Business Innovators Radio - Andre Gonsalves: How to Attract More Clients with Authenticity and Empathy

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Andre Gonsalves is a creative entrepreneur from Toronto, Canada. He runs a coaching business called Expert Coaches that helps coaches, course creators and experts get clients using social media. And the message he wants to share with the world is: “Stop hiding.”Learn more at: expertcoaches.coRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/andre-gonsalves-how-to-attract-more-clients-with-authenticity-and-empathy

Your To the Station of the planet Resistance is future The Revolution Has begun For listening to Revelepreneur Radio Helping you break the rules

And build the business you need For the life you want And now, broadcasting his pirate signal From somewhere beyond the status glow Here's your host Best Selling Author, Marketing and Media Strategist Ralph Brogden Hello and welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio.

It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I'm Ralph Brogden. I had a really interesting conversation with today's guest, and it really, I think, gets into some of the deeper psychological issues going on with people who are trying to market themselves and market their products and services on the Internet. We're talking about how to be authentic, how to be authentic, how to. how to create empathy in your messaging so that it's not all about you and all about what you're trying to accomplish, but getting into the hearts and the minds of the people that you are trying to serve and to help and to begin to speak their language and to do it in a really authentic way.

So today's guess is, I think, one of the best that I have seen be able to implement this to teach it to other people and to put it into practice. His name is Andre Gonzalez. He is a creative entrepreneur from Toronto, Canada. He runs a coaching business called Expert Coaches that helps coaches, course creators, and experts get clients using social media. And the message he wants to share with the world is stop hiding.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy my free-flowing conversation with Andre Gonzalez. your mind. You're listening to Rebelpreneur radio with Ralph Brogden. He's the one. www. www. www. Ralfrogden.com Hey man,

it's great to connect with you. You're doing some cool things here on Facebook. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I saw you connected with you and then I guess you saw some of my post or what happened with that because that's really interesting from my perspective. I downloaded your thing on, um, and read it word for word.

no BS guide how to get five clients in 30 days, which is refreshing because it's not like how to make a million dollars in three hours, you know, with this new website Gizmo. So I thought, well, that's achievable. That's doable for just about anybody. And I read it and it's like, yeah, that's great. So, yeah, I see what you're doing. I'm liking it. And I said, let's get him on the show.

Let's talk about it. Wow, because this is what I preach to all my clients is the power of just doing the basics, which is starts with content. And so when we say content, a lot of times people will think, oh, just your social media post. Right. But they don't know that once you learn content, this applies to your ads. This applies to your emails. this applies to your speaking engagements. This applies to your podcast appearances.

This applies to everything. Because what you've learned when you learn how to create content, because it sounds like, oh, anyone can create content, right? But what you're learning is how to be persuasive, right? And if you've taken my free training, you're learning a framework I call empathy content, right? Which is really a sneaky way of just me teaching people

how to be more empathetic and understanding. to the other person across the Zoom call or even the other person swiping up on their phone checking out your content. And so go into that person's head. How are they going to receive your content when they see you? Yeah, that's so refreshing.

So be hyper aware. It's so important. It's really refreshing because it's most of the messaging and marketing out there is all about me, all about my product, buy my stuff. And so empathy is,

getting out of your world and getting into the world and into the mind of your audience. What are their problems? What are their, what's the problems they have and don't want, the results they want and don't have? And they don't care about your program or about your product or your service. They don't care about your credentials or your degree. What they care about is, can you solve my problem and give me the result? So simplicity sells, complexity fails. And that's the biggest mistake people make is they make it too complicated. But I really like what you said. It is all about, it's in the communication.

