and saw some amazing things.

Right now, if you go out and search for certain terms like legal templates, you’ll find my website, and it hovers around the top 10 on a Google search for legal templates.

Now, you might say, top 10, what's the big deal? Okay, fine, but let's be clear, there's things like LegalZoom and like really big behemoth companies out there who I am up there with them.

We found that the Privacy Policy, which I give away my privacy policy template for free, most lawyers charge hundreds of dollars for theirs.

I did that as a strategic decision, you know, I like to say good online marketer,I hope people don't take this the wrong way, they are kind of like drug dealers. Don't be a drug dealer, by the way, being a drug dealer is really bad, but we give people a taste.

That taste is then what makes them say this is good and so I figured that's the way what to do on privacy policy. Well, we rate for that, too, and yesterday, at one point, I went on, I use a tracking software called Hieros because it'll really help you get granular tracking of where traffic sales are coming from.

My last three sales, which at the time was like $1,900, for those sales, were all Google organic. And I said, again, can I rail against the machine a little bit. In the online marketing space, again, more marketing malpractice in that some of the people who have a budget, who have a team, and who have all that have put zero effort into SEO and search engine optimization.

I'm not saying that should be the only thing where you should put all of your things but there's a value in a blog? Those things are valuable, and when we think about content now, in my mind, I think two big buckets of content.

One is the attraction content, that's the SEO of how am I going to get people to hear about me in the first place? And then the other is the nurturing content to move people who already know me further along, right.

I think a lot of people because when we hear content, someone had said, you have to create some form of content, and it can be a podcast, or blog, or whatever. When I was starting, I said, well, talking is easy for me, I'm gonna create a podcast. But no one really taught me at that point that a podcast is pretty crappy at building awareness and attracting new people.

Jen Liddy

Unless it can be highly searchable.

Bobby Klinck

Yes, but again, I guess here's my question.

When I go onto a podcast app, I'm never searched. I go and find a podcast because someone suggested it to me.

Jen Liddy

Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting to think about how your users or your listeners are getting to your podcast.

Bobby Klinck

Very little of podcast discovery is by search.

And again, this is one of those little things I said, a blog, a YouTube, and all of that stuff is search, right? I mean, there's a lot of optimizing for awareness, but a podcast.

Again, you could maybe do a podcast in a certain way to make it searchable to make it all those things, but you have to be very conscious about and strategic. But even with SEO like, so right now, on my plate that I'm working on, as I'm creating a bunch of different posts.

Some of them are meant to be SEO optimized, some of them aren't so for example, I'm creating a page, I'm creating something called Copyright 101: The Ultimate Guide for Online Business Owners. I don't think that's gonna get me a lot of search traffic.

But I think having a Copyright 101, a trademark 101, a trade secrets 101, and an accessibility 101, like all of these guides, will be the kind of thing that when people get into my world. They'll go further and further down, and so I think of it in those two buckets, not a single bucket. 

I think this is the thing when one of the last things I did and I created this thing, which I believe is truly valuable, but it was like I came up with it as part of like thinking about stuff soon before I decided to not, or to kind of close out the marketing. I created something, and there is this concept in business school and the startup world. It's called the Business Model Canvas, I think, or something like that. It's this thing where you put in horrible order because you literally don't go from one side to the other.

You kind of feel this one, and then that will be it's a way to basically put your business model on a single piece of paper so you can kind of see it together. Some of the stuff just is not relevant to their suppliers and stuff like that.

So I created one that was for knowledge brands like us. People are selling information services, courses, memberships, coaching any of that stuff, and I created this whole thing. The important part of it was understanding how a decision over here about my product affects these things I do over here.

But then also understanding, okay, when I'm creating content, it needs to fit one of these goals, I need to understand why I'm creating. Let me give you a very content-specific podcast example - you have to understand what is the goal of the content of your podcast. Is the goal of your podcast your product? Or is it an acquisition channel?

If it's your product, then you're going to have ads paid for by other people but guess what, if your podcast is not your product, you almost certainly should not have ads as part of your podcast that's really insect ads to your own product.

Jen Liddy

That is really interesting.

I love that you broke it down like that, and I don't think this is again where my brain doesn't like my brain needs your brain. I've always been resistant to external ads because my podcast is not my product. My podcast is information dissemination and so I'll talk about things like this thing that I have coming up or how you can get onto my list.

But I've never I've only intuitively known that, but I love that you have quantified it for me.

