13:43Dean Graziosi · Talking Head
This Simple Process Will Change Your Life
A 13-minute breakdown of the "seven levels deep" exercise: how to ask "why" enough times to turn a goal you might quit on into one you can't.
July 8th 2022The argument in one line.
A creator with a large free following doesn't have a traffic problem, they have a transition problem, solved by pricing a ladder so a small percentage of members ascend to the tier that produces most of the revenue.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run a content brand with real audience size (tens of thousands of followers or more) but a membership or community that's stalled far below what the audience could support.
- You're deciding what to charge for a community or coaching offer and want a model for why price itself changes commitment, not just revenue.
- You already have a low-ticket membership and are trying to figure out what the next, higher-priced tier should actually be.
SKIP IF…
- You have no existing audience yet — this is about converting attention you already have, not building it from zero.
- You're looking for platform or software recommendations. This is entirely about pricing, messaging, and funnel structure, not tools.
The full version, fast.
Dean Graziosi coaches three young media hosts, whose finance and entrepreneurship channel pulls 10.5 million followers and 200 million monthly views, through the gap between audience size and membership revenue. Their community sits at 3,400 members paying $39 a month while their content reaches millions for free; the fix isn't more traffic, it's a value ladder and sharper messaging. Graziosi covers pricing psychology (show-up rates run from 18% free to 99% at $10,000), a one-click upsell script, onboarding that needs explicit first steps, and a premium accountability tier above the base membership. He closes by running the math on a whiteboard: scale to 10,000 members with a 10% ascension rate and the business clears $20 million a year.
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00:00 – 00:59
01 · Cold open: separate pitches for pain vs. pleasure?
The clip opens mid-conversation as Dean asks whether a creator should run separate pitches for viewers escaping pain versus viewers chasing a bigger future, then previews the payoff: put 10,000 people into the right offer and the math alone gets you to $20M a year.
00:59 – 03:29
02 · Meet the finance media channel
Three young hosts describe their business: a 10.5-million-follower, 200-million-monthly-view finance and entrepreneurship channel that first crossed 7 figures in 2024, largely on the back of a $39/month community, with a $10M goal for the next year.
03:29 – 04:28
03 · Diluted focus: the five-snails problem
Dean warns that spreading effort across five priorities at once makes all five grow slowly, and pushes the group to name the single biggest constraint standing between them and 10,000 members.
04:28 – 06:41
04 · The real constraint: awareness and messaging
The hosts land on awareness and messaging as the bottleneck. Dean reframes their organic following as an asset that would have cost millions in ad spend to build the traditional way, then introduces the pricing-commitment data: show-up rates climb from 18% free to 99% at $10,000.
06:41 – 08:15
05 · Sellouts, and selling as serving
Dean predicts a small share of the audience will resent being sold to no matter what, and argues the fix isn't to sell less, it's to accept those people were never going to convert. If the paid product genuinely delivers more than the free content, withholding it does the audience a disservice.
08:15 – 08:48
06 · Ad break: Dean plugs his own community
The coaching conversation is interrupted by a scripted mid-roll ad where Dean promotes his own School of Mentors community directly to the video's viewers, referencing a separate interview with 'PBD' before returning to the live coaching session.
08:48 – 10:02
07 · Pain vs. pleasure, and why generalist offers lose
Dean explains that buyers act from one of two directions, moving away from pain or toward pleasure, and that the group's messaging so far only speaks to the second group. He argues specific hero's-journey detail builds more trust than a generic result, and that a single offer trying to serve everyone loses to a specialist offer for one type of buyer.
10:02 – 12:03
08 · The one-click upsell script and onboarding by subtraction
Dean sketches a one-click upsell video script for the post-purchase page, then argues new members need explicit first, second, and third steps the way a new college campus needs dotted lines on the floor. His core onboarding rule: the best programs remove content rather than add it.
12:03 – 14:04
09 · Inspiration, transformation, accountability: the next tier
Dean lays out a three-rung value ladder: free content sells inspiration, the $39/month membership sells transformation through courses and community, and a premium tier above it should sell accountability, ideally structured as small-group coaching rather than one-on-one.
