Speaker: 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs: 0:36

Welcome, heart-centered Heroes to another enlightening episode of the Heart-Led Business Show. Today we're joined by the remarkable Johnny Beirne, a master of mesmerizing presentations, and a true wizard of online engagement. With his presentation transformation framework, he turns ordinary pitches into persuasive power plays, helping coaches and course creators, not just captivate but to convert. So join us as we dissect Johnny's journey of running a Heart-Led Business and discover how to inspire action while building lasting connections. Johnny, welcome to the show.

Johnny Beirne: 1:16

Thank you very much, Tom. It's a pleasure to be here.

Tom Jackobs: 1:18

I'm really excited for this episode. And I've been looking forward to this too, by the way, Johnny ever since I, I purchased your program and I've upgraded my webinars I really feel like it's helped not just get the engagement, but get the heart into the presentation as well. Like I said, I'm really excited to talk to you about. All about your business and what makes it Heart-Led, but of course, the first question I always like to ask is, what's your definition of a Heart-Led Business?

Johnny Beirne: 1:48

Great Tom. Yeah. For me it's really people first wanting the best for the people that I serve, clients, students on my course over and above profit, and I'm not just kind of, you know, paying lip service to that, it's not even by design, it's fundamentally being part of, I wish I could help everybody and I would probably do what I do for free, but I genuinely do want to help people show up as the best version of themselves so that their true character and personality come true when they turn on the camera and present, whether they're creating a course, being a guest on a podcast, et cetera. So that's what it means for me, and I do try and live by that every day.

Tom Jackobs: 2:34

I love that. And several other guests have come up with similar definitions of heart-led and putting like the people that you serve, making sure that they are getting what they deserve. I think that is such a great calling. But I'm sure it can cause some issues as well in terms of if we were just talking before that we hit the record button, but when somebody buys a course and then doesn't finish it, what does that do for you?

Johnny Beirne: 3:00

Yeah, I guess you have to make peace with it, but it's very hard not to feel guilty. If they don't do anything at all. They buy the course. If they don't even log in, you do have the 14 day or 30 day guarantee and it's not like they come back after that looking for it or anything like that. It's just, I guess they were excited to buy and then maybe different things got in the way. I mean for anybody watching who feels guilty about it, I guess the other side of it is we have to make peace with the fact that we have a business to operate. They bought and got what we promised at a price they thought is fair, I guess because they bought it and all of that good stuff. But it, it is genuinely still part of me goes, I wish everybody who bought my courses would go through them all and get the success they deserve. I do accountability and updates and emails and but it is a horse to water an analogy. But yeah, from a heartfelt perspective, it is still genuinely. I do feel a bit guilty when that happens and I guess it's, people can buy a book and throw it on the shelf. They could buy a CD back in the day and throw it in the glove box of the car and never listen. So I guess there's only so much we can do.

Tom Jackobs: 4:20

Yeah, exactly. I had, a similar situation. I always feel bad as well if somebody gets something, especially the kinda, the low barrier offers, the$47,$97 I had somebody that actually signed up for a freebie, almost freebie thing, but bought like a$97 program of mine and then I noticed they weren't logging in and I started my regular harassment, I guess is what she called it anyway, of urging them to go through the program and it was finally, she was like, I don't have time to go through it. I was like why did you buy it in the first place? I was trying to she got mad at me for following up and feeling bad for her not going through the program. It was a weird situation.

Johnny Beirne: 4:58

It's never the wrong time to do the right thing. So you know, they're going to pay in time either way. The course that's gonna improve something in their business or in their lives. They don't realize they're paying for it in time and money anyway. But yeah that's a whole other

Tom Jackobs: 5:12

Yeah.

Johnny Beirne: 5:12

mind shift that we have to instill.

Tom Jackobs: 5:16

Yeah. And to guard against as well, because I think there's some people that might be able to take advantage of that type of situation as well. But being a Heart-Led Business owner, sometimes it, you just want to give as, as much as possible and hope that people take that, I guess.

Johnny Beirne: 5:33

Sure, for sure. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 5:35

Johnny, tell us a little bit about your business and what makes it Heart-Led.

