Your Next Act: The Six Growth Accelerators for Creating a Business You'll Love for the Rest of Your Life | Chapter 4: Model: What’s Your Brand Promise, What Transformation Do You Deliver, and How Do You Make Money?

A Step-by-Step Guide to Reinventing You and Your Business

You—and every entrepreneur—will inevitably face challenges at some point in your career. These challenges might include:

• Feeling stuck or stagnant.
• Realizing you’ve outgrown who you are, what you do, why you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it for.
• Desiring to do something new that brings more impact and joy but not knowing what it is.

If this resonates with you, it might be time for a reinvention.

Perhaps you’re content with your current business but need a total upgrade—better offers, higher-ticket products, and improved customers. Or maybe you’re ready for Your Next Act. You might have recently exited your previous venture, but assembling a team to quickly launch a new one feels hard, expensive, and time-consuming.

The solution? Reinvent yourself and your business by creating a Category of One brand—one that attracts ideal customers who are already sold on your products and services. This path leads to higher revenue, greater impact, and deeper fulfillment.

About the Book

This short guide, written by business expert and serial entrepreneur Mike Koenigs, will walk you through the key steps to reinvention:

1. Mindset: Develop non-negotiable values to reimagine your business.
2. Market: Identify your ideal audience by asking, “Who do you want to be a hero to?”
3. Model: Design a profitable business model that delivers a brand promise, creates transformation, and simplifies delivery.
4. Message: Craft a message that resonates with your perfect prospects, compelling them to raise their hand and buy quickly.
5. Media: Select the right platforms to reach your audience and drive conversions.
6. Multipliers: Leverage strategies to amplify your success and attract more customers.

Who Is This For?

Your Next Act is a powerful framework that works in nearly every industry for entrepreneurs and business owners worldwide. Whether you’re in funded startups, financial services, wealth management, professional services, private equity, insurance, coaching, SaaS, construction, real estate, or healthcare, this guide is designed to help you grow and succeed.

Praise for Mike Koenigs

“Mike is an extraordinary man. He’s brought me insights on how to reach people on the Internet that are so valuable. This is a man you should deal with. Take advantage of what he has to offer.”
 – Tony Robbins

YOUR REVENUES MULTIPLY

"Every time there's a significant tech marketing breakthrough, over the last 30 years, Mike's always been a trailblazing leader for ambitious entrepreneurs. If you're around him and his team for a day, everything in your marketing gets significantly easier, faster, cheaper, and your revenues multiply. This will an exponentially greater result now that Mike has mapped out how AI can transform both your back stage and front stage. This is my 50th year of coaching, and Mike makes my top three list of great, helpful marketing transformers."

DAN SULLIVAN
Co-Founder of Strategic Coach, Bestselling Author

“Mike Koenigs is a total badass. He's a trusted advisor and an early-stage investor in Bulletproof who I rely on for cutting-edge marketing and business advice."
DAVE ASPREY, founder BULLETPROOF COFFEE

“Mike Koenigs is a master of helping transformational entrepreneurs like me go out, get our message out to the world, and then give us the tools so we can go change lives and be role models to change everyone's lives.
[JJ Virgin]

Creators and Guests

Host

Mike Koenigs

Mike Koenigs is an entrepreneurial dynamo who doesn’t just play the game—he rewrites the rules. He’s built and sold four businesses, two to publicly-traded companies, racking up over $100 million in revenue and serving 54,000 customers across 121 countries. As a 19-time #1 best-selling author, he churns out hits faster than most people can read them. After beating stage 3A colorectal cancer, he penned Cancerpreneur, turning a personal battle into a beacon of inspiration. Beyond his own ventures, Koenigs excels at building brands, reinventing founders and entrepreneurs, and guiding them to their next big act through his work at Superpower Accelerator. Check him out on his website, LinkedIn, Facebook, or podcasts like Capability Amplifier and The Big Leap. He’s the go-to advisor for heavyweights like Tony Robbins, who raves, “Mike is an extraordinary man. He’s brought me insights on how to reach people on the Internet that are so valuable. This is a man you should deal with.” Peter Diamandis calls him the “Arsonist of the Mind.” Oh, and he’s raised $2.6 million for humanitarian causes, proving he’s as generous as he is driven. Mike’s story? It’s resilience, humor, and relentless hustle rolled into one.

