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Interested in replacing your monthly retainers with quick and easy virtual VIP days (think intensives that charge no less than four figures for just one day)? Guest expert Jordan Gill is here to share the top three types of VIP days that provide top results, plus how to decide which one is best for you.

Jordan Gill, operations consultant and founder of Systems Saved Me, helps burned out service providers replace their monthly retainers to virtual VIP Days. Her program Done In a Day™ has supported over 270 students create and sell their first VIP Days. She also has a podcast called Systems Saved Me with over 300 episodes all about how business owners navigate success with systems - of course! She currently lives in Dallas TX with her cavapoo Vivienne and collection of 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles.

Instagram // Facebook // VIP Day Roadmap

The episode:

Katrina Widener: Hi, everyone. It's Katrina back with another episode of the Badass Business Squad podcast. I am so excited to have Jordan Gill on today. Hi Jordan. Thank you so much for coming on.

Jordan Gill: Yes. Hi Katrina thanks so much for having me. 

Katrina Widener: Yeah. So today we're going to be talking about VIP days specifically, but before we dive into everything, Jordan, if you wouldn't mind, I would love to have you introduce yourself to everyone who's listening. 

Jordan Gill: Yes. So I am Jordan Gill and I reside in Dallas, Texas with my cavapoo Vivian, and my husband and bonus son. And I started Systems Saved Me, which is my business back in 2016. It's had many, many iterations, but the iteration we are in slash season is helping burnt out service providers replace their monthly retainers with virtual VIP days. We are very, very passionate about really removing even the thought or removing burnout from online service providers vocabularies. Because it's so rampant especially in this season of the world. And so we believe that can be done through VIP days. It can be done through a lot of things, right? But our lane is VIP days and, and we've loved doing that for about the past two years. And fun fact that I like to share is that I have a wide variety of thousand piece jigsaw puzzles that I thoroughly enjoy in my spare time.

Katrina Widener: Yes. That's awesome. Okay so just so that we can kind of lay the baseline for everyone, when we're talking about VIP days, what exactly are you referring to? 

Jordan Gill: Yes, they are very elusive kind of new kid on the block offer. So how we define them is that a virtual VIP day is a four figure offering minimum. That means you can go five, six, go big go home, but a minimum of four figure offering that lasts about three to eight hours in total, that helps your clients through about a three to five phase transformation. How we define a transformation is just again, what is the actual result. Whether that has a short term ROI with a long-term value. That's kind of what we define as the transformation, because it's not a power hour, a strategy session that's an hour long. It's not those things. And while those things are totally fine and we're not bashing them, that's just not what a VIP day is. Because it's so short and nature intends to be like, "Pick my brain ask me anything," and that's not what VIP days are. 

Katrina Widener: That's awesome. So can you give like a concrete example of what someone might be covering in a VIP day? Just so that people can really get the picture. 

Jordan Gill: Yeah, for sure. So there's so many, I see so many every day. But I would say I have seen website designers do a website in a day. I've seen copywriters write a sales page in a day. I've seen health providers come up with prescriptive regimens in a day. There's a lot of service providers that we focus on. But also coaches and consultants who have a type of transformation or method that they teach and people want to go through that transformation in a single day.

Katrina Widener: Thank you for giving those concrete examples, because I feel like people are like, "Oh, I get it now." 

Jordan Gill: Yes. For our concrete kinesthetic visual learners that's super helpful to ground it like that.

Katrina Widener: So when we're talking about the VIP days, I know one thing that you and I talked about beforehand was okay, let's help people kind of choose what transformation they want to have at the end of the day. So when someone is getting ready to set up their VIP day, what would be examples of the different types of transformations? Get things started off so people understand exactly where we are. 

Jordan Gill: Yeah, absolutely. I find that this is where people get really ignited about what's really possible to do in a day. We believe there's three types of transformations. And so the first type is a full transformation. And so again for our visual people, imagine a full transformation being A to Z. You see the whole spectrum. So again website design is an easy example for all. An A to Z transformation for a website is that you build the entire website. You build like the five pages of a typical coaching website. Whoever it is that you help, that is a full transformation. You are going literally from A to Z. 