14:04 – 15:34
10 · The math: 3,400 members to $20M a year
Dean runs the ascension math live on the whiteboard: at 5,000 members paying $39/month, converting 10% of them to a $10,000 tier adds roughly $5M to a $200K/month base, and the same ratios at 10,000 members clear $20M a year. He closes with a warning that the only way the model fails is if the team quits working it.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Free event show-up rates run from 18% to 99% depending on what people pay to attend, because committing money is itself a form of commitment.
- A 10.5-million-follower media channel doing 200 million views a month still ran its paid community at only 3,400 members, leaving most of its revenue potential untapped.
- Ad revenue, brand partnerships, a content agency, and a subscription community are the four typical revenue lines for a large media brand, and usually only two need to work well to hit eight figures.
- Working five priorities at once, content, partnerships, membership, coaching, relationships, makes all five grow slowly; picking two and dropping the rest makes both grow fast.
- People buy from you when they feel understood, not just when they understand you.
- A generic offer trying to serve everyone underperforms a specific offer for one type of buyer, the same reason patients want a cardiologist instead of a general doctor for a heart problem.
- The strongest membership programs remove content rather than add it, because retention tracks with how simple the experience feels, not how much is packed inside it.
- New members need explicit first, second, and third steps, the same way a new college student needs dotted lines on the floor to avoid getting lost on day one.
- Small-group coaching outperforms one-on-one coaching because members learn from each other and don't want to fall behind the group, not just from the coach.
- A value ladder has at least three rungs, not two: free content sells inspiration, a low-cost membership sells transformation, and a premium tier sells accountability.
- On a base of 5,000 members at $39 a month, converting just 10% of them into a $10,000 tier adds roughly $5 million on top of the $200,000-a-month base tier.
- Scaling the same ratios to 10,000 members turns the model into a $20-million-a-year business without adding a single new revenue line.
Why a huge free following still isn't a business
THE MEMBERSHIP MATH
A creator with millions of free viewers has a transition problem, not a traffic problem, and the fix is a value ladder where a small percentage ascends to the tier that funds everything.
01Cold open: separate pitches for pain vs. pleasure?
- Two different audiences buy for two different reasons: escaping pain (bad health, a stuck job) and chasing a bigger future (a marathon, a bigger business), and a single pitch that speaks to only one of them leaves the other on the table.
- The clip opens with a direct promise: put 10,000 people into a $39-a-month membership and the math alone gets a creator to $20 million a year, before any new content or traffic.
02Meet the finance media channel
- A channel doing 200 million views a month across platforms and 7 figures in revenue can still be operating a subscription community of only a couple thousand members, which is where the real leverage sits unused.
- Money in a large media business tends to split across four lines: ad revenue, brand or campaign partnerships, a content agency serving other entrepreneurs, and a recurring-revenue membership, and the membership piece is usually the smallest but the most valuable to grow.
- A creator who nails two of those four lines, in this case brand partnerships and a subscription community, can hit eight figures a year without touching the other two at all.
03Diluted focus: the five-snails problem
- Running five important projects at once, content, partnerships, a membership, a coaching program, and relationships to maintain, produces five things growing slowly instead of one thing growing fast.
- Naming one specific numeric goal (10,000 members) forces the question of what's actually stopping you from hitting it, turning a vague ambition into a solvable constraint.
04The real constraint: awareness and messaging
- When the audience already loves what's inside a program, the bottleneck usually isn't the product, it's messaging: whether the offer is described in a way the right person immediately recognizes themselves in.
- A creator who built an audience organically, without ever paying for reach, is sitting on an asset that would have cost millions of dollars in ad spend to build the traditional way, and most underprice how valuable that is.
- Attendance and commitment scale directly with price: 18% show up to a free event, roughly 40% at $10, 70% at $1,000, and 99% at $10,000, because paying money is itself an act of commitment.
05Sellouts, and selling as serving
- A small percentage of a loyal audience will resent being sold to no matter what; the answer isn't to stop selling, it's to accept those people were never going to convert and let them go.