What is Your Next Act: The Six Growth Accelerators for Creating a Business You'll Love for the Rest of Your Life ?

A Step-By-Step Guide to Reinventing You and Your Business

You and every entrepreneur, at one time or another in your career, face any or all of the following:

You’re stuck. You’ve outgrown who you are, what you do, why you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it for. You want to do something new that has more impact and joy…but don’t know what it is…
You need a reinvention. You’re okay with your current business but need a total upgrade—better offers, higher-ticket products, and better customers.
You’re ready for Your Next Act. You’ve recently exited, but finding a team to create all the “stuff” to get it off the ground quickly is hard, expensive, and time-consuming....
The path to higher revenue, more impact, and greater fulfillment is to create a category of one brand, where the ideal customers and clients come to you, already sold on your products and services. This short book by business expert and serial entrepreneur Mike Koenigs will help you:

Develop the right MINDSET of non-negotiable values to reimagine your business
Target the ideal MARKET who you can effectively serve, “Who do you want to be a hero to?”
Design a profitable business MODEL to deliver a brand promise, transformation and simplify delivery
Pinpoint the MESSAGE that resonates with your perfect prospects, makes them raise their hand and buy quickly
Choose the proper MEDIA to get in front of your audience and drive them to buy now
Amplify your success with a variety of MULTIPLIERS that attract and close your market
Your Next Act works in virtually every industry, for virtually every business owner or entrepreneur, anywhere in the world: from funded startups, financial services, wealth management, investing, professional services, legal, private equity, insurance, business coaching and advising, space, software, SaaS, construction, manufacturing, real estate, and healthcare.

Mike Koenigs

Chapter Four, Model, What’s Your Brand Promise, What Transformation Do You Deliver, and How Do You Make Money?

Now, when I talk about your model, it is both the process you go through to provide results as well as how you'll get paid for the transformation you provide your customers and clients. By the way, this model could be selling cars. It could be any product, any service. What's your promise? What do you deliver? How do you make money? So when I talk about your model, it is the process you go through to provide results, as well as how you'll get paid for the transformation you provide to your customers and clients. Now, one of the biggest mistakes business owners and founders make is confusing complexity with value. Having 130 step process that takes months to implement may seem impressive to you, but your customer really wants as a result, they don't particularly care how you get there, as long as you have a process that works, and often they'll pay extra for speed.

Think about going to two separate orthopedists because your knee is hurting. The first one diagnosis your problem says, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna take the next three months and perform daily exercise that I lay out for you. They'll probably take about 30 minutes per day. And at the end of three months, I'm gonna fit you for a special brace that you'll wear 24 hours a day for the next six months. At the end of that time period, we'll see where your chances are. You'll still need surgery, which will take about three months to get on my schedule, and then a month or two to recover. So just a year, you'll be as good as new. The second orthopedist diagnosis, the same issue, but says, I have an opening in my surgery schedule tomorrow afternoon. We'll have you on crutches by this weekend and back on the tennis court by the end of the month, which would you choose? Which one would you pay more for?

People will pay a premium for simplicity and elegance. One time, I sat down at a mastermind event, the famous businessman I'd heard of, but never had the chance to meet. We were paired up for a partner exercise. I could see he was hurting, so he spent the entire hour on his situation. At the end of that time, I gave him a new three line business plan that would fit on a post it note, but that he was certain would bring him an extra $400 million in revenue.

Stop trying to make things complicated. More is not better, and fewer and simpler is not necessarily less. And when you consider model, think about transforming your products and services into an efficient profit producing system that facilitates all your goals and matches your values. And remember that early story I told you about the fastest, easiest, best way to make a billion dollars. Remember that simple, elegant does not mean less. Be the best in the world at what you do be the only and start with the upside down pyramid.

