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Welcome to Make Your Passion Pay, hosted by LuAnn Buechler, a seasoned leader with a master’s degree in Hospitality Administration and a recipient of the TLC Award for Leadership. This podcast is designed for business owners who have left toxic environments to create their own thriving workplaces but find themselves struggling with team building and mindset. Join LuAnn as she shares insights and strategies to help you cultivate joy and a positive mindset in your business and personal life. Drawing from her experience working with renowned leaders like Dr. Ivan Misner, LuAnn guides you in building a supportive community and mastering the art of people management. Each episode offers practical advice and inspiring stories to empower you to transform your work environment into one that reflects your values and passions. Tune in to discover how to lead with joy, foster meaningful connections, and truly make your passion pay.
Welcome to another episode of Make Your Passion Pay podcast, where we talk about the sixes in the playbook
(00:05:14.900) Jonny Havey: to make
(00:05:15.600) LuAnn Buechler: your passions pay, which are connection, community, collaboration, creativity, and commitment.
(00:05:23.400) Jonny Havey: All
(00:05:24.600) LuAnn Buechler: That rolled together helps to create culture in an organization. I should put that word as number seven.
(00:05:30.900) Jonny Havey: and
(00:05:31.900) LuAnn Buechler: I have another note about caring as a competitive advantage, but my guest today is going to talk to us about how education can be a competitive advantage in your organization.
(00:05:48.100) Jonny Havey: Well,
(00:05:48.400) LuAnn Buechler: Welcome Jonny, how are you today?
(00:05:51.300) Jonny Havey: Hungry and really, education is a form of expression of caring. So
(00:05:59.000) LuAnn Buechler: loved that
(00:05:59.900) Jonny Havey: definitely alive.
(00:06:01.000) LuAnn Buechler: Jonny Havey is the founder of eLearning Partners, a business consultant and former CPA and IT auditor at PWC. He partners with forward-thinking business owners and teams within S&P 500 companies to identify and eliminate hidden profit leaks—say that again, hidden profit leaks—by turning education into a competitive advantage. Super excited
(00:06:33.700) Jonny Havey: to
(00:06:34.300) LuAnn Buechler: Speak with you today, Jonny.
(00:06:35.700) Jonny Havey: To help.
(00:06:36.400) LuAnn Buechler: The entrepreneurs that listen to our podcast find the hidden links. Tell us how you created what you're doing and a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey.
(00:06:48.100) Jonny Havey: Well, I have been an entrepreneur for almost two decades now, and it really all started in high school but kind of formalized when I took my first business law class my freshman year of college. I learned how to file for that LLC filing for the first time. My first, really, I guess, endeavor down the entrepreneurship path was writing movie reviews. Growing up, movies were huge for me, and in college I studied accounting and did a double major in film. And yeah, I think I wrote at least 500, probably more, movie reviews in my first business, Mile High Movie Reviews.
(00:07:39.600) LuAnn Buechler: What was
(00:07:40.600) Jonny Havey: Really cool with that is I was able to both really embrace my passion eventually. I didn't make a bunch of money with the business, but I did get to go to the movies for free and I did get to interview some celebrities that were in some of my favorite movies at the time. So that was really cool. That was really the starting point of everything for me. Fast forward.
(00:08:07.100) LuAnn Buechler: A minute. So you got to go to movies for free.
(00:08:11.700) Jonny Havey: Yeah. Yeah. So it took a while. I probably had to pay for a hundred movies or so at first, but I started writing all. So in addition to my website for the paper, my college, and really learning how they did it, I figured out that I could basically get into pre-screenings of movies because I had my own website. You know, a movie review is a promotion of a movie, so that's how I kind of arranged that. And then that also brought up opportunities to be able to interview some of these celebrities. So the biggest of note was I was able to do an interview with Aaron Eckhart, who had just been Two-Face in The Dark Knight. So that was really cool. I was pretty excited at the time. You know, 19 or 20 years old. And yeah, I mean that. I loved movies. I just kind of at some point thought that there's probably another way that I could use my entrepreneurial gifts to, you know, help even more people than just telling people what is a good movie and what isn't. That's
(00:09:37.200) LuAnn Buechler: Creativity, my friend.
(00:09:40.300) Jonny Havey: Yeah, I mean I love that I did that throughout college and started working on some other projects too. Started kind of a video production company in college, and at the same time, I was studying to be a CPA, certified public accountant, and ultimately, when I graduated, went and had the opportunity to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an IT auditor and risk assurance consultant, which is a story for another day.