Johnny Beirne: 5:39

Sure. So primarily I help people to show up as their best selves. there is technology involved. They can press a button on a little stream deck and use free software called OBS that you're currently learning. And that's the how to part. That's the technical part. The Heart-Led piece is, as I mentioned earlier, helping people show up as their best selves so that they get the results that they deserve. And in a very visual world, if I, if people are meeting the expert for the first time and they've never heard of them, and they look like they're in a hostage situation, or they look like they're in a witness protection program. Sometimes I, I joke and I turn off the, some of the lights and, just saying, the importance of good lighting and stuff. So I genuinely do want them to get the best from how they show up. And it doesn't cost a lot in terms of gear and space and equipment. The software is free. Does an investment with me, of course, for coaching or my courses. But my students are always pleasantly surprised with how relatively simple it is. Compared to how it looks when they see me do it for the first time. So the Heart-Led piece for me has always been showing people how to show up as their best selves. So, at least if they don't convert whatever they're selling in a webinar or whatever, at least it's not because of how they present it. Maybe the offer isn't right or maybe whatever, and that's, there are other parts to it, but I want to give them the best fighting chance they have from a presentation point of view. We teach them, how to bring in their slides effortlessly by, by pressing a button on a little switch, and they can press a another one and go to slides only and all that good stuff. yeah, we can talk more about that too, but that's what I do and people are getting better results with their webinars, their online presentations, and making better looking courses as well.

Tom Jackobs: 7:30

Yeah, and I know it, it's been a major upgrade for me and, I'd been looking at OBS for a while I never had the time to like just go through or didn't make the priority to go through it. And the way that you went through it with the class just made it just step by step. And I was like, oh, this is so easy. And I was like, why didn't I do this earlier? It's crazy. What got you into into this line of business? It's very niche.

Johnny Beirne: 7:54

I was a trainer. I was still a trainer. I was an offline trainer, if that's the term, for, gosh, 2008, even before that. So like 17 years and I loved it. I was training in online marketing, social media, all that good stuff. After a while, I just, it struck me one day I was about to share what I thought was a funny anecdote. But I stopped from a moment ago, did I share this with this group already or was it the group yesterday? And that would even apply to some of the examples. And I started to, I was doing so much of it. I was great and I was busy and I was driving around, but it became very repetitive and I got a little bored. So I went to a conference in London where all the speakers were back in the day doing information products as we would've called them. Not on DVD or anything, it was after that, but so your online courses and your high ticket weekends and all that good stuff. And I thought, this is the life for me. So I came back and I researched and I launched a couple of online courses in the online marketing and social media space, but I got so excited about learning about all of that, that I wanted to be an expert in online course creation and help other people have more freedom and impact and income. I wanted that for myself. And it was new and exciting and I got addicted to it and still have the obsession and addiction to it. So that's how I got started. And then I was showing people how to use OBS to record courses where you could pretty much do the editing during the recording, let's say. Which was a big part in making courses. So there was very little editing to be done afterwards, which is a huge expense on a bottleneck and time consuming and all that. And then I started to share these techniques on social and people were like, could you do these live? we talked earlier about, addressing the elephant in the room and all that, they're like, wow, it would be so cool if I could bring in an elephant. In a live scenario, and I'm absolutely, so presentation transformation was born, which was by COVID, where people were thrown into Zoom from stage to zoom, probably never in some cases having used it. And I wanted to help them deliver an offline experience in an online world. So like for example, I would teach them how to appear from behind Red Barrel, the curtains when they're speaking at a digital event or let's say. Are you fed up chasing your clients down rabbit holes and stuff like that? Or you wanna celebrate with your audience and bring in some confetti and stuff like that, or make money fall from the sky. So all of these things added to the experience. And it took off, people like your good self and others, experts around the world who were doing a lot of virtual events and webinars and speaking at virtual summits and doing group coaching. Wanted to be able to do that. And there's a foot pedal where you can go hands free and stand on the pedal and stand on it again, and the slides disappear and so many other. Really nifty tricks that you can do. And probably the most popular one for the online events is the overhead camera. So you can have your iPad at the ready and, you might have some whiteboard application on there, and you can start to draw out. Maybe you have a certain process that you wanna teach people and you can walk down through it and you can press a button and end up beside iPad. And if it's not charged, just make sure you have paper to hand and again, just go to your overhead camera. And you can, let's say you can draw a heart, and talk about podcast or I love Tom or whatever it might be. And so all of these things just really took off during COVID and thankfully COVID is over, but the business lives on.

