04:56Maria Wendt · Tutorial
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December 19th 2024The argument in one line.
Scaling without burnout means trading high-ticket, high-touch delivery for a low-ticket, high-volume system that is front-loaded with hard building work and then runs largely on autopilot.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A service provider or coach doing high-ticket sales calls who feels burned out by delivery and wants a lower-stress, more scalable model.
- A creator with a modest following who wants proof it's possible to monetize consistently without going viral.
- A beginner entrepreneur unsure whether to worry about ads, funnels, AI, or investors first.
- Someone managing content strategy for a personal brand who wants a concrete framework for scaling past the first million followers.
SKIP IF…
- You're already running a proven high-ticket coaching business with no interest in adding a low-ticket product line.
- You want tactical ad-copy or platform-algorithm specifics — this is strategy and mindset, not a step-by-step ads tutorial.
The full version, fast.
Maria Wendt used to charge $72,000 for high-ticket coaching sold entirely over DMs, but the delivery load (all-day Zoom calls, no time with her newborn) forced her to pivot to a low-ticket model selling $27-$47 products at volume. The first few months of building that infrastructure feel like wasted effort, but once it's built, growth becomes near-automatic — her business now averages $20,000-$30,000 a day with minimal ongoing work. She argues you don't need to go viral to monetize; you need consistent traffic and a checkout-page-first funnel that skips webinars and sales calls. Her biggest lessons: beginners should obsess over getting 100 checkout-page views a day, and entrepreneurs at six and seven figures should guard against the overconfident 'sophomore complex' by staying in rooms where they're the least experienced person.
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00:00guestMaria Wendt
00:00hostSam
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:29
01 · Cold open
How Sam and Maria first connected in a mastermind, setting up the interview.
00:29 – 05:10
02 · Why she quit $72K high-ticket sales
Maria explains selling $72,000 coaching entirely via DM, the all-day Zoom-call burnout, and the moment holding her baby made her pivot to low-ticket.
05:10 – 06:30
03 · Building infrastructure that runs itself
Why the first months of a low-ticket funnel feel unrewarding, and how it becomes infinitely scalable once built — $20K-$30K/day on autopilot.
06:30 – 09:15
04 · 60K new followers a month, and the awareness pyramid
Hiring a content director to reach mass-market audiences below her own 'most aware' niche, and comparing her funnel to Dave Ramsey's.
09:15 – 11:39
05 · Overcoming the fear of posting
Naming the specific people you're afraid will judge you shrinks the fear; most people don't have Maria's unusually supportive family.
11:39 – 14:46
06 · Addicted to impact, and why she won't retire
The high of a single helpful comment, worthiness issues resolved through content, and Tony Robbins' idea of a human need for significance.
14:46 – 18:56
07 · The biggest money mistakes by stage
Beginners need to fix their traffic (100 checkout views/day); six-and-seven-figure entrepreneurs need to fix their ego ('sophomore complex') and stay coachable, including learning from Sam Walton's low-ticket-at-volume playbook.
18:56 – 22:27
08 · You don't need to go viral to monetize
Followers are near-vanity; small audiences can out-earn big ones; sales are lost at a weak caption CTA, not in the view count — send buyers straight to a checkout page.
22:27 – 24:23
09 · Motherhood vs. entrepreneurship
Maria says motherhood makes her a worse entrepreneur but a better mother, and describes deliberately throttling her business growth for her daughter.
24:23 – 25:15
10 · Rapid fire: important vs. not important
A quick game ranking posting, ads, investors, AI, sales calls, automated delivery, and low-ticket products.
25:15 – 27:15
11 · Role reversal: growing from 1M to 3-4M followers
Sam asks Maria how to take his own (Dan Martell-linked) account further; her answer: double down on proven formats while keeping roughly a quarter of posts experimental, and build a team to sustain both at once.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Maria Wendt used to sell $72,000 coaching packages entirely through DM conversations, with no sales calls at all.
- She quit high-ticket coaching not because it wasn't profitable — she was making seven figures a year — but because eight hours of daily Zoom calls left no time for her newborn.
- Pivoting from high-ticket to low-ticket freed up all the time that used to go to client delivery, and that time went straight into marketing instead.
- In a low-ticket model, each new customer doesn't create more delivery work, which is what lets the business scale without adding hours.
- The first two to six months of building a low-ticket funnel will not feel worth the effort — the payoff only shows up once the infrastructure is built.
- Followers are close to a vanity metric: a creator with a million followers has to work just as hard for views on a single reel as someone with zero followers.
- Students have generated $30,000 a month from as few as 3,000 followers by monetizing a small audience efficiently rather than chasing reach.
- Sales are lost less often in the views and more often in a buried or vague call to action at the end of a caption.
- The advice for anyone making under $4 million a year: stop routing prospects through freebies, webinars, or video sales letters — send them straight to a checkout page.
- Growth stages have different unlocks: 0 to 100K followers is about finding your format and topic, 100K to 1M is about doubling down on what already works, and 1M to 10M requires building a team so you can keep testing new formats while still doubling down on winners.
