The Great Unfucking: How I Rebuilt My Coaching Business
A coach with an eight-figure business argues that empire versus lifestyle is a false choice, and tells how he cut his team from 36 to nine to get the second one.
Posted
3 months ago
Duration
Format
Essay
sincere
Views
7K
268 likes
57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Empire versus lifestyle is a false choice: pick your own measure of winning, build around your strengths and season, and add constraints so the business stays simple enough to grow.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A coach with a six-figure business who has copied a bigger guru's funnels, team and tech, and now dreads the weight of running it.
A coach who is quietly unhappy with a business that looks impressive from the outside and wants permission to build something smaller or weirder.
A founder in a demanding season of life, such as young kids or family illness, who needs a business that fits around real constraints.
A business owner who feels pushed to hire, add platforms and bolt on software, and suspects that adding more is the problem.
SKIP IF…
You want a tactical funnel, ad or sales-script walkthrough. This is a mindset and design talk, and the tactics sit in other parts of the series.
You are early and still need your first dollars. He says money can be the goal when you don't have enough, but he doesn't teach how to get there.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Empire versus lifestyle is a false choice, because every business shapes your life. The video offers a money, meaning and freedom traffic-light scorecard, then says to navigate by a personal North Star such as mojo or pride, and to build around your strengths, your role and your current season. The warning is that adding people, funnels and software is easy while living with them is hard, so you simplify first. The speaker cut his team from 36 to about nine, dropped his sales team and cut platforms to two, and says the business grew fivefold.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Taki rejects the either-or question and sketches empire and lifestyle axes in the sand.
01:50 – 03:48
02 · Jay versus Rob
Two clients at opposite ends of the map, one running a multi-million-dollar empire and one working 13 days a quarter, show neither is wrong.
03:48 – 07:10
03 · Constraints from a hospital bed
His son's health crisis forced a simple, flexible business, and that same freedom later let the family travel.
07:10 – 10:04
04 · Permission and the MMF scorecard
The Wright brothers as permission, then a traffic-light self-score of money, meaning and freedom.
10:04 – 14:34
05 · Navigating by mojo and pride
A North Star can be a number or a feeling. The E-Myth gas-station story and a 332-person refund show pride in action.
14:34 – 17:21
06 · Strengths and the right role
Stop fixing weaknesses, find the thing that comes naturally, and shape your week around the role you are gifted to play.
17:21 – 18:46
07 · Build for your season
Fit the business to this stage of life, and move from a season of yes to a season of no.
18:46 – 21:40
08 · Simple scales
The cruise ship versus the jet ski, and the billionaire's amphibious boat that lost to a $2,000 tinny.
21:40 – 24:33
09 · The Great Unfucking
Team from 36 to about nine, no sales team, only Instagram and YouTube, and a business five times bigger.
24:33 – 25:58
10 · Close and CTA
Build it your way, with a soft invitation to work together.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Every business is a lifestyle business, because every business, big or small, changes how you live.
You can accidentally land one or two of money, meaning and freedom, but getting all three only happens by design.
Before you model someone's business, look at their life and decide how much of it you actually want.
Forced constraints, like a hospital stay or a baby at home, can push you to a simpler business than a free choice would.
Working on a 4-out-of-10 weakness gets you to a 6, and nobody pays top dollar for a 6.
Anything that gives you mojo is an instant yes and anything that drains it is an instant no.
Pride works as a business metric: he refunded 332 workshop attendees because he wasn't proud of what he delivered.
The best games are infinite ones you can't win but keep leveling up at, such as pride and craft.
Money is a fine goal only while you don't have enough. Once you're out of the hole, play a bigger game.
Build for the season you're in, not the season you hope to reach someday.
Adding is easy and living with what you added is hard, so to multiply you first have to simplify.
A $857,000 amphibious boat lost to a $2,000 secondhand tinny because the simple one actually got him across the river.
Cutting from 36 people to about nine, with no sales team and two platforms, made the business five times bigger.
The first uncomfortable conversation is the one with yourself, admitting what you want and don't want.
Takeaway
Design the business around you
WHAT TO LEARN
Pick your own definition of winning, build around your strengths and season, and treat simplicity as the thing that lets a business grow.
02Empire, lifestyle or both
Plot yourself on a money axis and a fun axis, then ask whether you are okay with where you are. If you are, don't change a thing.