- Reframing selling as serving changes the math: if a paid product genuinely gets the customer better results than the free content did, withholding it does the audience a disservice, not a favor.
07Pain vs. pleasure, and why generalist offers lose
- People make purchase decisions from one of two directions, moving away from pain or moving toward pleasure, and a pitch built only around ambition misses everyone who's really just trying to make the hurting stop.
- A specific hero's-journey detail, broke and abandoned before the breakthrough, builds more trust than a generic result like '$3 billion in sales,' because specificity signals the story is real.
- A single offer trying to serve every type of customer performs like a general doctor trying to treat a torn ACL: people want a specialist for their specific problem, not a generalist for everyone's problem.
08The one-click upsell script and onboarding by subtraction
- Different pain points need different ads and, eventually, different landing pages; a single page trying to speak to everyone dilutes the message for all of them.
- A one-click upsell should feel like a video handshake, not a hard pitch: confirm the purchase, promise a great onboarding, then offer a modest discount and a bonus for people who want to go further.
- New members need the entrepreneurial equivalent of dotted lines on the floor, explicit first, second, and third steps, because a confusing first day, like an unmapped college campus, is where people quietly quit.
- The instinct to keep adding value to a membership is usually backwards: the strongest programs strip things out, because retention tracks with how simple the experience feels, not how much content is stuffed inside it.
09Inspiration, transformation, accountability: the next tier
- A value ladder has more than two rungs: free content builds inspiration, a low-cost membership delivers transformation through courses and community, and a premium tier adds accountability, a different product, not just a bigger price tag.
- Most people don't fail from a lack of information, they fail from a lack of a coach keeping them moving, the same reason someone standing in a gym surrounded by equipment still needs a trainer.
- Small-group coaching consistently outperforms one-on-one coaching, because members learn from each other in addition to the coach, and nobody wants to be the one falling behind the group.
10The math: 3,400 members to $20M a year
- The entire model runs on one ascension assumption: of a mid-size membership base, roughly 10% will upgrade to a premium tier, and it's that smaller, higher-priced group that produces most of the revenue, not the base tier.
- Applied to this channel's numbers: 5,000 members at $39/month is about $200,000 a month, but if 10% of those members (500) also join a $10,000 tier, that adds roughly $5,000,000 more, more than doubling the base tier's output.
- The people who never buy a paid tier don't disappear, they stay in the free-inspiration lane, get the feeling of a good ad without ever changing their life, and eventually go find the transformation somewhere else.
- The only real way to not hit a modeled revenue number like this is to quit working the plan; the math doesn't fail, persistence does.
Terms worth knowing.
- Value ladder
- A sequence of pricing tiers, from free to premium, designed to move a customer from a cheap or free entry point up to higher-priced offers as trust builds.
- One-click upsell
- A single-click add-on offer shown immediately after a purchase, before the buyer leaves the checkout flow, used to increase average order value.
- Ascension model
- A funnel structure where a deliberate percentage of buyers at one price tier are moved up to a smaller group paying a much higher price.
- Small group accountability
- A coaching format where a handful of members work with a coach together rather than one-on-one, shown here to produce better follow-through than solo mentorship.
Things they pointed at.
08:28productSchool of Mentors (Dean Graziosi's own community)
08:00videoInterview with PBD
Lines you could clip.
00:59
“This is what most people don't get. It's math.”
06:37
“When you cut a check, they're committing with their dollars.”
08:58
“People buy from you when they feel understood, not just when they understand you.”
12:07
“People that are really good take shit away.”
15:17
“It's like watching a great Nike commercial. You feel inspired, but you don't change your life.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
I'm curious. So you have one side of the audience that is trying to improve their life and the other one that's trying to move away from pain. Yeah.
Right? Should you do separate pitches?
You could do both or you could actually do both sides. Take weight loss. Some people wanna lose weight.
You boys, and and I hope me too, I wanna just keep getting in better shape in my life. So some people are moving away from pain. I'm forty pounds zero weight.
I can't play with my kids anymore. I'm starting to get diabetes. They wanna move away just to be okay healthy.
When they get healthier, are they gonna stop there? No. Now they wanna get in good shape and run their first five k and then a marathon.