- At least a quarter of posts, even for an established account, should stay experimental to keep surfacing new formats and topics.
- Six and seven-figure entrepreneurs often hit a 'sophomore complex' — too experienced to be a beginner, not experienced enough to be humble — that makes them temporarily uncoachable.
- Naming the specific people you're afraid will judge your content (rarely more than three or four names) exposes the fear as smaller than it feels.
- Being a present mother and being a maximally scaled entrepreneur are, in Maria Wendt's own words, in direct tension — she describes deliberately throttling her business growth to protect time with her daughter.
Build a low-ticket system once, then let it run without you
WHAT TO LEARN
A low-ticket funnel that skips sales calls and webinars in favor of a direct checkout page can scale further than high-ticket delivery ever could, but only after months of unrewarding infrastructure-building — and staying coachable matters more with every dollar you make.
02Why she quit $72K high-ticket sales
- Selling everything through DM conversations, with no sales calls, is a workable model even at $72,000 price points — it's the delivery load, not the price, that burns people out.
- Eight hours a day of Zoom calls left no time for her newborn, which was the concrete trigger for the pivot, not a strategic growth decision.
03Building infrastructure that runs itself
- When each new customer doesn't add more delivery work, the business can absorb far more volume without adding hours.
- Expect the first two to six months of building low-ticket infrastructure to feel like wasted effort — the payoff only appears after the system is built.
0460K new followers a month, and the awareness pyramid
- Growing 60,000 followers a month required deliberately targeting less-aware audiences instead of only speaking to people who already understand the offer.
- Compare your funnel to businesses like Dave Ramsey's: an audience with an urgent, ongoing problem (debt, income) is a durable customer base regardless of ticket size.
05Overcoming the fear of posting
- Fear of posting shrinks fast once you name the three or four specific people you're actually afraid of, instead of a vague fear of 'everyone.'
- An unusually supportive family isn't the norm — most people have to work through judgment fears without that advantage.
06Addicted to impact, and why she won't retire
- The high of helping even one stranger with a single piece of content can be a legitimate, sustainable motivator — not something to dismiss as vanity.
- A stated human need for significance (per Tony Robbins) is worth planning for deliberately, even inside a business built for passive income.
07The biggest money mistakes by stage
- Beginners should obsess over one metric: roughly 100 checkout-page views a day, not follower count or content polish.
- Watch for a personal 'sophomore complex' around six and seven figures in revenue — a stretch of overconfidence and reduced coachability that costs the most learning.
- Study businesses outside your category (e.g., an e-commerce or retail playbook) when you've outgrown the peer group you started in — new humility often comes from a room where you're the least experienced person.
08You don't need to go viral to monetize
- Follower count is close to a vanity metric — reach per post is a harder-fought, more honest number, and small audiences can out-earn large ones.
- Most lost sales happen at a weak or buried call to action, not from a lack of views — send interested people straight to a checkout page instead of a webinar or VSL.
09Motherhood vs. entrepreneurship
- Deliberately throttling business growth to protect time with family is a legitimate, conscious trade-off, not a failure of ambition.
- There's no permanent 'having it all' — only a season of life where one priority is intentionally chosen over another.
10Rapid fire: important vs. not important
- Investors, sales calls, and (at first) AI ranked as not important to building a million-dollar low-ticket business — posting, ads, automated delivery, and the product itself ranked as important.
11Role reversal: growing from 1M to 3-4M followers
- Scaling past roughly a million followers requires building a team so you can keep testing new formats and topics at the same time you're doubling down on what already works.
- Keep about a quarter of posts experimental even at scale — over-indexing on testing without doubling down on proven formats is its own failure mode.
Terms worth knowing.
- Low-ticket funnel
- A sales system built around inexpensive products (roughly $27-$47) sold in high volume, instead of a small number of high-priced coaching packages.
- Checkout-page-first funnel
- A sales sequence that sends an interested viewer straight to a purchase page, skipping the webinar, video sales letter, or sales call steps most funnels use to 'warm up' a buyer.
- Sophomore complex
- Maria Wendt's term for the overconfident, hard-to-coach phase many entrepreneurs hit around six or seven figures in revenue, before humility typically returns at higher levels of success.
- Awareness pyramid
- A way of describing how much a prospect already understands about their problem and the available solution, ranging from completely unaware at the base to fully solution-aware at the top.
Things they pointed at.
09:09channelDave Ramsey
12:40channelTony Robbins (concept of the human need for significance)
17:15bookSam Walton / Walmart (low-ticket-at-volume pricing lessons)
21:27toolManyChat
Lines you could clip.
02:08
“I can't do this anymore. I have to change. And so I pivoted away from high ticket into low ticket.”
02:41
“I wasn't trying to become a bajillionaire, I just wanted to have more time with my baby.”
07:36
“Every day becomes a no-$0 day in your business. Every day you make money. Every day you get new customers.”