And that's my area of expertise is strategic communication, especially when you apply communication in like a public health situation like we all had with the coronavirus. the failure to communicate clearly added to the problem, made things much worse because of the confusion around the communication. Same thing. You can confuse your audience, confuse the market, and they won't buy. Confuse people don't buy. So the challenge is how do we make it simple and make it about them? And I just got to say, you are doing a tremendous.

tremendous job doing that and teaching it to other people. I mean, that's really powerful. Yeah, that's the biggest problem I've seen. So the way I kind of got into this stuff is both my parents are real estate agents. And I live in a community where like everyone's a real estate agent. I live in a city where everyone's a real estate agent. And if you know anything about how real estate agents market, it's all about me. me, me, me. And they have the worst copy. The glamour shot. They have the worst slogans, the glamor shots. It's literally, they're not adding any value to other people's lives. And I would get so angry, like, even as a teenager when I started to learn about this stuff,

I would get so angry. Like, this is not providing me any value. Like, you're just telling me about you. Like, how do, why would I want to work with you? And so from then, I just kept on just growing and growing and growing and then just applying this empathy framework. work to everything. Yeah. And so there is a spiritual kind of aspect to it because it is, it is really, you know how Jesus, I don't know how much how Christian you are or whatever, but you know how Jesus says, treat others the way you want to be treated?

Yeah. Right. That's kind of one of these big slogans, right? Treat everyone the way they want to be treated. Right? And so we use language for where they're at, where they're. they can understand, right? My wife, she's a social worker.

She's a therapist. And they have a really beautiful saying I love, and it's meet people where they're at. Yep. Right. And so we don't meet people where we're at talking about our KPIs and our copywriting frameworks and our ROI, right? People are not going to know what we're talking about. Well, I see a lot of people they get out over the funnel, over the technique.

over the code, the website. And that just becomes an obstacle to, it becomes a barrier. That's about them and it's not about the audience. And the illustration I used was people are, marketers are broadcasting their message on WWD AM, what we do. in this very low bandwidth AM radio that's real crackly and staticy. When their audience is tuned in to WIIFM, what's in it for me? For me.

And that's in a different bandwidth, man. And that's clear and that's that's optimized at a different wavelength than down here of what we do. The challenge of communication. You've got to be on the same wavelength. And then once you are, to your point, you've got to speak the language. If your listeners are tuned in to an English program and they're speaking Spanish, or vice versa, there's not going to be any communication. So this is just basic stuff, but it's like we forget that. It goes out the window when we put on this marketing mindset and go out into the world.

How did you get into learning how to do this and then to, I know your background was in advertising, but tell us the story of you, how you came to be. So I was, I started very early in this as an online entrepreneur. I started when I was 24 and I don't, I'm not 24 anymore. I'm 41 now. So I've been an online entrepreneur for my whole life. almost half my life now. And right after university, the job I got was in insurance. And a big thing in insurance that they taught us was don't speak to the, don't speak in the insurance term jargons to the customers. And I took that with me when I started my online business because I didn't know what I was

going to do. So I just started a blog writing music reviews. And so this helped me tremendously get kind of like personality, bring personality into my writing. and write with an opinion. And that turns out to be one of the most important things you need to have in the year 2023 with your marketing is have a opinion, right? And so, and say, well, don't be boring. And so that has helped me tremendously. And I've been doing that since 2007. And so from that, I was able to launch, get into affiliate marketing, doing like insurance type of websites, all these things, learning ads. Then in 2012, I started my own agency. Start helping out local businesses, real estate agents, brick and mortar with their ads.

And it just all kept on building and building and building on top of each other. Cool. Cool. So what was, what, what triggered your transition from that to more of a coaching or helping coaches grow their business? What was the catalyst for that? So in 2019, I had a course. So I started dabbling with this idea of doing courses. And in 2019, I had a course for musicians on how to run Facebook and Instagram ads.

Right? Because I had also been a musician since I was 13 years old. So a lot of the sales and marketing stuff, I learned as a musician. And a lot of the, I was actually like an artist, like, like rapping. Okay. So I've been a wordsmith for a long time. Okay. And I would be selling my mixtape at the mall, like going up,

a lot of these kind of mindset issues that coaches and really any solopreneur has, I got over in my teens and early 20s. And so I had this course. It was just a course. It wasn't a coaching program. I didn't know what a coaching program was. But then I started finding out that people don't get the results they want just from a video course alone.

