45:37James Kemp · Essay
$1M+ Working Two Days A Week, No Team
A 45-minute read-aloud of a Google Doc manifesto: design the life first, refuse the four traps, then run five systems and three price phases as a one-person business.
April 3rdThe argument in one line.
A coaching business gets more profitable when it stops chasing cold leads through a multi-step sales machine and instead sells low-friction offers to people who have already paid, then invites them up.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A coach or consultant running a setter, closer and coaches team who takes home far less than the revenue suggests.
- A creator with a large social following who struggles to turn followers into paying clients.
- Someone selling a monthly retainer on a 12-month contract who wonders whether weekly, no-contract pricing could work.
- A coach who already runs group workshops for clients and has never sold tickets to them separately.
- Anyone borrowing a mentor's frameworks who wants to make the positioning feel like their own.
SKIP IF…
- You sell physical products or SaaS; every example here is a one-to-many coaching offer.
- You want a step-by-step funnel build; this is a conversational case study with numbers, not a tutorial.
- You have no audience or past buyers yet; most of the leverage described comes from people who already know you.
The full version, fast.
A coach who had 14 team members, a business partner, and $80K to $150K in monthly revenue was taking home only $20K to $30K. Nine months later it is him and one VA, with $93K in net volume and $73.9K in recurring revenue for the month. He changed three things. He replaced the two-call setter and closer funnel with no-contract weekly pricing ($250 a week) so leads move in small steps instead of one big leap. He sells the workshops he already runs for clients as $90 one-time tickets, which funds content, shortens onboarding and feeds new clients. And he focuses on the 522 people who have paid him, upselling a hand-picked few into higher tiers by Google Doc.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:00hostJames Kemp
00:00guestJK Molina
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 04:50
01 · The old business: 15 people, thin profit
Six coaches, three setters, a sales manager, a closer, three VAs and a partner. Revenue swung between $80K and $150K, costs ran $40K to $58K, and the founder took home $20K to $30K after a 50/50 split. Clients bought him but got one sixth of his attention.
04:50 – 07:11
02 · The new numbers: one VA, $73.9K recurring
Nine months later: $93K net volume in 28 days, $73.9K MRR, costs of roughly $3K to $4K with a $1,500 VA. With no contracts, the pressure moved from finding clients to making the product good.
07:11 – 10:30
03 · Why the setter-closer funnel broke
The old offer was "Get to $30K a month" at $2,000 a month on a 12-month commitment, sold through DM setters and a two-call close. Closing was easy; booking was hard, and the many steps hid that the real problem was weak marketing.
10:30 – 13:46
04 · Add $20K: turning liabilities into assets
Reframing the promise from reaching a number to adding one attracted people already above it, including three clients earning more than the coach. Marketing flipped from turning what people lack into what they have, to turning what they have into what they want.
13:46 – 16:40
05 · Prospect inertia and weekly pricing
The more someone has paid you, the more they will pay. A one-time offer between $50 and $300 bridges the gap from lead to client, and $250 a week replaces the sales call because the step feels small.
16:40 – 21:56
06 · Five reasons workshops pay
Two client workshops a month reduce churn, sell as one-time tickets (118 buyers at $90 for a 90-day offer swipe file), shorten onboarding, break offer fatigue, and catch people who are solution aware on one narrow problem. 80% of clients bought a workshop first.
21:56 – 26:39
07 · 522 buyers beat 240,000 followers
Most revenue came from the 522 people who had paid anything. A simple Google Doc offer sent to 15 hand-picked clients upgraded five from $250 a week to $500 or $750 a week, with three messages instead of a call sequence.
26:39 – 32:48
08 · Making borrowed mechanisms your own
Look to your past, not your playbook: a broke founder with a big account became "likes into cash" and the "cash creator" identity. Going hard on identity polarized the audience, and people joined simply to become one.
32:48 – 36:36
09 · Speed, confidence and the writing habit
The cash creator idea was published within 30 minutes of the call. Inspiration is perishable; a habit of 500 words every morning, written with low expectations and edited with high ones, built the muscle in about three months.
36:36 – 41:32
10 · What's next: a writer who happens to coach
With the survival chapter over, the focus shifts to stability, relationships and craft. The guest describes drifting from a writer who coaches into a coach who writes, and choosing to go back.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A coaching business with $150K months can still pay its founder only $20K to $30K once 14 salaries and a 50/50 partner split come out.
- In a setter and closer funnel, closing was not the hard part; getting people to book the call was.
- A sales process with many steps hides the real problem, so the owner ends up fixing the team instead of fixing weak marketing.
- "Add $20K a month" attracted better leads than "Get to $30K a month" because it speaks to people who already have something.
- Good marketing shows people how to turn what they already have into what they want, which pre-qualifies the lead.
- The more money someone has already given you, the more money they are likely to give you next.
