Dallas Travers: 0:23
Oh, Sonja, thanks for the invite. I’m excited to dig in.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 0:26
Absolutely so. I want to share a little background about Dallas for those of you listening, especially if you’re a coach, because you are in for a treat. So listen, if you’re a coach that serves everyday people, you need to know Dallas Travers. Her Ripple Effects System teaches you the exact steps to attract paying clients, build your list daily and then scale your business with a course, so you never, ever, ever, have to ask again what should I do today? All right, so let’s dig in. So, Dallas, I want to talk more about your program and that system that you have in place, and I kind of want to lead with two questions, one being just how did you start The Hive in the first place? And two, because you work specifically with coaches, how did you even get into focusing on coaches as a niche?

Dallas Travers: 1:12
Sure, thank you. All right, so I’m going to. If it’s okay, I’m going to answer the second question first, because I think it’ll lead into the first one. Yes, okay, so mainly okay. My very first business was a marketing service for actors. Then that just kind of evolved into coaching actors, because I’m not a former actor. I was an excellent career coach for them because I didn’t know the rules, so right. So then I was just using entrepreneurial skills and my own creative resourcefulness. Anyhow, I was helping actors get a lot of really incredible results, and by that I mean helping them find representation. They were booking work on their own, they were producing their own projects. It was a really, really exciting.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 1:56
They have to pitch themselves, kind of you know no different than entrepreneurs. They’ve got to get out there, it’s no different?

Dallas Travers: 2:01
Yeah, it’s no different, except actors face rejection more blatantly right, like in a more palpable way Right.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 2:10
It’s not an email that you just never got back, or a phone call it’s like no, we don’t want you, so yeah.

Dallas Travers: 2:16
Yeah, yeah, and we don’t want you either because of your talent or the way you look. So it’s, it’s brutal. It’s brutal, yeah, wow, anyhow. So, and I loved doing that work so much. And I loved working with actors because I would say 99% of the actors I met really were acting because they felt like it was what they were plopped on planet earth to do. It was purposeful work for them. That’s also why I like working with coaches. They have had some sort of lived experience, some sort of transformation on their own, which led them down the path to coaching, and it’s their purpose to help other people. So there are a lot of similarities. I love that. But my business became pretty successful working with actors. I kind of started a cottage industry that didn’t really exist, and so coaches started tapping me on the shoulder to say, hey, could you show me how you did that? So, kind of on the down low, I started mentoring other coaches, just one to one, out as I was leading my business serving actors and, as the entrepreneurial journey often goes, I, my own evolution led me to, in 2018, actually shutting my doors on the work I do with actors and mentoring coaches solely. Wow. So, and I started The Hive. So you mentioned the Ripple Effect System, which is the practice that I teach inside of The Hive. The Ripple Effect System is all about building your business out in layers, and the first layer, Sonja, is just private clients, like clients on tap. You know exactly what to do, so you’re not worried about clients leaving or where the next client will come from. Okay, so that’s what I did when I was serving coaches, right? I got private clients first, and then that grew into power groups, which for me is a group of four, right? So very small group coaching and I just over time, was able to develop and test a bunch of different tools and strategies with these clients. So I had a library of content that I’d been using with them, and then it just felt like it was time to scale and and serve people in a deeper way, but also in a broader way, and that’s how The Hive was born. Wow, yeah.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 4:31
You know, I think that’s a good point and that’s really cool to hear about how that ripple effect system works and the idea of layers, because I know when I’m in conversation with coaches, therapists, consultants you know people in those types of roles that are working with groups of people. They do start private, but usually you’ll hear the goal is I want to build a community and nowadays, with so much being available online, those communities don’t have to be in person. They can be virtual and they can be global. So that really makes a lot of sense in terms of how that system works.

