Stacey Hylen shares her SASE method, the upsell question that grew one client's sales 48% in a month, and how to find hidden profits without working longer hours. Built for solopreneurs and SMB owners.
GROWTH PILLAR: Sales & Revenue
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: Actionable insights, hard-won lessons, real growth strategies
Most business owners think more revenue means more marketing spend. Stacey Hylen shows the opposite.
In this episode of Knack 4 Business, Stacey shares how a single upsell question grew one client's sales by 48% in a single month. No new ads. No new staff. No new product. Just one question at the register.
Stacey is an internationally recognized business growth strategist, certified AI consultant, and former senior coach for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes Business Mastery. She helps established entrepreneurs find hidden profits, attract their perfect clients, and scale without burnout.
In this conversation she covers:
Stacey's upcoming book Hidden Profits, More Clients and Cash drops soon. Grab the custom GPT and the early-list spot at moreclientsandcash.com.
Connect with Stacey Hylen
Mentioned in this episode
Co-host: Wayne Pratt — Motive8U
Browse all episodes — K4B / ETW / CGN archive
— PARTNERS ON THIS EPISODE —
What's next:
Bernie (00:22)
Question for the listener. How can you increase profits without working longer hours or burning out?
Our guest will break down how business owners can uncover hidden profits, optimize what they already have and use smart systems and AI to grow revenue while protecting their time, energy and values. Our guest today is Stacey Hylen She's an internationally recognized business growth strategist, speaker and certified AI consultant who helps established entrepreneurs uncover hidden profits, attract ideal clients and scale the business without burnout.
Named International Coach of the Year in 2016, Stacey has guided six to eight figure founders using smart marketing, confidence sales strategies, and practical AI tools to increase profit while reclaiming time for what matters most. She's the author of the upcoming book, Hidden Profits, More Clients and Cash, and creator of programs like Hidden Profits System and Selling with Confidence. Stacey.
Stacey previously served as a vice president of consulting and senior coach for Chet Holmes and Tony Robbins, renowned business mastery program. And her insights have been featured on CNN, Fox Business Inc, MSN Money and Entrepreneur, helping business owners build companies that truly support their values and lifestyle. Stacey, absolute pleasure having you here today. Thank you so much for being our guest.
Do you have a favorite quarter saying?
Bernie (01:43)
it's great to be here. So my favorite, well, the one from myself that I say a lot, and I think it's so applicable for business owners is don't just learn, implement.
Bernie (01:54)
Wow. So hidden prophets, how did you find that? There's a paradox in that question, isn't there? That's right.
Bernie (01:59)
Yeah, because they're hidden, right?
This goes back to the last recession. And at the time I had just started working for Tony Robbins. He and his partner Chet Holmes had created Business Matter. It was the first iteration of. And so it's the first live event we had like, I want to say four or 500 entrepreneurs in a room.
Stacey (02:05)
in North America.
Business Mastery.
Bernie (02:25)
The energy there was excited because this was a new event that Tony was doing. It was a small event. So it was like, felt very intimate instead of being in a room with, you know, a thousand, 10,000 people with Tony. And, but people were scared because the recession had happened. People's cash was drying up. They didn't have lines of credit. Things were really. And this gentleman stood up at the event and he said, Tony, he said, I've tried everything and nothing works.
Stacey (02:44)
stressful.
Bernie (02:53)
Now, can you gentlemen imagine saying that to Tony Robbins?
Bernie (02:57)
Challenge accepted. Challenge accepted.
Bernie (02:59)
Tony's like hmm, so Tony starts coaching the guy and he said well How many times have you tried and the guy turns out only tried three? All right. Well, you've tried three things. You said you've tried everything How many times did you try and the guys like well I tried two or three times and So Tony said well, you've said you've tried everything and you've tried three things like two or three times That's not everything. So what happened and he said well, I ran out of resources. I didn't have the budget
Stacey (03:06)
times.