- Asking a stranger to go from zero dollars straight to a $2,000-a-month retainer is the gap that kills conversion.
- Pricing at $250 a week instead of $1,000 a month removes the need for a sales call because the first step feels small.
- Selling a client workshop as a $90 one-time ticket earned $10,620 from 118 buyers for work that was happening anyway.
- 80% of one coach's clients had bought a workshop first.
- With 240,000 followers, most of the revenue came from 522 people who had paid at least once.
- A Google Doc offer sent to 15 hand-picked clients moved five of them from $250 a week to $500 or $750 a week.
- No-contract pricing moves the pressure off finding new clients and onto making the product good enough that people stay.
- Borrowed frameworks only feel authentic when the new name comes from your own past pain, not from your current playbook.
- A made-up identity like "cash creator" can become a reason to buy because the only way to become one is to join.
- An idea published within 30 minutes of having it lands harder than a polished one published weeks later.
- Low expectations when drafting and high expectations when editing is what makes a prolific writer.
Fewer steps, smaller asks, more from past buyers
WHAT TO LEARN
Profit came from removing the sales machine, lowering the first ask to a weekly price, selling workshops already being run, and inviting existing buyers up instead of chasing followers.
01The old business: 15 people, thin profit
- Calculate take-home, not revenue: $150K months with 14 salaries and a 50/50 split can leave the founder only $20K to $30K.
- If clients buy you but get one sixth of you, the promise and the delivery no longer match, and retention suffers.
02The new numbers: one VA, $73.9K recurring
- Recurring revenue with no contracts shifts the daily pressure from finding clients to improving the product so people choose to stay.
- A small team with low costs, around $3K to $4K a month, makes a $93K month mostly profit.
03Why the setter-closer funnel broke
- In a two-call setter and closer funnel, booking is usually harder than closing, so measure each step separately.
- Too many funnel steps hide the real bottleneck; often it is weak marketing, not the closers or setters.
04Add $20K: turning liabilities into assets
- Promise to add a result rather than reach a number, so the offer speaks to people who already have something.
- Show prospects how to turn what they already own into what they want; it filters for leads with resources.
05Prospect inertia and weekly pricing
- Someone who has paid zero rarely jumps to $2,000 a month, so put a $50 to $300 one-time offer in between.
- Weekly pricing, such as $250 a week, makes the first commitment small enough to sell without a call.
06Five reasons workshops pay
- Sell tickets to the workshops you already run for clients; 118 buyers at $90 added $10,620 for planned work.
- Reuse workshop recordings in onboarding so calls point clients to trainings A, B and C instead of re-explaining.
- Alternate workshops with your core offer to break offer fatigue and reach people solution aware on one narrow problem.
07522 buyers beat 240,000 followers
- Look at who has paid you: 522 buyers out of 240,000 followers produced most of the revenue.
- Upsell by hand-picking past clients and sending a short Google Doc offer; five of fifteen upgraded to $500 or $750 a week.
08Making borrowed mechanisms your own
- Name your mechanisms after the pain that brought you into the space, or the borrowed framework will sound fake.
- Commit hard to an identity your audience can become; people will pay simply to belong to it.
09Speed, confidence and the writing habit
- Publish a strong idea fast, because inspiration is perishable and confidence carries half-formed ideas further than polish.
- Write with low expectations and edit with high ones; 500 words every morning built the habit in about three months.
10What's next: a writer who happens to coach
- Once the business is stable, protect the time it frees for relationships and craft instead of refreshing dashboards.
- Ask who you need to become to make the goal inevitable, then keep the boundaries that made the business simple.
Terms worth knowing.
- Setter / closer model
- A sales structure where a setter contacts leads and books calls, and a separate closer runs the sales call, often across two calls before a client signs.
- Triage call
- A short first call that qualifies a lead before booking them onto a longer sales call with a closer.
- MRR
- Monthly recurring revenue: the money that renews automatically each month from ongoing subscriptions or payment plans.
- Net volume
- Total payments processed in a period after refunds and processor fees, as shown in a payment dashboard like Stripe.
- Prospect inertia
- The idea that the more money a person has already paid you, the more likely they are to pay you again for a bigger offer.
- One-time offer
- A low-priced, single-purchase product, often $50 to $300, that lets a new prospect experience your work before a recurring commitment.
- Offer fatigue
- When an audience has seen the same pitch so often that it stops paying attention, similar to ad blindness.
- Solution aware
- A stage of buyer awareness where the prospect already knows the type of solution they want and is choosing who to buy it from.
- Power law of customers
- The pattern where a small share of customers, often 5 to 20 percent, produces most of a business's revenue.
Things they pointed at.
13:46productCustomers to Clients (concept)
18:09product90 Days of Offer swipe file
33:43channelNaval Ravikant: inspiration is perishable
39:23bookPablo Picasso
Lines you could clip.