(00:10:15.600) LuAnn Buechler: but I
(00:10:17.300) Jonny Havey: was able to get that job because of my love for movies, since I decided to keep my double major in accounting and film both on my resume. That propelled a handful of companies away from even giving me a chance, but it also brought in PwC, which was the company that I actually wanted to work for, and it did that with, you know, people didn't think that I would take accounting seriously if I had this film degree. But at PwC, I was asked one question in my interview, and it was, what's your favorite movie?
(00:11:03.300) LuAnn Buechler: And then
(00:11:04.300) Jonny Havey: for the next 45 minutes, I had the opportunity to talk with the director of the department about how both of our favorite movies was The Lord of the Rings. So that was really cool. Ultimately, I got that job, and without that job, I don't think I'd be doing what I'm doing today.
(00:11:24.600) LuAnn Buechler: PwC
(00:11:25.600) Jonny Havey: has
(00:11:26.600) LuAnn Buechler: Something to do with the movie industry, doesn't it? Yes.
(00:11:31.100) Jonny Havey: So
(00:11:31.300) LuAnn Buechler: you know that but
(00:11:32.600) Jonny Havey: Yes, this is so. The whole reason why I even had them on my shortlist, right, or even considered going into public accounting, is because PricewaterhouseCoopers at the time at least was responsible for auditing and consulting a lot of the big Hollywood studios, including Disney and Sony Pictures and a handful of others. Now, it's been a little while, so it's probably changed and stuff, but at the time they were the accounting firm to work for if you wanted to be involved in the entertainment industry. So that is why I even kind of looked at them as a place I wanted to work for.
(00:12:14.800) LuAnn Buechler: Again, very creative and understanding. Things that you love, things that you do really well, and
(00:12:25.900) Jonny Havey: Being
(00:12:26.500) LuAnn Buechler: able to connect the dots.
(00:12:28.800) Jonny Havey: To
(00:12:28.900) LuAnn Buechler: work in that arena.
(00:12:30.000) Jonny Havey: That's
(00:12:30.700) LuAnn Buechler: awesome.
(00:12:32.200) Jonny Havey: Yeah, I was super grateful for it. In college I kind of always thought that I'd be an entrepreneur when I graduated. I did not necessarily want to go work for an accounting firm. I studied accounting because I believe, and believe this to this day, that if you're going to study one degree in business that is going to set you up really well for being an entrepreneur, it's the numbers of business.
(00:13:01.800) LuAnn Buechler: and
(00:13:02.400) Jonny Havey: Entrepreneurship, so accounting and finance I do believe are probably two of the best degrees that you can study, or at least two of the best subjects that you can put a lot of time into in your free time. If you want to become an entrepreneur or if you want to become a more successful entrepreneur, really understanding the numbers of how things work in your business can really set you up for success and really empower you to create more impact with what you love to do.
(00:13:37.200) LuAnn Buechler: And so what brought you to where you are today?
(00:13:39.300) Jonny Havey: Yeah, so when I was at Price Waterhouse, they were big believers in education. I mean to this day, you know, these large organizations like PwC, they really take the education of their employees very seriously. So when I was there, I was able to get my continuing education credits for my CPA license covered, and these credits aren't cheap, you know, like it can be really expensive to get 40 hours of credits per year. Well, when I knew that I wasn't going to stay there for very long, you know, I was there for, I think cumulatively maybe a little over a year. I knew I had to find an alternative for my continuing education for my CPA license. So I searched around and I discovered e-learning for really the first time. Now, when I was in college, I had been enrolled in some hybrid courses, you know, were partially online, partially in person. That wasn't new to me, but really enrolling in a 100% asynchronous online course was something I hadn't done before. And
(00:15:03.600) LuAnn Buechler: so I
(00:15:04.300) Jonny Havey: found a couple that were available that would give me the 40 hours that I needed for my CPA license.
(00:15:12.100) LuAnn Buechler: They were
(00:15:13.000) Jonny Havey: a fraction of the price of doing these hours in person or, you know, taking these classes that, you know, gratefully Peter BC was able to pay for her. So I found this really low-cost, high-value program and was able to maintain my CPA license for about a decade. Now, I am inactive now because I decided that I wanted to spend those 40 hours on different education pieces, but that's really what introduced me to e-learning. And what I noticed was, well, I was getting a return on investment. I mean, really the return I was getting is I was maintaining my CPA license,
(00:16:02.900) LuAnn Buechler: right? I
(00:16:03.500) Jonny Havey: didn't feel like I was learning very much though, and it was just because of how the courses were put together. It's very much a bunch of words and then an assessment at the end, and that was it. It wasn't very engaging, it wasn't really built for the learner. It was built to check a box and, you know,
(00:16:23.500) LuAnn Buechler: we'll
(00:16:24.400) Jonny Havey: talk about this as we keep going here. But I was getting a return on investment and the company or organization providing the learning was also getting a return on investment. I was paying, you know, a couple hundred dollars a year, and they were making that, and I was able to get my benefit of keeping my license. But from a learner perspective, I'm just like, there has to be a better way, and that's where I really got the idea of starting to build video-based online courses for organizations. I started with kind of internal training, so, you know, training employees, and then moved towards building courses that you could sell, you know, and make some money off of. Started working for some organizations on that.
