I love handling objections...
I'm not a masochist...I promise!
I’m loving the stage of my business right now.
I’ve created a framework. I’ve chosen a target market. And now I’m reaching out to my network to test the messaging and refine my positioning.
And I wouldn’t be sad if I sold a few marketing engagements as well.
But what’s really fun is answering objections.
Yes, you heard me right. I’m not some masochist who enjoys the pain of hearing prospects object to my offering, and then trying to devise ways to argue against them.
I’m actually really enjoying finding ways to get people to think differently about what I offer…because frankly, what I’m offering is different than the normal, lead-gen, branding, GTM strategy.
This is the argument:
You do ads / cold outbound / social media marketing / trade shows, SEO, whatever.
And they work fine…until they don’t.
Two cases in particular:
One friend I was talking to, he said he’s really found a formula that works using Meta ads. And he doesn’t want to fix what isn’t broken.
My same friend spent an insane amount of money to join a mastermind of a major, well-known guru (you’d know who they are if I told you).
This guru told him to double-down on ads. And it’s working!
But here’s the thing: it’s working to generate leads, at a certain cost per lead.
However, what if he became the guy that people would pay insane amounts to to be in the same room as him?
What if he became the go-to person in a new category he dominates?
His cost-per-lead would go way down, because people would see him as the category leader.
He’d start to get more organic leads because people would know him and look for him to solve the specific problem he had positioned himself to solve with his new category
He could charge more because his ICP would come to him to solve a problem only he can solve
He could become that guru who charges lots and lots of money to hold masterminds, instead of him having to attend those masterminds
Another friend has frankly had a tough time. All of 2025, his tried-and-true cold outbound stopped working. I mean zero leads.
He loves the category design concept I presented to him, but was skeptical that a 3-day summit would work for his company.
“CEOs would not spend 3-days in a virtual summit,” was what he told me.
But the point is not attendance, it’s capture. He doesn’t need a CEO to sit through three days. He needs him to register.
The CEO needs to see the topic and think, “this is relevant to me.”
He needs to raise his hand…even for a second.
Because that’s the signal.
That’s the difference between guessing who might be interested… and knowing who is.
And here’s where it gets interesting.
My friend is thinking about a summit like an event. “Will CEOs attend?”
Fair question.
But it’s the wrong frame.
CEOs already attend multi-day events. They just call them conferences.
They fly across the country, stay in hotels, sit through sessions, network, drink bad coffee… and pay thousands of dollars to do it.
So it’s not that they won’t engage.
It’s that they won’t engage with something that feels like just another vendor trying to sell them something.
And that’s the real shift.
This isn’t about getting 100 CEOs to sit through every session.
It’s about getting the right CEOs to show up at all.
It’s about becoming the person who convenes the conversation… instead of competing inside it.
Because right now, in most industries, you’re one of many. One of 3,000. One of 10,000. Another option in a sea of sameness.
But when you organize the room…you’re no longer one of many. You’re the one people associate with the problem.
And the speakers? They become your category megaphones, as Bryan Funk said in his summit session in December.
Each one brings their own audience. Their own credibility. Their own trust. You’re not building an audience from scratch. You’re orchestrating access to other people’s audiences.
So no… we don’t need full attendance. We need attention. Intent.
We need the right people to say, “this is worth checking out.”
Because from there, everything changes.
Now you’re not chasing leads. You’re attracting them.
And that’s a very different game.
If your current lead gen math looks fine but your growth is still capped, sign up for our free training next Tuesday, April 21, 12 PM U.S. Central Time.
This training is worth an hour.