03:25
“They bought JK, but they got me as one sixth.”
09:50
“Because I had so many steps, it kind of hid where the problem is.”
12:50
“How do you turn something you have into something you don't? I flipped it and it turned into a better quality of lead.”
14:44
“The more money someone gives you, the more money they are likely to give you.”
17:10
“Before I used to create to get paid, whereas now I get paid to create.”
21:56
“I have around 240,000 followers across all socials. Most of my money comes from 522 people who have given me more than zero dollars.”
34:12
“Sometimes you just have to be the guy that crosses it.”
36:05
“The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.”
39:53
“I was a writer who happened to do coaching, but at some point I became a coach who happened to write, and that is when my writing went to shit.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 07:11denseBefore vs after: team, revenue, profit
07:11 – 13:46denseOld funnel and offer promise
13:46 – 21:56densePricing, prospect inertia, workshops
21:56 – 26:39denseMonetizing existing buyers
26:39 – 32:48steadyIdentity and positioning
32:48 – 41:32sparseSpeed, writing and what's next
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before i used to run the business typical setter closer call model so i had the big audience context i had the big audience maybe had like 200 000 followers on twitter and i got people into the list let's start from the top let's start from the top how many how many people how many people did you have you mean clients no how many how many how much team did you have yeah i had I want to say six coaches.
Yeah. Three setters.
One sales manager, one closer.
Three VAs, two VAs. No, three VAs. It was three.
14. And what? That's 14 so far.
Yeah. And a partner. Call it 15.
So you had one partner and 14 team members. yeah i didn't even know it was that high it was high i remember you sending me a spreadsheet but it was um it was a lot so at the highest that was it yeah what's the team now me and my va against the world christian and me super good i'm gonna i'm gonna you know my skills and drawing on ipad so i'm just trying to you know take notes for the for the people so one plus a va that's right wow yeah man what were the dollars before what was the rev so revenue was fluctuating it would fluctuate between maybe 80 and 120 at its highest it was 150 yeah so 80 to 150 pretty good yeah what i took home from that it was like 20 sometimes 30 yeah because the costs were high and i had to split it halfway so i had maybe at the highest it was 58 000 in costs maybe normally it would be like 40 and then i would have to split it in half with ryan because he was the operations guy i was i say that he was in charge of business i was in charge of show business yes yeah so i got leads in he kind of operated the thing i didn't get much face time with the with the people so like to be fair
And Ryan's help was amazing because he allowed me to kind of step away a little bit from the business, but I still didn't get much FaceTime with the folks. And I don't know, like I felt like I was just getting the sales in, you know, and then they kind of got put into this machine, . So like they bought JK.
That was like the interesting thing, you know, so much came from Twitter and. and those pieces so you're the face of it like what was it like being the face of something but not really being inside it the idea of it was very romantic get people in they take care of the thing but it i want to be really careful because like of course like i was helping the clients and and like the business was set up and i'm still really good friends with ryan I will say, though, that they bought JK, but they only got they got me as one sixth.
It was one sixth of me because there were other coaches in the team. Right. So it created kind of this weird dynamic, which I did say.
Enunciated that my clients were my priority, but I also had to run the other show. in which i had to get clients so the actions didn't really align with what was going on because if clients were my priority what am i why am i dedicating 95 percent of my time to get clients instead of servicing clients you know what i mean so there was a huge discrepancy there i think i think too in my experience you need operational discipline and whether you learn it yourself by doing which is like the long road to do it or you get given it by buying it by getting a partner who's really good at it, the outcome is like you needed to go through a period of having operational discipline so you know what systems look like, you know what those things look like, so you can then decide whether they are for you and you want to run in that structure or you don't.
If you're going like, well, now I understand how to operate something, you can decide what operating looks like, which is where you are now. So what's the rev at the moment? I can tell you exactly.
So this, out of 28 days of May, we're at 93K net volume. Out of those 93K, what I count more, the number that's more worth it to me now, is the MRR. So the MRR is 73 .9.
So I call it 74. 74K recurring. So that's the number I'm proud of.
More than the other one. Nice. And you won't know your exact profit number to the end of the month, but let's just say your costs are quite a bit less than they were.
My cost will be maybe like three, three to four, because it's Christian, it's $1 ,500. That's my VA. And plus all the software and stuff.
Nice. So this is in the period of seven months, right? In terms of...
Nine. Congrats, man.
thank you how does it feel going into a month with recurring revenue because you've been you've been on the other side of it like how does it feel you know mentally emotionally to go into a month with 73 74 grand on the board it feels the pressure is still there but it's in a different place i'll say that because now the pressure is kind of where i want it to be which is Because the nature of the way we do things is no contracts.