Bernie (03:26)
to invest in more, didn't have the team to implement. And Tony said, so basically what you're saying is that it was a resource problem. And he said, have you ever seen anybody that's come to this country and it's applicable for the US or Canada, North American dream, right, of making success that has come to this country with less than you and been more successful? And he said, yeah, you see it all the time on the cover of the magazines. And he said, so what...
we're seeing is that it's not a lack of resources. It's a lack of resource. And so going from there to the hidden profits is as a business coach at that time, people were paying me thousands of dollars and all of sudden things were really stressful. I was like, how can I be more resourceful for my clients? And that's where we started looking at the hidden profits. How could we increase sales, increase revenue without spending anything more on it? And that's where
Stacey (03:56)
wellness.
in marketing where
they were born from that question.
Bernie (04:19)
So a lot of your work has gotten even more focused where you realize the hustle that the culture taught us to do wasn't working. It was just getting you older. So what did you do post hustle?
Bernie (04:35)
Yeah, I was actually very lucky to get out of the hustle early because unfortunately it came, my dad died when he was 56 and my dad was like hustle personified. He, he had a very big corporate job. He was very entrepreneurial, started his own businesses and he, he died at 56, which for us, we know is really young, right? And so when that happened, I was, he had a lot of regrets and I,
I said, you know what, I don't want to have a life or business that leads me to having all these regrets. So I really built my business around being able to do it, have time for my kids and my husband to do the things I wanted to do, take time for my health, all of those things. But I still, I still get into that hustle mode and I have to be like, okay, stay, like take some time. Like I have a massage book because I've had a really big, I've had a really big week and it's only Wednesday.
Stacey (05:25)
for tonight.
Bernie (05:31)
thought for a second I have a massage book as in you have a book of reading about massage as opposed to be booked so that's why I'm okay that makes more sense yes yes so business mastery what is it
Bernie (05:40)
Yes.
Bernie (05:43)
Is it everything you've just described, understanding that and not having regrets? Or is there more to that?
Bernie (05:49)
So business mastery is the event, right, with Chet Holmes and Tony Robbins. Now Chet has passed away. But I think business mastery as an entrepreneur is really showing up and doing your best every day, right? And like I said with that quote of not just learning, I think learning is important, but also on the other flip side of that is being able to implement, right? So you're learning new things, you're stretching your brain, but then you're
taking the time to actually go and implement those. Because if you don't do that, then it's all, it's like a fitness book. You can't like have the fitness book under your pillow and you're going to get six pack abs. And the same thing with business. want that. Let's do that. That would be great if that worked. mean, stacks of these fitness magazines. It didn't seem to work. So really the mastery is like actually doing things, but then
Stacey (06:18)
things.
Bernie (06:40)
You have the learning before you do something and then the learning that comes after you do something. So you did it. It didn't work. What's the learning that you can take away from that? What would you do differently next time and really keep iterating and improving what you're doing?
Bernie (06:54)
So in working through the mud, you have found a way to quickly add profit. Tell us a story.
Bernie (07:00)
Yeah. So like I said, going back to the, what can we do without doing more marketing or more spending more money, right? From the recession. So, ⁓ I'll give you an example. One of my clients did, they had an auto parts store. They were in a very challenging situation because they had a lot of big box stores that had come into their small town. They were doing tons of media ads everywhere, you know,
Stacey (07:23)
Yeah.
Bernie (07:25)
Bottom pricing, all that. And then this guy with the small mom and pop store had a bunch of employees who were not doing what he was doing. When he filled out the questionnaire originally, he's like, you know, none of my employees are doing what I say. So when I came on the first call with him, I said, my gosh, we're going to have to clean house here with them. And he said, Stacey, I cannot let go of my employees. He said some of them were his uncles that were like 80 years old.
Stacey (07:35)
same.
Okay.
voice.
Bernie (07:54)
Other of them were his nephews. And then he said, everybody go to church with these people. He said, I couldn't hold up my head in church if I let go of these people, especially in this economy. So I was like, okay, what are we going to do? So we brought in the hidden profit to do an upsell, the want fries with that. And we were like, this is going to be the easiest thing we can do to make a boost in their revenue without spending more to compete with these big box stores. So we looked at what were the top
products that he was selling. And in his case, it was an oil filter for people to do their own oil change. And so he said, well, I asked him what would go well with this oil filter that we could just add on at the register. And he said, well, it's a great time to change your air filters because it helps your fuel economy, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these things. And so we implemented one question. You know, would you like to add the air filter with that? Because we find that when people do their oil change, it's a great time to
Stacey (08:42)
question.