And so they actually need me to look at their ads and see what they're saying and how they're saying it. And so I realized, oh, they're not, they're, they're just taking my information, but they don't know how to implement it. And this is when I learned about coaching and why it's so powerful, because you actually get the, the coach or the instructor to look at what the hell you're doing wrong and then slap you on the head. You're like, no, bro, no, you're not just like this. Or you're not just saying it like this. Or you're not just writing like this. And so they were taking the information and doing and applying it in their way. And then they weren't getting the results. Right. It's sort of like how people think,

just because all the information's on YouTube, that's going to solve all their problems. Really, you need that instructor, especially for these complex things like marketing and advertising or anything, spirituality, anything you're trying to fix that you've been struggling with for years, you need that second set of eyes to go, no, bro, this is completely, like you're completely off here. And we see it every day, don't we? We look at stuff. And I would love just to be able to give someone a course.

and say, hey, if you do this module with five lessons, you'll get everything I know about it, and then you can go out and produce the same result. And I think a lot of courses are sold that way. Yes. Education and information is not the same as transformation and implementation. Yes. Yes. That's a beautiful, beautiful way to say it.

And so once I started to meet all these coaches, and I saw how bad their marketing was, but how amazing their information was and how transformational their information was and how helpful they are to the universe and to the world. It was like, whoa, I should start helping these people. So I naturally, I'm friends with like 100 coaches, like personal friends. And from that, it just grew. And so, and it's literally the same skill set, just having that judgment, that I, that I for judgment and knowing, like, I didn't actually, and the funny thing is, I didn't know what copywriting

was until 2018. So imagine I had been running ads since 2007. In all these industries, I didn't even know what the word copywriting was. I didn't study it at all. I just thought like, just go into that person's shoes. Oh, what would that buyer want? Okay, write for them. And then once I started getting into copywriting, I studied the greats like Gary

Halbert. What's that guy's name? John, he has a great book, too. I forgot his name. those type of copywriters. And I was like, oh, I'm already doing all of the things they're saying. They just kind of gave me more inspiration to go more into it. I think that helps because it, yeah, it gave you your own unique voice, your own unique style without trying to sound like somebody else.

But you're hitting on the right buttons. But it's you. It's your unique voice. And that's hard to teach. And that's why people will hire a copywriter. And sometimes they get the result they want. Sometimes they don't. When they don't, it's usually because the copywriter cannot reproduce the voice that is unique to the person behind the ad.

And there's a disconnect there. So, yeah, that's super when you can pull that off. It's for me, it took time. And so what I realized with coaches is marketing and mindset are really related because people have a trouble, trouble being their authentic self. And so because I had that same trouble. I hid, I didn't show my face online until the last two, three years. So what was that? Why would you hide behind your computer? I wasn't, I was writing. I was writing blogs and everything like that, but I wouldn't show my face

and YouTube videos on reels. I was just scared to be on camera. I was scared to talk on camera. Interesting. And once I had a spiritual awakening that took at least eight months to kind of figure out everything. And it totally unlocked me. So that's why I love all the mindset, spiritual coaches, life coaches. Because I find a lot of people, if they don't address that personal development issue,

they're not going to be able to spread their gift to the world. Absolutely. I'm literally the example of that. Yeah. Well, that's the first step. I teach people mastering your message. And it's the three rules of communication. Have something worth saying.

Say it well and say it often. A lot of people will go online running ads or posting social, whether it's paid traffic or organic that they're trying to generate. And they're saying it often, but they haven't figured out how to say it well. And then it's like, well, take a step back because you got to say it well before you can say it often or it's just going to be a mess. And then they don't know what to say because they haven't first figured out step one, have something worth saying. And I find that you have to have that mindset work installed. And it's an ongoing process.

It's not a take this, you know, three hour session and your mindset is, is clear. It's a daily adjustment, but you've got to get at least some clarity around who you are, who you help, what is the value that you create for other people, how does it benefit them? And then that becomes the basis of having something worth saying. It's not about finding something worth saying about myself. It's finding out what are the problems I solve, what are the results I create for people, how does that add value to them? And then now I've got something worth saying, which means there's something somebody will listen to. Now we can learn to say it better and better.