Bobby Klinck

When you think of your podcast as part of my acquisition channels, not my product, it makes sense that, hey, this is marketing for my products. So yes, I have ads again, when you listen to my podcast before I close it down - I had some kind of call to action every one. It was sign-up for BOMU, and it was all leading people back to you.

And so again, this is where you have to understand what is the role that this particular thing I'm doing fits in my overall business model? Once you start doing that, you say, okay, and by the way, that allows you to do less, create less, spend less time on things.

For example, and again, I hope you don't get mad at me, I don't worry about creating weekly content. That's not because I don't think content is important but because the whole I mean, again, well, let me ask you this, and I'm not talking about my email.

What is the rationale for creating a new blog post, podcast, or video every single week From a content perspective? What are people telling you?

Jen Liddy

That's an interesting question, I actually like to write so for me, creating my email is fun for me. It's a way to kind of be present with my subscribers on my email list and be sharing something of value or connection with them on a regular basis.

So when it's time for me to sell something, I'm not like, hey, I know, I've been gone for a while, but here's my show, and I have this thing for you.

I feel like it actually for me, I view content, regular content creation as creating goodwill.

Bobby Klinck

I think for email, that is 100%.

I think for a podcast, that can be 100% true, but like once you shift once I shift and said, look, my primary form of content is now a blog. I don't know about you, but I'm not subscribed to any blog, and I'm like, I'm gonna go read it every single week.

So I view content now as I batch stuff out, and I'm not going to release it all on the same day. Guess what, I'll release Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you know, hit a blitz of content out.

Jen Liddy

Plus, to write a blog, to add an SEO-rich blog to write a good, juicy blog that's going to be found. It takes a lot longer to write that blog than it would take for me and you to just have this conversation from your podcast. So timewise, capacity-wise…

Bobby Klinck

And that's definitely true.

Once I realized that this content, this blog is not nurturing my existing audience, it is an attraction and awareness - that changes the cadence. I can think of the cadence in terms of that and say, what is going to serve that purpose, rather than everything else, and the way my brain works, it's gonna be way easier for me to maybe batch a bunch during the week.

Depending on the length of a big long one, it's gonna take me a long time, but a shorter one that I mix in that is a supporting piece, I could create, I don't know, in a few hours, so I can easily create maybe 10 pieces in a week.

I'm really gonna create 10 pieces a week but then put them out over 10 weeks. Why not, you know, literally release those 10 pieces in 10 days, and then all that's out there for Google to see and all those.

Jen Liddy

Well, that's because you're using it as an attraction with SEO-rich keywords.

I don't think that until people really parse that out in their brain. Like, I don't want content to just be something you do to cross it off the list that has to be strategic, and that's what you're talking about.

Bobby Klinck

Exactly.

That's the thing for a long time, and I did this for a long time, I just created a podcast because I was told I was supposed to create a piece of content every week. So I was creating a podcast with a new episode every week and before I closed things down, I had decided to do my podcast differently.

I was going to do seasons, and I was going to do seasons, like the Netflix style. They released them on Saturday, so people could listen to it whenever they wanted, but, again, this was more me thinking of, okay, this is how I can give the most value.

Part of the reason I was doing that was we were going to have a pillar page for every season because every season was gonna have a theme. The first one was email, which makes sense. I was gonna do one on strategy and think about their strategy, and so my point was, hey if I think of this as a project, I can actually give more value to my audience.

And also, have it be something that people will come back to.

Jen Liddy

It's sticky content in that way.

Bobby Klinck

Let's be honest, with most podcasts, you release an episode, and all 90% of the listeners are gonna come within the first probably 30 days it’s out unless something happens unless it gets featured somewhere.

For the most part, people don't go back now you'll have the people who find your podcast and bend your back catalog, but it's not this ongoing thing. I wanted to think of it differently, say, well, if I create an email series, a strategic thinking series, a content series, if I did that all the sudden, again, this was in my business marketing coaching, I was going to have all of these pillar pages that have immense value that people will listen to over and over again and it gives it a longer life.

I was thinking about content finally, strategically, instead of checking off lists.

Jen Liddy

Oh, God, I feel like we could talk about this forever.

How can you circle back to your expertise now? How can people get access to your templates and get into your world so that they can hear some of the real talk that you have to say and also benefit from, you know, the legal expertise that you have?

Bobby Klinck

Yeah, I mean, the simplest way is just my website, https://bobbyklinck.com/.