Bernie (08:49)
Remember to change your air filters, which helps fuel economy, blah, blah, blah. He increased his sales 48 % in one month from one question. So there's a hidden profit.
Stacey (08:59)
It's...
Bernie (09:00)
Did he find a new church? That's what I'm important about.
Bernie (09:03)
Now he stayed in his church.
Bernie (09:04)
Did find new family?
Bernie (09:06)
⁓
No, but he found something that even though like if we go back to that like not being resourceful like we got resourceful that even though he had that that Constraint that was really hard for him. We were able to make him successful with you know, lot of change
Stacey (09:20)
out
inside his company.
Bernie (09:23)
That's actually a really handy tactic to have, Without being a total disruption. Was he looking to scale his business then? Or was he looking to scale as in like open other franchise locations? We have auto parts stores here in the Ottawa Valley, right? And, you know, one can't service something that's now three hours away easily. Ken, you can do it, but it's not timely, right? Was he looking to scale his business or is he just-
Bernie (09:47)
He was more looking to make more money with the location he had at this point. He was actually a Napa store. So he was like, I want to max out the location that I have. And because especially for an auto parts store, you have an actual physical space that you're looking for, right? You have the building, you have all of that expense invested in a storefront. And in this case, being a franchisee and all of that, that
Stacey (09:54)
⁓
paying.
Bernie (10:14)
you're paying fees also for other things. So he was really wanting to maximize.
Stacey (10:18)
what he was working with.
Bernie (10:19)
where do they normally overlook the easy revenue? Where do people, I mean, in this case, you asked a question and so that meant you had to kind of sit back there and watch the transactions play out. Is there kind of a de facto thing that you would normally say, listen, have you tried this even before you walk on site or do a site survey?
Bernie (10:39)
What we usually do is we look at what they're doing for marketing, right? Like how's their marketing working? In some cases, we can make adjustments to the marketing to make it more effective. Like a lot of times people will do marketing without a call to action. It's like, hello, like you're already spending the money on marketing. What if we add a call to action for the marketing? What if we target it better at your perfect clients? That would be a great way to like bring in more people.
Stacey (10:53)
Right?
Bernie (11:06)
Then we would look at the sales process and look at how we can improve, right? By asking some of those questions of the upsell, maybe a down sell, different ways that you could maximize that. And then we look at once you bring somebody on board as a client, what are the other ways to increase the lifetime?
Stacey (11:09)
That?
value of your customer.
Bernie (11:23)
So I'll ask about the elephant in the room. You believe you found a way to thread the needle to use AI and still have a human touch. Tell me a story.
Bernie (11:32)
Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny because I've actually gone deep into AI. been about four years now that I've been working with AI and before I had secret and behind the scenes, like I would use AI, but I wouldn't tell anybody. And then I have two masterminds that I run one that's with like seven figure under 40 year old tech and another one that's with multi six and seven figure on and I asked them, I want to say it was last year.
Stacey (11:42)
It was kind of a...
entrepreneurs.
Bernie (12:00)
And I said, Hey, I'm doing this stuff with AI. Would you like to do this and find out some ways to do that? my gosh. Yes. So then I started letting my secrets out of how I was doing it. And so what I, I have created my own framework that I use within AI, which is called the SASE method. And so the SASE method is how you should be using AI. A lot of people are putting crap in and getting crap out. And that's why they hate AI.
Stacey (12:06)
better and they were like
Bernie (12:27)
Right? So if you're like, Hey AI, make this better, make this sound better, make this sound more like me, make this friendlier, make this more professional. You're going to get crappy results. So the sassy framework, what that is, is that first of all, you need to be strategic. You know, and from my work with Chet Holmes and Tony Robbins, I'm very strategic in everything I do. So what's your strategic objective with your piece of content that you're putting out there?