First, how to make more money. There are only three ways to grow any business, and if you want to make more money in your business, you're going to have to figure out out how to do one or more of the following, sell at higher prices, increase the repetition and frequency of sales, or increase the number of customers. Now I've identified 10 specific ways to achieve those outcomes, but before you dive into the following list, consider the most simple, direct route between you and more revenue charging more for the products and services you already provide. And don't skip this simply because it sounds too simple. It really is the silver bullet most business owners are looking for, but are reluctant to implement, for fear their customers will revolt. And I'm not saying you should double your prices overnight by why not? It's going to be market and client dependent, but it's worth thinking about. So here are some of the big ideas. How elastic or inelastic is the demand for your product or service? What ready substitutes do customers have?

When was the last time you increased your prices? What is your margin now and how does it compare to industry averages? And just so you know, none of these things are relevant. None of them are true if you know how to package and position your product or service and differentiate it, that's what having a category of one brand is all about. And it's also when you are the authority. You are the expert, you're the thought leader. People will pay you more because they trust a strong leader.

So here is 10 ways to profit. Number one, create a larger product suite. Number two, add sizzle and package stack or bundle. Number three, advertise further upstream. Number four, enhance follow up and support. Number five, fine tune your sales process. Number six, use scarcity and exclusivity. Number seven, change the terms, conditions and pricing. Number eight, offer premiums and bonuses.

Nine, create world class experiences. Number 10, incorporate fame, celebrity prestige and access. That is actually one of my favorites. So you can start there and then dive into the following 10 paths for creating a more profitable business model. And by the way, there's gobs of nuance from these. These are like some basic basics, but even as I look at them now, months after I wrote this, I realized, you know what, there's so many variations of this, the nuance is where the big money's at, but at least the start gets you thinking in the right direction. All right. Number one, create a larger product suite. Most businesses are very linear in their customer acquisition and service provision. They acquire a customer or client, they sell a single product or service and move on to the next customer. There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it is very limited. It's a starting place, a foundation upon which to build in order to create an extraordinary model. Look for ways to expand that linear approach. Instead of serving a client once and seeing them to the door, look at where they've been, where they're going, and how else you might serve them.

I was talking with the owner of a publishing service who produces books for his clients, taking them from concept to published volume. He said he recently was kicking himself in the head because a former client of his had just dropped $1,000 with a competitor. Why? Because the client wanted to know how to create an audio version of her book, something he did not support. How long would it take you to walk your clients through the audio book process? I asked him, the answer, a few hours. Is it something you can record a video course about and they can then access on demand. The answer, yes. What percent of your clients want to create an audio book? The answer, virtually all of them. A matter of days, he could create an on demand guide that would bring him a decent revenue stream. And that was a no brainer. Ask, what else your customer or client needs? What is the next step in their journey, and how can you serve them? Choose the sexiest, most profitable options and add them to your model.

Again, from my point of view, start with the most expensive possibility and go out there and notify your existing clients and say, I have something new, and I think it will be great for you. Number two, add sizzle and package stack or bundle. My client, Joey Osborn, says the fastest and highest ROI you'll ever get to add is more sizzle to your brand or offer. You can double or triple the value of your brand and equity value, or increase the value of your offer two to 10 times by changing your story. Best of all, it can happen in days. Frankly, it can happen in hours. So how you package your offer, the product stacks you create, how you bundle products together impacts the perceived value, and therefore the price the client or customer is willing to pay.

In other words, they'll pay more for a better story. Let's stick with the publishing example for now, the publisher has many small services he provides, including book cover design, copy editing, ghost writing and more. He also provides coaching and marketing support services, as well as lower end DIY courses, how he packages his services, how he bundles his products and how he stacks them on each other as bonuses affect how much a client is willing to pay one Do it yourself. Package might include all the on demand courses, plus access to a group for support as a bonus. Another bare bones package might be just publishing with no marketing or support services. Then as high end coaches, might want an all in one premium package that includes everything from ghost writing to full service marketing, the more exclusive and done for you a package appears, the more you can charge for it, providing the model meets your ideal market's needs.

Number three, advertise further upstream. Now, if you own a home and are at the very early stages of considering selling, the first question you ask yourself is, what's my house worth? Knowing this a real estate agent could advertise an annual house price guide for their geographic market, because they're reaching the prospective client earlier in the selling process, they get a jump on all the other agents advertising to those clients who've already decided to sell and may already have an agent marketing earlier in the process is a simple way to get more clients. You just have to know what question they're asking before you typically have your first contact with them. This is also known as being top of mind number four, enhance follow up and support once you generate a prospect, how are you supporting them, answering questions and leading them to the next step? One of my clients, Todd Brown, does a fantastic job of supporting his customers after they purchase a low ticket offer. When you buy a copy of his book, he collects your phone number and email the book arrives, it comes with a letter to sign up for a free bonus membership, from which, of course.