10:18
“I don't want to help a few people make millions of dollars. I want to help millions of people make a few extra thousand dollars a month.”
10:32
“It's false evidence appearing real. Let's shine some light on it. Let's name what actually needs to be named.”
20:18
“I have to work just as hard for the views on my reel as someone who has no followers.”
23:56
“The things we think warm people up actually create obstacles to the money.”
24:01
“Does being a mother make you a better entrepreneur? No, I think it makes me a worse entrepreneur... but it does make me a better mother.”
17:15
“You've never met anyone on their deathbed that said I would want to be more in the office.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:29 – 06:30denseLeaving high-ticket coaching for low-ticket infrastructure
06:30 – 09:15denseAudience growth and targeting less-aware buyers
09:15 – 11:39Fear of judgment and posting mindset
11:39 – 14:46Significance, impact, and not retiring
14:46 – 18:56denseMoney mistakes by business stage
18:56 – 22:27denseVirality vs. monetization, checkout-first funnels
22:27 – 24:23Motherhood and deliberately throttled growth
25:15 – 27:15denseScaling from 1M to 3-4M followers
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00:00Well, sweet. I'm I'm excited for this this interview, this this clip session. Yeah.
00:04Excited Yeah. First connected, I think it was on Takis Yeah.
00:08Mastermind. Yeah. And we were kind of doing a back and forth, I was like, this Maria girl's really smart.
00:12I thought the same thing about you. Thought Yeah. About appreciate it.
00:15Sam girl's really smart. Same
00:18thing.
00:19Yeah, that'd be wild. But yeah, I saw I saw was looking at your profile yesterday, and I saw a clip of you on another podcast, and you said that you used to charge $74,000
00:29Mhmm. A client Mhmm. And you stopped.
00:31Yes. Why did you stop high ticket sales? Yeah.
00:34So I used to do high ticket and I think what's very interesting is I used to do it and I didn't even do sales calls. Like I was just doing sell by chat over the DMs with the high ticket. Wow.
00:42And so I feel like I people a lot of people don't know that because they see me as the low ticket girl, and they don't realize that I have a lot of experience in doing high ticket, and I think high ticket very well. Yeah. But for me, I felt like, okay, you're charging $72,000 That's a lot of money.
00:57And generally, when we are charging a lot of money, we feel a lot of responsibility to, like, I would stress out about the delivery, making sure, oh my gosh, that's more than the average American annual salary, right? If the average American annual salary is $60,000 I'm charging more than that, more than a year's salary.
01:12Yeah. So, damn, I better perform. Yeah.
01:14And so it was very high pressure. It was very high stakes. And then the other thing I felt is, like, when you're when you do have that sense of responsibility, there's a lot of delivery, and very logistically, I was on Zoom calls.
01:26Yeah, Seven, all eight hours a day, and at the time, I had a like, baby was a tiny baby, and so she was in a daycare, and I would have to go at the end of the day and go get her, and it was always just so hard. I would pick her up from the daycare, and then she didn't want to be separated from me.
01:44And so I would sit in the car for ten minutes before I put her in the car seat because she didn't want to, like, have another point of separation. Yeah. And so it was just in one of those days after a long day of Zoom, where, again, I was making good money.
01:55Like, I was making 7 figures a year doing that, but I just was holding her and, like, procrastinating and putting her in the car seat and procrastinating and putting her in the car seat and procrastinating, and I was like, I can't do this anymore.
02:05I have to change. And so I pivoted away from high ticket into low ticket, not trying to make, a million dollars a month.
02:13I just because I had been told, you can't make 7 figures doing low ticket. You can't do Right. Let alone 8 figures.
02:18And so I was like, you know what? I don't care. I just wanna make enough to cover my bills.
02:23Like, I think my everything was like $13,000 a month, $14,000 a month, wasn't a lot. And I was like, I don't need to be making a $100,000 a month anymore, I'll just make $14,000 a month Yeah. But I won't have to do any work.
02:34And then I got out of delivery. All of a sudden, all my delivery. I had no more calls, and so all the time that I was putting towards delivery went into marketing.
02:41And when you're marketing that much and each new customer does not equal more work, you scale really quickly.
02:48So that's why I pivoted away. And again, I wasn't trying to become a bajillionaire, I just wanted to have more time with my baby.
02:54I love that. Yeah. So going out of high ticket got you more time to focus on the marketing, which allowed you to add more top of funnel Yes.
03:01Which then allowed you to scale your long Yes, ticket exactly. It's this beautiful thing where like, you because we all if we've been in the high ticket world, it gets to a point, and this is when you know you need to change something, is where you sign on another high ticket client and you're, sick to your stomach Yeah.
03:14Because now you've to deliver. That was me. And I was good, but it cost a lot to be that good for every high ticket client, and I just needed more freedom.
03:24That's Why great do you think most people are scared of low ticket?
03:27I think because a lot of people have tried it, especially in the high ticket world. They've tried it, and they do all this work, and then they get like $327 sales, and it doesn't feel worth it.
