The argument in one line.
Your offer—not your funnel, team, or work ethic—determines 80% of your business success, and the three-part formula of meaningful differentiation, premium pricing economics, and scalable cost structures is the single framework that unlocks it.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A service business owner with $1M-$5M annual revenue who suspects their offer design is the ceiling on growth.
- A founder or agency leader with proven sales ability but stuck plateauing who wants frameworks to engineer pricing power into the offer itself.
- A B2B service provider or digital product creator who's read Hormozi's work and wants advanced, industry-specific offer architecture beyond foundational concepts.
- An entrepreneur with an existing customer base or sales process who wants to reverse-engineer why competitors are scaling faster on similar positioning.
SKIP IF…
- You're pre-revenue or pre-product — this assumes you already have customers, a sales process, and proven product-market fit to optimize.
- You sell consumer packaged goods, physical retail, or inventory-based models — the frameworks here center on service and digital offer architecture.
- You're already operating at $10M+ annually — this is entry-to-mid level offer engineering, not the advanced mechanics of scaling from nine to ten figures.
The full version, fast.
80% of business success or failure comes from the offer — not the funnel, not the team, not execution quality. The pattern across 3,000+ businesses consulted is consistent: mediocre operators with great offers scale to $10-50M, while strong operators with weak offers stall at $4-6M. A great offer is meaningfully differentiated and has a favorable cost curve as it scales; both are engineerable, not accidental. The frameworks covered include the Three S Formula for structuring offers, the Barbell Framework for positioning, market-sophistication mechanisms for matching offer language to buyer awareness, and the conveyor-belt effect for creating momentum through the sales process. The offer determines pricing power, ad conversion, sales close rates, and ultimately LTV-to-CAC — the single ratio that decides how much runway exists to scale.
Members feature
Chat with this breakdown.
Modern Creator members can chat with any breakdown — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment. Unlocks at T2: refer 3 friends + add your own API key.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 02:38
01 · Cold open + thesis
Pattern interrupt — 'how did that idiot scale to 9 figures?' — into the thesis: 80% of business success comes from your offer. Cole stacks proof ($30M+ own company, 3,000+ consulted) and ladders into the promise: pricing power, cost curve, ad conversion, sales conversion, LTV/CAC.
02:38 – 05:40
02 · What is an offer + the 3 components
Definition: what you sell + how you communicate it (positioning) + the terms. A good offer has packaging, economics, and scalability. Mediocre operators with banger offers blow past world-class operators with bad offers.
05:40 – 09:27
03 · Market commoditization curve
Every market commoditizes over time — barrier to entry sets the speed. Online services, AI, even SaaS are all in the commoditized zone. A good offer is the antidote. Trust (referrals + content) overcomes a bad offer but masks the underlying problem.
09:27 – 13:14
04 · Packaging, economics, scalability
Packaging = how you communicate, drives differentiation and market power. Economics = pricing strategy (lowest cost OR premium — there's only one lowest, but many premiums). Cole: every top-dog in every niche he works with is the most expensive. All business strategy is pricing strategy.
13:14 – 17:46
05 · The 4 cost structures
Low-fixed/high-variable = services (easy to start, hard to scale). High-fixed/low-variable = SaaS (huge leverage). Low-fixed/low-variable = digital courses (temporary arbitrage, commoditizes instantly). High-fixed/high-variable = restaurants (death). Most viewers are in services — design for low incremental cost at scale.
17:46 – 22:18
06 · The Three S Formula (introduced)
The big-daddy framework. Solve a SPECIFIC problem for a SPECIFIC person in a SPECIFIC way. Hits packaging, economics, and scalability in one stroke.
22:18 – 26:50
07 · Bad offer worked example (agency)
'Everything to everybody' full-service marketing agency = no specialization, no premium pricing, varied client journeys, no SOPs, stuck at $20-100k/mo working 80hr weeks. Gets nailed on all three components.
26:50 – 30:37
08 · Good offer worked example (CRO)
AI-enabled CRO agency for e-com: specific problem (low checkout conversion), specific person ($1M+ DTC), specific way (Karpathy auto-research + LLMs split-testing). Higher prices → better team → better results → flywheel.
30:37 – 35:09
09 · Bad → good coaching example
Bad: 'executive leadership coach' helping C-levels with OKRs. Good: same client repositioned to 'women in middle management → C-level promotions in 6 months.' Specific person + specific problem + specific way (strategic OKRs with direct report).
35:09 – 39:41
10 · Note on landing $50M–$1B+ companies
Enterprise sales = ABM = capital intensive + 6-18 month sales cycles. Instead: use the 3S formula on SMB, let the 5-10% enterprise leads come through organically as your case studies + referrals compound.
39:41 – 44:14
11 · Market sophistication (Eugene Schwartz)
5 stages: first-to-market → expanded claims → mechanism → enlarged mechanism → dead market. Cole's hack: just assume you're in stage 3/4 and lead with a mechanism regardless. Permanent desires (money, relationships, health) rarely fully die.
44:14 – 49:32
12 · The Mechanism Framework
The script: 'Most people trying to achieve X make mistake Y. The problem with that is Z. So instead, what we do is [methodology], which allows [benefit] and ultimately [benefit of the benefit].' Worked live for media-buying vs offer engineering, and for RCA (affiliate marketing vs remote closing).
49:32 – 53:18
13 · The Barbell Framework
Sell highly-leveraged done-with-you to mass B2C, OR done-for-you to smaller-richer B2B/solopreneur. Stay OUT of no-man's-land (e.g. done-with-you coaching for $10k/mo coaches — broke, small TAM, wrong product type). Real-world: done-with-you for new coaches, OR done-for-you for $1M+ coaches.
53:18 – 56:20
14 · Pain vs Unfulfilled Desire
Below-average→average: high urgency, big TAM, less money. Average→excellence: low urgency, small TAM, more money. Golden quadrant: WEALTHY people who feel below-average trying to get back to average — high net worth divorce, wealthy guys who let bodies go, c-suite women in their masculine.
56:20 – 57:51
15 · Channeling desire (not creating it)
You cannot create desire — only channel existing desire into your offer. Speaker coach → 'speak to land clients.' Executive coach → 'get promoted to C-level.' Cole's own SDA: started wanting to help people be better sales leaders → had to wrap it in 'we place a rep for you' (cheese) to deliver the leadership coaching (broccoli).
57:51 – 59:20
16 · Guarantees + Proof Volume
Guarantee types: or-you-don't-pay, performance-based, money-back-if-you-succeed (Gym Launch), we-cover-cost. Conditions = the actions that, if done, make success near-certain. Proof Volume: stacking 15 case studies at bottom of cold email tripled Cole's response rate.
59:20 – 1:00:30
17 · Done-For-You Hybrids + close
Don't do full DFY — too unscalable. Do part of it (the setup, the placement, the systems setup) DFY and consult/coach the rest. Closer: 'I'll send the action guide and study guide.'
Lines worth screenshotting.
- 80 percent of the success or failure of your business comes down to your offer — not your funnel, not your team, not your work ethic.
- Mediocre operators rocket to 10 to 50 million per year on a banger offer; world-class operators stay stuck at four to six million with a bad one.
- The saying about offers is that it is how idiots get rich — because there is so much leverage in having the right one.
- Every market commoditizes over time; a good offer is the only mechanism that combats the margin erosion that commoditization produces.
- Without a differentiated offer, there is no incentive for a cold stranger who sees your ad to risk their time reaching out — full stop.
- Meaningful differentiation does two things: it makes cold acquisition work, and it maintains pricing power against competitors.
- Your offer determines your pricing power, cost curve, ad conversion rate, sales team close rate, and ultimately your LTV to CAC — which is the number that determines how much runway you have to scale.
Steal the offer-engineering stack.
Cole Gordon playbook
If 80% of business outcome is the offer, every framework Cole names in this video is a leverage point for Joe's product portfolio — not just MCN, but JoeFlow, Mod Boss, MCN+, and the $6 Stack positioning itself.
- Run every Joe product through the Three S Formula. Write down the specific person, specific problem, specific way for JoeFlow, Mod Boss, MCN+. If you can't fill all three slots tightly, the positioning is the problem — not the product.
- Apply the Mechanism Framework verbatim to the next VSL/ad script. 'Most creators trying to own their stack get sold yet another SaaS — the problem with that is rent compounds — so instead, we install the $6 Stack...'
- Place every product on the Barbell. JoeFlow $49–99 = right-bell (mass B2C, done-with-you). MCN+ membership = left-bell (DFY-leaning toolkit, smaller-richer creators). Kill any 'mid-tier for $10k/mo coaches' style offer in the roadmap — it's no-man's-land.
- Find Joe's 'wealthy people who feel below-average' quadrant. Strong candidate: 6/7-figure operators who feel out-coded by AI-native solos. High urgency, high money, mid-sized TAM — perfect MCN+ avatar.
- Wrap every transformation offer in cheese-and-broccoli. Cheese = the existing desire (more revenue, less SaaS spend, more time). Broccoli = the actual stack/skill transfer. Lead with cheese.
- Build a Proof Volume page. 15+ named case studies / testimonials in one place. Use it as the bottom block of every cold outreach.
- Pick a single guarantee type and bake it into a sales asset this week. 'Install the $6 Stack with us, and if it costs you more than $30 the first 3 months, we'll refund the install' is the kind of we-cover-the-cost guarantee Cole describes — and it's a marketing differentiator more than a sales one.
Terms worth knowing.