Dallas Travers: 5:10
Thank you, and I find is a lot of coaches. They just see I’m going to call it hype and I don’t mean to sound negative, but differently, in the online space we are told the idea of scaling yes. So a lot of coaches I know buy a course about scaling and realize they don’t actually have the confidence or the expertise or you mentioned the community first in order to scale successfully. So the kind of high, slower burn in the day to day, but actually over time it’s much faster because you’re doing things in order.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 5:45
Yeah, and then another part of the system that you mentioned is that there’s eventually helping them get to the place where they can launch baby a course, and they’re building their list and moving along like that. How did it get to that space where you can look at a client and say, all right, you’re ready, let’s. Let’s move into the next phase of preparing you to launch a course?

Dallas Travers: 6:10
Yeah. So I think there there are. I’ll talk about three metrics. The first one is social proof. So inside the hive we develop a signature system and every coach has one. Most of us just don’t realize we have one. It’s the milestones that clients tend to reach through their journey working with us, and so what we need to do is identify that signature system and road test it with real people so that we begin to understand what’s the mindset that comes up for a client when they hit a certain milestone, what’s the obstacle that tends to follow that milestone. We really get an experientially, we get the full framework through working with private clients that then informs the content for your course. So you’ve got to have a signature system that is proven to work, I would say with at least six people, ok. The other piece that I think is a really important metric is a mailing list of 1,000 to 1,200 subscribers. That’s because, when you look at the metrics with online marketing, typically 1% to 3% of your email subscribers will invest in any scaled offering that you offer. That’s not the case with private clients. You can have no mailing list and a full private client roster, but when we’re scaling, that tends to be the number. So if you have a mailing list of I’m going to make math easy for myself 1,000 people, 1% of that is 10 students in your course. Wow, any less than that and you can start to feel kind of like a failure. If you have a mailing list of 500, that means five people getting in your course and for a lot of coaches that is not worth the work. So you can set the launch up to be successful by building a big enough community. And then I think the third piece is just confidence. And confidence comes through putting in the work, devoting the time, gathering success stories and testimonials and really experiencing yourself running a business that feels real.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 8:21
Wow, you hit on so many great points and I just want to recap on that for everyone listening, because you just laid out a very tangible way to almost kind of give yourself that litmus test like am I ready for this? Through having those three items ready and the confidence being a huge part of it. Now, confidence isn’t exactly taught, right? You can’t teach it People. You have it or you don’t have it. You develop it or it doesn’t develop. I want to ask you, just through your own personal journey, like what were some of the milestones or moments that you felt like this is helping build my confidence, even if it was before, when you were on the coaching side, working with actors?

Dallas Travers: 9:11
Yeah, that’s such a good question. Also, confidence is not a permanent state. I had to put weird barrettes in my hair today because my hair was not doing what I wanted it to, so my confidence is not where it was yesterday just because of my hairdo. So confidence is a moving target for sure.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 9:31
Well, it’s around. Yeah, that’s true.

Dallas Travers: 9:34
As I heard you reflect that back to me and I appreciate the question so much. Maybe a better word for confidence is self-trust, because I may not feel confident today, but I can look back at my track record at other moments when I doubted myself and see how I responded, and be able to trust myself to show up today, yeah. So for me, I think self-trust is key and the way that I anchor into self-trust is by making every decision through my values. Right, I think we can trust ourselves more when we let our values lead us, and Values I talk about this a lot but values, for me, make every decision Obvious, but not easy.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 10:21
Yeah right.

Dallas Travers: 10:22
I know exactly what I, what I will do, and it doesn’t always mean it’s the right path. So how do we cultivate confidence or self-trust? Again, those things I mentioned practice, putting in the work, doing the time, but also leading with your values, yeah, which is easier said than done sometimes, right?

Sonja Crystal Williams: 10:42
No, this is good it’s. It’s because mindset is a big part of everything we do as entrepreneurs and I think yeah, that’s a great word self-trust that we have to have it. I was having this conversation With someone else and the in the same group that you and I met in, and that conversation was truly around like, what are the things that you do to create self-trust, and then what happens if that trust is broken? Now do you repair it for yourself, not even trust with other people. So I think that is a really huge part of owning and operating a business that you really want to scale and grow over time.