Want the pain to go away and then they want abundance. So it's easy to to start with, hey, I know what it's like to feel stuck. You've solved the problem of eyeballs.
Now it's how to transition. So if I was describe to you what's your biggest problem? How to elegantly transition viewers into members.
People buy from you when they feel understood, not just when they understand you. Put 10,000 people in here, you guys will be doing $20,000,000 a year next year. You can go into twenty twenty six doing $20,000,000 a year.
This is what most people don't get. It's math.
What's a year from now best year of your life look like? I think, you know, our biggest goal right now is to be doing, I could say from a revenue standpoint, $10,000,000. Okay.
I think it's kind of, like, the the goal that we've set by the next year. And I think that, you know, we wanna kinda translate what we did from a media side of creating one of the biggest, you know, finance entrepreneur media channels in the world, but translating that to our entrepreneur community that we have. You know, our channel has 10 and a half million followers across all platforms.
We're doing 200,000,000 views a month. Our community Amazing. Despite having a couple thousand people and having a a great base in there of consistent engagement and a lot of those, like, good indicators of, like, a community that's, like, growing and doing well, think that we wanna find a way to kind of, you know, bolster a lot of that growth within the the community that we're currently running.
Last year was our 2024 was our first year that we did 7 figures in revenue across the whole business. Yep. A big part of that was because we launched a subscription service with the school mentors.
Yep. Uh, I firmly believe that the school mentors will make up a big majority of that 10,000,000. And the reason why is because right now, we have the community,
uh, at a about a $40 a $39 a month, uh, price point. But I think what we can do and and that's a great entry point for a lot of the people in our audience to be able to join. What we'd wanna do is be able to take it further and be able to ascend people to Gotcha.
To other So more people in the original and also the evolution. We'll talk about that today. Right?
Yeah. That kinda escalation model. Just like a value ladder.
We we have four real extremes of income. So number one being, obviously, on all platforms, ad revenue. Again, doing couple 100,000,000 views a month.
You know, we're monetized through ad revenue. We do a lot of, like, brand partnerships or campaigns. We've done some with foreign governments.
You know, we've done a lot of campaigns and being that because of how big our reaches is that, like, we get a pretty good amount of money for that as well. Um, we have a content agency where we work with a lot a lot of top entrepreneurs to see their content, but then the subscription model, you know, the the recurring revenue of the community is something that, you know, we're really passionate about and I would say is our baby that we're really looking to grow.
But but those four things are, um, just to give you kind of, like, full, you know, transparency as to, like, what exactly So so if you did the $10,000,000,
what do you think the monthly mentorship what do you think is that 50% of that 10,000,000? Is it 75% of that 10,000,000?
What would you expect? I think we could probably get the low ticket to around a 150,000,
and I'm sure we could get some sort of ascension program to a 150,000 a month as So I would say probably, like, 25%
to 30% of that could probably come from the the community.
Number one and number two, in my, like, brand partnerships and school of mentors monthly when an ascension model could those two can get you to 10,000,000 with nothing else Right. A year.
Right? And beyond. So the only thing I would say as you grow sometimes, all of them are viable.
But if you spread yourself out, then all of them grow slow. Like, I love the analogy. I just shared this with my team.
Like, sometimes we have five really important projects going on. Right? And it's like because you work on this one and you go, no.
I gotta go over content. Oh, it's a little messed up over here. Oh, the brand partnership.
We better keep our friendship with that guy. I better fly out there and have dinner with him. Oh, no.
How's our membership going? Oh, we should launch that coaching program, but I don't have time. All And of a sudden, you got all these things, and you got diluted focus, and all of them are growing slowly.
Where if you said, hey. All of our energy is going on brand partnerships and school mentors. 10,000 members.
If that's your big goal, what would you say is the number one constraint
that would stop you from getting there? I think it's just awareness at this point. Just continuing to build that awareness.
Okay. Okay. What else?
Promising messaging, maybe? Yeah. The messaging.