Hours they're up sold into other products and services. Within a week of signing up, one of his team members calls you to hear a bit about your business and make sure you're able to access your bonus membership. The super soft close works like crazy to bring people to the next step in Todd's funnel, number five, fine tuning your sales process. A good sales process is one that seamlessly moves a prospect from one stage of the sales cycle to another as efficiently as possible and has flexibility in pricing and perception. Strategic Coach has one of the most elegant sales processes I've seen. Their marketing team focuses on events that generate referrals and leads. They have appointment setters fill the sales people's calendars. Their sales people have quotas. The whole process is fluid from beginning to end, with a focus on building a long term relationship with the prospects, however long it takes them to become customers. Application funnels are also a great way to establish authority with prospects. By asking the prospect to apply to work with you. You're exerting a subtle power play. Not only must they invest their time in filling out the application, you're also reserving the right to say yes or no.

Number six use scarcity and exclusivity. Legitimate scarcity and exclusivity work very well for services that offer high contact with you, such as coaching groups and Masterminds, you can create desire and justify a higher price tag by limiting the number of enrollees requiring a minimum income or setting some other criterion done correctly, a program or product with scarcity and exclusivity becomes a badge of honor one people will pay to access. A great example is the American Express Centurion card, which has a $10,000 initiation fee and a $5,000 annual fee. Now we use scarcity and exclusivity very well as well, and that is I actually do one on one, coaching and advisory, and I have a mastermind group, the one on one fills up quarters in advance now, and it's extremely high end. It's a high ticket service with some huge outcomes. And I have to limit who joins, because I produce great results and I have a reputation to defend. So that is done again on purpose. We also do things very, very quickly, which increases the value of what we're doing and it is application oriented. So by doing that and having the mastermind, first of all, we don't have to have a lot of customers to create great revenues. It also allows us to grow and fill up very, very quickly. It's a very simple business that has a high net yield, and many of our clients model our model number seven, change the terms, conditions and pricing.

A few years ago, I realized I wanted to sell my latest business and do something different. However, I didn't have a buyer. I did have about a million and a half dollars in fulfillment commitments and hotel contracts to fulfill. Shutting down the business is going to take 18 months and cost me $2 million just to walk away. But instead of biting a bullet and taking the financial hit, I created a business advisory program with 50,070 $5,000 and $125,000 price points. Now most people would have set the agreements for 12 months. Instead, I changed the offer. I said, most programs take 12 months. I'm going to deliver 12 months worth of results in six months. Now I filled that program, generated two and a half million dollars and finished the fulfillment in six months with almost no overhead. That experiment became the basis of the business model that I use to this day.

A real estate investor once told me that the listing price on a property was irrelevant. I'm a cash flow investor. She said, All I care about is the terms. What do your ideal clients care about? Are they more likely to go for a one time fee or a subscription model? Do they want huge tax write offs or smaller monthly invoices, one time fees, monthly subscriptions, annual fees, installments, percentage of base These are all ways to alter the perception of price. Number eight offer premiums and bonuses. Everyone loves a bonus. The cosmetics industry has made billions off the free gift with purchase model, with some people buying a product they don't really want just to get a copy or a hold of the bonus. You can adapt the strategy to your advantage. Early in my career, I offered a course on how to create an information product with video the bonus was a free Sony video camera. This was so popular that it led to my first back of the room rush as people vied to make sure they received one of the limited number of cameras I brought with me. Now if you offer a service, consider.