03:36Especially because they're used to like, I get three high ticket sales, I've made $15,000 I've made $30,000 They're used to a sale equals a lot of money in my bank account. What they don't realize is when you're pivoting from high ticket to low ticket, which is what I help a lot of people do.
03:49I help a lot of I'm in the high ticket world. I wanna do a low ticket or add a low ticket stream. I do this all day long.
03:55Yeah. And so what what I try to tell them, what I need them to understand is that you're building infrastructure that at first will not seem like it was worth all the time and effort.
04:03It's a big learning curve to go from high ticket to low ticket. Yeah. But the beauty is once that infrastructure is built, it's so easy to go from $327 sales to, like, we're at, like, 200 to 300 orders a day.
04:15It's actually not that hard, but they can't get past that initial bump, so they try it and then they quit. Yeah. And they've done all the work.
04:22All they need to do is just add fuel to the traffic fire, which is what I spoke about on stage yesterday. Yeah. And so it's a lack of understanding in what you're building and what the expectations should be, which is why I go around town all day long trying to explain that build the infrastructure, and then it's just every day becomes a no $0 day in your business.
04:39Every day you make money. Every day you get new customers. Every day you get new sales, and it's done completely automatically.
04:45All the work is front loaded in the building, and then then you're Gucci. So it's almost like going slow and then going fast. You have to be able to not do huge
04:55sales month for a period of two to three, four, maybe six months starting off, and then once you have that foundation built, it's infinitely scalable. Yes, exactly. It's infinitely scalable, and I would say go slow, but you're also going very intense.
05:08It's a lot of work at first. We are not a get rich easy. You can do it, but it's work, and it's a lot of work up front.
05:16But now, you know, it build it, and, like, for me now, like, I'm doing a lot of different things today, and I'm gonna make our our, like, daily average is around, like, 20,000 to 30,000 a day.
05:27Love it. And I do nothing. I do it's just done.
05:29It's rolling. It's fully hands off, and if you're, know, maybe it's not at that level yet, but like, I have students all the time who have their first $100,000 a month with a $27 product. Like, that's a normal day in our world, and they're not working that hard now that they've built the infrastructure.
05:43It's in getting it built that that's really the elbow grease. Yeah.
05:46You're most of your time on obviously getting distribution for your product. I was looking at your stats yesterday.
05:52You added 60,000 followers last month on Instagram. Yeah. How are you growing so fast?
05:56Well, I brought on an awesome content director. People always say, like, they want their Sam. That was me too.
06:02Yeah. And so you helped me find Luke. Yeah.
06:05And what Luke is really good at is something that's not a strength of mine. I'm very good at speaking to the tippy top of the pyramid. Like, I'm very, very problem aware and I'm very, very solution aware.
06:16I'm at the most aware level. So I know how to speak to people where they're like, I know I want to start and scale a low ticket business with ads and organic marketing. That's like my little tippy top of the pyramid.
06:27But I'm trying to get bigger, and so we need to work our way down the hierarchy, and so what we're trying to tap into now, what Luke is really good at is mass marketing, where you're talking to a lot of people. And so, you know, his strengths are helping me speak to more like, okay, I am somewhat problem aware and that I need more money.
06:47Not happy with the money that I have in my life, and so that's what we're trying to do is reach a broader audience because I really feel like on my own, I pretty much reached everyone in the world that knew they wanted a low ticket business to be marketed by ads and organic media. I got all those people, and that's what got me to like 600,000, 700,000 Instagram followers.
07:04But then really for us to hit a million and beyond, we gotta go mass market. I don't need to tell you.
07:08We got to go mass market. And so that's what we're focusing on now. I love that.
07:12And so you're almost you want to create a customer eventually, right? So it's like you want to impact someone today where in five years they've maybe built their business up to 10 ks, 20 ks a month, they come to you Yeah. For that long what we always say is like, I don't want to help a few people make millions of dollars.
07:27I want to help millions of people make a few extra thousand dollars a month. And so what I'm really interested in is speaking to the people who might be thinking, oh, I need a side hustle. Like, I need a side hustle, but I don't know what side hustle I should do.
07:40And so we actually really want to reach the beginners. We want to reach the people who haven't even started, and then we're very, very good at helping people make their first dollar online.
07:49That's what we're really, really good at. And it's a tough demographic. It's a a demographic that a lot of my peers don't wanna touch.
07:55Like, they wanna really work with people who are a little bit further on the chain, but my joy, my the thing I love to do is, like, take those beginners with their mindset issues and their limiting beliefs and all their tech overwhelm and I you don't know anything perfect. Come my way, and, like, I'll show you what to do to get started.
08:12Yeah. And I have immense capacity for that, and then what I actually do a lot of the time is I once they do reach that further level, I pass them off to my friends who run these Masterminds because I I just wanna help those beginners Yeah.
08:26Make those first few thousand dollars a month, and then I'm happy for you to go to my friends. I I create great customers for the rest of my friends' Masterminds because my the my love and my heart is in those beginners who have no idea, like, which way is up and which way is down, but come to me, I'll help you guys out, we'll get those first few sales under your belt, get you up to, you know, even just like 3 or $4,000 a month for my people is game changing.