People don't have to stay. People choose to stay, which leads to better clients. But we can talk about that in another note.
But the pressure now is in how do I make my stuff better? The pressure is in the arts. What workshop do I create?
I didn't think about this shit before. An hour before we got on this call, I was thinking, what are the next workshops? How can I deliver something that they want?
Before, the focus was on, okay how do i get more clients which is not really really what you want it to be like product is king i believe that so the pressure now it's there and i like it i spend a lot of time on my workshops i put a lot of work into it and make the make the docs really comprehensive but at the end i feel like that was a job well done the pressure is where i want it to be so i like it nice nice so talking about clients like How do you serve them now?
What were you selling before?
You mean the offer or the deliverables? Yeah, what was the main offer? The offer was get to 30k.
Get 30k a month. And the deliverables were getting a group onboarding call, right? And then you get like coaching calls, Slack, typical stuff.
Yeah. And what was it now? Is that a question?
Yeah, what were you selling that for? That was $2 ,000 a month for a 12 -month commitment. And what we found was that closing people on the call was not as hard with the closers.
What was hard was getting people to book the call. That was harder than getting people to close. So you had book.
Did you have a setter? Did you have a triage? Or did you do a two -call close or a one?
I did a two call. So people would join and they'll enjoy the signup page and they would have a number and setter would call them, then book them with a closer. It would take maybe one, two calls.
And then, so we also had DM setters that I kind of saw it as a . So the gatherer were the posts, which gathered likes, reposts, comments. And then the hunter was the setter who would DM everyone with their script and then get them to book.
Yeah. So lots of steps. A few.
Lots of stress sometimes because then I'll get up in weird situations in which maybe they messaged a previous client, somebody I wasn't in super good terms with, and then I'd get into awkward situations. Yeah. The thing is, it works, right?
But it's got lots of dependencies. You've got to get the leads in the first place. You've got to book the calls.
Then the setters have got to have enough people to go at in terms of audience size. Then you've got to get them to turn up to a triage. Then you've got to get them to turn up to the second call.
And then you've got to get them to close. So if any of the steps break down, then it's the difference between a good week and a bad one. Yeah.
It got me fixing a lot of the little things instead of the big things. I would get mad at my team sometimes. I'd be like, guys, why are we not closing anyone?
You guys are getting on calls, you're not closing them. And I was fixing the upper things instead of the main thing, which was my marketing just kind of sucked. Because I had so many steps, it kind of hid where is the problem.
I couldn't see where is the problem. Now, we can talk about the new model, but... I now kind of know where the problem is.
If I see it, it's not enough offers. The good offer is not good enough where I can fix it. Right.
Before there were so many steps that if something broke, I had to kind of like open the machine, which took a long time and I didn't know what to fix. Yeah. Yeah.
Lots of, lots of dependencies. So has the promise changed or that he's still, he's still selling the same promise. The promise has changed.
So we changed it to add 20 K. at 20k instead of getting around what's the thinking around that like because i mean we've had these conversations but for the for the benefit of the audience what's the thinking around add 20k versus get to uh it attracts people who may be above 20 so that's what's interesting uh getting 230 was outperformed by add 20 because it would get just people who maybe they are 20 they want to add 40 i feel like it got them I feel like I got a better quality of lead.
But what you gave me that really got the lead quality up more than the part of the offer was when you told me it's not the goal, it's how you get there. And this happened actually in May. I didn't share this, but I got three clients that make more money than me in May.
And it makes no sense, right? Because my offer is about money. But I got three clients that make more money than me.
And they showed up to a call saying, listen, bro. I'm making 400K a month. I'm doing great.
But my costs are really high and I need your help making this more profitable. What do I do? And they came to me because not so much me focusing on the promise.
The promise really hasn't changed. And at 20K, it's not really a very unique promise. A lot of people offer this.
But it's the way you get there through the identity and the mechanisms. By showing people your philosophy, you attract people that are above it. So when you posted that thing in the school that I liked was how to attract higher level leads, you turn liabilities into assets.
I thought about the ads that I have here about cars, right? So I thought a bad ad would be something about make 30K. A good ad would be something like take the old piece of junk you got parked in your garage and turn it into 30K by the end of the month.
So you show them how to turn liabilities into assets. Will you attract people, less people? Yeah.
But I mean, you want people who have a car, right? Who can afford something like this. Yeah.
So it really got, dude, that post changed me because I thought, how can I then turn liabilities into assets? How do I turn what they have into something that they don't? Whereas marketing before was, how do you turn something you don't into something you have?
I changed it now. How do you turn something you have into something you don't? I flipped it and it turned into a better quality of lead.
So that's why I changed the offer. Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, because it talks to, if you talk to what someone already has and they're dissatisfied with, then you're talking, that's a pre -qualification for the lead.