- LTV to CAC
- Lifetime value of a customer divided by the cost to acquire one. The ratio that tells a business how much it can spend on marketing while still being profitable, and how aggressively it can scale.
- Cold acquisition
- Getting customers who have no prior relationship with the business — usually through paid ads or cold outreach — rather than through referrals, content, or word of mouth.
- Pricing power
- The ability to raise prices without losing many customers. High pricing power means buyers see a brand as distinct enough that they don't shop on price alone.
- Cost curve
- How the cost of serving one more customer changes as a business grows. A favorable curve means each new customer costs less to fulfill; an unfavorable one means costs climb in lockstep with revenue.
- Market commoditization
- The drift over time in which competitors flood a market, customers stop seeing meaningful differences between providers, and everyone is forced to compete on price alone.
- Paid acquisition
- Buying customers through advertising — Facebook, Google, YouTube, cold email — as opposed to earning them through organic content, referrals, or SEO.
- Category creation
- A positioning strategy where instead of competing in an existing crowded category, a business names and claims a small new sub-category it can dominate.
- Market power
- The degree to which a business can raise prices without conversions dropping off a cliff. Strong differentiation increases it; being seen as interchangeable with rivals destroys it.
- Fixed and variable costs
- Fixed costs stay roughly the same regardless of how many customers you serve (rent, software). Variable costs scale up with each new customer (labor, materials). The mix dictates how a business behaves as it grows.
- SaaS
- Software as a Service. Subscription software businesses where development is expensive upfront but each new user adds almost nothing to ongoing costs.
- Done for you
- A service model where the provider executes the work on behalf of the client, rather than teaching the client to do it themselves. Commands higher prices but is harder to scale.
- Done with you
- A hybrid service model where the provider coaches or guides the client through implementation, but the client does the actual work. Cheaper to deliver than done-for-you and easier to scale.
- Three S Formula
- An offer-design framework: solve a Specific problem, for a Specific person, in a Specific way. Forces a business to stop being a generalist and become meaningfully differentiated.
- Risk reversal
- Shifting the perceived risk of a purchase from the buyer back onto the seller — typically through guarantees, performance-based pricing, or refund promises tied to specific conditions.
- CRO
- Conversion Rate Optimization. The discipline of improving the percentage of website or sales-page visitors who take a desired action, usually through testing different versions of pages.
- DTC
- Direct-to-Consumer. E-commerce brands that sell their products straight to shoppers, bypassing retailers and wholesalers.
- Split testing
- Running two or more versions of a page, ad, or email at the same time to see which converts better. Also called A/B testing.
- Conveyor belt effect
- What happens when every client comes in with the same problem from the same source and gets the same solution — fulfillment, sales, and onboarding all standardize, costs drop, and the business gets easier to systematize.
- OKRs
- Objectives and Key Results. A goal-setting framework used inside companies where each objective has measurable results attached, commonly used by managers and executives to track performance.
- Account-based marketing
- A B2B sales strategy that targets a small list of specific large companies with personalized outreach and long, relationship-driven sales cycles, rather than running broad lead-generation campaigns.
Things they pointed at.
30:50book$100M Offers by Alex Hormozi
40:10bookEugene Schwartz — Breakthrough Advertising
43:40toolTodd Brown's unique mechanism training
43:45toolAdvanced Market Research + Copy Platform (internal portal training)
58:10channelAlex Becker's high-roast ads
58:10channelHormozi / Gym Launch ads
58:50bookMade to Stick (Heath brothers)
Lines you could clip.
02:10
“80% of the success or failure in your business comes down to one single thing — and that thing is your offer. Not your funnel, not your team, not your work ethic. Offer.”
04:42
“There's a saying about offers, which is: it's how idiots get rich. Because there's so much leverage in having the right offer.”
18:06
“Solve a specific problem for a specific person in a specific way.”
12:50
“All business strategy is pricing strategy.”
19:00
“If you're truly everything to everybody, you're nobody to anybody.”
45:00
“Your mechanism is a simultaneous explanation of why everything they tried in the past has failed and why this is going to be different.”
53:40
“If you can find a segment of wealthy people who feel like they're below average trying to get to average — you can absolutely destroy.”
56:40
“You cannot create desire. You can only channel it.”
57:00
“The broccoli is the leadership — but the cheese is whatever you need to do to get them in.”
Word for word.
metaphorstory
00:00Have you ever seen a business owner in your space cross eight or even nine figures and you think to yourself, that guy's a complete idiot. Like, I know that guy.
00:08How the hell did that guy pull that off? Well, the truth actually might surprise you a little bit. So for context, after scaling my own company past $30,000,000 a year, I personally consulted and doing that 3,000 plus business owners now.
00:20And in doing so, I've been able to see a lot of patterns. And one of those patterns that's definitive is that I can tell you that 80% of the success or failure in your business comes down to one single thing, and that thing is your offer.
00:31Not your funnel, not your team, not your work ethic. Offer. And I've watched over the years mediocre operators .
00:40I've also watched world class operators, guys who pretty much execute really well, stay stuck at four to six million years simply just because their offer sucks. And the thing is is the offer is the most important lever that you can pull in your business. So your offer determines your pricing power, determines your cost curve, which really determines how scalable your margins are as you grow.
00:58It determines if your ads are gonna convert and how well they convert. It determines how well your sales team's actually gonna close at the end of the day. And ultimately, all those things culminate to determine your LTV to CAC, which is really the single number that decides how much runway you have to scale.
01:12So in this video, I'm gonna splice to a dense training I did for some private clients talking about everything I know about how to engineer offers that go absolutely nuclear and just print money. So we talk about how to package your offers correctly, how to engineer something called market power into the offer itself. We talk about how to design offers with favorable cost curves that you scale.
01:31If you don't know what that is, we'll cover it in the training. And really how to position your offer based on market sophistication so it lands with the exact buyer that you want. And more importantly, a buyer that actually has money and purchasing power.
01:42So this is really the perfect training if you've read a $100,000,000 offers by Hormozi, but you want something a little bit more practical for our industry and advanced. And so I'll splice over that training now, but hope you enjoy. Let's get into it.
01:53What is an offer? An offer is really just what you're selling, how you communicate what you're selling, which is your positioning, and then the terms of the deal. So with that being said, what's a good offer?
02:01Well, a good offer has two components. Number one, it's meaningfully differentiated. Okay?
02:06So we'll talk about what that means in a second. But when it's meaningfully differentiated, it does two things. It allows cold acquisition to work.
02:12Like, again, what we talked about is essentially, it gives people who have no idea who you are, a reason to reach out when they see a piece of marketing. Okay? The other thing being differentiated does is it maintains your pricing power and allows you to price more than your competitors.
02:25Okay? The second thing a good offer is going do is, again, it makes you more scalable. Okay?
02:30And it does that by adjusting your cost curve compared to other businesses in your industry, which if that doesn't make sense, stay tuned and I'll explain how that works. So again, this is a big deal. 80% of your success or lack thereof is really downstream from your offer.
02:43Like, I'm not even kidding. I've seen average entrepreneurs where I don't even enter that hit 50 or $100,000,000 a year because their offer just rips.
02:49And then I've seen other people who they're great entrepreneurs. They might get to 250 to 500 a month, but they get stuck there because they have a bad offer. And these entrepreneurs can be literally at the similar same levels.
03:00But the difference is in terms of the massive gap in revenue is how good their offer is, which is why there's a saying about offers, which is because there's so much leverage in having the right offer. So let's get into why having the right offer is so important.
03:14This is gonna be something I just want to touch on quickly, which is market commoditization over time. So this looks like a supply and demand curve.
03:20It kind of is, but it's really that's not what this represents. And essentially, what this shows is as new markets emerge and businesses start to make more money, it attracts more competition.
03:29So you can see here, this is a new market. The profit margins are crazy. But as that happens, competition and supply goes up.
03:36Right? As that as more competition enters, businesses become more commoditized. And that's because the customers start to see the businesses as interchangeable or undifferentiated.
03:45So they start to compare them all on price. And now this happens, and when they start to compare them all on price, of course, it pushes everybody's pricing and everybody's margins down. Now this happens in almost every market.
03:56All right? And the speed in which it happens in every market depends on the barrier to entry. So for a lot of my clients who are in the online service economy, whether it's a coach consultant agency, etcetera, Even if you are in the in person service economy or med spa, an HVAC business, etcetera.
04:12The barrier to entry is very, very, very low. Okay? If you're one of my software clients, the barrier to entry is a little bit higher.
04:17But now especially with AI and the speed of coding, that barrier to entry is coming down as well. So more or less in most markets, unless you're in something crazy like an airline market, but we don't have any clients like that here, we're all living in this place.
04:30You just realize it's not your market's commoditized, and somebody else's market's not commoditized. Everybody everybody's market has this force going on. We're all living in this place.
04:39Okay? So a good offer combats this. Alright?
04:43And essentially, the fact that we're all in a commoditized market, it has two very important implications if you don't have a good offer.
04:52Okay? So if you don't have a good offer, what happens is is you succumb to commoditized pricing, which we already covered. Basically, that pushes all your margins down.
04:59It makes it harder to ROI on cold ads. And on top of that, it makes it harder to reinvest in good talent for your business so you can get leverage and remove yourself. So a lot of people, they just end up like, especially agencies, as being a glorified freelancer because they don't have the margins to reinvest in their company to scale, and they can't can't get cold acquisition to work.
05:17So they just take on business that's everybody, anybody. We'll talk about that later. The other implication is that you can't get paid acquisition to work.