08:47It's a game changing amount of money, and so that's what I want. That's the impact I want to have and feel like I make the most difference is, okay, you've tried some things, hasn't worked, come to Marijuana.
08:57Yeah. It's just the zero to one journey. It's not someone that's, you know, maybe has a full time job, they're kind of at a dead end, they're collecting
09:03credit card debt, and they need money now. We help them pretty much go from the person that needs money to the person that has money. Has money, exactly.
09:10So one of the people I really look up to is Dave Ramsey and what he's built. He's built a $300,000,000
09:15per year information business. That's what it is. It's an information business.
09:18And so what he always tells people, you know, they're trying to get out of debt, he tells them, you need to get your income up. You need to get your income up. You need to get your income up.
09:25Those people, Dave Ramsey's customers, are my ideal people too. Wanna be that, like, getting your income up side of the equation in their journey to paying down debt. And so Dave Ramsey and I have a lot of very similar people that we attract.
09:37We're running in very similar beginner circles. He's just been doing it for like thirty years longer than I have. I love Yeah.
09:42You mentioned hitting on people's limiting beliefs, right, in that journey from zero to one, and one of them is posting on social media. Why do you think so many people are scared to post on social media these days? I think they're afraid of looking ridiculous in front of their friends and family.
09:54Yeah. I think they're really scared to start and be judged, but when I press them on that fear, and I ask them, like, well, give me names.
10:02Like, who specifically are you worried about? Is it your aunt Jane? Is it your old ex boyfriend from high school?
10:07Like, I want you to really sit there and list the actual names of who you're afraid of or judgment, and it's never more than, like, three or four people. And then I'm like, you gonna let your Aunt Jane keep you from greatness? Are you gonna let what your ex boyfriend from high school thinks keep you from making the money that you deserve?
10:22And so when I make them name the people they're really afraid of, it's not a lot, and it becomes ridiculous, and so we know fear. It's . Let's shine some light on it.
10:32Let's name what actually needs to be named, and then when we have a label on it, we can be like, Oh, yeah, it really is silly that I would let my aunt's opinion of me keep me from the dreams and the financial comfort that I actually want. So I think it's fear of judgment, and I think there's an easy solution for that.
10:45Did you struggle with that starting when you started posting on social media? Yeah. You know, a little bit.
10:51Was a few people whose opinion I was worried about, but I just got so lucky with my family. We're so supportive. Like, the whole entire family tree is always rooting for each other.
11:01Like, any kind of my family all my cousins have got things going on. My aunts have things going on. Like, everyone's got these different entrepreneurial adventures, and in the family group chat, we're just supporting each other.
11:09We're just, you know, letting them be themselves and supporting them, and so I got really lucky with that. But it's very common.
11:17I think I'm the I'm the exception to the rule. Most families are not that supportive. Yeah.
11:21Most friends are not that encouraging, And so I've had to help a lot of students go through that. For me, it was like a few people, but really, overall, I have just a lovely family tree, and so very supportive.
11:32Yeah. What did you notice the second you started posting on social media, the impact that you're having on people? How has social media changed your life?
11:38That's a good question. I couldn't believe how good it felt to even get one or two comments of someone saying this was helpful.
11:48I immediately became addicted to that feeling of making a difference in someone's life. I never have been the kind of person where I was like, oh, it only got 300 views. I would be so excited that one person commented, this is helpful.
12:00This was so helpful. Couldn't believe that because I had a ton of worthiness issues. I was very insecure when I started posting content.
12:06Really did not see my worth. Even as a person, I really struggled with that. And so because I was so insecure and because I had such worthiness issues, I felt so validated.
12:16I felt so worthy. I felt like, oh, I have something to contribute, and so I never worried about the fact that I was only reaching a few people. I couldn't believe that a video that I made helped someone else that I didn't know, a complete stranger, and I've been riding that high for the last, like, thirteen years.
12:32It's still just as intoxicating. It's just as lovely.
12:35I can't believe the impact I'm able to have, and, you know, Tony Robbins talks about our need for significance, and I've been thinking about that a lot because sometimes I think, well, maybe I'll retire. I don't really And need to work I could just, you know, live off of my little 4% dividends and just like, just chill and have a great life not working.
12:53And so I've really been challenged to work still. Like, why am I still working? Why am I still doing this?
12:58I could be reading all the time. I read a lot, but I could be reading even more. Could be painting even more.
13:02Could be on the beach even more than I already am. And Tony Robbins talks about our human need for significance. Yeah.
13:07And I think that I would really struggle because I have such a high level of significance now. I'm recognized whenever I go out in public.
13:13I'm, you know, I feel my impact, I see my impact, and so I really think that that would be something I would have to work through before I retire. It's like, where is my significance going to come from and where am I going to feel that? Because it's not a bad need at all.