(00:17:14.600) LuAnn Buechler: And
(00:17:16.200) Jonny Havey: So what I did for a handful of years, now, during all of that I did learn something very important though, and what I learned was that even if you have the best course, like the content is the best, like your education. Well, whatever it is. I mean, this is really applicable to anything outside of education. You can have the best product, the best service, whatever it is. Yeah, but if you don't have the right strategy or in e-learning, there's really three pillars that we really came up with here at eLearning Partners and the first one is content. So I see actual curriculum, the actual, I mean, it could be anything, that could be the content that AI spits out when you try and learn from AI these days, but the content is the curriculum. I actually engage with the alarm. Then you have the technology. The technology empowers e-learning to be e-learning and, you know, the e-learning stands for electronic learning. So, the technology empowers the course and powers the, you know, the AI agent and powers whatever you're creating to be online learning. So that was one thing that I learned is like hey if we create the best course but we give it to an organization that doesn't have the right e-learning technology or they're overpaying on the e-learning technology, which a lot of people do, then they may not have a successful program. Well, the third pillar is distribution. So if you have the best content, the best technology that you're not paying an arm and a leg for, but you don't have a distribution strategy to actually get your employees, to get your team members to engage with and get value out of your program or to get your customers to actually purchase your program and not just purchase it, but get some value out of it and be able to get a return on investment in their lives, then your program's not going to go anywhere. So ultimately I had to move away from just building video-based courses and really become an education consultant and that's where eLearning Partners is today. We partner with organizations to leverage education as a tool to build their businesses.
(00:19:42.400) LuAnn Buechler: And you're the founder of eLearning Partners so I'm
(00:19:47.500) Jonny Havey: getting
(00:19:47.800) LuAnn Buechler: lost in the words a little bit. Because e-learning is a method as much as it is a name. Correct.
(00:19:54.900) Jonny Havey: Both. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So e-learning is the tool, the solution to, in my opinion, increase customer acquisition, product adoption, and on the internal side of businesses, to help you retain more employees and team members. And really, I believe it's one of the most powerful tools you can use to increase the profitability of your business, and that's really what I learned in the past 11 and 12 years, being a part of e-learning, what the actual results that organizations get when they invest in education. I've done a lot of digging in the past couple years on how the biggest companies in the world, the most successful companies in the world, are leveraging education. Because, when I was a freshman in college, I, greatly once again, at the University of Denver, we didn't have a requirement to have class on Fridays, which is a really exciting thing. I think for any of us, right? No one wants to work Fridays. No one wants to go to class Friday, right? And as you know, a 19-year-old in college, I mean, Thursday becomes the party night then, right? Well,
(00:21:21.800) LuAnn Buechler: for
(00:21:22.400) Jonny Havey: Me, I was encouraged by my advisors to invest my Friday mornings. So, 9 a.m. every Friday morning my freshman year, into getting certified in the Microsoft Office Suite.
(00:21:36.400) LuAnn Buechler: Now
(00:21:37.500) Jonny Havey: I was encouraged, basically saying, hey, what we've seen is that students that get this certification or the suite of certifications tend to get jobs more often when they graduate. Also, they tend to get paid a little bit more. Also, if you're really planning on getting into the accounting industry, the Big Four firms, they don't say they require it, but they require it. So that was the return on investment. That was the ROI that was explained to me,
(00:22:10.600) LuAnn Buechler: that
(00:22:11.600) Jonny Havey: I would get out of investing my Fridays into
(00:22:14.900) LuAnn Buechler: getting
(00:22:16.000) Jonny Havey: certified in Microsoft Office Suite. Retrospectively, I'm pretty sure Microsoft had a similar conversation with my university and universities all over the country and world, basically sharing, hey, we have data that shows that if you encourage your students to invest their time and some money into getting the certification, then you are going to have higher placement rates for students.
(00:22:43.700) LuAnn Buechler: from The
(00:22:44.100) Jonny Havey: Graduate. Yeah, which means that more people are going to want to go to your school, which means that you can charge more for tuition.
(00:22:53.600) LuAnn Buechler: well,
(00:22:54.000) Jonny Havey: Ultimately, in retrospect, this is a strategy that I employ with my clients today. Everyone wins here. I won because I got a certification. It did help me get a great job at PwC. My school won because, at least I don't know the numbers for the entire business school, but the accounting program for at least the year I graduated, I think 98% of us had a job even before we graduated.
