Ep 21 - Jill Young
"Businesses require investment": Jill Young on the mindset shift most Implementers skip
Key takeaways
- An $800 Vistage ticket Jill could barely afford put her at a table with seven CEOs. Three became clients within 18 months.
- Her 64 connecting meetings in the first 60 days looked like a waste after a year. Three years later, she traced 11 clients back to them.
- EOS® teaches focus, but early in a practice you also have to say yes to the right things, even when the payoff is invisible.
- The shift that matters: from a coach who happens to run a business to a business owner who happens to coach.
- Treat spending on your practice as line items, not gambles. The best investment is your own education.
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The Idea
Act like a CEO, not a solopreneur.
Early in her practice, Jill Young got invited to a Vistage event. The ticket was $800. She barely had the cash. She went anyway.
She sat at a table with seven CEOs. Three of them became clients over the next 18 months. But what stuck with Jill was not the ROI. It was the moment she realized she was also a CEO, sitting at that table.
Jill told Chris Beer on The Practice Builder that when newer Implementers hesitate to spend money on their practice, she has one line for them.
Surprise, newsflash, you have opened a business, and businesses require investment. And the best investment you can make is in your own education.
This sounds obvious until you watch the pattern play out. Jill spent her first 60 days booking 64 face-to-face connecting meetings. After a year, she checked the numbers. Not a single client from any of them. She started to wonder if she had done everything wrong.
Three years later, she ran the same exercise. This time she could trace 11 clients back to those 64 meetings. Not directly. Person by person, introduction by introduction. One meeting led to someone who invited her to an event. She said yes. That event led to a conversation that led to a client.
And I went to a lot of things that didn't pan out, but I kept saying yes.
The $800 Vistage ticket followed the same logic. She did not know it would yield three clients. She knew that sitting at a table with seven CEOs, asking curious questions, letting her coaching instincts work, was the kind of investment a business owner makes. The difference between a practitioner and a business owner is that the business owner treats these decisions as line items, not gambles.
Jill named a paradox that sits at the center of EOS®. The system teaches focus. Do one thing well. Say no to distractions. But early in a practice, the paradox is that you also have to say yes to the right things, even when the payoff is invisible. Especially when the payoff is invisible. The 64 meetings looked like waste at month 12. They were compound interest by year three.
The Implementers who struggle with this, Jill observed, are often the ones who have not fully made the identity shift. They think of themselves as coaches who happen to run a business, rather than business owners who happen to coach. That distinction changes how you spend money, how you spend time, and how you evaluate what is working.
The Steal
Run the practice P&L check.
Look at your last quarter of spending. How much went toward things that put you in a room with potential clients or sharpened how you show up in session? If the answer is close to zero, you are running your practice like a freelancer, not a business.
Pick one event, one course, or one peer group in the next 90 days that costs enough to make you flinch. Jill's math: an $800 ticket returned three clients over 18 months. The investments that feel risky at month one are the ones that compound by year three.
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