Is it to establish you as an expert? Is it to build rapport? Is it to increase connection? Is it to drive people to take action, whether that's subscribing, liking, buying, whatever that is? that's, first of all, you need to figure out what that strategic objective is. Then the next for the A, it's to be authentic and talk to your perfect, right? In the way that you're going to attract your perfect. And so this is
Stacey (13:09)
Thank
client.
client.
Bernie (13:19)
I see this all the time, like some, clients have access to me on Voxer. And so they'll send me a message on my cell phone and they're like, you know, can you check my thing? Like, what do you think about for this? And it'll be very vague language. Like you will have six, you know, you will this, you, or they'll describe the problem and the problem will be so vague that people can't see them. So when I'm saying to be authentic and attract your perfect client, we need to be very specific. Like what are they dealing with? So.
Stacey (13:32)
success.
solves in it.
Bernie (13:47)
It was funny, one of my clients has a program for hormone replacement and she was just like, your hormones are slowing down your hormone. You're this, you're that. And they were so vague. And I said, we want to think like, if you were out with your girlfriends and you were complaining over a glass of wine, what would you be saying? Because the hormone challenge and you guys are for this, but
Stacey (14:08)
Probably embracing yourself.
Bernie (14:12)
no, we're good, we're ready, we're ready. We're both married.
Bernie (14:14)
So she just put this one out and it was so good yesterday. And it was like, do you feel like divorcing your husband? Wait, it's your hormones. Right. And so, hello. That had such a more reaction because it was authentic and it attracted her perfect client. So that's the A in Sassy. And then the next step to the Sassy method is stories. So what stories can you tell?
that make your content authentic. And I give the example, I was walking my dog one day this year and I thought of years back, I had met this gentleman at the gym and he was talking to me and he ended up wanting to hire me. And I met with him and his wife and then they invited me to go to his house to have another meeting with him and his wife. And I went to this house and I kid you not, it's like the biggest house I've ever been. It was like 14 or 17 bedrooms and bathrooms.
Six garage helicopter pad overlooking the lake. was ginormous. Dobermans coming to the door. Turns out this gentleman was a Russian and he also had the very big thing to distribute something for the Russians. And I won't say anything more, but I was like, you know what? This is not my perfect client. He wanted me to run his companies for him. And I was like, no.
Thank you. I backed right out of that situation. But that's an example of a story. How many other people have had this wealthy Russian want to do business with them and put that into their social media content or their newsletter for the week? None. So that's a Stacy story. So that's the S. And then the next S is sell. And so again, this is a hidden profit. What are you doing to sell with your AI content? And when I say sell, I don't mean like
Every post, everything that you put out has to be like, I, my stuff, buy my stuff. Selling could be like selling the person that they have a problem, selling the person that you have a solution that they should try, selling the person that they should follow you. Right. As Dan Kennedy always says, you have to sell the free just as much as you sell something that's for a fee. So we want to have that built into the AI content that you're doing. And then the last letter in Sassy is why for you, your
own uniqueness. So you want to have things in your AI that if you go into your memory setting in chat GPT, you can see mine and it's really funny. It'll be like, Stacy has a dog named Red. Stacy loves to paddleboard. Right. And so these are the things that are woven in so that your AI when you use my Sassy Framework does not sound or like
Stacey (16:48)
Like
anybody else.
Bernie (16:49)
Well, I'm actually looking for a Russian oligarch to back me. So maybe you can pass on some leads. But a lot of what you talk about is alignment. So, and I get that. How can you tell me when a business knows it's misaligned or misaligned with the owner?
Bernie (17:06)
So think so misaligned is, mean, it can be misaligned with the, the, the perfect client, right? That you're not going after your, your perfect client. And I think it's really, that's one of the steps in at a zero without the hustle framework is to know exactly who that perfect. And so I think the biggest misalignment is people are dealing with clients that aren't their perfect client and they're, they're just like taking the money because somebody's like, Hey, let's do business together.
Stacey (17:18)
my
client is.
Bernie (17:34)
Instead of focusing on who's the perfect client I want to work with, who's the perfect client that I'm going to be able to help the most. And when you start going that way, business gets much, much easier. Your marketing gets much, much easier because everything is
Stacey (17:46)
is
an alignment.