The messaging. Because So the people that come into the program, they absolutely love it. We're connecting, you know, the person, the average everyday business owner to maybe someone who's looking to leave their nine to five with a 7 figure mentor as well as resources to where someone can start and scale that business.
And the average person doesn't have the ability to access these connections. When they come in, they love it, but I just need sometimes speaking to that person accordingly. Right.
So so it's kinda like elegant marketing. Right? You don't wanna slam them into it, but it really is marketing.
I'm gonna go backwards here. So let's say messaging. But if you think about it, in my career is I started before social, so I had to pay for every eyeball.
So for me to have the viewership that you had, I would have paid tens of millions of dollars each year to have that. And you guys but you put in the work. You put in the hard work up front to build a following, to build trust.
People know, like, and trust you. You don't take advantage of them. You do the right thing.
So you probably don't realize how valuable the asset is. Right? And you're just scratching the surface and you got, whatever, thousands of of members.
With a strategic model, I would bet to say you've solved the problem of eyeballs. Now it's how to transition.
So if I was gonna describe to you what's your biggest problem, how to elegantly transition viewers into members.
I promise you though, as you guys move forward and you start to grow this, you're gonna have 1% of the people go sellouts. How could you do this? It's so horrible.
Here's what I say. Try to help them too. You guys are very inspirational.
Now you guys are trying to get into transformation business. Remember, I truly believe we are in a time that we are bombarded with information.
We have information overload, but we're starving for wisdom. Shit.
Who don't pay don't pay attention. If I run a free event, Tony and I do a free event, we'll have 18% of the people show up to a free event. We're we're doing it right now.
We'll have 1,400,000 people registered. 18% will show up.
Wow. Do you know if we just charge $10? It'd be more like 40%.
If we charged a thousand, it'd be 70%. If we charge $10, it'd be 99%.
Because when you cut a check, they're committing with their dollars. The other thing to remember too is some of the most costly advice in the world is free advice and bad free advice. I'm anchoring that into your soul because the last time we talked guys, I could feel you wanted to launch this.
You knew it could help people, but you're also thinking, hey, we built this loyal following. Are they gonna be mad at us? If you guys start selling more, there is gonna be a small percentage of your audience that's not gonna like you.
And what I would say is, just feel bad for them and let them go because they don't want help. They've already had years and years of free content. Why the hell aren't they living into their full potential if free content was enough?
Internally, should be like, we're gonna inspire for free forever. But if you're truly ready for transformation, then this is what we've created for you.
How much your products and services, and we'll get that, you know, can actually get your ideal client the results they want, then you should actually feel bad if you don't sell them because most of them will suffer in silence. They'll just watch your videos like, oh, that guy, he must have had he probably was born with money.
Oh, that guy got lucky. Like, you can't interview 6,000 people and all of them get lucky. There's a pattern.
There's a system. If you take on that mindset that you're not selling, you're serving, it changes everything.
Guys, this interview with PBD has been amazing so far. We're about to get right back to it, but I've got a very, very special announcement to make real quick. So a couple months ago, I launched and created one of the largest entrepreneur communities in the entire world, the school of mentors, where every single week, I host live calls with the millionaires and the billionaires that I interview on this channel, interviewing over a thousand millionaires and over 10 billionaires.
Is that there's only one shortcut to success in today's world, and that's mentorship.
That. I see why it did good, and I wanna give you a little advice. Yeah.
People make decisions for two reasons. They're moving away from pain or they're moving toward pleasure. That's why we all make decisions in our life.
I want to get out of something that's uncomfortable or life's not so bad, but I needed to make it better. And other people are like, life's not bad, but I'd love to learn skills to make a $100 a month, not $10 a month. They're moving towards a bigger future.
It's the stick in the carrot. When I see that, you did a great job of getting people that are carrot motivated. Meaning, want a bigger future.
But what you missed completely is the people that wanna move away from pain. People buy from you when they feel understood, not just when they understand you.
I know what it feels like when you know you're meant for more. Like, there's something else. Like, this career isn't meant for you.
This this entrepreneurship that you're trying just isn't working. And I know what it's like to say, is this all life has to offer? Like, get that.