(00:23:22.300) LuAnn Buechler: Wow.
(00:23:23.200) Jonny Havey: And Microsoft wins because for the past 17 years, I've been paying 100 to 150 dollars a year for my Microsoft Office Suite subscription.
(00:23:32.400) LuAnn Buechler: and I
(00:23:33.200) Jonny Havey: barely use it anymore, LuAnn. I think I open up Excel once or twice a month.
(00:23:39.200) LuAnn Buechler: Wow.
(00:23:40.900) Jonny Havey: But I still pay for it because I'm certified and I am going to pay for the product. I'm program.
(00:23:47.500) LuAnn Buechler: But
(00:23:48.100) Jonny Havey: This is just a brilliant way to leverage education, not only to make a little bit of money on a certification, but to create win-win-win for everyone involved. We could probably do the math pretty quickly, but that is some long-term customer retention.
(00:24:09.300) LuAnn Buechler: and
(00:24:10.200) Jonny Havey: The people would love to have a customer for 17 plus years. Yeah, you know, so this is the power of education. This is how some of the biggest companies in the world are leveraging it. So why not? Why not you? Why not me? It doesn't matter the size of the business. You can leverage education to create these win-wins and grow your business.
(00:24:32.800) LuAnn Buechler: Well, let's translate that. Let's talk more about a medium or small business.
(00:24:38.600) Jonny Havey: And
(00:24:38.800) LuAnn Buechler: How might they use education and give us an example? Maybe have a real-world example that you could share with us so that my listeners understand how they could use it.
(00:24:51.000) Jonny Havey: Yeah. I mean what we're elected to start always with education is not actually with education. It starts with the profit equation. So when we look at profit, profit in the most simplest terms is revenue minus expenses. So revenue being, you know, when you make a sale or whatever, it's the cash inflow that you create value for your customers, you get paid for, and that money comes in your business. Then you have your expenses, which is what you spend to create that value,
(00:25:33.000) LuAnn Buechler: right?
(00:25:34.100) Jonny Havey: Create that revenue.
(00:25:36.200) LuAnn Buechler: right.
(00:25:36.900) Jonny Havey: Profit is what's left over? So where I see a lot of people get education wrong, e-learning wrong, is they go into kind of having a learning program with the thought of, I'm gonna create an e-learning program. That is not the first thought you should have,
(00:25:54.900) LuAnn Buechler: because
(00:25:55.600) Jonny Havey: It's just isn't, I mean? In 2020, 2021, 2022, you could probably do that because that was the heyday of if you have an online course that addressed a problem, then someone's probably going to buy. It's just how it is. We're all at home and we need something to do. So it was really easy to, you didn't have to be really good at expressing value to at least get some sales or even to get your employees invested in taking courses. Well, it's not typically how it works. So that's why I always start with the profit equation. Well, from there what we really need to think about is how can we increase revenue and decrease expenses? Like that is how we increase profit. Ultimately, another thing that I got wrong for a long time and I've seen a lot of people get wrong is when we look at increasing profit, we go to, oh well, we need to increase sales. Well, I mean, you're right, and if you spend more than you make to actually increase those sales, you're actually not even, you may increase sales, you're not going to increase them enough to actually increase profit. Or really, we want to increase profit margin, which is the percentage of money that's left over versus revenue after you pay your expenses. So we start here because this is how we can actually put a goal in place, and education isn't always the right solution, or education how you may think it is may not be the right solution. So let's say though that you want to increase revenue. Well, now we need to diagnose why maybe your revenue isn't where you currently want it to be. So now we start looking at KPIs, so key performance indicators, and that's what we ultimately want to track before we actually put a tool in place like education, like AI. You can apply this to anything then, not just education. So the KPIs that I want to look at if I want to increase revenue may be marketing spend versus leads coming in, so a cost per lead. I may also want to look at conversion rates, so out of, you know, 100 leads that are coming in, how many are actually going to become a paid client,
(00:28:41.600) LuAnn Buechler: right?
(00:28:41.900) Jonny Havey: So we want to set baselines for all of these KPIs before we do anything else
(00:28:47.000) LuAnn Buechler: and
(00:28:48.100) Jonny Havey: The more KPIs that we track, the better. So, I'll have clients that will literally have like 30 or 40 KPIs that they're putting a baseline number or metric to before integrating anything.