Copying a business built for someone else's goals is the mistake, whether that person chose empire or lifestyle.
04Money, meaning, freedom
Score money, meaning and freedom as red, yellow or green, and only fix what scores red or yellow rather than copying someone else's changes.
Getting all three of money, meaning and freedom takes deliberate design, because you only get one or two by accident.
05Finding your North Star
Choose a North Star you can feel, such as mojo or pride, and treat money as the main goal only while you are short of it.
Favor infinite games like craft and self-expression, which you can keep leveling up at and never finish.
06Strengths and role
Stop working on weaknesses. Lean into the one thing you do naturally, like talking instead of writing newsletters, and let the business do more of it.
Protect your role by deciding what you don't do, so your calendar holds only work you want, instead of meetings and admin you grew into.
07Build for your season
Match the business to your current season. A parent with a newborn should not run a model that needs sales calls around the clock.
Start in a season of yes if you must, then move to a season of no where constraints keep the business growable.
08Simple scales
Adding people, funnels and software is easy and carrying them is hard, so simplify before you try to grow.
Buying the fanciest version of a tool or team member often loses to a cheap, simple one that reliably does the job.
09The Great Unfucking
Run the reduction as an experiment, such as selling a premium program with no sales team, and have the awkward conversation with yourself first.
Saying out loud what you no longer want is the moment the changes start to follow.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Lifestyle empire
A business that is large enough to make real money while being designed on purpose around the owner's freedom and meaning, rather than choosing between big and happy.
MMF (money, meaning, freedom)
A quick self-assessment triangle where you score money, meaning in the work, and freedom in your week with a red, yellow or green traffic light.
North Star
The personal measure you steer by, which can be a revenue number, a feeling like mojo, or pride in the work.
Season of yes and season of no
Two phases of a business: an early period of saying yes to every opportunity, followed by a period of deliberately saying no to protect simplicity.
The Great Unfucking
The speaker's name for the project of shrinking his team, offers and platforms to match what he wanted from the business.
Salesless
Selling a premium program without a sales team or calls, by sending a clear offer page to people who are a good fit and letting them buy.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
17px
Are you building an empire or a lifestyle business? I got asked that once and I got offended. I don't think it's a stupid choice.
What a dumb question. It's like somehow an empire is legit and a lifestyle business is somehow less than. Especially because when you think about it, every business is a lifestyle business because every business, whether it's huge or it's small, every business impacts your lifestyle.
So that got me thinking, what if you could have your perfect sweet spot mix of both? I'm going to show it to you. I can't show it to you without being able to draw, and I'm at a beach.
I'm going to find a stick and some sand. I'll show you what I mean.
A stick. So your business, it's either this is your empire axis. It's either big, lots of money, or little, down the bottom.
You're somewhere on that spectrum right now. And as you grow your business, you're either, if this is your lifestyle axis, you're either super happy, living a dope life, or you're all work and no play, not having much fun.
So this is your spectrum. This is your axes. Think about your business right now.
You're somewhere on here. You just go, how much money am I making compared to how much I want? And maybe you're like there, vertically.
And how much fun am I having? Well, not as much fun. So that'd be you.
All I want you to do right now is go on this stupid sand picture. Where are you? And then secondly, Am I okay with that?
If you're exactly where you want to be, don't go changing. This is great. But if you want to make a bit more money or have a bit more fun, that's what this conversation is about.
I've got clients all across this map. I've got this epic client. We had him battle it out in a cage match, lifestyle versus empire.
And representing team empire was Jay Wright. Epic coach, great dude, has built an empire. It's millions of dollars a month.
It's a big team. It's building for sale. It's killer.
And I love Jay. It's amazing. And the best thing about Jay is he's built an empire because that's what he wanted.
The mistake is if that's not what you want, copying what they're doing, that's just dumb. And against him in the red corner, representing Team Lifestyle, was a cool cat called Rob. Coach's account.
One of my favorite humans in the world. Lives larger than life. The most incredible lifestyle guy I know.
I'm going to share his numbers. Let's say it's more than $5 million a year. Almost 90 % profit.
works 13 days a quarter, and his bucket list is just getting ticked off. Playing golf with the 100 best golf courses in the world, and collecting a hat for each, and the 100 best golf courses in Australia, like that's his life. So his team lifestyle, like tiny team, big team, lots of money, no freedom, lots of freedom, frankly, pretty good money.