05:23Okay? So because you're not differentiated, because your offer sucks, there's no incentive for somebody who has no idea who you are to see a piece of marketing and take the risk in terms of risking their time, to reach out and speak with you.
05:35Okay? So to be clear, this training is really about overcoming this trend.
05:39That's why I started the training with this. Okay? And so this training is really about overcoming this.
05:44But one important caveat I do want to give is there is people out there who overcome a commoditized offer that's undifferentiated just by having a high degree of trust. Right?
05:55So if you get a lot of word-of-mouth and referrals from doing good work, that obviously overcomes a commoditized market, right, and an undifferentiated offer. So your offer could suck, but if somebody refers you and says you're the best person ever, like that person's probably going to buy.
06:07And they might buy at a higher price than they would otherwise. Okay? The other the other key distinction of this, which is very similar, is if you have a huge content presence, okay, you're gonna be able to charge higher prices even with a bad offer because of that.
06:20Alright? Because, again, the commonality with both word-of-mouth referrals and content is you have a high degree of trust. Okay?
06:26So a lot of people think their offer is good because they either have a lot of referrals or they have a lot of revenue that's coming in from content. But what they don't realize is, is it's not the offer that's good.
06:38It's the trust that's overcoming a bad offer. And the thing is, is even if you have killer word-of-mouth referrals and you're famous on social media or whatever, you would do so much better if you also got the offer right too. Okay?
06:51So hopefully that makes sense. Now there's three parts of a good offer. There's packaging, economics, and scalability.
06:55I've already touched on that. We're going to dive into each of them with more detail now. So packaging is not what you're doing.
07:00It's how you're communicating what you're doing in a way that's different unique, different superior than everybody else. Okay? So when we do that, we become meaningfully differentiated.
07:08Some people in marketing books call this category creation because you're kinda creating a little mini category. But regardless, what that does is, again, two things. It gives you people it gives people a reason who have no idea who you are to actually reach out and take a chance to actually speak with you because they're seeing you as a little bit different than everybody else.
07:24So you're giving them a reason. And then it also gives you market power, which really means you can charge higher prices without sacrificing conversions. So again, if you have high market power, as your prices increase, you don't have as much drop in conversions.
07:36If you have lower market power, you have a higher drop in conversions as your price increases because, again, you're more of a commodity. So higher market power, less commodity, lower market power, more commodity. Okay?
07:45Now moving on to economics. If your packaging is good, it allows you to become meaningfully differentiated. And then that allows you to charge higher prices, giving you an economic advantage over your competitors.
07:55Okay? So it's important to understand there's essentially two pricing strategies in business. There's lowest cost, and then there's premium.
08:01Okay? Now there could only be one lowest cost provider in a market. Alright?
08:05There's Walmart, Amazon, etcetera, great examples. But there can be several premium providers because they can essentially, if they have good packaging and a good offer, they can kind of carve out little mini markets, which is why it's also called category creation.
08:19And they can carve out little mini markets by differentiating themselves. Okay? So this is basically why people tell you to, like, pick a niche.
08:25Alright? Now this is extremely important because the entire economics of your business is created from your initial pricing strategy.
08:34So just to give you an example, like if you have higher prices than your competitors, you can pay more to acquire a customer, which makes ads or whatever you're doing way easier. You can scale your ads further so you're more scalable because, again, you have better economics. Another thing people don't think about is you can hire way better people because you have more profitability and more margin.
08:51And then that's actually a flywheel. Because if you hire better people, let's say you hire better salespeople, you'll convert even better, which makes you even more profitable.
08:59Or if you hire better executives or client success or whatever, I mean, again, it makes the quality of your business better, which probably increases LTV. And also on the front end makes it easier to make more profitable on ads or whatever acquisition that you're doing, and you have more profit to reinvest. So I I know this kind of sounds like common sense, but the reason I'm bringing it up is, you know, this might make sense, but 99% of people aren't even doing this.
09:22Alright? So to give you an example, I've worked with dozens and dozens and dozens of clients of mine doing sales recruiting for them that are essentially the top dog in their niche, whether that's functional medicine or online personal training or a certain category of SaaS or whatever it is.
09:40Okay? And these people are doing 50,000,100 million dollars a year.
09:44I mean, I've worked with billion dollar level clients. Every single kind of top dog in their category is the most expensive in their niche. Okay?
09:52Period. And that's because when you are the most expensive, it gives you such a downstream advantage of everybody else. Alright?
09:59But even despite this, this might sound like common sense, nobody really pursues the tactics and the strategies needed to become the highest price so that they have this advantage on everybody else. Right?
10:08Like, lot of people say this is why people say that really all business strategy is just pricing strategy. Okay? Unless, well, really still, if you're the lowest person in the market, it's still pricing strategy.
10:20So all business strategy in a way is pricing strategy is a cool way to think about it. Now the third thing of a good offer is scalability. Okay?
10:26So you want to set up your offer in a way that it's going to give you a good cost structure. So it's important to understand there's four types of cost structures. There's basically low fixed and high variable, which is coaches, any online service economy thing, coaches, agencies, online services, done for you services, even in person, med spa, etcetera, those are low fixed and high variable.
10:50So they're easy to start. But as we take on more and more clients, because we're ultimately scaling with labor, the incremental cost of each new client becomes more and more and more expensive, because we've to hire a bunch of more people. Now there's also a different one to think about, is there's high fixed cost, variable, which is like software, which it takes a high amount of development cost to build out.
11:10But then each incremental unit or customer that you bring on is basically almost like no cost whatsoever because the product is so scalable. So it's a huge opportunity vehicle. Then there's low fixed, low variable, which is like a digital course.
11:23Now, this is easy to start and easy to scale. But the thing about this is, is because it's easy to start and it's so easy to easy to scale, these are like temporary arbitrage windows that basically get commoditized immediately.
11:35So a great example is, again, digital courses, you can barely give a course away on YouTube, all right, let alone try to sell it through ads. It's not going to happen. So these go away very, very quickly.
11:44It's just not a sustainable way to build a business. And then there's high fix and high variable, which is like a restaurant.
11:49And this is obviously why restaurants have such a high failure rate is because the economics behind it are just so bad. All right. So I'm not going go into each of these in detail because most people watching this are a service based business, whether that's online or in person, which means low fixed, high variable.
12:03Okay. So we want to create an offer strategy that essentially, I mean, we're already good in terms of low fixed. But we want to create an offer strategy to where as we add more and more customers in the future, it minimizes our incremental costs at scale compared to our competitors.
12:17And we're going talk about ways to do this. Now, if you're a SaaS business watching this, you're still going to want to apply all the same concepts. Because even though you have that good incremental cost per scale, it's really going to help you on the marketing and sales side of things.
12:29Okay? So in summary, you want good packaging, economics, and scalability.
12:33If you have packaging and scalability, but you don't have the economics, you're gonna have weak margins and inability to hire.
12:39Okay? If you have packaging and economics, but you don't have the scalability, you're gonna have constant fulfillment bottlenecks.
12:45If you have economics and scalability without the packaging, you're not going to able get cold acquisition to work. If you have all three, you have a great offer. Okay.
12:51Now the most important piece of this is the packaging because the packaging dictates how you're positioning and communicating what you sell, which will help you charge higher prices and also how you position your offer essentially, and how you position the promises that you make dictate what you have to fulfill on. So packaging is kind of the one that like downstream sort of hits everything.
13:12So if we get the packaging, it's like if we get the offer right, our business becomes a lot easier. Then if we get the packaging right, our offer becomes a lot easier. Alright.
13:20So how do we actually do this? Now we're gonna get into, like, what do you actually do? Alright.
13:24So for the rest of this training, we're gonna cover the three s formula, risk reversals, done for you elements, even a non done done for you offers. You'll see what that means in a second.
13:32We're gonna talk about positioning and how desire works, and then messaging, which is like channeling desire. Okay? So if that doesn't make sense, we'll get to it later.
13:39So the most important framework that you're going to learn really, period, is something I call the three s formula. So we talked about a lot of things like having the right packaging, economics, and scalability. If you do the three s formula is like the big daddy that basically just gets all of that in one stroke if you just do the formula.
13:55Alright? So this is the main thing I want you to implement from this presentation because if you do that, you kinda hit all like, you're gonna, like, what's the kill all the birds with one stone or whatever the freaking phrase is.
14:07So what is the three s formula? So the three s formula is that you wanna communicate what you do in a way that solves a specific problem for a specific person, a specific way.
14:17Alright? And so the easiest way to understand this is for me to give you a bad example and a good example. So here's the classic bad example.
14:26Very, very bad. Tons of clients like this. Is the everything that everybody I do everything that everybody, I take on every client that exists, full service marketing agency.
14:35Like I'm a one stop shop. I do everything. Okay?
14:37Now, generally, this is a disaster. The only times it does work as a generalist service company is if they're operating in like Fortune 1,500, Fortune 100 type echelons.
14:50Okay? But especially in the small business space, you're going to be wrecked if you do this. Okay?
14:55And so by the way, if you're also going to try to move super upmarket like that, especially like Fortune one thousand, these people are essentially getting their clients mainly through word-of-mouth, brand, networking.
15:07Like, think about Mackenzie Bain, etcetera. So a lot of it is more of a network play in who you know in most cases. So it's very hard, if not near impossible, to break in to a market as a generalist, even if you want to work in enterprise.