(00:29:00.300) LuAnn Buechler: we want
(00:29:01.400) Jonny Havey: We want to do this because we want to see what we actually create, like where it's actually helping the most, and if it's not, then great, we're going to make a pivot. Well, once we do that, what I've really seen—and I have a bunch of companies running this specific play—but one of my favorites I like to share because it's such a hard industry to be in is the healthcare industry. And so, what we've been doing is looking at, okay, we want to increase product sales of this product that my client has; it's a healthcare product. Well, who gets the most value out of this product? Well, there's really two stakeholders that we identified. The first one is patients. I mean, it's made for patients, and there are a bunch of different indications that this product that my client has created are extremely powerful for them. So, that's the first group: patients. Well, patients wouldn't even be able to get access to the product without doctors buying them, believing in the product, and believing in prescribing the products. So, now we also need to make sure that we're supporting doctors and educating doctors. You kind of see where I'm going.
(00:30:36.000) LuAnn Buechler: Yeah.
(00:30:36.500) Jonny Havey: So what we really need to do is identify, once we have the profit equation figured out, once we look at how we want to impact that, once we look at our KPIs, now we need to look at who we can better serve, who we can help create wins for in order to actually impact these KPIs. And what we really need to do is look at what is the return on investment that our customers, our buyers—because buyers and customers can be different. Customers, I look at as the end user who's actually going to be using your product, but buyers may not actually ever use your product, but they may be making the purchase decision to buy your product.
(00:31:21.700) LuAnn Buechler: Actually,
(00:31:22.300) Jonny Havey: They need to be educated too, but we don't even know what to educate them on until we've identified what they want to get out of our product or service. So that's where really researching and figuring out what the ROI that these different stakeholders are looking at getting is—understanding that as much or better than they do, and then leveraging education to educate patients why this product is maybe better for them than the alternatives that they've already kind of been presented with in their life. Educating patients on the safety, the efficacy, and really helping them have confident conversations with their health care provider about the potential of using the product. Then on the provider side, educating providers on the clinical trials, on the efficacy once again, and really giving them the information that they need to really be equipped with making the decision that this product is maybe better for their patient than something else that they may be prescribing. Now, another layer here is really figuring out, because one of the challenges we all run into as entrepreneurs is if our customers are already used to paying for or investing their time, their money, their energy into something already, then how do we get them to invest their time, their money, their energy into us?
(00:33:01.000) LuAnn Buechler: Well,
(00:33:02.400) Jonny Havey: This is where a behavior change comes into play, and there's another layer of what is the business outcome for this organization? And this is really interesting, because you could have a product that is the best—it's better in this case for the patient, it's better for providers as a tool in their toolkit to serve their patients—but maybe it's not the best business decision. Well, gratefully, the client I'm talking about, their product also just so happens to be ten times less expensive than the alternative options out there that providers have to prescribe to their patients. Well, there's an education piece that we've had to go through there just so they know how it works for business sense. So when we talk about education, we're really just getting inside the heads of all the stakeholders that our product or service serves and making it as easy as possible for them to say yes to adopting our products and give them as many resources as we can to equip them to feel confident with it, not just when they make the purchase decision, but long-term serving their company and potentially serving their customers.
(00:34:34.100) LuAnn Buechler: Okay, that was a lot of information. I feel like I need to translate it in my terms to really...
(00:34:43.400) Jonny Havey: Please do, and yeah.
(00:34:44.500) LuAnn Buechler: And so, it's educating the person who is using the product. It's educating the people who are providing the product so they can educate the users.
(00:35:03.700) Jonny Havey: Yeah, I mean, every business is going to...
(00:35:05.900) LuAnn Buechler: Need our video training tools.
(00:35:08.800) Jonny Havey: Really. I mean, it doesn't have to be so.
(00:35:12.400) LuAnn Buechler: it's
(00:35:13.200) Jonny Havey: Actually, nowadays with AI, it might be the best education solution. Really, what we're doing—another example. So I resell multiple e-learning technologies. You know, it just made sense. First, we build out the programs, then we figure it out. What are the best tools? What are the best technology tools for our clients to use for education purposes? As part of that, I have affiliate partnerships with four different tools. What my affiliate partnership allows me to do is give an extended free trial of the tool.
(00:36:01.600) LuAnn Buechler: Well,
(00:36:02.600) Jonny Havey: What I've done in conjunction is I've created multiple programs on each tool. So what this does is, when someone is interested in one of the softwares to integrate into their business, I not only give them access to an extended free trial, but I also give them free access to a program that teaches them how to get up and running with the software. My goal is to equip them to start making money with the software before they even have to pay for it. So the win for the software company is I'm reselling their software. The win for the actual business owner that decides to use one of these softwares is they get an extended free trial, so they get to test it out with the program I give them. It gives them everything they need to start making money on the software before they start paying for it. So that's a win for them. The win for me is if they are successful with the software, then they're going to use the software for longer, and I'm going to get paid my commission for longer. So that's another example of using education as a tool to create these returns for our customers by just making their lives easier. That's really what we're doing. We're really, as you put it earlier on, LuAnn, we're showing care. It's really caring as a competitive advantage when you show your customer that you care as much or more about their results than they do. Then everyone's going to win, and education is just one of those tools you can use to equip them with the knowledge they need and to really express that care.