Whereas everybody really wants, you know, you can largely say everybody wants another 30K, but when someone already has 30K or more. then they're much more discerning and picky about how they're going to get the next bit because they know the downsides of getting it in the first place. So it's a beautiful insight.
It is a beautiful insight. And you move to a weekly pricing. Talk about that.
I did move to weekly pricing because of what I call prospect inertia. So the more money someone gives you, the more money they are likely to give you. Yeah.
So what I found was that it's customers to clients rebranded, right? But people would take leads and turn them into clients. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants here, right?
That's right. That's right. That's right.
It all flows up. That's right. For the record, James Kemp invented the week, the concept of the week.
I invented weekly payments and money. Yes. Yes, correct.
So anyway, the usual models take people from leads to clients, right? What I found was that it was really hard. My stuff is like likes in cash.
Likes in cash came from like real pains of people who have, there's a story of a guy making 80, had 80 ,000 followers in the financial niche, like wealth management. And he couldn't afford the 1K a month service. I'm like, dude, like you have 80K followers.
Like what's wrong with you, right? So anyway, these inefficiencies happen often because we ask too much from the audience. We ask them to go from lead to client.
And the more money someone gives you, the more money they are likely to give you. If somebody gave you zero, it's unlikely that will give you 1K, 2K, 3K a month. So when you introduce a process in the middle, like a one -time offer, 50, 100, 300 bucks, that allows them to be introduced to who you are because they don't really know you from your content, but once they pay something and they're there with you, they have the experience of what it's like to be served by you.
So by including that, you just get more clients, right? And if you wanted to remove the calls, what I found most efficient to be was, as simple as it sounds, just do weekly instead of monthly.
I remember your stuff. Back when I joined the syndicate, I think it was 1K a month. And I was thinking, man, 1K a month, I'm already in this other stuff.
But then you said, but JK, did you know that you could also join for 250 a week? I'm like, that sounds like such a good offer. then now so compelling because it's just 250 right you got 250 now that's that's what we're asking really isn't it just let's let's get started let's go and then yeah motion as you say beautiful it made sense because i got i got into the you know typical funnel right so it's like i i saw you on facebook then i got into the 100 uh workshop and then the 250 it made sense like zero 100 250.
it was easy it didn't have much friction yeah so now that i saw how the magic trick is done now i'm like oh i get it now it's cool yeah so let i mean let's talk about that because you you sit you know in the same place as me with the wonderful privilege of serving people like you just spent a lot of time thinking about your next workshop like why you know why why is the the thing that you deliver important So there's let's talk workshop.
It's I think let's call it three reasons. One is a little negative. The two are quite positive.
Let's talk about the little negative. Little negative is that because we don't do contracts or I don't do contracts, if I stop delivering, then people just don't see a future. They're out.
So why am I thinking of this now? We're recording this on May 28th. It's because at the beginning of the month, I like to tell people like.
being a leader and tell them this is what's going on in june on the next month that reduces trim so that's negative what's the other positive what what are the two positives the two positives is that i can sell it so uh kind of the way i articulate this is before i used to create to get paid whereas now i get paid to create yeah so how does this work i have two workshops a month that I host for clients.
People then can buy a one -time ticket to those. I'm going to do this anyway, but people can buy a one -time ticket to those. Last time I did this was I put up, well, I say I, but actually Christian did it.
Shout out to Christian, my VA. He collected my 90 best emails that have converted it. And I sold it as a 90 days of upper swipe file.
That was an asset I wanted to give clients because some of them were asking, how do I write faster? I collected those so they could swipe them. Well, Christian did it.
And I sold tickets to it. 118 people bought at $90 for the 90 days of offer swipe file. So that's like $10 ,620 that I got for work I was going to do anyway.
So that's the beauty of the workshops. It aligns incentives. Because I know that if I make the workshop good, I'm going to sell people on it.
If I make the workshop good, also clients are going to benefit from it. And if I make the workshop good, which leads to the third benefit, I can then use it as a way to make the delivery faster and simpler. In the beginning, I struggled with the one -on -one onboarding call because I had to explain things from scratch.
I couldn't just say, watch this and implement the three steps I have at the end of the doc. I had to explain it and tell them the three steps. Now my calls, instead of going through the hour, sometimes one went to two hours actually.
Instead of that, I can just tell them, this is the pieces that you're missing. Go through training A, B, and C, and then you will be okay. It gives them quick clarity.
And if I explain to them why they need to watch them, I can shorten the delivery time and I can just reference to assets that I've already created. So these are the beauty of workshops for me. So it's just, you know, the customers or clients model depends on you deliver a workshop on a couple of dates to a client solving problems that clients have and serving them.
Then you monetize that for 90 bucks, you make 10 K and then you invite those people to become clients and the cycle continues. Yeah. Oh, and a fourth benefit.