Bernie (17:47)
That's a really handy construct. So when you make SASE happen, is it inside your box or is it inside a chat chippy tea box in the cloud? Do you use complexity? What does it sit on? And is it in the wild? Because sometimes when you put things on a public server,
Chat GPT for example, it's not necessarily hidden or perplexity, right? I'm not picking on Chat GPT. I think any of them that are public facing. You never put in your social security number or SID number, you never put in your credit card number or your trade secrets. Do you build it inside or outside or are you just leveraging one system?
Bernie (18:30)
It's combination. Yeah, it's a combination. So first of all, for anybody that's listening or watching, you want to make sure that you go in your settings and there is a setting on chat GPT of train the model for everyone. You want to make sure that that is turned off. So anybody that's watching this, like that's on your to do list, go check that setting because if you do not have that turned off, then anything that you enter into your chat GPT is fair game for them to train the model.
Right. And it's a language learning model that they're trying to like learn as much as they can. So make sure that that setting is off. So the SASE method, I do have some custom GPTs that are set up. And then it is how I train my clients how to use it themselves so that when they're going into a project on chat GPT, or if they're using Gemini, or if they're using any other system, they're using this system of thinking of how they approach AI.
Stacey (19:03)
⁓
that. ⁓
Bernie (19:25)
So you don't necessarily have to have each system trained in SASE, but the person using the AI needs to.
Stacey (19:28)
⁓
be
thinking SASE.
Bernie (19:34)
You have to run a workshop to go with it too. and the reason I'm, mean, one-to-one is always ideal, right? It's great. But if you're scaling up one to many is better, typically. On this course is massage therapy, in which case you don't want like 15 masseuses working your body over. Be a bit weird, but all of a sudden, all kidding aside, is this something you hold?
sessions on and just, know, and then do follow up connections with people who I am and how to go.
Bernie (20:02)
Yeah, absolutely. So I have an AI assessment that I do. So that's usually the first step that we do an AI assessment. I look at your business. I look at how you're using AI. We actually have you put your stuff up on the screen on Zoom so I can see, ⁓ look, your security settings are not on. you haven't trained your chat GPT to sound like you yet. So those are all things that we do to program the GPT, the
Stacey (20:05)
Okay. ⁓
Bernie (20:31)
the model to sound like you. And most people are just going in there. Like I had a gentleman last week. He's like, yeah, I'm using AI and he didn't even have an account. So he was using it to send follow-up emails, but it wasn't remembering anything because he didn't even have an account. He was just going in there every time reinventing the wheel. And because people aren't getting trained in this, they don't know. And after we did the assessment, he said, Stacey, this is going to save me two days.
a week, two days a week. So that's eight days a month, right? And so I think a lot of people are not using it. So I do do these AI assessments to get people started. And then I also do some master classes and things like that.
Stacey (21:11)
to train people.
Bernie (21:12)
How long does it take to train the AI to understand you?
Bernie (21:16)
it's very quick. it's very quick when you go into the settings and you, you want to upload some of your, your content. And so what you really, hardest, the longest thing that it takes is to find the content that you want to try. So I would say like, find the pieces of content that sound like you that get your, like, I, I always have humor in mind. So I'll, I'll write my newsletter and in my newsletter, I'll say something snarky in parentheses. Like I've been doing that for.
Stacey (21:28)
it on.
Eon.
Bernie (21:44)
And so my chat CPT knows that Stacey says snarky stuff in the parenthesis, right? In my newsletter. So I found some newsletters that did that. I found some newsletters that had stories in it that kind of walked through how I would tell a story, right? And like one of them, I remember I uploaded an article. I had been in Russell Brunson of ClickFunnelsMath. And I literally did an article on crying on Voxer with Russell Brunson.
Stacey (21:49)
disease.
your mind.
Right.
Bernie (22:10)
Like nobody does that, but that's the kind of stuff I trained my AI on so that when it writes my content, it knows that it can be open and honest and funny and all of that, which makes.
Stacey (22:22)
it sound a lot more like me.
Bernie (22:23)
we run into is founders or people who've just left corporate. And at first, you know, there's a hundred things to do and they fail to have to do it all because they don't think they have money for HR and things. And then there's a dopamine hit. They're working 15 hours a day, six days a week, and they're trapped. How do you untrap them?