Dallas Travers: 11:17
Yeah, yeah. And for me, self-trust is about I know I’m gonna come back Right and I I trust myself enough to know that, even if I sleep all day tomorrow and eat ice cream for dinner, I’m gonna come back around right so self-trust isn’t about being trust worthy even all the time right. It’s about knowing that when, when we fall, we will get back up.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 11:40
Yeah, we’re not perfect, Wow, Okay. So let’s let’s talk a little bit more, as we can kind of continue to peek around the curtain. So you’ve shared some things about the Ripple Effect System and how that works within your group The Hive. Let’s talk also just a little bit about as you’ve grown your business since 2018, you started and you’ve now looks like been on about a five-year journey. What are some of the ways? I guess are channels, and I think for you we’ve talked about your podcast being one of them but what do you feel like has really contributed to your growth and your success as you’ve been growing your community?

Dallas Travers: 12:17
Thank you for the question. If I had to pick one marketing channel that has made the biggest impact on my confidence, my client attraction, my bottom line, all of the things, 100% is my podcast, and if you would have told me three years ago that that would be what I would be telling you right now, I would not have believed you. If I had a regret, it would be that I didn’t start a podcast sooner. Yeah, it launched the summer of 2020. Okay, and this is true math. 100% of the people who apply for and join The Hive actually come through my podcast.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 12:57
Wow, oh boy, okay, you got to spill some secrets. How does that happen?

Dallas Travers: 13:01
Dallas, yeah, Okay, so a couple of simple things. The most important one is, for me, the format of the podcast. I call it podcasting for lazy people because I don’t have to do any prep. Yeah right, there’s my next lead magnet. So the format of my podcast is actually me coaching Hive members. So the reason that the podcast, I think, is such a lead driver is every listener hears me in action. They see themselves reflected in the person that I’m coaching.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 13:40
Yeah.

Dallas Travers: 13:41
And they leave every episode with tangible actions that they can take. So when folks come to a sales call, it’s funny because sometimes I’ll even say what questions do you have about the Hive? And their answer is I have no questions. I listen to your podcast and I’m like well, okay, you do have questions, let’s talk about it, but it’s because they really are in the experience of working with me and the format I think for any coach coaching as a podcast format is I highly recommend it. The other thing that I do is my weekly social media content is built around the podcast topic every week. Okay, because all roads for me lead to the podcast. If you listen to the podcast, it’s a matter of time until you either stop listening because I’m not your coach, yeah or you come into my program. So we all of our marketing just leads people back to listening to the show. And then I have commercials. This is the third thing everyone could apply. I have commercials on the show for my lead magnets, which is not revolutionary. A lot of podcasts do that right now. The podcast not only is this great experiential marketing tool, but it does drive leads to my mailing list.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 15:02
Wow. Who came up with the idea of launching the podcast? Did you hear about podcasts and one day say, look, I think I should start it? Or did a coach or mentor share that with you.

Dallas Travers: 15:11
That’s a great question. I was in a mastermind and it was actually shout out to Allie Ball. She’s been my accountability partner since we’re going on four years now. We meet every Monday for four years. She was a total stranger to me, but I met her inside of a program and she had a podcast, so I just saw that I trust her and I saw that what an impact it was making for her. I just didn’t want to have to craft episodes and I didn’t feel like having guest experts would really accomplish the goal I wanted to accomplish with a podcast. And then it was just through a conversation with some peers where the idea of coaching on the show became the format and then I was able to run with it pretty quickly from there.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 15:58
All right. One more question about the podcast, which is how do you? You’re the, in a sense, the talent, you are on the podcast, you’re the host, you’re hosting the calls. What’s happening behind the scenes? Do you have a marketing team? Do you have a VA? Are you doing it? What happens on the backside of that?

Dallas Travers: 16:18
Yeah, so we have a very tight SOP standard operating procedure for the podcast. My podcast producer her name is Suzy she from the moment someone applies to be on the show until the moment the episode airs, she handles all of that. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what actually happened.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 16:42
That’s where you want to be.