Now that I see this. It reduces offer fatigue. You taught me this.
When people know what you're going to say, they stop listening. Yeah. So if you always keep promoting your core offer over and over again, eventually just people get ad blindness.
They don't know. They know what you're going to say, so they stop listening. But when you add a workshop in between, then it's like, you know how bodybuilders confuse the muscle?
It confuses the audience. They don't know what to expect. And because you take offers down and up, it allows them to hit harder when they're up.
So that's another benefit of including workshops inside your offer cadence. Yeah. The fifth benefit, if you want to get real deep on it, is that people look at an audience as pain aware, problem aware, or solution aware.
But that's kind of in the macro of your total solution of, I want to become a solo consultant who makes a million bucks a year or whatever. There are also people who are solution aware on a particular problem. your last workshop was on what the templates that you'd use to you know do something there are people who are solution aware looking for those templates to execute on something so they were at the bottom of the funnel for that solution and then you move them from solution aware and one out element of you know the templates into solution aware of your systems and your method so it actually moves people down a funnel and actually crosses the funnel as well because it and that's why we get Like, you know, 118 people, 118 customers out of an audience of like, you know, a few thousand is a hell of a percentage.
I'm going to give you two statistics that are going to really nail this point. 80 % of my clients have bought a workshop from me before. Is it to say that if they didn't buy a workshop, they wouldn't have become clients?
No. But hey, it helped, you know, 80%. Now, here's another interesting thing.
I have around 240 ,000 followers across all socials. Most of my money comes from 522 people who have given me more than zero dollars. It is the hyper focus of people who are actually willing to take their credit card and pay that gave me a lot of...
I mean, it allowed me to stop being fucking petty, like always focusing on leads and shit and like always chasing and be like, let me not expose myself to that. Like, I know I need to do some inner work and some Buddhism stuff. So that wouldn't affect me.
I don't want to do that right now. I could just focus on the people who already paid. And because I hyper focus on this 522, they make me more than the 240 ,000 other people.
Yeah, my. My argument to all of you guys that I keep saying is it's not the 239 ,000 people who are going to waste your time and waste your energy. It's not so much the people that you're focused on who have demonstrated intent.
It's the efficiency of not focusing and chasing 239 ,000 people and not catering to the whims and needs of people who aren't actually going to buy. Because success is through elimination of the things you're not going to do. that get in the way of the essential things that you must do and the essential things you must do is understand why someone gave you 90 bucks and why someone was interested in that particular piece and then invite them to become a client because they might have another problem to solve done also on this so thinking about that like a lot of the energy we leak are in it's like let's let's draw a line and let's see like how close like the line goes in to how much what your most expensive thing is.
We focus so much of our energy on people who are furthest away from that line. Leads, new followers. And sometimes we don't remember prospect inertia.
Again, the more money someone gives you, the more money they are likely to give you. So I make as much from 60 clients, or what is it? Almost as much from 70 clients as I make from 10.
Why? Because I took that advice and thought, Why am I focusing on these people that are so further away from the line and not focusing on the people who have already paid me?
So what I did was what you did with me. I thought, okay, who are the guys that I think could do better here? Let me craft a small Google Doc and ask them, would you like to join this other offer that's two, three times as expensive?
I sent it to maybe 15. Five of them agreed. And I turned from a $2 .50 a week.
to 500 a week and one guy to 750 a week from a pool of 15 people because i picked the right pool yeah so a lot of money to be made from the people who already gave you money yeah the power law of your customers is like that right in terms of in terms of where the dollars are the the the 80 20 rule the 95 5 rule is is very much present in terms of client serving businesses about who gives you the most money that is a graph by the way that i drew just for just for clarity that's it's also so much easier man like to you know before it used to be like okay get them to engage get them to book a call get them to show up get them to do on the follow stay and then another retention call now it's just like hey new offer google doc in out done three messages in between like so much easier it's also like The more money they're likely to give you, it is also the less headaches they're likely to give you because they already know you.
There's so much trust. You could just go like this. Yeah, yeah.
I think it's a useful frame in terms of, you know, this is a sales process. This is a process with multiple steps and many people are finding this pretty expensive, you know, filling the funnel, getting people to turn up and everything. This is an invitation process for people who've already given you money.
inviting them to give you more money to solve specific problems that you've specified in the path to there because there's a clear outcome between what you're offering and what you're asking and what you're promising to get to get done and the relative investment that you're asking to me is that something that i really like you know in the process of us working together you know i'm a kind of mechanism guy how have you You've done a particularly good job at making things your own.
Philosophically, this business looks like mine, but it's yours. How have you done that? Because a lot of people struggle with that.
How have you made these mechanisms your own and the identity that you've crafted in public as well to differentiate?
It had to come from the past. Like when I think about these mechanisms, I need to look not to the future, but to the past. Like there was a reason why I was attracted to this spot in the first place.