The second type of transformation is what we call the founding transformation. This is where you're playing in the realm of A to F. /A to J maybe in the A to Z spectrum. You're really just helping them with the initial part of the full transformation. So again, going back to like website design, that could be that you are creating the mock-ups for their website, and then they're going to go and actually fill it in with the copy and the images and stuff like that. The founding could also be maybe its like two website pages. So again it could look at a few different ways, depending on what excites you. But the founding transformation is really that A to J area of the A to Z. 

And then the last transformation that we see is the feature transformation. Which is like J to P. It's like smack dab in the middle. And this can look a variety of ways again with websites. But what I see most is like a sales page or something that is more one off. So it's not their main website that you're helping with, but it's really just kind of this one-off page or two off page that is being created within their website.

And so, those are the three transformations. And it really depends on what excites you and lights you up. As you can see, you can choose any of those transformations and they're all wonderful and amazing. It really depends. And I truly believe similar to airplanes, put your own mask on first before you help others. If you're not excited about what you're doing then your clients aren't going to be excited because you're over here annoyed that you're having to do the work that you're doing. So pick the transformation that lights you up the most. One is not right or wrong or bad or good. It truly is what is in alignment with you and what excites you and where you could totally spend all your time in. And move forward with that transformation. 

Katrina Widener: So say that you are like a coach or consultant. Cause you mentioned those earlier. How would these different types of transformations kind of fit into those businesses?

Jordan Gill: Oh yes. So let's go with health coaching. So a full transformation for a health coach could be, if you specialize on hypothyroid, maybe your full transformation is creating an A to Z personalized prescription for this person's specific needs around handling and being supported with their hypothyroidism. And so that would most likely be you and them on the call going back and forth. And then as the client is talking, you're really creating a workbook or a guide or a prescription of what they can do to help settle their specific needs around hypothyroidism. 

For a founding transformation it potentially is, you have maybe a five part transformation for helping people with hyperthyroidism. And you just want to focus on the very first part, whatever that is. I don't know what it is. But the very first part of that transformation, maybe it's just sleep. It's not health whatever else, exercise. It's really just the sleep portion and that's the first part of your phase. So you have a founding transformation. Your entire call with your client will be around sleep, how we can make that better and be like a prescription based VIP day. 

And then feature is generally speaking going to be again, if you have a five-part transformation it's going to be whatever that middle part is. So maybe they've tried a bunch of things and they're like, "I need you to kind of audit or review what I've been doing and give me suggestions on how I can do it better." That would be a feature transformation. So it's kind of that middle ground, let's review what I've already done and let's tweak it and make it better.

Katrina Widener: That makes complete sense. Thank you for answering that. So when people are looking at these different types, how would you walk someone through deciding which one they want to move forward with? I mean, I'm sure that there are people out there who are just like, "Oh! Immediately this one. This one's automatically the one I want." But for those who might be like, "Well, I dunno. I could see how this would fit or I could see how this would fit." How would you recommend they go about narrowing that down? 

Jordan Gill: Yeah, for sure. I see it a lot where people are like, "Oh I have 17 VIP day ideas. I want to do them all." And I'm like, "Well let's wait a second. As much as I love VIP days, one at a time." And so if you're kind of between ones of like, "Oh I do love seeing the full transformation of prescribing support for somebody or the whole website or the whole sales page copy. But I also do get really excited about the beginning part." There's excitement in a lot of areas and where I would go next is if you truly are excited about all of your areas, then I would actually... I have a team development lead on my team. And she talks to us about the coin toss method. And I like doing this because it actually ignites kind of an energetic answer or response. And that tends to be your answer. 

So I would take some of your different ideas and put one and two together and flip a coin and say heads for one, tales for two. And as you're flipping the coin you either need to recognize, "Oh, I hope that it's a heads." And then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh I want transformation one." Or if it lands on heads and they're like, " I kind of wish it was tail." And then you're like, "Oh you wanted it to be tails. You wanted it to be the second one." So I love using coin toss method. It sounds really silly, but it really helps bubble up what actually may be hiding under just your conscious level of the work that you do. If that doesn't work, I just say start with the one that is actually going to be a really good front facing offer. Meaning that okay, maybe you do a founding transformation, so you just do website mock-ups and then you can upsell into the full transformation because already part one is done. So instead of starting with the full website and then wanting to expand to just mock-ups, it makes sense to do it the other way, because it actually provides an upsell opportunity. 

Katrina Widener: That makes a lot of sense. I can also see how someone might have the founding one as its own thing. And then later someone can do the feature one. You can have someone come and do both as opposed to just doing one because you can devote more time to it or whatever that might look like based off of your business. 