Bernie (22:43)
Yeah. So one of the things, one of the things that my coach from, I want to say like 20 years ago, Chris Barrow said to me, he said, a lot of people are trapped in the BS, right? And the BS funnel is all the things that you're doing to feel like you're working, feel like you're making progress, but are not moving your company or your business forward. Right. And especially if you've come from a corporate, you're getting paid no matter what.
Stacey (22:54)
funnel.
Bernie (23:08)
Right? Like it doesn't matter if you're productive or not, your paycheck still shows up after every two weeks. And so as a business owner, you have to kind of move into new skills, which can be really uncomfortable and look at what are the highest ROI generating. Right. And focus on those because the BS funnel could be like, I'm going to work on my webpage copy. I'm going to rewrite this whole series of whatever.
Stacey (23:23)
activities.
Bernie (23:34)
You know, it feels like you're making progress, but really you need to be making progress on talking to people and doing marketing and having conversations with people that could become. And then once you have clients, then then the question is, okay, what can I outsource that is not my zone of genius? That then I can focus on the things that I'm really good at in my zone of genius, in my zone of excellence and have somebody else do the stuff behind the scenes.
Stacey (23:43)
clients.
Bernie (24:00)
So one of the things I have noticed in leveraging AI, so there are different platforms. them, know, they're image editors. Others are agents. Others are, you know, just putting in a prompt. And then you go down a rabbit hole in each of them. And sometimes how you build the prompt is everything, right? And then you have to say, you AI, you're this, and goes on the story.
Right, so it gives a context, almost like you're talking to a human being or a librarian asking for information, you have context to get a best result. But at the same time, every time I turn around and go, there's new AI, give it a name, has shown up on the block. How do you stop from getting the distraction that'll waved in your eyes all the time and going, squirrel, how do you stay focused?
Bernie (24:47)
Yeah, entrepreneurs and squirrels, topic comes up all the time. We just love squirrels. And it can be really tempting because it's always a new platform, a new thing. And so what I would say, first of all, is don't buy whatever AI that you're using. Do not buy the year long thing because you're going to see that these AI platforms leapfrog them leapfrog all the time over each other. Right. So you don't want to be tied into a whole year subscription. Number two.
Stacey (25:11)
sub
Bernie (25:13)
is you want to really train one well. like chat GPT, has, it knows me. It like, I don't even need to do as much of the, are a blah, blah, blah. So please do a blah, blah, blah, because it's trained in my methods. It knows that Stacey speaks strategically. It knows all the sassy stuff. It's built into that. So the prompting gets much more simple. And then I would also say to surround yourself with other people.
Stacey (25:33)
now.
Bernie (25:40)
that are in the AI industry that can tell you like, don't do right? Like I have in my mastermind, I literally put the blinders on for my clients in my mastermind. I'll be like, hey, this new thing came out this week, it's not for you, right? This new thing came out this week, stay focused. You are working on building your list. You are focused on launching your book, whatever it is that they're focused on and don't keep going because you're starting over.
Stacey (25:44)
Yes.
every time on a lot of these platforms.
Bernie (26:10)
love the name of your framework, SASE. What I want to know is, SASE is also a word I think that summarizes you. Did you end up having to change words so it still said SASE?
Bernie (26:21)
No, I actually, was, had it originally SaaS, right? And that was a little confusing because people think of, have a lot of SaaS companies that I coach. And I was like, I don't really like that because they're going to think it's S-A-S-S. S-A-A-S. And so then I was like, you know what? The U needs to be in, like why the U? So that's how I, it's iterated.
Stacey (26:24)
It was.
from there.
Bernie (26:43)
How do you know business is off? It's Mark.
Bernie (26:44)
there's so many.
Bernie (26:46)
Is it stress? it money? Money, stress? People looking at you going, no, not you again?
Bernie (26:52)
So I think if people are like, hey, you, you again, that's a sales and marketing problem, right? That they're making the sales and marketing all about them and the business versus about the client, right? So if I'm coming to you with value, like for example, this week I had the fast cash class, right? That I did and it was three hidden profits that you could use to generate revenue before the end of the year. Well, I would be crazy if I didn't share that with all of my people.