And that reason included a lot of cigarettes, a lot of stress and a lot of late nights that I didn't want. It was me thinking in the past on why am I interested in this? Like why did this come to be?
My own personal story is I had a big account, but I was broke. So what do you call audience efficiency? I call likes in cash.
What do you call maybe the sovereign consultant? I call the cash creator. Because the sovereign consultant was something that you needed to do because of what happened in your life.
Me becoming the cash creator, me understanding the likes in cash is something I needed to do. So in order to make them my own, I didn't think how I'm doing things now. I had to think to the past.
Why was I interested in this? And what was my own unique story? Because the moment I try to like, kind of, if this has a shade of something that is not true, it stinks and people get it.
So it has to come from the story. It has to come from something that you like. It almost hurts.
Like, I don't want to, I don't want to assume here, but maybe the sovereign consultant came from pain. Maybe Lex and Cash came from, I know Lex and Cash came from pain. so it has to come from a true place in order for it to like really hit so you have to look to the past why is this uniquely yours and then once you take that kind of stance from what happened in the past yeah when you look to the future you will be able to paint the stuff in your own color yeah beautiful and the what because from observationally when you switched from talking to creators to crafting this identity of cash creators what happened because observationally there was a very distinct shift in the marketplace in terms of how they perceived you and how they perceived what you were going to do for them it was oh my god it was a me too moment because it was people saying dude like you're right all this stuff that we've been taught like not not everyone but a lot of them were like dude you know what yeah that's kind of bullshit like it was people for me one of some things that i seriously disagree with is give everything away for free give all of your value away for free so me being able to say cash graders don't do that because honestly i've done this thing for four years and it didn't work it gave people kind of a place to say
dude me too so that happened a lot also it polarized people i didn't understand this at first because i don't know maybe i feel like some people see the world in color i see the world sometimes in lines as in this doesn't make sense that's why i like kind of straight away from all the woo woo stuff so when you told me you gotta go harder on the identity piece i'm like dude but like why People don't use this thing.
You're like, yeah, just trust me. Right. So I went hard on the cash creator thing.
And to my surprise, people would join my stuff just because they said, I just want to become a cash creator. And it was like the cash creator isn't real. Whaleblade isn't real.
Valley versus Insight isn't real, but I make them real. Yeah. So it's almost like I didn't get it at first and maybe like some people won't get it, but it's like that whole thing of you are the niche.
It really is, like you said, marketing on steroids, because then the only way if somebody resonates with a fraction of the things you created with your identity, the only way they can relieve that anxiety and scratch that itch is by becoming one of them. And the only way they can become one of them is they have to pay you.
And that makes it easier. You are building a monopoly, you know, and competition erodes profits and monopoly keeps them. you know and creates them so you've fundamentally built a monopoly on the idea of a cash creator and no one that's a monopoly that the government can't come and take away from you either because it's an idea that people attach to and the become piece is the crucial bit isn't it you know they're telling you who they want to become because you've you've built a a vision for them you know and you've forgiven their past as well you haven't said oh you're dumb you're stupid that don't you've said These are the flaws of doing it this way.
These are the benefits of doing it my way. And here's the invitation that bridges the gap. It's beautiful.
Sometimes it depends. You know, like sometimes the difference between a failing and a successful marketing campaign is how confident you are the moment you say it. It's like when you were in high school and you told a joke, but nobody heard it, but somebody else said it confidently and now he's the cat and he stole it.
Sometimes that is the difference. Sometimes I'll come up with stuff that are half cooked, but because I say it with confidence, people believe it. So the cash creator, there is a world in which I don't say that confidently and it sounds corny, right?
But because you believe it, people believe it. Sometimes you said this, clients borrow your confidence. I also, the half -life of the idea matters.
And the most impressive thing about you is that when we have a conversation, if you get the insight, you will go and execute in that moment. so i distinctly remember the conversation about cash creators we didn't even complete our schedule however long we had together and you were like cool bam and i think i saw you tweet or post on instagram about it or email maybe within 30 minutes of that conversation happening and the idea from inception to execution and the response is the commitment to that and and the response was immediate and then you built on it so it's also not just confidence it's the speed of the idea because if the idea hangs out there for too long then someone else is going to come and take it because it's a good idea yeah like uh speed can definitely kill but speed can also save you so when i have a moment especially with writing because the all the things we we deal in scientific terms, like specific numbers.
How much did you make? What's the profit percentage, right? But sometimes you got to let go of the scientific to like believe the subjective and no, not the subjective, but believe kind of the woo -woo.
So to me, woo -woo things I believe in, write fast, inspiration is perishable, act when you have it. Naval said that and just put it out there. Like sometimes just for the fact that you're willing to lead, people are willing to follow.