Jordan Gill: Yep exactly. 

Katrina Widener: Yeah. That's really interesting. Cause I'm of course sitting here being like, "All right, so which ones would I do if I was doing them?" Which I'm sure you get all the time. 

Jordan Gill: I do. You'll be doing them soon enough. 

Katrina Widener: Yes. So do you find that oftentimes there's one that more and more people are leaning toward? Or is it really just a mixed bag? 

Jordan Gill: It feels like such a mixed bag. I feel like people tend to do founding and full more than feature. Just because feature, you have to think about where people are coming from or where people will have to come in order to meet you at where the point is that it makes sense for them to hire you. With full and founding it's very obvious. They're starting at zero a lot of times, or starting from nothing. But with feature, there has to be some sort of history or something leading up to it in order for you to be able to do your magic. But the feature transformations tend to be like audits. They tend to be like reviews, analyzing that sort of a VIP day. And so if you're like, "Oh, I love doing audits." That actually maybe features would be the best benefit for you, because that tends to be generally speaking, the transformation that's best for that. But I would say full and founding tend to be where people lean, just because they like to know where people are starting, which is ground zero rather than trying to meet them where they're at. 

Katrina Widener: That makes a lot of sense too, because when you think of lead generation you know it's way easier to market to someone who's like just starting out, or at the first stage for your journey. But then again, it does make sense to have the feature as that "Okay. We've already worked together. How do I get that repeat client experience? How do I create that?" Because I think a lot of people do kind of struggle with that a little bit. Like, "I did someone's website?" Going back to the design example or like a copywriting example. "I can't do it again immediately, but what can I do again?"

Jordan Gill: Oh yeah, exactly. And my VIP days are centered around client management systems. So I build out their client management system from lead to onboarding, to offboarding and everything in between. So could I do that again? Maybeish. But what actually I do is once I do someone's client management, then we move into team management. And so it becomes a very easy upsell because it's like, "I have done your client management and I know all the pieces. And so therefore, when you're talking about team and how to best work the system, obviously I'm the best person to talk to your team about that." And I don't like doing just team management, like a one-off team management thing, because I haven't built the system.

So why would I tell your team how do we best manage when your system is total crap? So really think about how you best like to serve your clients. And that is always going to help guide some of those decisions around transformations and types and stuff like that. Because again, maybe some people would be cool with just doing a team management one off of somebody, and that's fine. It's not right or wrong. But for me, I don't want to help you manage your team if your systems and things are totally broken. That just doesn't make sense for me coming into someone's business. 

Katrina Widener: Yes. I mean that could be a whole different podcast episode because if you don't have systems and procedures in place, right? How are you going to onboard? Anyway, moving on from that, before I go on a soap box, do you find that oftentimes people will maybe they start off with one VIP day and then they're like, "Oh my gosh. Now I'm going to add another one. And now it just makes so much sense to have another one."

Jordan Gill: Oh yes. Yes. Once you get bit by the VIP day bug, it is never going back... so I do tend to find them adding that in a second or even third VIP day to the mix. Whether it's because they want to continue working with their same clients or they want to just try a little bit of variety as well. So I think there's a lot of cool stuff going on now where people are wanting to do recurring VIP days. So those strategic planners who are like, "I like going over people's goals every quarter." So instead of that being a longer-term thing, it's really just you get four VIP days a year. Its always at the end of that quarter for the next quarter. And so you book and you secure those clients in that time way in advance or every quarter so that you can have that quote unquote "recurring revenue," but it's not like a retainer where you're having to talk to these people all day, every day or have open communication. 

And that's really cool. I've seen actually a Pinterest manager that I worked with. She had it to where her process, her actual monthly retainer process was technically a VIP day from the client's perspective. So each client was assigned a date that their Pinterest stuff was due, like their articles and things. But her team would then have, their tasks were rolling based on that client date. And so again, from a client perspective it's really helpful because it's like, "I know my date and I have to have my stuff in otherwise it gets skipped for the month." So it allows for that boundary because with monthly retainers it's just like this endless, "You're always there and I can just bother you whenever I want to. And I can delay if I want to and all of that stuff." And that's where for me when I was doing monthly retainers, which was only for about five months in my life, because I couldn't stand it. But it helps with the boundaries. It helps with clear communication. It helps to really set you up for success instead of just feeling like, "Oh I'm just waiting around for my client to get their life together." And that never felt good to me. 