Tom Jackobs: 11:38

That's right. And as I was going through the course, the biggest thing that you were talking about, which was really struck me as interesting was the pattern interrupt and how important that is during doing webinars. And I talk about that all the time in sales conversations that you wanna break the pattern that people are in, and so you do some verbal but the visual pattern interrupt, I think is just really brilliant in terms of keeping people's attention. how did you figure that out?

Johnny Beirne: 12:06

Yeah. It's been around and I suppose one of the things that, that struck me when Tony Robbins does interventions, like he calls it state change. Is a pattern interrupt and, being at Unleash the power within and then watching the net Netflix documentary and a guy was talking about. Taking his own life. And Tony was like, but your shoes are red. And the guys couldn't help but laugh. And so it has a profound effect. And it goes back to, if you fell off your swing, Tom as a kid, or you fell off your bicycle and scraped your knee and your caregiver parent or guardian would say, Hey, look at the cute puppy, or here have a lollipop. So you're trying to break that, that pattern and its particularly prevalent in presentations where the pattern unfortunately is and I bring in this slide to demonstrate it. The pattern is for people is dozing off, right? we need to make sure that doesn't happen. So what do we do? we break that potential pattern of them zoning out or being distracted and bring the attention back to what we're talking about. That's where pattern interrupt comes in and a second camera, an elephant in the room slides appearing without having to say all that. I share my slides. All that contributes. You can change the pitch and tone of your voice. It all adds to the whole avoiding death by PowerPoint essentially.

Tom Jackobs: 13:31

Yeah. I don't have my OBS set up here but I do have my voice modulator on as well, so that's, you hear that.

Johnny Beirne: 13:39

Is that the voice modulator is is the other one, the voice modulator? I gotta get me one of those I was trying to be funny there that was your real voice and the one you interview people with is the voice modulator.

Tom Jackobs: 13:56

Exactly right. This is my real voice. Okay. No, I liked it. This is funny. Let's talk about your business.'Cause this is a Heart-Led Business show. You have a Heart-Led Business. How is the Heart-Led Business can be harder because we're not always just looking at the profit or we're not worried about making money to our detriment sometimes as Heart-Led Business owners. So how have you overcome that or built your business in a way that's still Heart-Led, but you still make a profit?

Johnny Beirne: 14:27

Yeah, so I do like to do a lot of free events. Just, I know there are people out there who, who don't always have the big budgets for some of our courses and programs, and I know some of you and I, we provide, low entry points for people to get started. But I genuinely do love to teach and I, like I was saying, I genuinely do want to have people to improve and I guess when you do have courses and programs that you don't always have to be exchanging time for money. It's the sort of business that's naturally Heart-Led because you don't always have to be looking for the dollar. Like I'm on a 6:00 PM Irish for 30 minutes and I'm gonna be talking for free. And there's about 30 people registered about the pros and cons of live webinars versus Evergreen. And I may mention my program, I may not. But I don't because my courses are making money, not while I sleep or any of that stuff. But having a freedom based business where you're not exchanging time for money, I think is naturally Heart-Led, or at least it helps you be more Heart-Led. And that allows me to go live a couple of times a week for 30 minutes showing people practical and tactical things they can do to improve their online business, their courses, and their presentations without always looking for the dollar and the dime and I love to be able to do that.

Tom Jackobs: 15:55

All right. Nice. And over when did you, when you started the business, when? In 2018. Is that right?

Johnny Beirne: 16:02

Initially 2008.

Tom Jackobs: 16:04

Oh, okay. So long, long time in business. How I am sure there's been ups and downs with any business. Have there been any nice surprises that have come from being Heart-Led versus just looking at the dollars and cents or the pounds and pences?