It's probably why I went in this with my brother and my friend, and we do this is because so many people have such high potential. Like Dale Carnegie said, the greatest plight of the human race is knowing you have more potential and you don't utilize it. Right?
So now you're help you're entering the pain they're feeling, and you know this by the surveys that you do. I would start asking, what's the biggest thing you fear? I guarantee is, is this all life's got to have?
If you knew their little bit of their hero's journey. If you said, hey. There's a guy that did 3,000,000,000 in sales, and he's gonna show you how to sell the way he did.
Right? Imagine if you said, there's a guy who's done 3,000,000,000 in sales, and when he was 26 years old, he was flat broke, and his girlfriend left him. Right.
He didn't know what he was gonna do with his life. Sometimes when you're the one size fits all like, you don't wanna go to a doctor and you say, you know, I I and I had this last year from a ski exit with my son, but I tore my rotator cuff and I tore my ACL. Right?
I don't wanna go to a doctor that says, hey. Come to me. I can help you with the flu.
I can help you with your ACL. I can help you with your your your rotator cuff. And, If you want better vitamin like, I don't want that.
I want an expert. Specialist. You don't want a specialist to go, no.
No. No. You have an ACL?
All I do is ACL. Yep. Right?
I don't want the guy to be like, yeah. Let's just do it all at once. You know?
If you have a problem, you don't wanna go to a general doctor. You want a cardiologist. They need mentorship by people who've already been there.
Right? Yeah. But some of them are a little too smart for that.
So I would consider
having separate ads for those demographics. Because if you're pitching to everybody, you're pitching to Yeah.
Right? So if we can make these more specific, and then as you evolve, you might wanna have a slightly different landing page for that group.
What I would consider is making this page all about the one thing, either $39 a month or the trial. On that page, if there's just one choice, it's a free trial for seven days, or it's or it's $39 a month, I would consider a one click upsell test.
Right? Just just test it. You can call me and say that was terrible.
It didn't work. But I would test the one click upsell, and it should be a video and go something like this.
Hey. You're in. Congratulations.
On the next page is everything you need to get started. Our onboarding process, you're absolutely gonna love it, and you're in. But if you're an achiever like me, we'll not only take 25% off, we'll throw in this x y z bonus.
Go into your first day of college, and no one you know there's a million classrooms, lots of great education going on, professors all over, but no one told you what to do first, second, or third. So you're standing on campus like, I don't know. Should I go into one on one science or math?
Right? I don't it's too confusing, and they leave. You have to have the dotted lines on the floor like you're in.
Okay. Walk this way first. Shake this hand.
Walk in this door. Get this. Go and usually, it's like a week of do these things first.
It sounds like you're you're there, but I would look for any holes. I would look for where people bail the most on your onboarding and adjust that. Most of the time when we think we wanna serve our clients in our membership sites, we add more stuff.
People that are really good take shit away. Wow. And do you think that helps them focus more on, like, the Yeah.
Because we're all busy. Right? Like if I go, I'm gonna extract value, but I gotta do this and do that and do the thing and exist, and there's some modules to go through, and then I walk through the steep three step course.
It's how they feel. Yeah. Not what they get.
Just remember that. And this is years of doing this. I used to we did live events for years.
We're doing thirty, forty live events a week forever, and I hired secret shoppers to go to all my events around the country country, and I said, don't tell me what they get. I know we deliver the best programs in the world. Tell me how they feel at each level.
So think of you're given all this value for free, so you are putting inspiration out there. Now you just guys you guys just decided to do a membership.
Right? And it's $39 a month. Right?
And this helps people with skills and capabilities and learning from the best and modeling proven Right? Yep.
They have courses. They have trainings, and you're serving them. Do they get a lot more from here than they would for here?
Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely.
Right? Inspiration, transformation.
Correct. Right? The next evolution, I don't know what you guys wanna do, is accountability.
Some people go to the gym and they stand around and they look at all the equipment. What do they need? What do most people need to get in really good coach.
Yeah. They need a trainer, don't they? Yes.
Yeah. So what I'm sharing with you guys, this is not about, what can I sell them next?
