Richard Hickman spent his first career hunting Russian hackers as a digital-forensics consultant. Then he became a stepdad to five kids overnight, walked away from the on-call life, and started helping his wife build her coaching business — which accidentally turned into Piqued Consulting, a marketing agency built entirely for high-ticket coaches. In this episode he hands Jeremy Rivera the exact playbook: the CRM foundation that comes before ads, the pricing math that decides who he'll even work with, and why you should be writing your website for the AI that's reading it, not just the human.

Richard's ideal client is an established coach making around $20k/month who's stuck under a "referral ceiling" — great at the work, no predictable sales system. His agency's job is to install the foundation, dial in the offer, and only then turn on paid acquisition. Along the way he makes a sharp case for answer engine optimization (AEO), email marketing, and never betting your whole livelihood on a single platform.

In this episode

• The CRM foundation comes first — centralize communications in GoHighLevel, get a company phone number off your personal cell, and build speed-to-lead before you ever run ads.
• Don't turn on ads until the offer is dialed in — and why he won't work with a coach whose offer is under $4,000–$5,000.
• Price to cover your cost of acquisition — collect enough cash upfront to pay CAC twice over, charge upfront (or half now/half in 30), and stay far away from pay-on-results.
• The coach-to-advisor shift — reposition so a successful client keeps you for the next milestone instead of graduating away from you.
• AEO/GEO in practice — "build your website so an AI cites you," and title blog posts as the exact questions prospects type into ChatGPT.
• Email is the most underutilized channel — value-add sends weekly, the jab-jab-jab-hook rhythm, and why he's never unsubscribed from Grant Cardone.
• Never rely on one platform — the creator with millions of followers and zero emails who nearly lost everything in the TikTok outage.
• The authenticity paradox — how to market credibly for profit without becoming the person prospects "can smell."

Notable quotes

"You need to be building your website to where it's not necessarily geared towards a human being visiting it, but an AI visiting it." — Richard Hickman"Who reads blogs anymore? AIs do. Perplexity reads your blog. ChatGPT reads your blog." — Richard Hickman"Social media is great, but don't rely on it, because it could go away in an instant and we've seen it happen." — Richard Hickman

Resources & links

• Free AI visibility audit for coaches: coachingaiaudit.com — checks whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude cite you, then gives pointers to fix it.
• Piqued Consulting — Richard's marketing agency for high-ticket coaches.
• Richard on Instagram: @piquedconsulting
• Richard's new podcast, The Business of High Ticket Coaching — launching soon.
• Go deeper on AI visibility & answer engine optimization.

Unscripted Small Business is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Every episode at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com.