Stacey (27:08)
Master.
Bernie (27:18)
of how they could improve their business in the next few weeks. And if I made it all about me, then they'd be like, get out of my face, right? So I think a lot of times people are talking about features, they're talking about things that are not of value to the client. And that's why people throw up their wall.
Stacey (27:37)
with approaching
them.
Bernie (27:38)
And I think another thing that you see with businesses that are misaligned is that they're offering too many things, right? They're just throwing spaghetti at the wall. a lot of times when clients come in to start working with me, they have like a million things that they do and we get really focused in on what's in their zone of genius, what would be the best thing for them that keeps their energy up and that they love and what can they let go of, right? And when you're coming from that,
lack mentality that you're just throwing the spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, you're not going to move forward as fast. And you're also going to probably turn off your people that are your perfect clients. And then what you had said of like in misalignment, like the stress of the business owner, like if you're always feeling stressed, if you're dreading your business, if you're dreading, you know, like
Stacey (28:25)
⁓
Bernie (28:27)
doing the things in your business, then that's probably a misalignment that you need to come back to. Like, why did you start this? What's your zone of genius? What is your, what is your why? Right? Like, why are you doing this? And a lot of my people want to, you know, increase their revenue, increase their freedom. Well, you need to start acting like it and start doing the things that get the higher ROI instead of doing the BS.
Stacey (28:47)
funnel stuff.
Bernie (28:48)
with your auto parts guy, what was his what was his clue to reach out to you? And there's a reason why I'm asking this is what is the tell? Like, you know, I know I'm hungry because my body is going to tell me right. But I can't tell if my my spouse is hungry or my kids hungry until someone says or the dog. Hey,
Bernie (29:06)
The dog lets me know all the time.
Stacey (29:08)
time.
Bernie (29:09)
Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. They're smart about that.
Bernie (29:11)
Yeah, I think for him, it was the big box stores coming into his town. So he had competitors that had way deeper pockets and were out there and he was really facing it because he would be watching football and there'd be an ad for the competitor, right? Or he would be driving down the road and there'd be a billboard or open the newspaper and it was there. Open the internet. was there. So he was scared that the big box with the big pockets were going to take over his market.
Stacey (29:38)
marketplace.
Bernie (29:39)
Most people come to me because they know they're doing well. Like my people are not struggling when they come to me. They're doing well, but they know that they can do better and they don't want to just like keep going harder and harder. They want to work smarter. And one of my best clients always says to me like, I couldn't see my way from inside the peanut butter jar. Like you can't see what the next step is because you're inside it. So you need to have somebody else's eyes.
Stacey (29:41)
⁓
Bernie (30:05)
And to me it's obvious, but to them it's not. And the same thing for me, I go to my coach and I'm like, what do I do? But if I was my client in the same shoes, I would be like, well, what about this and this and this and this? But when you're in your own stuff, it's really hard.
Stacey (30:17)
to see.
Bernie (30:18)
So you absorb and put out data. And some people call data information. Well, profit is information. What's it trying to tell us?
Bernie (30:27)
That's a really good question. So I think if profit is data, it's telling me what you're focusing. Right. So if I was to do a little detective work, it would be, okay, are you focusing on. Are you focusing on the long-term value of your. And this is something that my clients love because instead of having to fill up their business every single year, they have clients that stay with them for, years.
Stacey (30:33)
on in your business.
perfect clients, right?
clients.
Bernie (30:54)
Right? So you go from somebody that's a thousand or 10,000 to turning somebody into a hundred thousand dollar million dollar, multimillion dollar client. Then like I have a client that we've been working together for years. He was at six figures when we started. He's now like he grew to eight figures. Now he's multiple eight figures and his clients now have stayed with him for years. He just added on another few million dollars, you know, like two months ago.
to the business, that book of business that he was doing with. And it's because he wasn't just focused on the profit with this client, he was focused on serving the client and giving them what they wanted, helping them, helping them solve their problems. And I think sometimes if people are too focused on profit, then they're not serving their client. So there's a balance of it of like helping the client makes you more profit.