I am not one of the things I tell people - I'm not into creative naming. There was a little bit with my BOMU with Badass Online Marketing was kind of a brand cut for the most part, what I say is what I get.

So that's the first place to start, we've got information there, we've got our templates, we've got various freebies, we're going to be creating new freebies on a regular basis.

We're going to be creating slowly, but surely, I'm gonna be creating all of those. Think of them as guides but basically these pillar pages, copyright, trademark trade secrets, privacy - all of those things we will eventually have those built out as well.

So you'll have an educational piece, if you want to learn, you don't have to, but if you want to learn, if you don't understand that, that'll be there too. That's the easiest way, plus you get on my list a lot of different ways there.

I would tell you about social but honestly social I’m hit or miss.

Jen Liddy

Yeah, yeah, I get it, you know, and it's just so obvious that your brain can't stop creating.

That's what makes it so interesting to listen to you and to be around you, so I want to just say thank you so much for this conversation. I love how clear you've made everything, and I also love the kind of permission and the clarity that you've shared about your journey.

I know that for me when I was closing down my membership in the Fall, these were hard decisions. For the people who are listening, whether it's an offer that's no longer feeding you or, you know, a way of doing something or channel that you're on that isn't that is not strategically working for you, it's like the best thing you can do is, is have that hard conversation with yourself and like, almost like be a rebel against what everybody is telling you and make a shift.

Bobby Klinck

So look, I know you're trying to close things out, but I want to be clear that sometimes your business is going to be boring. Just because you're bored with something does not mean you should close it down.

When I made this announcement, a lot of people asked if this was a statement about business coaching or marketing. It is not.

If that's what I had and that was like the only thing on my plate, I would be going all in on that, and I feel I can make it work. It was profitable - this was a decision where I had this other cash cow easier to run business over here. But not only that, like, let's just be honest, an area where I have true expertise. Like my business coaching, I was like, now I'm in the process of getting an MBA. But for a long time, I was just teaching stuff that I knew intuitively without really having any true credentials or anything like that.

And, look, I'm weird - I think that actually learning stuff is important before you're teaching. That was why I made the decision - it was not because I thought business coaching is bad or marketing coaching is bad. I was choosing between two things, and so I want people to understand that, again, you don't need my permission, you don't need Jen's permission, you don't need anyone's permission.

But don't I think one thing I see people do is they get bored and so they moved to the next thing.

Jen Liddy

I love that you make this distinction.

Because when I made the choice, it was not out of boredom. It was almost burnout - different from yours.

But I really wanted to have this conversation because I think not enough people tap into their intuition or tap into the realities of what are going what's going on with them. But yeah, it's different than boredom.

I'm so glad you said that.

Bobby Klinck

Yeah.

Even like even burnout, I think my first question would be, is there a way I can do this and not be burned out, rather than burning it all down. And again, I'm not talking about closing a particular product or something like that.

We've seen a lot of people who kind of just burn it all down, like, they have like, something's going on, they burn it all down. That may or may not be the right move, but that should be a decision you definitely ruminate with and sit with for a long time, not one that you do on the spur of a moment.

I would just encourage people to understand that business isn't always going to be fun business isn't always going to be the thing that lights us up. But it shouldn't be the thing that makes us feel crappy, and there's kind of a distinction somewhere in there that you'll find you say, here's when I know it's not right.

Jen Liddy

Yeah.

It's almost like you don't want to make emotional decisions, but you have to tap into your emotions to make those decisions.

Bobby Klinck

Yeah, I think that's a great way of putting it.

Yeah, you have to make an analytical rational decision, but your emotions can factor into that. Like, at some point, I was like one of the last boot camps I did for my coaching program, we walked through how to, like, find the right scalable product.

I hadn't even thought about this, but like one of the things that someone suggested, because I wouldn't talk about, like, does it excite you, but that should be part of the analysis. Now, it shouldn't be the only thing you shouldn't do something that is a horrible product nobody wants because it excites you over a good profitable product that doesn't excite you as much.

But it's definitely a factor that should come into the analysis, but also recognize it should be a long-term excitement, not a I'm excited about this right now.

Jen Liddy

Which creative entrepreneurs sometimes find it hard for them to suss that out because everything feels exciting and creative to them all the time.

Yeah, I love talking to you, Bobby. Thank you so much - please go check out Bobby at https://bobbyklinck.com/ . As you can tell, he's got a lot of gems and is coming up with more because he can't stop creating.

So go check him out and thank you for listening, I will see you all next week.

Bye.