And once we really dial that in, now we can share it with the world. We can blow it up. And if it works with free traffic, then it will work with paid traffic. And that's in my mind how the progression goes from who am I, what am I here to do, who am I here to serve? And then out of that, this message begins to blossom and to grow. grow and to bear fruit so you can you can impact the world with your gift and and very similar I think to to your approach with people yeah for me so for me I had to I see it as the way I

create music as well is it's a piece of art it's like a piece of clay and then you be sculpted the thing is I already have a lot of training to know what I want to sculpt and how it should be So my refinement process is really good, right, is dialed in. And so what I do is show people my frameworks and critique them and even edit their content, right? And show, because a lot of times people don't know their content is the issue. Right. And by content again, I mean their messaging. Right.

And so once they see like, oh, this is how it could be written. Then that modeling, they see that role model. Then they get it. Oh, I don't have to say all of this. Oh, I don't have to be so salesy, right? I don't have to talk about myself, right? And so you have to learn how to talk about yourself in a way that's of service to others. Yeah, that's a trick for people.

So you've got a whole process you go through to help people. Yeah. To help people do that as most coaches do. So with the people that you work with, and we probably touched on this already, but if you could put your. finger on one thing that seems to be the big problem that you're solving for people over and over again. What would you think that big problem is? It's definitely the empathy, their level of empathy, because for a lot of them, their transformation was years ago, right? So I was just talking to

one of my clients. He's 69 years old. His transformation, when he learned, what he learned was probably 30 years ago. So he can't even remember what it was like 30 years ago not to know the information that he knows now because his ideal clients are people who do not know his world. So it's like he's speaking English again to people that only know Spanish. Yeah. Interesting. I hadn't considered that.

Especially for people listening who you've been at this for years and years and years, it's easy to forget what it feels like to not know what you know. And then you begin to bring in jargon into your message or just using terms that nobody else understands. Or you make a lot of assumptions. And don't you think that imposter syndrome is kind of, that's kind of a symptom of what we're talking. talking about is you had your transformation, whatever your Eureka revelation moment was, your epiphany, your metamorphosis. And then you go on and years go by and you're helping people with this, or you want to help people with that, but you start thinking, well, who am I? Well, you start thinking,

well, what do I have to offer or I'm not an expert? And you forget that, you forget that you are so way higher in your development than the people that you're trying to reach, you only need to be one level higher. You know, if you're in fifth grade, you're an expert compared to somebody in fourth grade, but you're actually probably in master's in graduate school and you're saying, well, I don't know if I have anything to offer to high school kids. Well, yeah, you do. But you got to bring it down, bring that messaging down.

And you can always bring it up when you're, working with someone, but that's an interesting twist. And I think that, I think you're, you're right about that. If you lose track of your own transformation and you forget what it's like before, so how do we fix it? Just go back mentally, psychologically? Well, it's difficult. It's because for some clients, say they're a trauma coach and they've dealt with sexual assault. So for them to go back to the sexual assaults, that leads to burnout for a lot of them. So they have to learn how to compartmentalize that sexual assault and their mindset has to be in a great place to talk about those dark times because that type of content may help people, right? And they're talking

about it in an empowering way. Yeah. Right. And so, but even to go back to that dark darkness is very difficult. So for some people, it's just not possible, like depending on what your program is, it's very difficult to talk about trauma. Yeah. You know, unless you really developed from it. So you, and that, that again, goes back to a personal development issue. Yeah. Right.

Right. You're not taking your, you're not taking your content personally, which is something a lot of people do. Right? They take their content personally, whether it gets a lot of likes or comments or whether it gets leads or clients. Yeah. So you're saying you shouldn't even look at that in terms of your self-worth or, you know, your mindset. Your approach is, I've got something to say, I'm going to put it out there. I don't care if anybody likes it or not. Is that the approach? That's the destination, but nobody's

going to start there unless you're already developed at that level. Even with me, I did not start there, right? And as you said, I think earlier, is like layers and layers get peeled off until you get more and more authentic. And even with me, if I'm, if I don't sweat a little bit, before I hit the publish button, then I know that post is not going hard enough. Right? I know I'm not growing enough. I know I'm not being vulnerable enough, right? Because vulnerability is courage, right?

A lot of us learn that from Brunee Brown, right? And so that is such an important piece to add into your copy. That will help you resonate and be more relatable to your ideal client. Because a lot of times coaches, experts, consultants, they want to be on the mountaintop, doing their mountaintop proclamations. And everyone at the bottom with the people who they can help are like, I can just see this guy's nose hair. And they're not relatable at all, right?