Bernie (31:43)
So people keep themselves busy doing routines. I think you touched on it earlier. Are they getting in a rut or is it someone not just nudging them out of it? Or are they allocating their time and they feel they have to be running the hamster wheel?
Bernie (32:00)
Yeah, the hamster wheel, that is so, you know, they get to the end of the week and they don't feel like they're any further than they were on Monday. Right? And so I think the busy mistake is getting caught up in the minutiae, not looking at what's the highest ROI activities that I can be doing because there's a lot of things that are kind of vanity things that people are doing and they're not driving results. so having the prettiest website or
prettiest branding or the prettiest photos is not going to necessarily translate into revenue. I would say like, what are my objectives this week of getting in front of those perfect clients for me? And then how am going to move that forward? And then with the people you have in your own business, what are some of the things like you could upsell them, the people that are already in your business, which is a hidden profit, right? You could raise your rates. You could add on another package to what they're already doing. So there's a lot of ways that you can.
generate revenue even with
Stacey (32:55)
getting new clients.
Bernie (32:56)
lot of this seems to be industry agnostic, but are there industries you enjoy working in the most?
Bernie (33:03)
⁓ it's funny because I have never been a coach that coaches coaches, but I do, I do like working with coaches who are like executive coaches or leadership coaches, because I find those people are really excellent at what they do, but they don't know how to market and sell what they do. They don't know how to package it in a way that people want to say, I want to work with you. ⁓ I had a woman in my mastermind who is a leadership coach and.
Stacey (33:07)
⁓
Bernie (33:29)
She has now been able to raise her rates like so much. I can't even say how much and she is now have a waiting list. So we have that velvet rope strategy in place of like, Hey, you need to get on the waiting list if you want to work with me. And so I think that's really fun of helping people that don't know how to do marketing, don't know how to do sales to really do that. And then I also really like working with B2B business owners that are selling to other businesses because from my work with Tony and Chet.
I'm one of the top people in the world that does the dream 100 strategy. was actually in Chet's new book with his daughter, Amanda, that she wrote after he passed away. I'm actually in here with a case study of a client that I helped with the dream 100 that went from six to eight figures. So I love doing
Stacey (34:13)
years doing
that with people.
Bernie (34:15)
So I know you're writing a book. Could you tell us when it might be hitting Amazon? And do you have a podcast?
Bernie (34:23)
Yeah. So I would suggest the book is going to be coming out soon. It depends on when this podcast is going to drop. So I would say to go to moreclientsandcash.com and get on the list there. In that more clients and cash, you're going to see the things that are in the hidden profits book. So it's, it has a custom GPT that's going to walk you through some of the things that we talked about today and say, Hey, try this hidden profit and it'll actually show you how to do it. So.
Say for example, you wanted to do an upsell, the GPT there on moreclientsandcash.com will walk you through how to implement that in your business. And then you'll also get all the announcements with.
Stacey (34:57)
the
book and all of that as well.
Bernie (35:01)
And if this resonates, somebody falls in love and they want to work with you, what's the easiest way to get a hold of you?
Bernie (35:06)
Go to staceyhylen.com. Stacey with EY and Hylen is help you leverage everything. Staceyhylen.com.
Stacey (35:13)
now.
Bernie (35:14)
Nobody could spell my last name. They always thought I was, you know, Scott or something. And it's actually Swedish.
Stacey (35:18)
So
I thought of that on the back of the.
Bernie (35:22)
motorcycle
one day.
Bernie (35:23)
You don't have a kilt to go to set of bagpipes and start dancing? No.
Bernie (35:28)
It's all Swedish.
Stacey (35:29)
That's it, but that's it.
Bernie (35:31)
Oh, Stacey, I to say thank you so much for being our guest today. To my co-host, Wayne Pratt, thank you. And you, the Knack for Business listeners, we really appreciate your time. You know, after years of watching smart, capable people, Stacey really decided to make it her mission to prove growth doesn't have to cost you your health. You don't have to, you know, basically kill yourself to get somewhere. You can get there. And
is helping businesses and like much like the auto parts store, you know, just ask a question and that does, you know, that relieved a lot of stress. Imagine having someone give you that safety advice has come in, just try this, you know, little, little, little