Johnny Beirne: 16:21

Yeah, you do get compliments where you go beyond the call of duty. And I think going beyond the call of duty is another way to say Heart-Led. At least in my book. I just like to, as much as is possible, do more than what is asked. And then, you know, the thanks and gratitude and compliments you get and the extra results that people might get. Goes beyond you could ever be paid. So long as you're profitable'cause you have to be to run the business and then you can't serve unless you are selling to a certain point. But you know, if it's, for me at least, I've never been as fulfilled from the compliments as I have from the dollars and cents for someone, it's nice the phone lights up, stripe, you've received 4.97, that's all great. Nobody knows unless of a very small list, everybody on their list. So you get an email from someone that you know, they must have bought something based on the email or even they just attended a webinar and they didn't have the finances to invest, but the sheer gratitude that they share from someone you've never been in the same room with. It is really nice and it really fulfills and it reminds you that when you are Heart-Led, that fulfillment can't be bought.

Tom Jackobs: 17:46

Yeah. Can you remember a specific instance where you received some, something like that was, a nice compliment or what have you at the right time, like maybe a day that was a bad day for you and you got this message and it just really lit you up.

Johnny Beirne: 18:01

Last week, a client who was on a webinar, some of the free master classes actually, and I'm sure in time will become a student. Just very quick comment under the video where it was being played was like, your training is awesome. This is making a massive difference to my business. And when you get caught up in the day-to-day operations and stuff like that, it's a nice reminder to go. I'm doing something right here. I'm making a difference, didn't necessarily buy anything, but I didn't care. Now if nobody bought anything, I would care, of course, from a business perspective

Tom Jackobs: 18:36

Yeah.

Johnny Beirne: 18:38

So those nice reminders that come in via video, a text message, WhatsApp, or email, are always nice and always a great reminder to keep going. I mean, I would genuinely do for free, but I don't luxury just yet.

Tom Jackobs: 18:52

Yeah. Now, have there been now on the flip side, so that was a really good example of a good thing that came out of being Heart-Led. Have there been any challenges that have come from being Heart-Led versus just looking at the profits?

Johnny Beirne: 19:04

Yeah, the other side of it would be. You do a couple of free master classes, you might some, and some of them make a subtle invitation, sometimes more than subtle invitation to buy for whatever reason it's crickets a couple of times and you're going, how much more of this serving before selling can I do until my accountant, or my significant other says, our bank manager, not that we ever speak to bank managers now, but so yeah you gotta, there, there are times you go on, am I giving away too much and am I teaching my audience that if they stick with me, they'll get everything for free and never need to buy anything because of doing too much free stuff. There's a balance to be struck there. And only recently even I was brainstorming a little bit with chat GPT about the strategy and they, it said that as well. It's if you're doing this much for free, you're teaching your audience that you're doing too much for free and that if they,

Tom Jackobs: 20:07

Yeah.

Johnny Beirne: 20:07

I said, watch all your stuff, they'll ever have to buy any of your stuff. Yeah, something to be mindful

Tom Jackobs: 20:14

Is, there is definitely a balance between that. Do you feel like you've found that balance between the freebies and the paid.

Johnny Beirne: 20:23

Yeah. So the freebies will continue at 30 minutes without recording as an example. So they're 30 minutes. So we go live at one Eastern for 30 minutes about evergreen versus live. And they'll have, to more educated in the differences in the nuances of live versus Evergreen, and they might never have thought of Evergreen, and that could send them on a trajectory that could transform their business. They need to learn more about what's involved in doing an evergreen webinar, but that 30 minutes should be valuable enough for them at least to consider it and do more research or buy my course. For 90 minutes then I'm looking at maybe$17 each or maybe more. Or for$17, they'll get all the recordings for free. No recordings for 17. So, a member's area, they can watch all the recordings as often whenever they want and so on. So I'm looking at, two or three free a week, 17 bucks a month to get the recordings. Maybe an all access pass to the paid events and the recording at 47 or 97 a month. Or 17 per event for the paid events and still do 30 minutes for free. So, I'm, I'm looking at that kind of tiered level of for me building a monthly recurring revenue through the membership side and then serving the world who have to decide whether I'm the person for them or whether I teach is something that they should learn and implement.

Tom Jackobs: 21:51

Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Like that 30 minutes can be more teaching what they need to be doing, and then the rest of the paid portion of it is how to do it, which would totally make sense in terms of getting people into your program.