13:25There's lots of ways we can feel significant, but we as humans do have a need for significance, and so I, to this day, still get that high from helping people, and it's something I would have to work through before I retired. Yeah.
13:36Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Love that idea.
13:37I've always thought about that, too. It's like, well, if you're not working, what are you gonna do? What are you are you gonna Start working again.
13:42Yeah. Dude, I mean, and that's the other thing too, is like we all see these entrepreneurs that retire for a year or two and then they get bored and then they have to restart everything from the ground up and that just seems like a freaking nightmare.
13:53Yeah. And so I'm like, you know what, like maybe I just need a month off. Yeah.
13:56Like I'll just take a month off and I'll be running back to the office screaming with Dude, my hair on I can barely take a day, right? Like I and I'm I'm I think I'm better than most, right?
14:04Because I really only work on Tuesdays and I only work on Fridays. Yeah. And so like today's a Friday, like I'm here working.
14:09And so I actually have five days a week where I don't work, and I'm pretty good about being off my phone and being unplugged. So I'm like, Okay.
14:17Like, I'm so excited every day to go into the office. Like, I genuinely love working. So why would I do that to myself?
14:23Why would I retire? It doesn't make sense. Just because you can stop working doesn't which is a new thing, right?
14:28It's a novelty. Oh my gosh, I don't have to work anymore. I could literally not work for the rest of my life, but that doesn't mean I should.
14:35And that's something I've just been going through kind of behind the scenes, it's like working through all of that. And I genuinely think I'm gonna be doing this until I'm a little old lady on a holiday somewhere. I'm gonna be 90 years old being like, charge $27
14:46for your first product and then $47 for your order, bub. Yeah. Maybe then the $27 is gonna be worth Dude, it'll be like 300 because of inflation.
14:54Yeah. Yeah. That's wild.
14:56Yeah. Well, cool. You've been in the space thirteen years, like you You've seen a lot of entrepreneurs.
15:02What's the biggest money mistake that you see new entrepreneurs make in their first year? Yeah.
15:07Well, I think it really depends. So there's two types of new entrepreneurs. There's new entrepreneurs that really struggle to get their offer off the ground.
15:14Yep. And so their money struggle is that they don't have any, and they have to work through a lot of mindset issues to attract that money, to receive that money.
15:21Yep. And they have terrible expectations that I'm going to push a button and immediately make $20,000 day one. And so a lot of what I do, because I work with beginners, is just recalibrating expectations.
15:32Yep. You actually can make money in the low ticket space, I think, much more quickly than the high ticket space. You it's a $27 sale.
15:39It's a $47 sale. Like, you actually can, but the the linchpin to that, the most important thing to do if you wanna make money quickly, is focus on generating traffic. Get eyeballs on your checkout pages, and so my whole mission, what I help all my students do, is focus on generating about a 100 checkout page views per day.
15:56That's our first initial goal. And so, like, my bread and butter, my day in and day out is just getting eyeballs on the page. That's for some beginners.
16:03For other entrepreneurs, let's say they're at like 6 or 7 figure mark. They're they've been in business for like a hot second. They have what I call sophomore complex, where they've been around the block a little bit, and so ego is at like a peak.
16:13Yeah. Like when you're a 6 figure entrepreneur and sometimes a 7 figure entrepreneur, your ego is never higher than that point.
16:19Oh, yeah. Because then you're like, that's like sophomores, right? Like sophomores, they're not freshmen anymore.
16:23They think they know everything, but they're not juniors or seniors, and so they, like, have peak ego, right? Yeah. So they're very uncoachable in my experience.
16:30They it's just they're they're hard they're hard for me to get along with. Yeah. Again, like, it's just you haven't been around the block long enough.
16:36Yep. Then you get past that and you go you're like, oh, now I'm with eight you know, 9 figure business owners who are very humble, who are sponges, who are like the ego is like all the way in the back seat. Like, they're so coachable, and they're so like like a little sponge ready to soak up.
16:50And so Yeah. My advice to people is like, look, if you're seeing some success, the best thing that I ever did was stay coachable.
16:57Now, I still had an ego at six and seven figures. I thought I was the shit once I hit seven figures. But, like, I think it's just a normal part of the journey, and then you realize, oh, like, even now, like, as someone that's doing, you know, like, I've done some nice numbers, but, like, I don't feel like I'm anybody.
17:10I feel like now the pond I'm in, I'm a very, very tiny fish. I really a big but that's genuinely how I feel.
17:17Like, really do feel like a very , and that tells me I'm in the right pond. I want to be the tiniest person in the room and soaking up and learning everything because that's how we grow, and it's just cool because, like, now the people you learn from are different. I'm learning a lot from Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart.
17:31He's a low ticket baby. It's all low ticket.
17:34It's pricing for moving units at volume. There's so much that I'm learning from him and what he built and how he scaled Walmart. Walmart has just had a very consistent upward trajectory.
17:45If you look at their like, once they went public, it's just been up Yeah. And up and up and up, and that's amazing. That's been that way for decades, and so anything Sam Walton has ever written on business, I've been consuming like a little sponge because I have so much to learn from him and he's helping my business scale now because we think of ourselves as like an e commerce business.