I don't want to be all lifestyle, and I don't want to be all empire. I don't like being forced to choose. I'm always like, well, can I do both?
So I'd like to figure out this perfect business for me. And that's what this video is really about. I don't want a lifestyle or an empire.
I want this. I want a lifestyle empire. So that means we're going to be deliberate about designing the business that we want.
So that you get the perfect business for you, the right amount of money, the right amount of freedom. So that as your business gets bigger, your life. gets better it's hard talking to you way over there so i'm going to come back to the table let's sit down and chat about it so it's kind of crazy dude we're on this weird enigma of a business like eight figures very comfortably heaps of freedom and it's kind of ridiculous like with a tiny team who outperforms like best team on the planet it's great now and it looks like i'm living this dope life because i am but it's like honestly it started At the exact opposite end of the spectrum, like not great, hard, not fun, tough.
When Ethan, my son, was still in the womb, we knew something was wrong. We didn't know what it was. He nearly was almost stillborn and we heard we were going to have either a stillborn or a vegetable.
Thank God it wasn't, but he's had a ton of complications. About a year and a half in, we found out that he had cerebral palsy and later autism and neplet a lot. hard stuff yeah if you've had a kid or know someone with a kid who's got special needs it's full -on it's like a whole different level of hard and uh he's nearly died a bunch of times and so when this business was like in its infancy ethan got rushed to hospital and i had to spend 10 weeks beside his bed at westman kids hospital those guys are the real heroes and it became pretty clear that running a traditional business just wasn't going to work for us because we just didn't have time and i couldn't be on a schedule available nine to five and i couldn't be in a in one spot i had to be able to drop everything and go be by ethan's side and kind of make it work and so because the situation at home was so chaotic i needed a business that was really simple and that i could do it around life what often happens i had like force constraints because i don't have any self -control i had to like if that's the available window that life gives me i have to make it work in that spot
And so in the early days, that was look after Ethan and go to all the therapy appointments and hospitals and shit. And now he's 25 and he's really healthy. He's still got all the same challenges, but there's no risk and he's living his best life.
And now we get to use the exact same freedom that we built for hospital because we built a business like this to travel. We took the kids out of school a few years ago. We nomaded around the world for three years.
We built the business to fit in a tiny box so it doesn't take over all of life. And that's the danger. If we're not careful, this thing is a greedy, hungry monster that will take over your world.
I was lucky enough to have life force some discipline and constraints on us. And now I get to show coaches how to build some constraints around them so they can have a business that does incredible things and doesn't get in the way a lot. I think in some ways, the business looks weird.
But like I said in the first video, way back then, I don't care about how the business looks to other people. I just care about how it looks to me. And I think the thing I'm noticing at the moment is that other coaches are starting to, either because they got the same gift that I got or because they built it the other way and hated it or burnt out.
I built something that looks really impressive and realize it's not. all it's cracked up to be. So all of the gurus that you look at with their awards and their Stripe screenshots, that's cool.
Before you model somebody's business, look at their life and see how much of that you want. So what's the takeaway? More than anything, what I hope you get out of this whole series, and frankly, hanging out with me, is that we live in this world of infinite possibilities.
There are people doing incredible things in the weirdest possible niches, in the weirdest possible ways, and all of them have built something just for them. And sometimes we just need someone to give us permission.
And I think a lot about the Wright brothers, you know, the two guys who flew a plane first. Guess what they'd never had? A pilot's license.
They just decided, I reckon it'd be cool to fly. Let's figure this out. And they did.
So if you're looking for your pilot's license, you're not going to get one. But if you're looking for permission, granted, build this business to suit you and your weird and your stage of life. I wish you could learn this in a book or a YouTube video or...
Like I had some magic crystal, you know, chakra divining machine that just like said, well, this is your path. Do it like this. That's not how it worked for me.
I don't have those skills. I got like no mindset skills. For me, it's just been a game of like hotter or colder, trying to get closer to balance the three things that I think you got into this business for in the first place in no particular order.
You know, most of us want more money because that gives us options. Most of us want more freedom. So we're not tied down.
And most of us do this because we care about the work and we care about the people. And so we want to do it in a way that's meaningful to us. And I think you can like accidentally get one or two of those.
Getting all three is a game. It's deliberate. You never get it by default.
It's got to be by design. So we're going to play this game and do it by design. Let's figure out what winning looks like for you.