(00:38:02.900) LuAnn Buechler: Okay. I gotta try something else here. So, I engaged with a company who is pitching to me that they can help me get speaking opportunities on college stages, okay?
(00:38:26.600) Jonny Havey: I
(00:38:26.800) LuAnn Buechler: Buy in because that's where I want to be.
(00:38:29.700) Jonny Havey: And
(00:38:29.900) LuAnn Buechler: Then they give me a platform with education on it of things I need to know about getting chosen to be on a college stage, tools I need to create.
(00:38:44.800) Jonny Havey: to
(00:38:45.600) LuAnn Buechler: give to the colleges, like
(00:38:47.100) Jonny Havey: your
(00:38:48.000) LuAnn Buechler: media kit that you sent to me, kind of thing, and how I create those pieces for myself,
(00:38:55.700) Jonny Havey: is
(00:38:56.300) LuAnn Buechler: all in their education platform. Am I getting closer to
(00:39:02.300) Jonny Havey: What? That's exactly. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, they're equipping you with everything you need to be successful with what you're hiring or would potentially be hiring them out to help you with.
(00:39:18.100) LuAnn Buechler: And preparing me for that opportunity to actually get on that stage.
(00:39:22.000) Jonny Havey: and
(00:39:22.500) LuAnn Buechler: They're helping the colleges find qualified people.
(00:39:26.700) Jonny Havey: with
(00:39:27.700) LuAnn Buechler: great messages
(00:39:28.700) Jonny Havey: in
(00:39:29.700) LuAnn Buechler: in alignment with their values in their college and what, you know, they teach for their students
(00:39:36.500) Jonny Havey: that
(00:39:37.700) LuAnn Buechler: kind of thing, right?
(00:39:38.400) Jonny Havey: And
(00:39:39.200) LuAnn Buechler: that there's our win, everybody.
(00:39:41.100) Jonny Havey: Exactly. I mean, everyone wins. And what
(00:39:43.100) LuAnn Buechler: you're
(00:39:43.500) Jonny Havey: Saying the college is because they're going to get a powerful speaker that's been trained to create the value the colleges are looking for,
(00:39:50.400) LuAnn Buechler: You
(00:39:51.300) Jonny Havey: Win because you get to fulfill this goal, and you're going to probably make a little bit of money doing it as well.
(00:39:57.900) LuAnn Buechler: And
(00:39:58.700) Jonny Havey: The company wins because they're getting paid to do this, so it leverages education and creates a win-win-win. Yeah, I mean it's really interesting. Well, and once you kind of start really digging deep with us, you see it everywhere. I see it everywhere.
(00:40:16.700) LuAnn Buechler: Oh, recognize is that? Oh yeah. And then over here. I'm engaged with the speakers bureau doing similar things for opportunities in the general space, not specifically colleges, right? So, and they too have an education platform for me. Exactly, and learning, and they're helping me get in place, and they can also then confidently say that I have the skill sets in the education areas that they provide. Right.
(00:40:54.700) Jonny Havey: exactly.
(00:40:55.200) LuAnn Buechler: Right. Awesome. So
(00:40:59.600) Jonny Havey: I'm
(00:40:59.800) LuAnn Buechler: Trying to think of some other potential examples. Oh, maybe in the publishing world.
(00:41:08.200) Jonny Havey: Yeah, I mean, I don't know that world very well, but how I would outline it is, if you are, you know, an aspiring author and you're looking to get published, I would create—if I was a publishing company—a program that anyone who I work with, I would give a basic program away for free, getting them ready and equipping authors to really get their work in order to be at a quality that we see fit to publish. And then I probably also have an advanced version of that program that I would charge for. That would get them even more ready. And that's really what I see is, like, all this doesn't have to be free. Now, the Microsoft example we started with—I mean, I paid for those certifications,
(00:42:01.300) LuAnn Buechler: the
(00:42:02.100) Jonny Havey: The example of that I shared with my own company, like, I don't charge for these programs. I get paid on the back end with product adoption in other ways.
(00:42:13.800) LuAnn Buechler: But
(00:42:14.700) Jonny Havey: I think the best way to do it is combining both. So you provide some free education in whatever way—it could be video-based, it could be text-based, it could be a free AI agent that answers all of your questions about a product—so you get the most value out of it. It doesn't matter what it is, but you can have the free version and then you can also have a paid version that's
(00:42:37.200) LuAnn Buechler: more
(00:42:37.800) Jonny Havey: advanced.