18:02We don't think of ourselves as a coaching business. Yeah, which is e commerce. We're pricing for units and volume.
18:07Yeah.
18:08That's a huge insight. The idea that the biggest money mistake that most people make isn't, you know, anything in the monetary sense, but it's like they're not actually staying humble at every journey of their Yeah. Monetary You could be at $4.05, $6.07 figures, and you have to try to be in those bigger pawns so that you feel like the smallest fish.
18:28Yes. And then you learn from those people. Yes.
18:29I learned the least when I had outgrown my mastermind.
18:33And I everyone was coming it's so good for the ego. Everyone's always coming to you for Yeah. You really do feel like the shit.
18:40Yeah. But I learned the least. I stayed the I was plateaued, and so I had a you know what I did is I found my people in these it's just a lot I adore them.
18:49They're these Ukrainian and Russian e commerce bros, and so they're really good at drop shipping. Have 8 and 9 figure businesses shipping like $27 products.
18:58Now they're physical, so they like like physical products, but like they're e commerce bros. And oh my gosh, the stuff I learn from them, it's so helpful. It's so it's exactly what I need to know, and I am like, I know nothing about that space.
19:10And I learn, like, I soak up everything. And so making that pivot and really just changing how I saw my business and my business model has been really helpful because, yeah, we're not really, like, in the business of selling high ticket services or coaching. And so what you do to attract customers and scale and ascend and all of that has to change.
19:29So we gotta, like you said, be a tiny little fish the Yeah. Right
19:33Love that. Yeah. There's a, this is the age old question, and there's different perspectives in the space about it, but the big question is, do you have to go viral to make money on social media?
19:43That's a great question.
19:45I think no. I think that I've always squeezed every penny out of my audience, out of every size. Like, I've always been very good at monetizing a small audience.
19:54We have students all the time who are making, like, $30,000 a month with, like, 3,000 followers. Insane. Yeah.
20:00Because, and let me tell you why, the way that social media works now, and I don't need to tell you this, Sam, but your followers are, like, at best a vanity metric. Like, just because you have a million followers doesn't mean you're gonna get reported.
20:11I have to work just as hard for the views on my reel as someone who has no followers. Like, we're we're all at, you know, it's a zero sum game. Like, it's it's what that means is that you don't have to have a big following to make a lot of money.
20:24What you have to do is make good content that gets eyeballs. Yeah. And so but going viral is, like, a little too far on the spectrum, in my opinion, because we all know.
20:32Like, I know not to even go in the comments. If I my reels get over, like, a million views, I'm I'm just letting the comments section be whatever it is. Yeah.
20:38It's a guaranteed troll fest, right? I'm sure you guys see this in yours. Yeah.
20:42So I think, like, going viral accomplishes other things, and that's great, but in terms of monetization, somewhere in between my content sucks and no one's seeing it, and I'm getting millions of views and millions of hate comments, somewhere like almost more towards that bottom area is where you can really start to monetize reels that get 2,000 views, 3,000 views, 4,000 views.
21:00Like, it's not a lot. It's just knowing what to say to attract those buyers, and then specifically, like, what to get them to comment. Like, people lose the sale, they lose the money at the call to action stage, at the caption, at the call to action.
21:14It's buried at the bottom where it's like, comment me if you're ready for the next level. It's like, fuck's comment? I have nothing.
21:20Exactly. So then you're not really losing them in the views, you're losing them in the caption and the call to action, and that's where a lot of my coaching comes in. It's just like, don't say this.
21:28Stop saying that. Say that better. Stop being around the bush.
21:30Be confident and ask for the sale. Like, it's Yeah. Again, I'm working with beginners, so it's like the most basic stuff, but it's what I teach best.
21:37Yeah. I noticed that's something that you do extremely well, is you'll lead with a problem, give them the solution, and then give them the next step on the back end with a CTA. Yep.
21:46That's brilliant. Yeah. Use, you know, ManyChat on the back end, send them the resource, and then you Send them take straight to a checkout page.
21:51Yeah, straight to that's one of the big things that I tell people is we especially if you're making less than $4,000,000 a year, you need to be sending people straight to a checkout page. Stop sending them to freebies. Stop sending them to webinars.
22:00Stop sending them to video sales letters. Just straight to a checkout page. We live in such an instant gratification society that you making them sit through an hour and a half webinar to then ask for the sale is causing you to lose the sale.
22:11And so I always say, like, the things we think warm people up actually create obstacles to the money. And so many chat, like, real to many chat comment to checkout page, doesn't matter the price point. You can be charging $3,000 $10,000 like, still straight to a checkout page.
22:25Because mind you, I was selling $72,000 coaching packages without a, like, call.
22:30Yeah. And so straight to a checkout page is what I tell everybody.
22:33Love that. Love that.
22:35Want to ask this because I saw your Instagram video of you and your daughter getting on the plane yesterday. And I just thought about this question to kind of wrap up the interview.