There are people in this group that are dying right now for somebody to keep them accountable, to be coached, to be a part of something bigger. They wanna evolve. And what I would suggest to you guys is what do you like?
What do you want that to be? Here's another thing. Most people think they need one on one.
They actually don't. They need small group accountability. You people remember this for people actually do better in small groups.
Not only are they learning from the coach, they're learning from other people, and they don't wanna be the loser of the group. Actually, small group coaching is actually more powerful.
You guys are doing amazing stuff for free. Love it. How many members do you have?
We have 3,400 right now. Well, up right here could be 20, but let's just say 10% of these 5,000 go here.
What's 5,000 times 39? Well, five times four is let's just say it's $200. Now if 10% of them, which is 500, 500 times 10,000 is what?
5,000,000. So now all of a sudden, 5,000,000. Right?
And what is 1% of 5,000 is 50? What's 50 times 40,002.
9,400,000 of only 5,000 members.
That's the math. If you put 10,000 people in here, you guys will be doing $20,000,000 a year next This is what most people don't get. It's math.
I promise you, there are people in here right now that if you don't offer this, they're gonna go find it from somebody else because they're gonna go, this has inspired me. I'm gonna predict at the end of 2026, if you guys put this in play, you'll you'll be at $30,000,000 going into 2027.
Could be more without feeling like you're pressing hard. You want if you were gonna blow up your brand, you could be at $20,000,000 in six What you have to do in your membership is help people keep moving forward, to keep persisting, to stay plugged in because eventually they'll get success.
The only way they don't succeed is if they quit. They bail on the membership. Correct?
Yes. Right? Then they're out there just getting inspiration.
It's like . You feel inspired, but you don't change your life.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Dean Graziosi opens this clip from his School of Hard Knocks coaching show already mid-sentence, walking a young media team through a question most creators never ask: are you writing one message for two completely different buyers? By the end he's done the math on a whiteboard and put a real number on it: $20 million a year, off an audience they already have.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:45list
Four Revenue Lines
- Ad revenue
- Brand partnerships / campaigns
- Content agency
- Subscription community
The hosts' business runs on four income lines; they estimate two of them (brand partnerships and the subscription community) could alone clear $10M a year.
Steal forany creator sizing up which revenue lines are actually worth doubling down on
13:19model
The Value Ladder / Ascension Model
- Free (YouTube/IG/TikTok/FB)
- One-click upsell
- Onboarding
- $39/mo membership
- Premium accountability tier ($10K)
Built live on the whiteboard: free content feeds a paid membership, and a deliberate percentage of members ascend into a much higher-priced tier.
Steal forany membership, community, or coaching funnel
06:29concept
Price-Commitment Curve
Free events get roughly 18% show-up; charging $10 lifts it to about 40%, $1,000 to about 70%, and $10,000 to about 99%. Commitment tracks with what people paid, not what they were promised.
Steal fordeciding whether to gate an offer behind a paid tier instead of a free one
14:04model
The Membership Math
- 5,000 members x $39/mo = ~$200K/mo base
- 10% ascend to a $10K tier = ~500 members x $10K = ~$5M
- Same ratios at 10,000 members = ~$20M/yr
The whiteboard calculation Dean runs live to justify the $20M/year projection.
Steal formodeling what a community's revenue ceiling actually looks like at scale
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
08:28product
“So a couple months ago, I launched and created one of the largest entrepreneur communities in the entire world, the school of mentors, where every single week, I host live calls with the millionaires and the billionaires that I interview on this channel.”
Dean interrupts the live coaching narrative with a scripted, produced ad break for his own membership community, aimed at the video's own viewers rather than the on-camera guests, then returns to the coaching conversation.
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
- Why Most Entrepreneurs Are Miserable Running Their Own Companies with Dan Martell ↗
- The #1 Mindset Shift That Builds Millionaires | The Why Project ↗
- 14 Lessons That Helped Build $1 Billion in Business Success (And I Wish I Knew Them Sooner!) ↗
- The New Rules of Business (Most People Miss This) ↗
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- Try Mastermind Business System for Just $1 ↗
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- Website ↗
Visual structure at a glance.