What's your North Star? And let's set some constraints because frankly... The more constraints I've had, the more creative I've got and the closer I've got to what I want.
So if you're my client right now, I just go, let's chat about this money, meaning and freedom thing for like 30 seconds and do a quick self -score. So I just bust out a simple triangle. Money is a dollar sign that's pretty straightforward.
Meaning like how much do you love your work and what you're doing and who you're doing it for? And then freedom, like how does a week feel? Are you tied to your computer on Slack all the time or Zoom?
Or are you actually living life? And I just get you to score them like a traffic light. Yellow, green, red.
Like green is, this is great. I'm living my dream. This is perfect.
In terms of money, give it a score. Green if it's green. Red if it's like horrendously bad and needs to change right now.
Or yellow if it's like it's okay. Could use a tweak. So just do that.
You could draw the triangle or not, but just like MMF, money meaning freedom. And give yourself a score on a traffic light. And that'll give you a sense of like, am I on track or am I off?
So we can play this game of like hot or cold together. Like what needs changing, what doesn't. the biggest mistake I see coaches make is seeing what someone else is doing and making some changes that never needed to be changed.
I'm here in Manly in the harbour. The sun is setting. You don't need this, but I feel like you need to see what I get to look at.
Let's flip the camera around. I'm going to show you over here because it's gorgeous and let's chat about North Stars. So we're going to play this game.
We're going to make sure the game's worth playing. I've got to know how you'll win. This is a really interesting one because my clients are split.
Some of them are like super money -driven. Often they were yeah they grew up really poor and it's really important to them to like not be poor some of them are like they love the numbers you know i want to like they track all the numbers and they're upgrading them i can't even read a spreadsheet dude i'm like fundamentally unqualified to run a business this big i don't know how it happened as a happy accident i'm stoked don't tell anyone who might take it away from me i've always navigated by gut feel more than anything else and i don't just mean like what should i do next but like how this business feels is the driving light it's the north star like if something feels off I listen to that and I change it.
I know that's like super vague. So let me give you some of the feelings I'm looking for. Like if something feels heavy, it needs to change.
Like my mojo is like a couple of years ago, I'd lost it. And a friend of mine, Pete said, Taki, your mojo is the number one asset in this business. Anything that gives you mojo is an instant yes.
Anything that takes away mojo, that's an instant no. So mojo is one of the things I navigate by. pride is another.
If I do something I'm not proud of it, I need to stop that immediately and do something I'm proud of. So years ago, when I first got interested in business, my uncle Brian sent me this crate, like this big chest full of like all of the books and cassette tapes and manuals from all the seminars he'd attended over his business career.
I remember one day I was in the car and I listened to something so profound, I had to pull over, rewind it like cassette tape and listen to it again and again and again. It was this simple story. by Michael Gerber, who wrote The E -Myth.
And he's talking about how the best businesses in the world are obsessed. And this is the line that like hit me. He said, I've seen all sorts of businesses, like big businesses and small.
He said, I've seen churches that are run like gas stations, you know, like something that should be revered, run like something dirty and it doesn't matter. And he goes, but I've seen gas stations that are run like churches. And that sparked something in me.
Like I just run a coaching business. It's not, it's not going to change the world but i get to run this like simple normal business just like you do with a sense of like reverence and awe and holiness like we care about this stuff and so we do stuff because we care about it That matters to me a lot.
I don't know what your North Star is, but I navigate by pride. If I run a workshop and at the end of the workshop and hundreds of people have paid for a ticket and I'm not proud of it, I refunded the 332 people's money because I think that people should only pay for something that I'm proud to give them. What's the lesson in all this for you?
I think it's permission again. You can run it by the numbers. You can have a money goal.
You can navigate by pride or by whatever feeling sparks something in you. I think that's totally okay. It's worked out okay for me.
So this super weird thing happened a month ago. I got a message from Tony on my team saying, hey, by the way, we did $2 million last month. And I was like, huh, that's cool.
It wasn't a goal. I wasn't striving for it. It's a big milestone.
And so like we took a moment. It was like, that's pretty dope. And then we just got back on to working on cool projects with people I love to help people we really care about.
I like the idea of this infinite game. Like I can't win pride or self -expression or gas stations and churches. Like it's...
this is a game I could play forever until I'm dead. And I think that's the reason I've been able to play this game for so long and it's ended up great. The only time money was a goal was when I didn't have enough.