So for me, that's why I inject a lot of humor into my stuff. Because that keeps me in the present moment, keeps me grounded and allows me not to take myself too seriously. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think you're really hitting on all the buttons there. The website is expertcoaches.co, dot, CO, if you want to check out Andre and his work and see videos of testimonials and people that he's working with. So we've talked about empathy. You've also used the words relatability.

You've also talked about authenticity. All of these are wonderful words. How can our listeners, be more mindful of this and begin to, I don't want to say inject it into their marketing because then it sounds like a tactic. And this isn't a tactic. Being real is being real. How can we implement this in our life, in our business, in our messaging? How do we, how can we be more mindful of being relatable and accountable and or authentic, empathetic, and relatable. How do we do that? One of the best ways I found for doing this is turn your purpose or your business into a mission.

And so once it's mission oriented, you don't care about how you look on camera, right? You don't even care how you sound on camera. You don't have to edit, super edit your videos, right? because you're like, this is for these people, if they don't, if they don't get it, like, I screwed up, okay? But this is not for me. It doesn't matter any, I don't need to put on makeup. I don't need to doll myself up, right? Because a lot of people stop at the dolling themselves up phase, right? Especially women.

Shout out to all my women. I know how it is. And so that prevents them from being their authentic self, that alone, that ego, right? So really what you're talking about is ego work. And that's something really deep. I'm not a spiritual coach or mindset coach. But there is mindset stuff I do teach in spiritual stuff I teach. That is a big part of this stuff.

Because what we're talking about is becoming the magnet, right? Not implementing these lame copywriting frameworks that these other copywriters do. And anyone who's trained in copyrighting can see like they're just copying a framework. Yeah. Right? That's not interesting to us. And that's not interesting to anyone because you're just doing like paint by numbers. Mm-hmm.

Right? We want something real. Like have you seen that movie The Whale? The Whale. I don't think so. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great movie. It won so many Academy Awards a couple years back. But he was an English writer and he was like this super, super fat dude.

And he could only do classes through Zoom. And he didn't show his face at all. But his whole thing was he just wants people to write real shit and be super out there. And he would get so mad about it. And I was like, am I turning into this guy? I think I might be turning into this guy. So just be real. Just be real. But the thing is, you have to know what the real you is.

And that takes a ton of work because you, you will, a lot of, for 99% of people, they're listening to their ego. They think their ego is the real of them. Right. And so once you do the ego work to get rid of the ego and you see the real you, you're like, okay, let's go. Now I'm mission oriented. Now I can be free. Now I'm unlocked. Yeah, I like that. So then becoming mission oriented or turning your mess into your message, that gives you the purpose outside of yourself and helps you.

I think that's a really good answer to overcome a lot of the ego problems, the self-centered problems that helps you get out of yourself and focus on something that's bigger than you. and that empowers you to be able to make a difference, make a transformation in people's lives. Because who would you want to learn from? The guy whose mission is it to help you or the guy who he's just doing it for a paycheck. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Powerful, powerful distinction. What are you working on right now, Andre, that's got you really excited? I'm just doubling down on this mission now. Like as I, as the years have gone by, it just been and getting clear and clear and clear. And so me just developing myself more into a leader.

Like I'm really just focusing on optimizing my leadership skills. And I think that will just take care of everything else. So not only being a leader in my business, but also with my family and my community, to employees, with my kids, right? Just optimize for leadership and reputation. Right? Don't optimize for conversions in your Facebook ad manager. Right?

Optimize for leadership and reputation. And that is what makes brand. And brand, if you develop your brand, that's going to lower your cost per acquisition by so much. Like you won't have to look in your ads manager. Just keep running ads, but you won't have to look in there anymore. Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, it's been a real pleasure to connect with you. I'm glad that we were able to find each other on Facebook. and how these things happen, I don't know, but that's the nature of social media is you caught my eye. And I said, I like your energy. I like what you're doing. Keep up the good work.

And thanks for sharing your wisdom with us on Rebelpreneur Radio. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Ralph. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelpreneur.com.