15:21Okay? So we'll talk about actually in a little bit. If you do want those bigger customers, how I'd recommend you actually do that if you're not somebody who just happens to have all of these amazing connections.
15:33Which if you're watching this training, you're probably not like super networked with like the ultra elite or something like that to where you know all these people, like huge corporations and all of that stuff, etcetera.
15:44Now, Okay. So let's look at the full service marketing agency, everything to everybody type of person.
15:50Let's look at their packaging. All right? So they do everything to everybody.
15:54So there's no specific person or problem they're solving for that person, and there's no unique methodology that makes them different. Therefore, they can't make quote acquisition work, which means they're stuck with referrals.
16:04Like, how do you if you're . So how do you actually create a marketing campaign that makes people want to reach out to you over anybody else? You can't.
16:14Like, this is the definition of a commodity. Now, let's look at the economics. Because there's no specialization, there's no premium pricing.
16:21Because if you're just like everybody else and you could do anything, then you're just a commodity. Alright? So the other thing that also really kills is the lack of both specialization and premium pricing is also a signal of lower quality service, which means you get worse leads.
16:38So I know this is a little bit weird, but to give you an example, if I get pitched from somebody and they are like the most expensive firm that I've talked to, it's actually a signal to me that they do really good, really good work.
16:53Because I'm like, hey, otherwise, how are they even charging these high of prices? So obviously, you can't just charge infinity. But in general, premium pricing in a weird way is a great signal of work quality, of business quality.
17:07Okay? So moving on. No premium pricing also equals smaller margins, smaller profits.
17:12Smaller margins equals a lower ceiling to scale. So you hit diminishing marginal returns faster. Also, profit profits mean less money to reinvest in an a player team.
17:21That means your competition's gonna have better teams. You're gonna be stuck in fulfillment because you can't get yourself out of fulfillment. And so what a lot of people happen here is this is like the typical pseudo freelancer agency business doing like 20 to $100 a month.
17:32They just can't get past that, and they're working eighty hours a week. Okay. It happens in a ton and ton of businesses.
17:37It's because they don't do what I'm trying to talk about here. Then in terms of scalability, when you do everything to everybody, you have varied client journeys.
17:44So like different clients are coming on solving different problems, they're different industries, etcetera. When there's different client journeys, there's no standardization in the fulfillment process.
17:54So what that means is because you can't standardize and streamline the fulfillment process, you have higher labor costs and way more outsourcing a lot of times and way more contractors. So that means worse client results. And it's harder, again, to remove yourself from fulfillment because everything is so varied and it's all over the place.
18:10And then ultimately, you're stuck again working eight hour weeks. It also creates a very, very hard system to remove yourself from sales and ultimately put in a sales team.
18:20Because you've got to think about it. You have different prospects coming in from different referral sources or different places, all with different problems in different industries, which means in order to sell those people who need different things, different problems, different industries, etcetera, you need extreme levels of domain expertise, which is very hard to recruit and train salespeople for.
18:40Right? Because they're not going to be if, I mean, if they were extreme domain level expertise type salespeople, they just do this business themselves. Okay?
18:47And then they probably wouldn't do what you're doing. So, again, you get nailed on all three of these things. Hey.
18:52If the way you sell your product or service is through phone sales, you need to stop using booking systems like OneSub, Calendly, iClose, and other booking systems that aren't designed specifically for a phone sales approach or a phone sales team. So we at SalesKick just launched a new calendar and booking system that'll decrease your cost per booked call because it's conversion rate optimized specifically for call funnels, whereas most other calendar systems are meant for corporate all purpose booking, and it'll increase your show rates.
19:17So we've had clients see 30 to a 100% increases in their show rate because our calendar system is specifically designed for call funnels and other funnels that are high volume sales call booking funnels. And the software does so much more. It's really the only product designed specifically for sales teams with inbound booking systems.
19:33So if you're interested, go to saleskick.com. Check it out. Now back to the video.
19:37Now let's turn this into an actual good offer. So let's say you're an AI enabled CRO agency for e commerce businesses.
19:46All right? So you're packaging. The specific problem you solve is low conversion on checkout pages.
19:51Easy. Person, 1,000,000 plus DTC e commerce businesses.
19:55Maybe you do 5,000,000 plus, I don't know. Specific way is you're using Carpathi Auto Research plus large language models to test thousands of different page iterations in a research container, then split testing hundreds of the most effective versions live through self learning AI, and then whittling that down to, let's say, the top 10 tests, and then deploying those in an actual split testing framework.
20:15Okay? I had not heard of a business doing this, but this would be a banger offer. Somebody just do it.
20:20Okay? It would work really well, especially with this auto research. Oh, crush.
20:25So what does this actually do? So this is very clearly meaningfully differentiated. So you see how because it's so different, if I see an ad that communicates this the right way, you see how it gives a reason for somebody who has no idea who I am to take the risk and reach out and talk to me because they're like, oh, this is different.
20:44That sounds interesting. Okay? It also helps answer the question, you know, I've kind of tried that before.
20:50Why is this different? Which is not only going to help more people reach out, but it also makes the sales process way easier. Okay?
20:56And so this brings me to something we're going talk about a little bit later. But your way, like this part right here, the specific way, what that needs to be is the simultaneous explanation of why everything they chart in the past has failed and why this is going be different.
21:08Okay? Again, we'll talk about that later. Now let's look at the economics of this new business.
21:13So economics wise, because there's higher specialization, we can charge more.
21:17Because we can charge more, we have better margins. Because we have better margins, we can hire a better team, and remove ourselves from fulfillment, all that good stuff, and price higher than our competitors. We can also spend more to acquire a customer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
21:28Right? You get it. Better pricing strategy is all business strategy.
21:31Okay? So it helps us in a lot of different ways. So we have more leverage.
21:35You can remove yourself. Uh, you have better client results because your team is better. You have less churn, more upsells.
21:40It just becomes this flywheel of a better business. Again, that's why out of all my clients who are like the top category kings in their respective verticals, they're all just the highest priced. Okay?
21:48And that's not just because they, again, it's because they did this stuff right. It's not just because they decided, oh, I'm just going be the highest priced. Right?
21:55Like you have to do stuff to earn the ability to price premium. Now let's look at the scalability. All clients have this so every single client coming in, they have the same type of business with the same type of problem coming from the same place, like your cold acquisition system.
22:10They're getting pitched the same solutions, and they're undergoing the same client journey and fulfillment process. So this makes sales and fulfillment extremely easy to standardize an SOP.
22:20K? Which makes hiring easier. It actually makes hiring cheaper and more efficient.
22:25And then also your conversion rates on sales and your client success will go up. So I call this , to where you have people coming in with the same problem, meeting the same thing, coming from the same source, getting the same solution, getting the same onboarding process, getting the same client journey every single time.
22:41So you can see it's like a system. Right? It's a conveyor belt.
22:43We can easily process that. And especially the opportunity now with AI is when you set up your business this way, you can become so freaking efficient through AI, through agents, all of that stuff.
22:56Okay? So I mean, it is a huge, huge opportunity, especially in service based businesses right now, to take advantage of this framework. Right?
23:02Like this framework was around before agents were a thing. Now with agents, like this is the thing. Because you could really just have a super high pri highly profitable service if you get this right.
23:14Okay? So let's look at another example. This is a classic bad coaching example.
23:18Hey, I'm an executive leadership coach. Okay? So you help C level employees lead their teams through hitting their OKRs.
23:25You work with any mid level business. You mostly maybe speak sometimes, work your network.
23:30You're kind of on LinkedIn connecting with people. You're speaking at events. There's a lot of variations of this, but they're very, very I mean, it's very, very, very difficult to really scale any of this past like a couple million bucks a year, and that's if you're lucky.
23:44Most people can't even scale a million. And again, I talked about this in the very, very beginning of the training. You might find exceptions to this, but almost always, those those are people who have a big brand.
23:54Okay? Or massive word-of-mouth referrals because of their network. So yeah, like if you if you are the one of the top executives at Google, and then you leave and start a consulting business, don't you really have to do any of this stuff because your prestige is literally so high and your network is so good that you have massive brand and massive network.
24:12But again, if you're probably watching this, you're probably not the top executive that just left from Google. Okay? So you need to do this stuff I'm talking about.
24:19So how would you turn this into a good offer? This is actually a real example of a client that I had who used to be doing bad example. We switched to good example, and now they're absolutely crushing it.
24:29Okay? So the specific person would be women in middle management. Women in middle management or women in leadership management executive positions, maybe not C level.
24:40So the problem is they want to essentially get to C level promotions in six months or less, or they'll help you build your resume up to source a different C level position in a different company.
24:54All right? Now, how do they do that? What's the specific way?
24:58I actually just made this one up. I'm not sure what theirs is, and I don't want to give it away. But it might be strategically setting up OKRs with your direct report that you that position you for a promotion when you hit them or act as an extremely attractive resume to land an upward position elsewhere.
25:13Okay? So I again, I made up the way. The rest of this is somebody who's a successful client.
25:18I just don't want give away their actual secret sauce. Okay? So that's a coaching example.
25:22Bad offer to good offer. Now, I promised I was going to go over this. What if you do really want to land those big 50,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 companies in mid market and enterprise and a lot of that, Okay?
25:34So some people, they want to target a market that is exclusively mid market to enterprise. This is difficult because the market's small, and most of the sales are driven through network and relationships.
25:46And also the sales take forever. So the only somewhat predictable way to do this is through what's called account based marketing, which is like building a big enterprise sales team.