And if that's where you're at, dude, I 100 % get that. Set yourself a goal and get out of the hole so that you can play a bigger game. And then find the magic metric for you.
And for me, it's expression and it's pride. And it's doing something with a level of crafting care just because we can. That fascinates me.
The most important thing is you find a game that you want to win and the best games are one that you can't win, but you just keep leveling up at. So we just talked about playing an infinite game, a game that has no end, but I still want to set it up so that you feel like you're winning along the way. And there's been plenty of times where I've got off track and I missed one or two key elements and it's made business grow slower.
It's made it felt harder. It's made it feel heavier. And I've lost a bit of money.
Let's not do that. Let me show you. how to get this right so you can play a game that you are uniquely built to excel at.
Here's the crazy thing. Not only is there not just one way to grow a lifestyle empire, there's not even one best way for you forever. There's a best way for you for right now and that's allowed to change.
Certainly my greatest moments have been when I've been playing to my strengths in the right role for the right season. I want to chat about that with you right now. I don't know about you, but there's probably some things you're great at and some things that you kind of suck at.
I'm the same. The worst advice I ever got was to work on my weaknesses. If I take something that I'm like a four out of 10 at, and I work really hard, maybe I get it to like a five and a half or a six.
No one's going to pay me top dollar to be a six, dude. Same with you. There's some things that you are already great at.
Some things which come naturally. You've been doing it since you were a kid. They're easy.
People notice. And frankly, the business wants to do more of them. Whether it's creating content or sharing a message, do more video or whatever that thing is.
There's something that only you do. You're never going to build a business around something you're weak at. I've tried.
My first role model was this dude called Dan Kennedy who wrote newsletters to people. So I thought, I need to write newsletters to people. And I was crap at it.
It was miserable. It was hard work. And I was always late.
And I hated my business until one day I realized, Tox, you're a great talker. Why are you trying to write instead of talking to people? And I just decided from that day on, you know what?
I'm in a bit of talk business. And it's been epic ever since. There's something you're great at.
Find that and just lean into it. There's so many ways to be right in this business. If you notice, everyone who you follow, everyone who you look up to, like, I wish I could be more like that.
Doesn't matter what their skill is. They're doing something they are gifted to do. Find the thing that's most you naturally and lean into that.
Second, your role. Look under the hat that you wear. During COVID, the business grew a lot because everyone needed to figure out how to do this online thing.
And because I'm not management material, we drew people at the problems. Is it getting like systemized and organized like you're supposed to? So pretty soon I found myself.
scaled out of all of the things that you're supposed to. And the only thing left was meetings and admin. It's like, I grew this business and I looked at what my week looked like.
I love the business and I love the clients, but I looked at my week and it was awful. So now I built this business around my strengths. You know, the role that I'm gifted to play, the stuff that's fun for me.
I create and I communicate and that's it. There's nothing in my calendar right now that sucks. Find the role that you're best at.
And like when it's early days, yeah, you play a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But it's also okay just to say, yeah, we don't do that. I'm not on LinkedIn.
I probably should be. Business would be great if I did. I don't feel like I belong on LinkedIn.
I don't wear a tie. I don't have like Slack messages or corporate stuff. I just don't feel like I belong.
So play in the things that I'm good at. And that's completely fine for you. It's worked great for me.
It'll be great for you too. I said just before, it's not like this is the perfect model for you forever. It maps to your stage and season of life and of business.
Like when we got started, my business looked a certain way because I had to be in hospital. And now there's things that I can do because the business is bigger. My kids are more stable and more secure that never would have mapped to where I was back then.
If you're a stay -at -home mom and you got young kids, Like choosing a business that needs you to be locked into sales calls 24 -7 is a terrible idea because what do you do if the baby needs you? Like I'm here shooting this video for you.
Right now, I just got a call from my son, Ethan, saying he needs meds. Well, guess what? I got to wrap this video up because I want to make him meds on time.
Think about the season you're in as well and build up for the season you're in, not the season you hope to one day be. If you build a business around your strengths, you're going to be great at something. If you build it around the sweet spot role, You'll be in your genius zone.
And if you put a business around the season you're in, you're honoring where you're at so you can get to where you want. When it comes to seasons, I think big picture, there's two seasons you go through. There's a season of yes, where you're just like, oh crap, there's money, there's an opportunity, I'll take it.
Yes. That's good to get you started. I've been there, I get it.