Sending a direct mail package that includes a gift with high perceived value. It can be a quick start, guide, book report or ancillary support material that helps the person implement stand alone coaching calls, live FAQ sessions and tickets to a live event are all high value ideas, but whenever you are offering a premium or bonus, make sure it either answers an objection or it does that in a substantial way that doesn't detract from the core offer. You don't want your premiums and bonuses to look like a bunch of junk you gathered off your hard drive and stuck on the website just for the sake of padding the offer number nine, create world class experiences. Now I used to hold mastermind meetings in hotels, three meetings per year for $25,000

I pushed pause on that business model for a few years, until enough people asked me when I was going to start doing masterminds again. I asked myself, What would make me super excited to do them again? Answer, create bucket list experiences that include a master wine sommelier, private chef, exotic locations and content topics that I want to learn more about. Now, I also wanted to do something that would excite my wife and the other spouses in attendance, who usually get bored at just another Business Mastermind in a hotel that they don't want to go to now, I take my clients and their spouses to places like Guadalupe Valley Baja Mexico. There are over 300 amazing wineries there. We travel with a master sommelier and private celebrity chef, and we eat like kings and queens. And we stay in exclusive locations that require you to know a guy to get into our topics include life extension, including full body and brain scans, cryptocurrency investing, artificial intelligence, hedge funds and I make sure our agenda provides lots of time for connecting and relationship building. We've got an event coming up where we're taking everyone to Malaga, Spain. Best of all spouses ask members, when's the next mastermind I want to go. We're going to the next one. So if you want to create an irresistible offer, consider the setting. The more memorable it is, the harder it will be for anyone else to replicate your offer. I'm going to tell you one other thing, when you put together a great event, and you break bread with people, they'll walk up to you and say, What do you have next? I'm all in you can close hundreds of 1000s of dollars, even millions of dollars, in new business without even having to sell number 10 incorporate, fame, celebrity, prestige and access. 99% of businesses are replicable, especially those doing less than ten million in revenue. And the main difference between one business and another is not objective, it's perception. It's the feeling a person gets when they buy. That's why fame, celebrity, prestige and access are all important enhancements for your model. What kind of access can you provide your clients that they can't get anywhere else?

For instance, one of the multipliers we offer our clients is featuring them in an article that's placed in Fortune, Fast Company, Forbes or entrepreneur. This is access to showing up in print that they likely can't get elsewhere, not easily, in a way, and it contributes to their fame, celebrity and prestige, they're willing to pay a premium for the perceived value. And I introduce and connect my clients to celebrity connections and friends, including bringing them with me when I attend invite only concerts or meetings, the trifecta, get paid, get laid and live forever. Now excuse the crassness, but the phrase is memorable, and from a consumer's emotional point of view, they'll trade their hard earned money for these three main promises, whether they're buying a laptop, vacation or a coaching program, all products and services fit into one of only three categories. They want to get paid, make more money that appeals to the greed factor they want to get laid, which is increase their status, authority, brand thought leadership or attractiveness or live forever that's improved their lifestyle, lifespan or health span or quality of life. Now people will buy from you in order to make more money. I call it selling money at a discount.

One of my brand promises is that you'll get your original investment after working with me in less than 60 days. One of my most recent clients, Michael Chu spent three days me for a superpower accelerator workshop, and within two weeks, closed $1.2 million lately, my big promise has been my goal is to help you generate over a million dollars in 100 days. Next is status, the clothing and accessories we wear, the people we associate ourselves with, the car we drive, the home, environment we live in, all may raise our status relative to those around us. This can also include becoming a best selling author, getting publicity.

Raising public awareness, creating a consumer brand or anything that positions you as an authority, thought leader or expert, we want to be followed, admired and respected. We want to be relevant, and when you can provide that to your clients, it translates into being able to dramatically increase your prices. People will also pay for improved or increased health or lifestyle. Everyone wants to live longer, live better, live healthier. They want endless sex drive and youth.

When you create or improve your business model, make sure you're baking in at least one of these elements and making it clear that it's part of the transformation you provide to increase your perceived value, increase the certainty with which they'll achieve their goals. And when you mix all three of them together, you get something I call the Holy Trinity. That's when you're getting paid, getting laid, and living forever, all in one. So in this section, we covered the three ways you can make more money with your model by increasing your prices, frequency of sales, number of customers, a linear business model is just the beginning. Review this chapter and choose at least one specific way to amplify your model. And up next, we'll master your messaging through a series of distinctions that will help you articulate your message in a way that captures the mind and heart of your ideal prospects and compels them to take action.