25:57That's very much a capital intensive, long term, six to eighteen month play, and it is very difficult.
26:05Okay? Like, it's you got to hire a bunch of salespeople. You got to pay them mainly salary based positions, and then you got to wait.
26:11And then hope you're doing it right because you might not be doing it right. Okay? So I wouldn't recommend that probably for most people watching the training.
26:19One way though, I've been able to land these big top of market people, like companies doing 50, 100,000,000, 100,000,000, 500,000,000, billion dollars plus, multi billions, right, that we've worked with. One way I'm able to land those people is simply just by doing what I've already been telling you to do.
26:36Because what happens is, is that 90 of the clients that let's say I land or maybe you land if you use this strategy, they're going be in small business. They're going be small businesses. So let's say that's below $50,000,000 just for our definition.
26:48So what happens is these deals are profitable, and they can help you cash flow and scale well. But what's going happen is like 10% or 5% of the leads coming in, they actually will be those mid market to enterprise customers.
27:00So for example, in the online services industry, like I have, again, I've worked with probably 3,500 to 4,000 SMBs. But in the process of doing that, I've actually had probably 100 to 200 mid market to enterprise level companies come through as well.
27:13So what happens is those small business clients, they help you liquidate the ads. You're still making great money on them and delivering a great service. And they're sort of paying for all the marketing that does help you land those enterprises anyways.
27:25And then a lot of times those enterprises through network and referrals lead to other enterprises. So still, like, you're somebody with no network, no connections, no big brand from the corporate world, if you come in and use this strategy, essentially, it's a great way to break in and eventually get there.
27:41Okay? And I'm just proof of this actually working. Like, in my space, I've worked with pretty much all of the top names in my space.
27:47Okay? Who you can't guess really get through ads, but I was able to get through using this strategy. Okay?
27:53Now to be clear, I also just want to say, if you just want to make like, you know, 8 figures, multiple 8 figures or something, and and I mean net, like net after taxes, you don't really have to do mid market enterprise.
28:07Right? It's like way more competitive. It's way more tough.
28:10If you just unless like your true goal is like you want to scale a $500,000,000 firm, I don't even think it's worth it. Okay?
28:19Because you can make tons and tons and tons of money just by doing small business, and it's a lot easier. Okay? Now, let's talk about developing the way.
28:27Alright? So remember, specific problem, specific person, specific way. So this is where most people struggle.
28:34And the way is really your unique mechanism. Okay? So I'll I'll refer you some other trainings.
28:40There's advanced market research, copy platform. There's Todd Brown's unique mechanism training.
28:45These are all in the portal. These are phenomenal trainings. Okay?
28:47So if you're serious, which you should be, about really mastering this, I would go through those after I finish this, but I'm gonna touch on it briefly here. Okay? So the first thing to understand in order for us to create good mechanisms is something called market sophistication.
29:01This is popularized by Eugene Schwartz. Alright? So that's a great book, and Breakthrough Advertising, that's another book you should read if you haven't read it.
29:07But I'll just kind of walk through this briefly. Alright? So there's five stages of market sophistication.
29:13There's first to market. So when you're first to market, you can just use simple direct offer copy, like automate your company with AI or lose 20 in sixty days. Then there's second to market, which is basically taking existing claims and expanding on them.
29:27So automate your company with AI and save. This supposed to be say save.
29:3350 ks in operations cost guaranteed. Right? So you see how it's the same claim, it's just expanded and inflated.
29:42Right? Lose £20 in forty five days guaranteed or you don't pay. Expanded and inflated.
29:46Then in stage three, they've heard all the claims. Okay. So this is a more mature market, and now the inflated claims have no effect.
29:53So now this is where you need to become meaningfully differentiated and do a lot of the stuff I'm talking about here. All right. So in stage one and two, you're talking about what your product does.
30:01Now you have to talk about the way it works and why it works so well, and why it's different. Okay? So again, this is the example I already gave.
30:09We'll increase your sales page conversion rate by 200% using Carpathi self learning AI auto research. Or lose 20 pounds in forty five days through the ketogenic diet.
30:18Now the ketogenic diet's not a good mechanism anymore, by the way, but this worked at a certain point in time. Stage four is enlargement of the mechanism. So this is basically like a repeat of stage two.
30:29So people start ripping off the mechanism. So then it just repeats stage two where you're enlarging the claims, and it's becoming more specific or more complex.
30:38So again, like the same thing, and you can just read here.
30:43It's just inflated, same thing here. Okay? Then stage five is a dead market where people ignore all claims and mechanism.
30:48This rarely ever happens if you're focusing on markets with permanent desire. Right? Permanent desire being money, relationships, and health.
30:56Okay? So this rarely ever happens. I don't wanna hear you say, I have a dead market.
31:00You probably don't have a dead market. Okay? It's not, you know, the mechanisms and the way to get the result might change, but your market doesn't really change.
31:07Okay? If you think about it that way. So to keep it simple, you may have to change your mechanism that becomes very played out, but, you know, you're probably not in a dead market.
31:17So to be clear, this is a good framework for understanding marketing and messaging. But really, the most effective way to actually approach this is just to assume that you're in stage three slash four. Because even if you aren't, the actions you would take in stage three slash four essentially are still the most effective.
31:35Does that make sense? So even if your market was technically stage one, if you use a stage three strategy, you're actually gonna get better results than stage one using a stage one strategy.
31:45Hopefully, that makes sense. So you just want to assume you're in stage three, stage four, and use a mechanism anyways. But this is why this is important, how these things evolve over time.
31:53So how do you actually build your mechanism? Alright. So the way I teach it is you're really good at solving x, y, z problem for ABC client.
32:03Okay? The question you need to answer for yourself is, why is what you do so much better than the competition or the other alternatives out there?
32:11Okay? So think about, again, your mechanism, I mentioned this earlier, as a simultaneous explanation of why everything they tried in the past has failed and why this is gonna be different. So it's almost like if you were on a sales call and you were explaining your mechanism, which is just a fancy word for why is what you do so much different and better than the competition and the other alternatives out there, when you were explaining that to somebody, they should be able to understand through the explanation why what they've done in the past didn't work and why this is going to be different, and actually should give them an insight.
32:43Okay? So I know that might sound like, okay, well, that sounds great. How do I actually do it?
32:47Well, here's how you do it. Okay? So you want to use this framework.
32:51And what you can do is use this framework as essentially just kind of like a way, like, write out what you do in this way or write out a couple of versions of these.
33:01And as you're doing that, it's gonna sort of flush out what your mechanism is. So here's how this framework works.
33:07So most everyone out there who's trying to achieve x y z makes a b c mistake. So, hey, everyone out there who's trying to get ads work, what they do is they really focus on media buying, and what they do is they ignore the offer.
33:19Alright? So this is kind of what the training is about. The problem with that is, and you explain the reason why this problem is a problem, which ultimately means consequence.
33:28So instead, what we do is specific methodology, which allows us to benefit and ultimately benefit of that benefit.
33:36So let me see if off the cuff I can just make this up. So most people out there who are trying to get their ads to work for their business and really develop a consistent acquisition system for their business, what they do is they focus all on the media buying strategy and what ad they're going to run and what's the latest like Facebook technique.
33:52But what they're really missing out is their offer is not good and their offer doesn't work. And they're not actually optimizing the offer. And the problem with that is, is if you have a bad offer and if it's not meaning different, meaningfully differentiated, your cold acquisition is never going to work, and you don't have the right pricing power to get a good ROI on ads.
34:10And then on top of that, your pricing is commoditized because there's nothing different about what you do. So it drives down all of essentially your cash flows and your margins, so you can't even hire a good team. So what ultimately means is your ads are never going to work because you're not meaningfully differentiated, and you might be able to scale to 50 to $70 a month of referrals, but your margins are so compressed that that you're working like eighty hours a week.
34:32You can't hire anybody new. You can't get cold ads to work because you don't have the margins and you're not meaningfully differentiated. And ultimately, you're stuck.
34:39So instead, what we do is we implement a framework called the three s formula with our clients. And what that allows them to do is meaningfully differentiate themselves through how they communicate what they do. And in doing that, they can get a cold acquisition to work.
34:53They can price higher than all their competition. The margins allow them to remove themselves from their business so much faster. And ultimately, means you have a more scalable business and from a cost perspective, and your ads will actually work.
35:06Okay? So you see how like, I just literally made that up off the spot using what we've been talking about right now. Like you can see how like this framework actually fits in perfectly with this.
35:16That's how I explain it on a sales call. And then once you start to kind of like draft this out in this way, you'll start to get some good ideas from ads as well.
35:24Alright? So this is very, very key. So I'll give you another example of what we use with RCA.
35:28Most people out there trying to make money online do it through affiliate marketing and drop shipping. The problem with that is if all you want to do is make 20 k a month and work remotely, that's tons of complexity and work and time just to make $2.40 ks a year.
35:40For example, like you might have to build a million or $2,000,000 e commerce business just to hit that amount of profit. And you got to like run ads, do tech, manage a team, and all that stuff, which ultimately means you're setting yourself up for years away of hitting that income goal and working remotely while doing all this unnecessary stuff.
35:57Okay? So instead, like, if all you wanna do is make 20 k a month working remotely, you should get into remote closing. And doing that, once you're good, you can hit 10 to 20 k a month within thirty, sixty days.
36:07It's so much easier if you just do that and land a contract with a good offer owner, which means you get to the goal a lot faster without all this additional complexity and headaches. Okay?