Katrina Widener: Totally. That makes so much sense. And I also wish everyone who's listening to this could have seen my face when you were talking about the boundaries. So it was just like, "Oh my gosh, I know exactly what you're talking about. I have a lot of clients who deal with this." And boundaries within a client relationship are very important. I tell them that all the time. So it totally makes sense that a VIP day would be a great answer to that. Would be an easy way to say, "Alright, so I see this problem. This is a great way that I can fix it." And I love the idea of someone doing quarterly VIP days. Cause when we are business owners, especially the business owners that I'm sure you work with. And the ones that I work with, the people who are listening to this podcast, we're doing everything on our own. And maybe we have contractors or maybe we have people that are coming in, but normally it takes a little bit of time before you get strong team members. And so even from a client perspective, having someone that just pops in once a quarter to do this for you or having these VIP days allows you to almost mimic that vibe of a team with the recurring help from someone else. Yeah. So that makes so much sense. 

Jordan Gill: Yeah, it's great. 

Katrina Widener: Okay. So my last question for you is for anyone who's like, "All right Jordan, you've convinced me. I want to do VIP days. I now know what transformation I want to do." What would you say would be the ideal first step for them to take so they can actually walk away and go do this now?

Jordan Gill: Totally. So I'm kind of the type of coach that likes to push you over the cliff a little bit. So once you have a decision, I think it's really important to get it out there as quickly as possible. Even if you don't even have everything set up on the backend. So if you're like, "Okay I want to see if people are interested in getting a prescriptive customized VIP day about their sleep schedule or whatever." I would literally have you go to Instagram type in your stories, "Would anyone be interested in this result in one day? Question mark. Sent. We're just getting it out there. And see if you get DMS. And it's funny how often that actually it's like, "Okay I want it." And then it's like, "Oh okay well... now I gotta get this out." right? Because I think it's important that we aren't in our heads too much, and building out this whole thing. I've done 30 different launches in my five and a half years of business. And goodness gracious the amount of energy and branding and all these things that have never seen the light of day because they didn't actually sell is like hurtful to my soul.

So I am very like, "Get it out there and if there aren't any hits then maybe we need to tweak something or adjust. Or maybe you're not in front of the right people or whatever the case is." Just as simple as saying, "I just want to build a sales page in a day. Anyone need that?" Make it very, very straightforward and see if you get any initial bites. And if you do then congrats, you're going to be doing a VIP hopefully. And it doesn't even have to be you put the price out there, anything like that. It's just for the messaging and the result. So that's what I would say. Just get out there and test the waters before you get too deep down the rabbit hole and then realize "Actually, I don't want to do this VIP day."

Katrina Widener: I love that. That is so helpful. And just so like practical, right? Like, "Oh yeah. Duh. Of course. Why wouldn't I do that?" 

Jordan Gill: I know. I definitely, yeah. I enroll in overthinkers university pretty much every year. But I tried to move myself through that as quickly as possible.

Katrina Widener: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me and talking about this today. I'm sure that there are going to be several people who walk away being like, "All right, this is my next step. This is what I'm doing now." Before we officially sign off, I was hoping you would share with everyone where they can find you afterward. 

Jordan Gill: Yes. So my jam is Instagram. The handle is @systemssavedme, not just one system can help you. And I would also say my website is like full of resources www.systemssavedme.com, I do have an archive. My podcast is on a pause, but if you like podcasting obviously if you're listening to this one, you can go check out Systems Saved Me also at the podcast. Which is all about navigating systems and success. And we do talk about VIP days, but also I have guests on there talking about other things too. 

So I would say those are the three big places if you're like "I want to know all the things about VIP days." Then you can go check out the roadmap, which is just like the nine steps to building a successful VIP day. And it's a really easy, awesome guide. We've had like over 4,000 people download it. And you can do that www.systemssavedme.com/roadmap, or suggest you just go to the show notes that Katrina provides you. 

Katrina Widener: Yes. That link will be in the show notes. Don't worry. I mean all the links will be in the show notes, but I'll make sure that one specifically is also. Because yeah, everyone needs to go check it out especially if you're like walking away from the episode being like "I need a VIP day." But thank you so much Jordan, for coming on here. This has been amazing. 

Jordan Gill: Yeah! Thank you so much for having me Katrina. 

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