Dallas Travers: 16:45
Yeah, so she handles all of that. I do craft. I write the intros for the show I, and then I and then I craft the social media content and then delegate that to a VA who posts it. But in terms of the production, that was the other thing that held me back. Actually, I just couldn’t, didn’t feel like I could take the project on yeah, and then I realized, oh, I shouldn’t, I just need to show up and coach and then hire someone who can run through the tape and bring the podcast to people’s earbuds.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 17:15
Got it. Wow, what a great system. Wow, I mean it’s. I think it just makes so much sense and I’m so happy to hear how your community has and is growing, so that is awesome. Okay, I’m going to shift us into our lightning round, so I’m going to ask questions, just a few more, and these ones you can give rapid doesn’t have to be one word responses, but rapid responses. So I’m going to start with my first one, which is the story behind the name Dallas. I’ve met Austins, I’ve met Brooklyns, I’ve met you know, but I haven’t met a Dallas. What’s the story there?

Dallas Travers: 17:51
So I was born. I’m 46. I was born in January 1977. The soap opera premiered in September of 1976. So you cannot tell me that I am not named after that show. My mom will not admit it but I really believe it was in. It was like in the zeitgeist Right. But when I was born I was actually named Brandy for I don’t know 10 minutes or something. And then my mom looked down. They left her alone with me and she looked down and thought this is not a brandy, I’m going to name this kid Dallas. And it was quite controversial. Her mom could not stand my name. But I feel more like a Dallas than Brandy and I don’t mind being named after a television show. It’s fine.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 18:29
I think it’s super cool and that was an awesome show, so very cool, ok. Next question what’s something you can’t live without?

Dallas Travers: 18:42
I’m embarrassed to answer this, but the answer truly is Keith Morrison and Dateline podcasts. Yeah, that’s, and I’m not. I’m going to try to explain myself. There’s my answer.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 18:54
We go with it. All right. All right, cool, all right. What’s one piece of advice? It could be career, it could be personal, it could be health related, just anything. Just something really good advice that someone’s given you.

Dallas Travers: 19:12
My daughter’s kindergarten teacher said to us once and I can’t even really remember the context, but she said your children, what your children care about the most is that you’re striving. They don’t care that you’re getting it right, they care that you’re striving every day. And I really took that to heart and I say it often to my clients about how their clients actually feel too. What they care about most is that they see us striving, that’s good, that’s good, universal stuff.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 19:45
You never know if you get the best or most memorable advice from? Yeah, very cool, all right. One more question on the on the topic of advice for people who are kind of your peers and you mentioned even meeting with an accountability partner, super cool. So you all are kind of bouncing, I’m sure, thoughts and ideas off of each other. But just other business owners who are several years into the business, like yourself, or on the second go round of having another business, what’s a piece of advice that you would impart upon them based on your own journey and experience?

Dallas Travers: 20:23
Look for ways to practice unscalable marketing, unscalable, unscalable marketing. It’s especially with AI and all of the things that are funnels and all of the things right. People crave a personal connection. What I find is the unscalable marketing acts like a voice message, DM right or hosting my own sales calls. These things are the highest converting and therefore actually take less time to produce better, to produce better results than a lot of the automations that I have in place. I love that, and that’s Carrie Perry who told me that she’s a social media coach and I follow in her footsteps.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 21:08
All right, good, good, good advice, all right. So, Dallas, if people want to find out more about the program that you have in place and I think you also have a free guide, but any resources that you want to share, that we can drop in the show notes for our listeners and how people can find you.

Dallas Travers: 21:25
Yeah, sure, so we’re on a podcast. If you like podcasts, come and subscribe to mine. It’s called Coaches On A Mission. That’s the best place to get a lot of juicy knowledge from me, and then, if you have any questions, you can hit me up on Instagram. My Instagram handle is @dallastraversbizmentor.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 21:47
All right, awesome, Dallas. Thank you again so much for being here today, for sharing some of your secrets around how podcasting has been effective for you, and maybe we’ll have to have you back sometime in the future. And yes, everyone, please. I’ll drop a link to Coaches On A Mission, the podcast. I’ve been listening to it and I think it’s absolutely awesome. So thanks for being here today.

Dallas Travers: 22:07
Thanks for having me.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 22:18
All right.