36:16So again, FYI, this doesn't work as well anymore.
36:19But like back in the day in like 2020, 2021, 2022, this was our messaging for RCA that like, you know, did I don't know. It was like $20,000,000 a year for several years in a row. So well over 50,000,000 probably a year total.
36:31So stuff works. Okay?
36:35So here's another example for a CRO agency. I don't know if we need to go through this. I think that you kind of get it at this point of how you would do this framework.
36:44Now a few notes on this is people trip up and think that mechanisms are just fancy names.
36:51Okay. You can have a cool name. Cool name helps.
36:54Right? If it's memorable, if it's a sticky name, like you can read the book Made to Stick. Yeah.
36:58That helps. Okay? The bigger thing is the explanation, which is what I was trying to get you to flush out above.
37:05Okay?
37:08Because the explanation is really what you give in the ad as well as a sales call. You might say the name. Right?
37:13Like the three s formula is a name. It's not that great. But the explanation matters way more.
37:18That's where the actual argument and the persuasiveness is. Okay? And then also, with both of these examples I gave you, Okay?
37:26And you can look at the CRO one as well. But you can see how in the example, it explains why what they're doing now doesn't work, or why what they tried in the past doesn't work, and how what they're going to do with us is going to be different.
37:39Okay? So it's, again, it's a simultaneous explanation of why everything they tried in the past has failed, why this is to be different. Right?
37:44So this is very, very, very key. I'm going to give you some worksheets and what to do in terms of actually developing this for your business later.
37:53All right? Now, contrary to a lot of what I've been saying so far, sometimes you actually don't need a mechanism.
37:59So don't overthink it. Alright? Because I see a lot of people just like frying their brain and getting stuck here.
38:05And while having a mechanism is good, you can get away without it and still scale pretty pretty big. So in SDA, we do have a mechanism, but it's not really prominent in our marketing.
38:17And the reason why is, is because we have massive amounts of social proof. We've worked with every big name in the industry. We focus on a good guarantee.
38:24And because our offer is done for you, it's just more attractive. Right? So when done for you companies specifically, you can get away without this.
38:32And the other thing that helps us a lot too is we don't there's not a lot of other sales recruiting companies out there who are actually good. I mean, there's a lot of people who try to copy us, but they, they start, and then they're only around for like six months, and then they're gone. So there's not like real competition in a lot of ways.
38:46So I still recommend developing a mechanism. This isn't a pass to not do it. But like if you're stuck and you're a done for you company, and what you do is highly valuable, and you can make a big promise and a guarantee and you have a lot of social proof, you can get away with it.
38:59Okay? So the three s formula, basically, what we covered so far, it's kind of like the big daddy to knock down the packaging economics and scalability.
39:08It basically does all of that in one thing. Okay? Because, again, the packaging, it kinda makes sense.
39:13Like, really what it is is the packaging. But when we get the packaging right, we can charge higher prices. And then also because we're solving a specific person for a or a specific problem for a specific person, a specific way, it streamlines into the conveyor belt our delivery, which helps our cost curve and makes each incremental customer not cost more than the last.
39:30For the most mean, it's going to cost more than the last, but it smooths out the cost curve so we have more scalability long term. So this formula kinda knocked down the main things that we wanted to do, which is why I like it so much. It's why the first thing I taught.
39:41Hey. If you're enjoying this video and you wanna work more personally with either me or my team, we can help you in two different ways. Number one, we can help you install a marketing system so you can generate more leads and ultimately scale the revenue of your business.
39:50Or b, we can help you with your sales team by placing setters or closers in your business. And if they don't perform, you don't pay. We can also help you scale your sales team, systematize your management, all of that stuff as well.
40:01So if you're interested in either of those, there's a link in the description or in the first comment. You can check it out. Now back to the video.
40:08So now what we're gonna do is dive into more stuff to just make this even better. And these are just kinda some different tactics, if you will.
40:15So, um, the first thing we're gonna talk about is positioning. And we're going to talk about something called the barbell framework.
40:21And so the key points here is there's essentially kind of two parts of the market barbell. So when you're doing your offer, you either want to be like if you're going after B2B or solopreneurs, like a solopreneur is like an insurance agent or a real estate agent or a lot of times a coach.
40:37You know, here you have richer clients. Time is a premium for the clients. You want to probably be doing done for you or partial done for you.
40:44You're not going to have as big of a TAM, and your back end and your LTV is going be super important. It's going be almost impossible to get this business to work if you don't have a good back end and LTV. So this is a good place to be.
40:54Right? Like, this is a fine way to position yourself. You could also position yourself as b to c to where you have consumer clients.
41:01They have way more time. This could be done with you. It could still be done for you, honestly.
41:04You have a huge TAM. The front end can scale more, and the back end is tougher, but it's still possible. You still do a back end here.
41:12So this works really well because you have such a big TAM. Right? So your ad costs are quite low.
41:17This year, your ad costs will be higher, but you also are charging more money, and you have a higher back end LTV. So this is good. This is good.
41:23Where you don't wanna be is this no man's land. Okay? And a great example of this essentially is like, if you're helping a 10 k a month coach get to 50 k.
41:34You know? It's like you either want to be kind of helping more experienced coaches with an actual done for you service almost, or you want to help you be helping people get into the coaching business. You don't want to be almost like with a broke market that's also smaller TAM and probably still wants done for you, even if they're not ready for done for you, etcetera.
41:52You don't want to be in this kind of no man's land. All right? So I'll summarize the key points here.
41:56You either want to sell a highly leveraged product that's like done with you to a mass market B2C, or a more done for you oriented pro product to a smaller but richer market. K?
42:05You stay out of no man's land. That's generally where you have a smaller TAM, poor clients. They're not established enough businesses for done for you.
42:11They can't pay a high enough price, and they're, like, also a little bit too established for done with you. So a few examples of no man's land is like a done with you coaching offer for real estate agents.
42:20Again, if you're Ryan Serhant, okay, he's got a huge brand. You can do it. For most people, the real estate agents don't wanna do it.
42:26Done with you coaching for ecommerce business is doing 10 k a month. Okay? They're still poor.
42:29There's not a lot of them. You just might as well help new people start ecom brands. All right?
42:33Done with you coaching for coaches doing 10 a month. Okay? Same thing.
42:36Same issues above. So in these examples, you'd be better off just helping new real estate agents get their first couple of clients.
42:44Right? You'd be or or doing a done for you marketing system for, like, super high end brokers.
42:51You might help people start ecommerce businesses, or you do a done for you agency to ecom for businesses doing over 10,000,000 a year. Or instead of done with you coaching for coaches doing 10 ks, you help coaching corporate execs package their expertise into consulting offers and start a consulting business.
43:08Or you do some sort of done for you offer for higher end coaches. So the barbell is a trade off. And essentially, you know, you're either kind of going one side or the other.
43:17Right? You just don't want to go in the beginning. I can tell you in a moment, though, there's a way to sort of combine and get the best of both worlds, which I've had a few clients do.
43:26And, know, they do like 50 to 100,000,000 a year. It's pretty wild.
43:29So that brings us to positioning part two, which is how desire actually works. So people, obviously, they buy something to go from current situation to desired situation.
43:40Right? So they buy something when there's a pain or a problem.
43:45Now there's two types of problems. There's essentially pain, which is when they're moving from below average to average.
43:54And then there's what's called an unfulfilled desire, which is when they're moving from average to excellence. Okay? So like, let's take stem cells.
44:01If I'm selling stem cells to somebody with knee pain, they're going from below average to average, from not normal to back to normal. But if I'm selling it to somebody like me for longevity, we're kind of going from average to excellence.
44:13All right? And so same thing with, let's say you're selling weight loss.
44:18If you're selling somebody who's obese, it's below average to average. If you're selling somebody who wants to get six pack abs, it's average to excellence. Quit your job versus quit your job and start an e commerce business versus scale your e commerce business.
44:31Again, one's below average to average, one's average to excellence. Okay. So what are the trade offs here?
44:36Alright. So when you go from below average to average, there's a higher urgency because of loss aversion.
44:43Right? Like people want to get back to normal, back to where they were more than anything. Nobody wants to go backwards.
44:48So there's always a much higher urgency with below average to average. There's also a much bigger TAM.
44:55You know, just how it is. Like, there's more people who have worse results than better results in any given market. Right?
45:02Uh, tell me when there's not. There's also less money, usually. Not always.
45:06We're going get to something in a second, but usually they have less money. Now average to excellence, there's lower urgency, it's a smaller TAM, and they have way more money.
45:15It's just the inverse. So it's kind of similar to the barbell framework. And most of us are to be on one side or the other, and knowing where you're at matters.
45:23Okay? But this this is a little tactic that can take your offer absolutely nuclear.
45:28And I I got this idea from watching somebody actually do it. So if you can find a segment of wealthy people who feel like they're below average trying to get to average, you can absolutely destroy.
45:40Because this gives you a golden opportunity market to where you could hit all of those. You have people with high urgency and high money.
45:49And then in some cases, you can even get a the market has a decently high TAM as well. So I'll give you an example.
45:55Like, I have a friend who targets wealthy guys who just let their bodies go, and they need to lose weight. So he's very good with his messaging and he's very good at speaking to the pain of these guys.
46:05That's the key is he's very, very, very good at that. Like, he's not saying like, hey, busy professionals. Like, he's just very good at like gut punching these guys with his messaging.
46:13And so he's targeting a mid sized TAM. It's almost like he's targeting accredited investors, like wealthy guys over 40. They have an urgent problem, and he's also agitating that problem the right way, and they have lots of money.