(00:42:38.500) LuAnn Buechler: And
(00:42:39.300) Jonny Havey: also now creates a little bit of additional revenue stream in addition to indoctrinating your customers deeper into your system and your arena. So
(00:42:55.100) LuAnn Buechler: Much running through my head. It's more time with you, Jonny. So let me bring it to another example because my audience knows, likely, that unless they're here for the first time, I use a tool in my coaching program called the Passion Test,
(00:43:15.400) Jonny Havey: okay?
(00:43:16.300) LuAnn Buechler: The passion test is not a test someone goes online and takes; it's a process that I facilitate people through. However, leading up to the actual time that I would take them through the process.
(00:43:32.900) Jonny Havey: I'm
(00:43:33.200) LuAnn Buechler: likely speaking in front of a group
(00:43:35.900) Jonny Havey: or
(00:43:36.600) LuAnn Buechler: coaching a client one-on-one, and
(00:43:39.000) Jonny Havey: I'm
(00:43:39.200) LuAnn Buechler: educating them on the philosophies and the concepts behind the neuroscience behind
(00:43:45.200) Jonny Havey: like
(00:43:46.100) LuAnn Buechler: I could put all that into an e-learning platform. they
(00:43:50.700) Jonny Havey: could
(00:43:51.000) LuAnn Buechler: Get that content from me virtually, right? And then we meet only once to go through the process, at least at the beginning. That's the way I would land. That's the way I would
(00:44:05.100) Jonny Havey: describe
(00:44:06.200) LuAnn Buechler: It. Then actually implementing that into your life is the coaching piece, right? Where now, I've grasped the concept. I've identified my top five passions. Now, how do I truly live them in my life is where the coaching comes in, because it's too easy to fall back into your old ways. You know, does that make sense? Is that where I, as an entrepreneur,
(00:44:30.100) Jonny Havey: might
(00:44:30.800) LuAnn Buechler: use the tools you have
(00:44:33.300) Jonny Havey: Yeah. So for coaches and consultants, I'm a consultant. I don't really do much with—I mean, we'll still create programs. I have organizations that have paid me a lot of money to do that. We really only take one or two of those on per year, but most of the work I do is consulting.
(00:44:52.600) LuAnn Buechler: and
(00:44:55.000) Jonny Havey: What that looks like for a consultant or a coach is exactly what you laid out, LuAnn. Which I'm saying is that there is still a lot of value in asynchronous, you know, online courses. Now, people are less likely to pay money for them nowadays unless there's a certification attached. That's why, if you look at the whole kind of online course industry, it's—I mean, it's dropped, like, basically since 2023 when, you know, generative AI came to the masses. It's dropped every year. If you look at the certification market, it's—I mean, I think it's up 30% in 2026 versus 2025, which is really cool. And that's a topic for another conversation.
(00:45:51.500) LuAnn Buechler: We're going to have that conversation.
(00:45:55.200) Jonny Havey: But still, when we're talking about cultural consultant, the best way to utilize this is combining kind of what we said, having some free
(00:46:10.000) LuAnn Buechler: curriculum
(00:46:11.000) Jonny Havey: That you can use to really indoctrinate people into your world. But when we're actually talking about bringing on page clients, what I do is I have a ton of asynchronous content, and I give my clients access to that. What this does is exactly what you shared, LuAnn. It empowers your clients to take the learning when they need to, have access to it 24/7, and then when they work with you, they get even more value out of it. Because instead of you having to teach the foundational knowledge or them having to wait on you to teach the foundational knowledge, they have access to that. And now when you are working with them as a coach or a consultant, you're able to dig even deeper into their business, you're able to work out all the nuances on what they need, you're able to really create even more value. So what I've seen is the hybrid model is the most valuable model. It's better than 100% any synchronous, and it's better than 100% just coaching or consulting. When you put it together, you're actually multiplying the value you're able to create for your customers by doing both. And that's what I do with my one-on-one programs. That's what I do with—I have a group consulting program, and then, yeah, and then even my partnership programs, where I take on one or two clients a year and we actually do the things. In addition to consulting, all their education is the backbone, the foundation, for everything that I sell, and I think for every coach and consultant out there, it should be as well.
(00:48:08.800) LuAnn Buechler: Thanks. So we've been talking a lot about education to help increase profits, but you've got a challenge coming up called Profit Leak, the challenge. Yeah.
(00:48:23.300) Jonny Havey: The Plug the Profit Leak Challenge.