Then you've got to get to a season of no. Because all of the things we've been talking about here today are about constraints.
There's a couple of constraints. that I think we wanna add to make sure your business grows. Because if you don't, you'll hit a ceiling of complexity and you'll never deliberately grow into pain.
I'm gonna keep it real. If you're not careful, this business is gonna get complicated really fucking fast. As it grows, you're gonna be tempted to add more people, more funnels, more technology, this other software, an extra call, more bonuses.
Adding more is really easy. But like living with them all, that's really freaking hard. To the point where it gets heavy and weighs you down and starts to feel like even the idea of growing equals pain.
The counterintuitive thing that I've found is that in order to multiply, first you've got to simplify. If you think about what most people do, in order to get bigger and bigger and bigger, they add complexity until the thing becomes really unwieldy and hard to turn. Think about like a cruise ship.
It's big and it's slow. There's cruise ship people. I'm not one of them if you are.
You do you. I'm more of a jet ski guy. I like nimble.
And the reason the business has been able to grow so fast is because we've deliberately put some constraints in to make it simple. We're on the topic of boats. When I'm not here in Manly, I live in Noosa on the other side of a river in a national park with like a dirt track and eight neighbors and they're all weird like me.
One of them is this British billionaire called Richard. It's not... Branson.
It's a different Richard. When he moved into the Noosa North Shore, he saw what the rest of us had, which was the sea legs, this weird amphibious boat. It's kind of dope.
I'll show you one day. Imagine a speedboat with wheels. It drives out of my shed, down the dirt track, into the water, and then we press a button.
Just like James Bond, the wheels fold away and we speedboat across the other side, get to the other side where the coffee shops are, wheels down, drive out, park it, go get coffee or pizza or whatever. It's awesome. But Richard's a billionaire.
So he's not just going to buy any amphibious boat. He's going to buy the Mac Daddy. So he bought this like $857 ,000 nine meter beast.
And it's awesome. It's beautiful. It's also really complicated and it breaks down all the time.
And when it's low tide, it's too big and bulky to get across. So he has to like be the idiot who like gets in the water, drives 20 meters, puts the wheels down, hovers over the sandbank. It's clunky.
Finally exasperated, Richard's like, this is way more hassle than it's worth. So he jumps on Facebook marketplace. And he bought a $2 ,000 tinny, secondhand off some fisherman.
And now when he wants to get across the river, he just jumps in, fangs across. It's simple and it's easy and it gets him where he wants to go. And I think often I've been the dude who buys the stupid fancy thing or the course that he doesn't need or adds the team member or the this or the that.
And I end up like carrying too much. So the shift that I'm seeing, both in me and my clients and across the industry, is this return to simple because simple scales where complex fails.
So right now here, I'd say I'm a pretty good role model, a poster boy of like lifestyle empiring. But a year ago, a year and a half ago, I wasn't. Business got big and complex and as it got complex, it got slower and harder.
And I basically took my jet ski and strapped 182 anchors to it and it got hard and slow and not very fun. So exactly a year ago this week, I was at my house with Tony on my team and Kieran in my life.
And we started a secret project called The Great Unfucking, where we just got back to, well, what do we actually want from this business? And what are the boundaries and constraints we need to put in place? And that touched like every area of my business.
It started with team. I'm not management material and I didn't want a big team. There was nothing wrong with them.
It just didn't fit me. So I went from a team of 36 to now a team of like eight or nine. We went from a sales team who had to like pounce on every lead, slide into every DM to like no sales team.
Now it's just like, here's the offer, read it. If we've sent it to you, it means we think you're a good fit. Read it.
If you want to join us, click the buy button below and join us. And it's simple. It went from like trying to be on all the platforms to Instagram and YouTube.
And that's kind of it. Really easy to talk about now. At the time, it was terrifying and it was nauseating and I put it off.
for like a year or a year and a half of like in my bones knowing that I didn't want what I had and having an idea about what I did want. But it was scary, like letting go of team members who I'd worked with for some of them a decade, who were like dear friends, who I thought I'd work with forever. Dude, it was awful in the lead up.
And then when I admitted to myself what I didn't want and what I did, like that was the moment I said it out loud about I don't want this anymore, then the dominoes started to fall. And when I had the conversation with the team, I don't think anyone was surprised because they knew that I was like unhappy and out of my sweet spot and everything was not fun for them too.