22:46Does being a mother make you a better entrepreneur?
22:50Does being someone that's No, class I think it makes me a worse entrepreneur. Okay. Yeah, because I think I'm a good mom.
22:55Okay. And so I think that where I could be, if I could work even five days a week, you wouldn't need, like, I would be at a totally different level of business.
23:06I think that I am a very good mom and not a great entrepreneur, and that's just the season of life that I'm in. I don't think you can do you can have it all, but I don't think you can have it all at And so That's a great point.
23:16I'm throttled, absolutely throttled in my entrepreneur journey right now, very consciously, very intentionally, because I want to be with my baby.
23:24She's, you know, she's going to be older at some point. She's going to have her own life, but like right now, she loves holding my hand. Even if she's drinking out of her water bottle, she'll reach over to hold my hand.
23:32Those are moments that I will never get back. This business will always be here for me. Customers will always have an income problem.
23:39There will always be problems for me to solve, and so there's always gonna be a space for me to grow and expand. And sometimes, like, selfishly, I really feel I chafe at that restraint. I really want to grow bigger.
23:50I want to grow faster. I love my days in the office, and so it can be hard sometimes to be like, okay, let's do a puzzle of a zebra today when I wanna be, like, solving like the multi million dollar problems that I wanna be solving. But I want to live a life with as few regrets as possible, and you've never met anyone on their deathbed that said I would wanna be more in the office.
24:07They always regret not spending more time with their family. They always regret not doing even more things for themselves, like adventures. And so I know the work will always be there, and so to answer your question, no, I think it makes me a worse entrepreneur, but it does make me a better mother.
24:19I love that. Love that. I wanna wrap it up on this I've
24:23got a game of important versus not important to build a million dollar business. Important.
24:29So, no, so far. Oh, okay. It's important.
24:31It's important. I am writing So things that are important versus not important to build got a it, got it.
24:37Okay. Alright, first one we've got posting content. Important.
24:40Then we've got running ads. Very important. Having investors.
24:43Not important at all. Using AI.
24:46Oh, I would say not important at first. Love that.
24:51Sales calls. Not important.
24:53Automated delivery. Important.
24:55Low ticket product. Important. Let's go.
24:58Yeah. Wrapping in. Wow.
24:59Wow. Thank you so much, Sam. Boom.
25:01Okay, wait. Wanna ask you a question. Yeah, yeah.
25:02Let's do it. Okay. This is selfish.
25:04I go. You can cut the interviewer where you want, but this is a question I wanna ask you. Let's do it.
25:07I'm at about a million Instagram followers. What do we need to do to get to like three or four? Like, where the gap between where we are and where you guys are Yeah.
25:16I'll tell you what we're doing now, and you tell me what what we need to level up. Okay.
25:20Okay? So we're posting about five times a day. Yeah.
25:23We're really testing new things, testing new series. Yeah.
25:27We're growing by about, very consistently, about 17,000 per week right now, 18,000 per Yeah. Week right are we missing?
25:35Is it just time on the clock? So going from I mean, you know this, but going from zero to 100 ks is all about figuring out your formats Yeah. Figuring out your topics, figuring out your brand and finding out what people actually care about.
25:47Going from 100 ks to 1,000,000 is all about double doubling down on what works. Yep. A million to three or even a million to 10 from what I've seen is building the systems and the team in place so that you're able to consistently both test new topics and new formats and new angles.
26:00Okay. And so I'm sure you guys are working on topics and angles and and formats that you know are working right now. Yes.
26:07And you double down on those because you'd be stupid not to. Yeah. But the key is is I'd say at least half your posts or maybe 25% of your posts in some seasons should be experimental posts to see if you can find those new formats and those new topics that work.
26:19That makes me feel good because I feel like right now where we're failing
26:23the most is like we're trying so many new things. I think that what we need to do better at is doubling down on what's working. 100%.
26:31There was a season of life where we were posting slope content where kids were asking dang questions on the street. And we the first video we posted got a million views. Okay.
26:39Insane. And they were talking about business stuff, was positioning Dan very well, and obviously there's the philanthropy angle. And so we doubled down on that, and that was our biggest season on Instagram Okay.
26:49Was when we were doubling down on that content because we knew that format worked. But at the same time as we were doing that, we were also testing new angles, new formats, that's when we started, you know, playing with gamified content, playing with, you know, these big, you know, good, better, best videos and all these videos that are obviously positioned down very well in the AI space,
27:06but then also, you know, resonate with our core audience. This was great. Thank you so much for letting me take your brain.
27:10Really appreciate I'm glad it's helpful. Yeah.
27:14Glad we got this done.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The title promises the guy who grew Dan Martell's audience to 11 million followers — but for most of the runtime it's Maria Wendt in the hot seat, explaining why she torched $72,000 coaching packages for a low-ticket funnel that now runs itself. The tables only turn in the final minutes, when the interviewer asks her how to take his own account from one million followers to three or four.