46:24So, you know, he's doing basically online personal training, but he's being able to sell 10 to 40 k packages and does 50 40,000,000 or, yeah, 50,000,000 a year, around there. K? So this sounds easy.
46:35It's not. Okay? The the key to this is really having outstanding messaging that shocks the wealthy person into getting their shit together.
46:43So I'll give you another example. I have a client who does high net worth divorces. Hits all of the above.
46:48The TAM is not huge here, but it's bigger. I mean, the nice thing is if you can solve a high net worth problem, it's not a business segment.
46:57It's just like a wealth segment, which is much bigger than a business segment. So the team is still pretty much mid sized. Okay?
47:03But the money and the urgency is obviously much bigger. You know, I have another client that targets c suite women who have trouble attracting men because the women feel like they're always in their masculine.
47:14That's a great example. I have another client who helps rich guys in their 40s who are post divorce, who are lost in the dating world, get back into dating.
47:24So again, the thing is, is you can't just call out this person in your ad and then be like, oh, why is it not working?
47:31You really have to understand them viscerally and be able to talk to the pains. Like because I mean, these people are very sophisticated. So the messaging really has to hit.
47:40There's not just going to be kind of like a little call out that you can do to get them on the phone. You can't say, hey, are you a high net worth person going through a divorce?
47:49I mean, you could say that, but whatever comes after that's got to be really good. All right? So that's gonna bring us to messaging.
47:55So what we're gonna talk about here is you can only channel desire. You cannot create desire.
48:02So the big fallacy is that you cannot create desire. Like, can't create desire out of thin air. Desire already exists, and what we can only the only thing we can do is channel it to create demand.
48:13And so here's why this is so important. You might have an offer you're very passionate about and you want to sell. But if you put it out there, people don't want it.
48:21Alright? And most of the above training is really how to fix all of that. But this really will get you thinking about where your market is at and how to like actually position yourself the right way.
48:31Because like you could do the three s formula, but you could basically just do it in a way to where what you come up with nobody wants. All right? So how does this actually work?
48:41Again, you cannot create desire. What you have to do is find existing desire, and then you either do two things. So once you find existing desire, you put your offer in front of that desire, or you channel the existing desire into your offer via copywriting.
48:56So like this diagram here will make a lot more sense. So like, this is like existing desire. This is like a flowing river.
49:03What we have to do is we have to put our offer right in front of it. All right?
49:08Or what we do is we, through copywriting and good messaging, we take existing desire and we channel it into what we're selling. Okay?
49:17So I'll give you some examples of existing desires. Like people always want customers. People want staff that solves their problems, like recruiting offers done for you services.
49:25Like that's what I do. People want to find a partner. They want romance.
49:29They want a good relationship. Right? They want to get in shape.
49:31Right? There's a lot permanent desires. These ones are obvious, but you get what I'm saying.
49:34So people want investment returns. People want to diversify.
49:38They want to limit their downside risk. I mean, you go into any market, you can find stuff that never changes. People want stuff that's cheap, never changes.
49:45So with some offers, again, you can put them in right in front of existing desire. So if you have a done for you marketing agency, you have a recruiting offer, a weight loss offer, dating offer, now you still want to follow the three s formula and do all that stuff.
49:58But it's going to be much easier because you're just kind of putting yourself in front of the existing desire. Okay?
50:05Now, I'm gonna give you some examples of having to a channel desire to create demand. Okay? And and this is where this is actually gonna get valuable.
50:12So let's say you're a speaker coach. Alright? Again, you might have people in your network or who know who you are through your brand or referrals who do want to speak better.
50:23But most people don't want to wake up and want like, they're like, oh my gosh, I need to work on my speaking, and I want to learn it from this stranger who said they're a speaking coach.
50:33Okay? So the market's small for one. And then the people who do, know, again, like I was already saying, the people who'd like actually do get clients for this, generally, they're getting it from speaking on stage themselves.
50:45They have a lot of organic content, or they're getting referrals. But it's very tough to get an offer like this working on cold acquisition or paid ads. So instead, what you want to do is you want to attach it to existing desire.
50:57So an example of that is you could help business owners in whatever industry source stages in their market and speak in a way that lands them clients.
51:07Okay? So you see how what I did is I bridged, essentially, people want more customers, which is an existing desire, and then I'm bridging that into my offer.
51:17Does that make sense? Okay? So that's very key.
51:20You have to give somebody what they actually want. You could help ex military create a speaking platform, wish they can get on stage, share their story, as well as on social media. Right?
51:27A lot of people wanna do that because I've seen other ex military do that. But you can see here again, what we're doing is we're attaching it to some something tangible. Okay?
51:35So in that example, it like making money and and so on and so forth. So an executive coach is another one. So no executive wakes up and they're like, man, I really want to be a better leader, and I want to learn it from some random person on the internet.
51:49They might want to be a better leader. Like, they might buy leadership books and whatever. But it's it's tough to get them to actually reach out to a rando on an ad to buy that.
52:01You know? So instead, what you do is you make it more tangible.
52:04So you help them to get promoted or move to a c level position in a different company. And by helping them become a better departmental leader, they show a consistent track record and they could go to a different business or they could get promoted in the current business.
52:17Right? I already gave you that example. Right?
52:19You could also help home service businesses remove themselves from the day to day and the fulfillment and cut their hours down to forty hours a week. That's another real example that worked really well with our program.
52:29In the process of doing this, you do help them become a better leader. But you see how we just kind of wrap it differently. Okay?
52:36We have to wrap it in something that is an existing desire for them. So a great example that I can give you for my own business is I started SDA wanting to help people become better sales leaders.
52:48Okay? Like my big thing when I started the company was I was like, man, the reason people can't scale their sales teams is because they're just bad sales managers or the bad sales leaders. But what I realized is nobody woke up.
52:59I mean, you know, again, they might want to get better at sales management, but they're not really waking up thinking like, man, my number one problem is I'm a bad leader. You know, it's kind of a hard thing to admit to. So what I had to do is I had to kind of beat the recruiting to like, okay, let me place a rep with you.
53:13That gets them in, and then I place them a rep. Great. But then what also I can do that starts a relationship where I can audit their business, fix their sales team, make them a better leader, yada yada yada.
53:24So it's kind of . Right? The broccoli is the leadership, but the cheese is like whatever you need to do to get them in.
53:30Okay? So I went through the same exact thing here. All right?
53:34So with RCA, it was a very different example. So RCA was the program we had that helped reps essentially or sorry, it helped everyday people get into high ticket sales.
53:44I kind of already talked about it earlier. But when I first launched RCA, nobody knew what high ticket closing was.
53:51Like, it wasn't even a term that much. It wasn't even known. And people weren't out there trying to do it like they are today.
53:57So I had to market again to people who wanted to make money online. Alright? That was the existing desire.
54:03And then I was like, hey, that's like silly. That's like tough. Like, shouldn't do that.
54:06And then what I had to do is channel that into a new opportunity for them to achieve the same thing, but through remote closing. So for more training on this, I really recommend going through advanced market research and copy platform.
54:18Okay? It's just in the school module, just like it's in this module. Just look down.
54:23Okay? From where you're at, you can probably just click on it. Pretty easy.
54:26Now let's move on to guarantees. So another thing that's gonna make your offer far more attractive is making different types of guarantees, and there's different types.
54:33There's guaranteed or you don't pay. Like, we'll get you resolved or blah blah blah blah, you don't pay. Guaranteed or we work with you until you do.
54:40We'll give you more time. That's not really great, but it's better than nothing. Okay?
54:44Performance based. So you can charge per lead generated, for instance. Hey.
54:48We only charge you for the leads we generate. Money back if you succeed.
54:53So this is the classic gym launch guarantee, which was like, if you come in and lose 10 pounds in the challenge, then you'll get your money back.
55:01We cover the cost guarantee. If it doesn't work, we'll reimburse your ad spend. If it doesn't work or pay for itself, we'll write you a check for the difference.
55:09Experience based, which is if your first coaching call isn't valuable, we'll give you a 100% refund. So anyways, there's tons of guarantees and get creative with it.
55:18I kinda just gave you the most common ones that are used and recommended. So they're also all of these are conditional.
55:24Right? They're like, there's conditional and unconditional guarantees. Unconditional means for any reason.
55:28That's usually only for, like, lower ticket stuff. Right? Conditional, obviously, they have to fulfill certain requirements to get the refund.
55:35Okay? So with anything you do that's higher price, it should always be conditional. And if you're gonna do a guarantee, I recommend some sort of reimbursement based or refund guarantee attached to conditions that if they fulfill, makes it highly unlikely they wouldn't succeed.
55:49Okay? So really, the easiest way to think about is your conditions should be the exact things that they have to implement or do in the program to make the offer and to to succeed with the offer.
56:00Does it make sense? So like, you think about the most important things in your client success journey, if they do those things, that's essentially what the guarantee should be like.
56:09If they do those things, everything should work. Therefore, they shouldn't need the guarantee.
56:13So you put the most important things in there. And if they do those, it's like, well, if they did those, there's a 90% chance it's just gonna work.
56:20Okay? So one thing with guarantees that a lot people don't understand is the main reason you do it is really to stand out in your marketing. It's not to help your sales team.
56:30I mean, will it help your sales team? Yeah. A little bit.
56:32I mean, I think that it doesn't matter that much. But the big factor of why it does help so much and why a lot of people use it is it helps a lot in the marketing. Okay?