So I obviously we made sure everyone was looked after. Some of the stuff was like, was scary. Like, could we really sell a premium coaching program without sales polls?
I didn't know, but I needed to test. So we ran an experiment. All I can say is it probably feels scary to you as well.
And on the other side of it, is this business that you never knew was possible for you? So is it hard?
Yep. Is it scary? Yep.
You're probably a couple of awkward conversations away from the thing that you want. And the first uncomfortable conversation is the one you have with yourself in the mirror about admitting to yourself what you want and what you don't. And that's the conversation I'd encourage you to have.
All I know for sure is that simple scales and it's fun and I'm way more me and I'm way more happy. And the weird thing is, not only am I way happier, but the business is like five times bigger with less people and all of these weird constraints. I'm more attractive to my potential clients and I'm living the dream.
If you get anything from this, just understand that the shift from the business that I think I should have or that looks good to others. And if you've got like a big business that people who aspire to. the fear of late letting go of that to going something that actually feels great to you that's the ultimate role model you can be so this has been kind of fun to share let's time for us to land the plane so uh i'm gonna do like this seagull here and stand up so my friend if we have more time in this series we go super deep and super nerdy into all the different ways we can build a lifestyle in front we can attract leads with with brand with and we could sell salesless and we could deliver in a In a more streamlined way with deliveries.
We looked at everyone in Black Belt and everyone in Boardroom. What I love about it, the thing I'm most proud of is we haven't built a cookie cutter, follow this one plan thing. Because they're never going to be building my business my way.
But I want you to build your business your way. There are literally hundreds of ways to grow and scale a coaching business. And the most important thing is that you find yours.
My deepest hope is that this has been a source of inspiration. There you go. You know what?
I'm going to find my way. Every great video series should have a CTA. So here's all I'm going to say is if any of this has resonated and you want to do some work together, you'll figure out how.
I don't know what's on this page or where you're watching this. Go for a hunt if it's useful or don't. Go build a lifestyle empire.
You'll put on this planet to make a meaningful difference, to have more money, more meaning, more freedom. And it's there for the taking. Just don't follow somebody else's plan.
Forge your own path.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Taki Moore opens by getting offended at the empire-or-lifestyle question, draws the answer in the sand with a stick, and spends the next 25 minutes arguing you should design the business on purpose rather than copy someone else's. The proof is his own teardown from 36 people to about nine.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:20model
Empire and lifestyle axes
Empire axis: little to big money
Lifestyle axis: all work to a dope life
Plot where you are on money and fun, then decide whether you are okay there.
Steal forA self-audit before changing a business
08:36model
MMF scorecard
Money
Meaning
Freedom
Score each of money, meaning and freedom as red, yellow or green to see where to adjust.
Steal forA 30-second client check-in
14:34list
Strengths, role, season
Your strengths
Your role
Your season
Three lenses for building a business that fits you now.
Steal forDeciding what to keep or cut
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
25:30link
“If any of this has resonated and you want to do some work together, you'll figure out how.”
Deliberately soft and self-aware. He jokes that every series needs a CTA and points to the description rather than pitching.
Add Modern Creator as a preferred source and Google shows you more of our breakdowns in Search, Top Stories, and AI Overviews. It only changes what you see, and you can undo it in your Google settings anytime.
Add to Preferred SourcesOpens your Google source preferences with us pre-loaded. Tick the box and you're done.
A coaching founder fired six of his nine salespeople, locked the other three out of the inbox for 90 days, and found that a written offer doc outsold the whole team.
A coach answers one viewer's question about pitching inside a paid workshop by drawing the exact four-moment structure that lets him sell without souring the room.
00:38
00:48
01:08
01:27
02:06
02:26
02:45
03:05
03:24
04:03
04:22
04:42
05:01
05:21
05:40
06:00
06:19
06:39
06:51
07:37
07:57
08:16
08:36
09:02
09:15
09:34
09:51
10:22
10:52
11:11
11:31
11:50
12:10
12:29
12:49
13:08
13:28
13:45
14:10
14:26
15:05
15:25
15:44
16:23
16:42
17:02
17:41
18:00
18:27
18:39
19:01
19:43
19:57
20:17
20:36
20:56
21:15
21:35
22:14
22:31
22:52
23:12
23:31
23:51
24:10
24:40
25:09
25:28
25:48
34:05
20:43
12:37
36:51
13:28
18:44