(00:48:25.000) LuAnn Buechler: What the profit leak challenge. Tell us about that.
(00:48:29.600) Jonny Havey: Yeah. I mean, it's really my way of being able to serve more and more business owners and leaders. At the same time, it really, I have a small company, you know, it's me, my fiancee is a owner and member of the company, and then we have just, you know, a handful of contractors that are amazing. And, even though at one point I wanted to, you know, build a massive company, I think at some point every entrepreneur at least thinks about it.
(00:49:12.600) LuAnn Buechler: having like,
(00:49:13.500) Jonny Havey: you know, tons and tons of employees. Well, I
(00:49:15.800) LuAnn Buechler: have
(00:49:16.400) Jonny Havey: No desire of doing that. So my goal is to serve as many people as possible without really increasing the size of my company and, you know, back to the profit leak piece without increasing my expenses a crazy amount. So what the profitably challenge does is it allows me to work with business owners in a group setting. Right now, the next one coming up is November 3rd through the 5th. Now, we do these every month though, so if you miss the one November 3rd through the 5th, you can catch the next one. What it really is, is for one to two hours a day for three days, we dig deep into your business in a group consulting setting. What we're looking at is really what potential profit leaks may exist. And the reality is, even if you have the most successful business, we're all leaking profits somewhere, and we can make that business even more successful. So, one of the core things that we go through in the challenge is utilizing a framework I call Ro. Pi, which we've talked about today. But what it really is, is aligning the return on investment that you and your company are looking at getting with the return on investment that your customers are looking at getting, the return on investment that your team members are looking at getting, and any other stakeholders in your business. And then once we do that, this really helps give us clarity on what we should be investing our money, our time, and our energy in our
(00:51:00.200) LuAnn Buechler: businesses,
(00:51:00.700) Jonny Havey: and what we shouldn't be.
(00:51:02.100) LuAnn Buechler: And
(00:51:03.200) Jonny Havey: Really, I have had clients on the challenge coming to the challenge extremely overwhelmed, working crazy hours, and having all these opportunities and not knowing which ones to really focus on. Within just spending two or three hours with me and with the group, they know exactly what to do, cutting their work time down significantly and equipping them with the tools they need to create a more profitable business. I've also had clients within just a couple of hours of the challenge uncover 100K per year of additional profit that is already in their business, without bringing in any more customers, without spending more time marketing. They were able to uncover this just because of what we go through in these three days. So
(00:52:05.600) LuAnn Buechler: when I
(00:52:07.000) Jonny Havey: invite anyone that this sounds interesting to, so maybe you're overwhelmed. Maybe you just want to see if you can find more profit in your business. I invite you to grab a ticket, either a VIP ticket or a general ticket. Either one is a great investment. VIP just gets you two hours with me every day, and we get to dive even deeper into your business. And then general admission, you're going to get the ROI Pi curriculum in addition to really getting into the tools you need to unlock the profitability of your business. So it's really just a way for me to serve people and business owners on a monthly basis without them having to pay me 250,000 dollars to
(00:52:57.500) LuAnn Buechler: do all
(00:52:58.400) Jonny Havey: this stuff for them. Because the challenge is either 297 for a VIP ticket or 97 dollars for a general admission
(00:53:08.300) LuAnn Buechler: ticket. That's fantastic and we'll have a link in
(00:53:12.000) Jonny Havey: the
(00:53:12.100) LuAnn Buechler: Show notes so you can sign up for the challenge. I'm going to sign up for the challenge. I want to learn about it.
(00:53:18.300) Jonny Havey: so that
(00:53:19.100) LuAnn Buechler: I too can educate entrepreneurs, either with some of the best that you're teaching us or send them to you.
(00:53:26.800) Jonny Havey: Definitely, I'm excited to have.
(00:53:31.000) LuAnn Buechler: You gonna be
(00:53:32.000) Jonny Havey: a ton of fun?
(00:53:34.000) LuAnn Buechler: Yeah. Yeah, that's super exciting. Again, I think we could talk about multiple things here, Jonny, your wealth of knowledge. We've spent more time than usual already. It's been fascinating and in-depth.
(00:53:47.800) Jonny Havey: and I
(00:53:48.500) LuAnn Buechler: So appreciate it. I hope some of you will join me on the Profit Leak. I'd like to plug the Profit Leak Challenge, and then we'll get to know each other in person instead of just talking heads on our podcast here. So we'd love to see you there. Jonny, thanks again.
(00:54:06.700) Jonny Havey: In the
(00:54:07.800) LuAnn Buechler: Meantime, always be thinking about how you can make your passion. Hey, and looks like Jonny is gonna help us make it more profitable. Love it. Everybody have a great day.