So you don't really need to think too much. You know how sometimes people don't know if they should cross the street, right? But then one guy crosses it, and then everybody crosses it, right?
Sometimes you just have to be the guy that crosses it. And you need speed for that. How much do you think your consistent social posting and content creation helps with that?
Because you and I and some people in our community get a lot more swings at bat than that. you can tweet multiple times a day you can post on instagram multiple times you can email as much as you like like how do you think about training that muscle because that's that's very strong in you as well because you are you are like a few of us in terms of prolific yeah yeah for me it's i have very low expectations of myself when i write but high expectations when i edit so my habit is and i i picked this up since i was learning how to write in english i Like my first language is Spanish, but I didn't really know like how to do stuff in English.
So I bought a course and I don't remember what the course said, except for 500 words a day, every morning, even if they suck. I said, okay, do it. And I started with that habit.
And often when I find that I'm like struggling with like writer block and like, I don't know what to do. Sometimes I find that I have too high expectations of myself. So some of my best content have come after I literally write, this is probably going to suck, but...
So I have really low expectations and I just get it done. Put a timer in 10 minutes if that helps. I don't put timers, but I have it useful to just be like, this is probably going to suck.
I put it on the page, then I rest and then come back with a fresher mind later because the hard part is putting it on the page. Like . The toughest thing to write is you just got to sit down.
Yeah. I mean, you're much younger than me, but how long did it take you to develop that muscle?
Maybe like three months.
Impressive. Yeah. I mean, it was COVID.
There was nothing else to do. I was on my computer anyway, so I guess kind of a hack. Very cool.
so what's next i mean i know the goal what's the um this is going to be a record month it is it already is i'm i think so no i'm 0 .3 percent away from it being a record month but inshallah now what is next get to that point but i i ask you this james what the hell do i do with my time it's like i have a lot of time now right so what uh what is what is next and i feel like what's next it's kind of understanding what areas i should grow in that's not just business i have to kind of resist the habit of just going there and refreshing notifications and see what's broken because maybe maybe maybe nothing's broken right maybe maybe there's other areas of your business that are broken like maybe the relationships that i you know that I didn't cultivate, like the time I didn't spend with people that I love.
So now it's what is next is just something I didn't learn for the past four years that I finally learned is just don't change the plan. Just stick to the plan. But maybe there's other things that I can grow that is not just my business.
And now I feel like I've created enough space and I've earned enough space so that I can grow in other areas. So what's next? it's um survival chapter is over the next step is kind of i want to call it kind of the the personal chapter like seeing what calls seeing where do i need to go next personally in my life maybe not business i just have to like keep going through the path yeah the the the question if you ask is who do i need to become to make the goal inevitable and you've understood that keeping the boundaries and constraints as you've reduce down the um you've made the business much less complex and you've made the business have a lot fewer moving parts and you've got strong boundaries in terms of where you spend your time in the business and then the constraints of the constraints of spending the time on yourself and being the person to become to to maximize the leverage that you've built because that that will come because the model allows for it the model allows for you to do that without um breaking
the boundaries and the constraints you've got so conversely it gets easier so you must be the person to be able to manage no and be able to uh to to to keep things on the table when some many many want to take it off out of desperation yeah now now it's i don't like i still work a lot i spend a lot of time sitting down thinking but now i do it in the things i want so like it's not like you know i don't have kids it's not like I don't want to pretend like I have the same time demands as you do.
But to me now, it allowed me to transition into my art. And this is huge for me because I feel like I started this journey. You know, Picasso said that his best works were the ones when he started.
And I'm not comparing myself to Picasso, but I felt that because I thought, dude, my best writing was when I started and I barely wrote good English. And I feel like in the beginning, I became, I was a writer and I truly today, like, if you ask me what am i i will say writer i felt like i was a writer who happened to do coaching but at some point i shifted and i became a coach who happened to write and that is when my writing went to shit because i wasn't doing it for the art yeah and now like i'm back i'm a writer who happens to coach and i find a lot of joy in like you pulling on my ipad doing it with like my shitty handwriting and putting out concepts into the world because i feel like now i created this space so that i can become not like the business guy but the artist that i that really like that fulfills me it's writing i'm the writer who happens to coach away from the coach who happens to write which i don't want to be in a position ever again beautiful thank you thank you for doing it it's um it's great to see people following their
their artistic passion with the scientific methods so uh congrats on the on the numbers my friend and thank you for everything man like give me an instrumental really helpful uh honestly like um i was talking to my girl like there's no really reason why i would go to any other like there's no real reason why i would go to bali because i'm like i was i was born in a tropical country grew up there i have like nice nice beaches and stuff but James will be a reason I would go to ballet just to meet the guy just hang out sometime I'm gonna hang out you know my house is always open for you well thank you for your teachings thank you for having me do this let's keep going thank you
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