Johnny Beirne: 22:05

Yeah, well the, the 30 minute, what I say to them is I charge for the all access pass to all the recordings so that you have one repository and you can ask questions. You know, if I give you the recording, you can't ask questions. And if you could, I can't with respect, be constantly answering questions for free. I'm happy to go on for 30 minutes for free service as best I can, and that's the 30 minutes done. But if you're getting emails every other day answering questions for free that is a challenge. But if you pay me$47

Tom Jackobs: 22:38

Yeah.

Johnny Beirne: 22:39

a month, I'm happy to do that and I'll manage the time. And then if all the questions are the same or a lot of the questions are the same, then I should be doing 30 minutes or 90 minutes or a course about that. So it's valuable to me

Tom Jackobs: 22:52

Yeah.

Johnny Beirne: 22:52

And I like if 10 people are paying 47 and 500 bucks a month and it takes an hour or two to answer the questions per month, or a team member, then it's all justified.

Tom Jackobs: 23:02

Yeah. Yeah. No, it totally makes sense. And you know, that, that, I'm glad that you went through that too, because I think that gives the audience a really good example of how you, how a good business owner like yourself goes through the process of going, how do I balance still making money, but also being Heart-Led at the same time? So I think that was a perfect, like little masterclass on the thought process of how to be Heart-Led. And so thank you for sharing that,

Johnny Beirne: 23:31

I appreciate that, and people who don't pay money won't pay attention and, if they're not investing, they're not invested, and all those other phrases that come out over the years about people investing you're doing a disservice if they've not got some financial skin in the game. You know, so people who pay you$5,000 for an hour will abide by your every word and probably implement every single thing you've done and get massive results. And someone who pay$50 for an hour go, nah, it was only$50. If I don't implement it, it's not a lot of money. So you gotta balance. Charging can be hard led. It, you don't have to be Heart-Led doesn't mean to free. In my book, at least, it doesn't have to mean free. You can be Heart-Led and charge.

Tom Jackobs: 24:13

As long as your heart's in it, right? And you're giving a great product at a good, great price. And there people are getting value out of it. Yeah that's absolutely true.

Johnny Beirne: 24:22

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 24:22

Johnny I can't believe this time has gone by so quickly. But how can people learn more about you join one of your events.

Johnny Beirne: 24:29

Sure. johnnybeirne.com/event-calendar. They can just see the full schedule of events there. That will then, you know, give them a sense of what they need to be thinking about within their online business. And yeah, they can attend the 30 minute ones for free. We do, we were talking earlier, I mean I had the slide up for there just as a sample. We were doing teleprompter mastery last week about using an auto queue or teleprompter when presenting and again, you could see from the chat and from talking to people, they got a lot of aha moments from people who've never thought about using one to not really sure what it was, that they thought it was only for tv. And if they bought one, it was gonna be a thousand dollars. So, do they know everything there needs to know how to use it effectively in 30 minutes? Probably not. Do they know enough to consider buying one and trying it out? Absolutely. And if they need help, then there's the paid program. And if they figure it out, they figure it out. They're the sort of events that we do and we have good fun doing it.

Tom Jackobs: 25:37

That's awesome. Oh no, no point in working if you're not having fun doing it.

Johnny Beirne: 25:41

Yeah. I, all my jokes don't always land, but I do try. At least they make me laugh.

Tom Jackobs: 25:48

That's awesome. Alright, awesome. Johnny, thank you again for spending your time with us today. I really do appreciate it.

Johnny Beirne: 25:57

Yeah, likewise.

Tom Jackobs: 25:57

Thank you.

Johnny Beirne: 25:58

Thanks very much.

Tom Jackobs: 26:00

Thank you audience for tuning in today and listening to or watching the Heart-Led Business show. I really appreciate it. Make sure you're checking everything that Johnny's doing. We're gonna put all that, all the links down into the show notes, so make sure you're checking that down in the show notes. Or you can go to the website and check out the show notes there as well. And while you're doing that, if you could do me a favor and give us a rating and review that really helps spread the word about the show and help more people who are thinking about being Heart-Led Business owners to really get the good idea that you can be Heart-Led and still make a profit at the same time. And until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2: 26:38

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.