56:41And so that being said, if you already generate a lot of leads and lead generation is not a constraint for you, it's probably not worth it.
56:50K? Now we're gonna talk about proof volume. So if you watch my ads, I stack tons and tons of proof.
56:57And this alone can be the differentiator between ads and cold acquisition working or not working. Okay? So for instance, I once ran a cold email campaign, and we were testing some messaging.
57:07We were getting like a 1% response rate or something like that or 1% book rate. And then I put, like, my biggest 15 case studies at the it's like, PS, here's a few people we worked with. And it was, like, 15 of the biggest names, and it tripled the conversion of the cold email, which is pretty crazy.
57:25So if you watch Alex Becker's high roast ads, he does the same thing. Hermozy gym launch ads, they do the same thing, just like insane amounts of proof. So if you can overwhelm with proof, it alone can make your ads work even if you have a lot of this other stuff.
57:37And then if you combine that, though, with the three s formula, all the stuff we've been talking about so far, it can really, really take it to the next level.
57:46Okay? So you don't need to have big names to, like, proof stack. I mean, obviously, it helps if you do.
57:51But you can just hammer out 10 to 15 case studies of people who are just like them with amazing results. Just make sure it's compliant based on your industry regulations, what you're doing, etcetera. The last one, or we're getting close to the last, we're gonna cover here is done for you hybrids.
58:04So this can work with b to b, b to c, and be to solopreneur. So this is where you don't do full done for you, but you do parts of it, and it makes your offer way more attractive and sound way better with marketing. That's why you do it.
58:15So I'll give you an example. It's like, we do done for you sales recruiting, but we don't do done for you full sales team management. Okay?
58:22That's by design. Right? It's far more scalable, it's far more profitable, and allows our marketing to do very, very well.
58:28But nobody comes in and buys and thinks we do full team sales team management. I mean, we never say we do that. We also do done for you marketing setup, but we don't do done for you ongoing ad management.
58:37Well, now we can consult on the ad management, but we don't do the ongoing done for you ad management like an agency, which with a lot of our clients, they're not running a ton amount of ad spend.
58:48So it's just very, very easy. It takes like twenty minutes a day, if that, for the entrepreneurs managing themselves, plus we just tell them exactly what to do. So it actually is better for them that we do it this way, but it's also better for us because it's more scalable.
58:59Right? Example number two is for RCA, when we are helping people get them jobs, okay, we would basically apply to jobs for them using their resume. Like, we would just go out and apply for them.
59:08And we we would just force them on the offers, which not only got them results, but also because we had a guarantee and made it so it's like, man, like, you had all these offers.
59:17Like, you didn't take any. I mean, that's why the results were so good. We had a huge, huge success rate with RCA compared to a lot of other B2C programs.
59:24So another example is like, maybe you help people start Etsy stores, but you could do the initial store setup done for you, and then they do everything else. Right?
59:32And that also could allow you to hit people who want more like passive income from their nine to five job, but you're not doing full done for you. So you get better lead quality and you could get better higher pricing, and it sounds better, but you're not doing full done for you forever.
59:45Right? Like, you're just automating one of the processes for them. Another example is you might help people with systems and operations, but maybe what you do is you place an ops manager on the front end, which makes the offer way, way more attractive.
59:59And then you make that one placement. And then after that, for nine weeks, ten weeks, twelve weeks, whatever it is, you coach them and the new hire that they got on all the systems and implementation, your sauce, and your expertise, and everything you do.
1:00:10Right? So doing this allows your marketing to be way more attractive. It isn't full done for you.
1:00:15So you can systematize this one piece and still make it very profitable. It'll increase your price, and that'll make it more than enough worth it. And allows you that broccoli cheese approach where you can kind of give them the done for you thing on the front end in order to kind of bring them in to coach them on what they really need.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Cole Gordon opens with the pattern interrupt that powers every great business essay — that guy's a complete idiot, how the hell did he pull that off? — then drops the thesis at the 60-second mark: 80% of business success comes down to your offer. The next 59 minutes are the most practical and advanced takedown of offer engineering on YouTube right now, framed as a private-client training spliced into podcast format.
Named ideas worth stealing.
09:00list
The 3 Components of a Good Offer
- Packaging
- Economics
- Scalability
Packaging = how you communicate what you do (drives differentiation + market power). Economics = pricing strategy (lowest-cost OR premium). Scalability = cost structure that smooths the cost curve at volume.
Steal forany product positioning audit — score yourself on all three
17:46model
The Three S Formula
- Specific problem
- Specific person
- Specific way
The headline framework. Communicate what you do in a way that solves a specific problem for a specific person in a specific way. Hits packaging + economics + scalability in one stroke and produces the conveyor-belt effect downstream.
Steal forevery JoeFlow/Mod Boss/MCN+ landing page hero block
13:14model
The 4 Cost Structures
- Low fixed + High variable — services (easy start, painful scale)
- High fixed + Low variable — SaaS (huge leverage)
- Low fixed + Low variable — digital courses (commoditizes instantly)
- High fixed + High variable — restaurants (death)
Most service businesses are in quadrant 1 — design your offer to smooth the cost curve so each marginal client doesn't require a marginal hire.
Steal fordeciding which tier of MCN+ is most defensible — likely SaaS-like leverage on top of low-variable digital
39:41model
Eugene Schwartz's 5 Stages of Market Sophistication
- Stage 1: First to market — simple direct copy ('Automate your company with AI')
- Stage 2: Expanded claims ('...and save $50k in ops costs guaranteed')
- Stage 3: Mechanism ('...using Karpathy self-learning AI auto-research')
- Stage 4: Enlarged mechanism (claims inflated again)
- Stage 5: Dead market (rare in permanent-desire categories)
Cole's hack: just assume you're in stage 3/4 and lead with a mechanism regardless. Works even in less-mature markets.
Steal forevery Joe-built tool's positioning — assume saturated, lead with the mechanism
44:14model
The Mechanism Framework
- Most people trying to achieve X make mistake Y
- The problem with that is Z (consequence)
- So instead, what we do is [methodology]
- Which allows [benefit]
- And ultimately [benefit of the benefit]
Simultaneous explanation of why everything they tried in the past failed and why this is going to be different. Cole demos it live, ad-libbing it for both his current biz and a past one (RCA).
Steal forVSL openings, ad scripts, sales-call frameworks — this is a directly reusable script template
49:32model
The Barbell Framework
- Left bell: Done-for-you to smaller/richer B2B/solopreneur (premium pricing, LTV-heavy)
- Right bell: Done-with-you to mass B2C (huge TAM, front-end-heavy)
- Middle: NO MAN'S LAND — done-with-you for poor markets that need DFY but can't pay (e.g. $10k/mo coaches)
Pick a side. Stay out of the middle. Real positioning errors live in the middle — the 'help $10k/mo coaches get to $50k' offer is a classic trap.
Steal forJoe's product portfolio split — JoeFlow ($49–99) is right-bell, MCN+ membership is left-bell, no-man's-land is the trap
53:18model
Pain vs Unfulfilled Desire (Positioning Part 2)
- Below-average → Average: pain. Higher urgency (loss aversion), bigger TAM, less money
- Average → Excellence: unfulfilled desire. Lower urgency, smaller TAM, more money
- Golden quadrant: wealthy people who feel below-average trying to get back to average (high urgency + high money)
Examples: wealthy guys who let their bodies go ($10–40k personal training, $50M/yr biz). High-net-worth divorce. C-suite women trapped in masculine. Rich post-divorce 40s guys lost dating. Hard to execute — requires visceral, agitated messaging.
Steal forcreator burnout positioning ('you used to be the smartest guy in the room — AI passes you every week — get back')
56:20concept
Channeling Desire (not Creating)
You cannot create desire — only channel existing desire (money, relationships, health) into your offer. The 'cheese and broccoli' approach: cheese = the existing-desire wrapper, broccoli = the actual transformation. Cole's SDA started as 'be a better sales leader' (broccoli) but had to wrap in 'we place a rep for you' (cheese).
Steal forevery Joe positioning brief — find the cheese first
57:51list
Guarantee Types
- Guaranteed-or-you-don't-pay
- Guaranteed-or-we-work-with-you-until-you-do
- Performance-based (per lead, per result)
- Money-back-IF-you-succeed (Gym Launch — completed challenge → refund)
- We-cover-the-cost (reimburse ad spend if it doesn't pay for itself)
- Experience-based (first call not valuable → 100% refund)
Conditions = the actions that, if executed, make success near-certain. Real purpose = marketing differentiation, not sales-call closing.
Steal forMCN+ membership guarantee structure
59:20concept
Done-For-You Hybrids
Don't do full DFY (unscalable). Do PART of it DFY — the setup, the placement, the initial system — and consult/coach the rest. Marketing-attractive AND profitable.
Steal forany 'install + onboarding' offer — $6 Stack setup, JoeFlow vocab tuning, etc.
How they asked for the click.
51:50product
“If you want to work more personally with either me or my team, we can help you in two different ways. Number one, we can help you install a marketing system so you can generate more leads and ultimately scale the revenue of your business. Or b, we can help you with your sales team by placing setters or closers in your business. And if they don't perform, you don't pay.”
Soft, mid-video CTA at the 51:50 mark, after the heaviest value-delivery section (mechanism + barbell). 'If they don't perform, you don't pay' is a baked-in guarantee inside the CTA itself — the strongest version of this pattern.
Visual structure at a glance.
