How Maria Wendt Sells $27 Products and Makes Millions
Two creators argue over coconuts in a Hong Kong garden about whether it's easier to sell one $10,000 thing or ten thousand $27 things — and land on an answer that depends entirely on who's selling.
Selling ten thousand things at $10 is easier than selling ten things at $10,000 for a total beginner, because low-ticket sales require none of the sales-call and delivery skills a first-time entrepreneur hasn't built yet.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You're weighing whether to launch a low-ticket ($20-100) product or a high-ticket coaching offer and want the actual tradeoffs, not just conventional wisdom.
You have a small or nonexistent audience and want to know whether follower count actually blocks you from making sales.
You're considering running paid ads for the first time on a small budget and want a concrete, low-risk way to start.
You already sell one thing and are trying to figure out whether to add more products, more price points, or both.
SKIP IF…
You're already running a profitable high-ticket coaching or consulting business and aren't looking to add low-ticket volume infrastructure.
You want step-by-step platform tactics (funnel software, specific ad settings) — this is a strategy conversation, not a tutorial.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Maria Wendt built a $27-product business serving complete beginners, and argues volume beats price specifically because low-ticket buyers require none of the mindset, sales-call, or delivery skills a first-time entrepreneur hasn't developed yet — while high-ticket skills actually become an anchor when someone tries to switch to low ticket. Her mechanism: $5-a-day 'elevator ads' that fund their own scaling, ad creative pulled straight from whatever already worked organically, and a growing library of hyper-specific low-ticket products that feed into new high-ticket offers rather than competing with them. She pushes back hard on the idea that a $27 price point cheapens a brand, pointing to Walmart and Dave Ramsey as proof that serving an underserved, budget-conscious market builds durable, respected businesses. The actionable takeaway: match your offer to your actual skill level, not to what looks more prestigious, and don't wait for a following before you start selling.
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00:00hostUnidentified male interviewer (biographical details on the medical-school YouTube channel, wife, and Hong Kong base strongly suggest Ali Abdaal, but this is not confirmed by any on-screen name or graphic)
Chapters
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:40
01 · The core debate: one $10K sale or ten thousand $27 sales?
The host lays out the revenue-equals-price-times-volume framing and challenges Maria's low-ticket model against conventional wisdom; she immediately disagrees and stands by selling at volume.
01:40 – 03:25
02 · Why total beginners scale faster at low ticket
Maria explains that beginners have no mindset or sales training gap to charge $27, but a huge gap to ask for $10,000 — and that low ticket has no delivery burden, unlike high-ticket sales calls.
03:25 – 04:54
03 · The daycare Zoom-call pivot, and why they both hate memberships
Maria describes pivoting to low ticket because Zoom calls conflicted with her baby's daycare pickup; both agree memberships aren't worth the churn compared to a one-time course sale.
04:54 – 07:29
04 · High-ticket skills become an anchor in low ticket
Maria argues that experienced high-ticket business owners actually struggle most with low ticket, because the habit of one sale equaling $10,000 works against building $27-scale infrastructure.
07:29 – 09:58
05 · One value ladder instead of three separate businesses
They discuss merging previously separate verticals (YouTube growth, productivity, business-starting) into a single value ladder aimed at one underlying outcome: time freedom.
09:58 – 12:27
06 · Pitching every day without needing everyone to like you
The host admits he's afraid daily pitching will make people dislike him; Maria says creators need to decenter their need for approval, and reframes her own pitching as a gift to the buyer.
12:27 – 15:50
07 · $250K a month in ads and turning organic hooks into ad creative
Maria details spending $250,000/month on ads to a checkout page at close to a 3x return, and explains that ad creative is simply whatever already performed best organically, reshot in variations.
15:50 – 18:49
08 · $5 elevator ads: how beginners should start advertising
Maria pushes beginners to run ads the moment they've made their first dollar, describing a $5-a-day 'elevator ad' that funds itself into $27 sales and scales from there off pure profit.
18:49 – 20:05
09 · Why $27 doesn't cheapen a premium brand
Responding to the objection that low prices sully a premium brand, Maria points to Walmart and Dave Ramsey as proof that serving a budget-conscious market builds durable, respected businesses.
20:05 – 22:14
10 · The vision: the world's best online business school
Maria states her five-year goal — teaching anyone with the right skills to reach six or low-seven figures — and both agree that transferable skills matter more than any single revenue number.
22:14 – 24:37
11 · Building a sales team without becoming a call center
They discuss adding a sales team for higher-ticket offers: the same beginner audience that says no to a written offer doc says yes once they can ask questions on a call.
24:37 – 28:22
12 · New parenthood: nannies, sleep, and slowing down on purpose
Both new parents compare notes on night nannies, Hong Kong's live-in domestic help, and deliberately shrinking their work hours around family dinner and bedtime.
28:22 – 32:02
13 · Legacy building and the three-generation wealth problem
Maria describes reading about generational wealth preservation — people and skills before money — and reframes her ambition from retiring early to building something for great-grandchildren.
32:02 – 35:57
14 · How both of them actually started
The host traces his path from failed music-YouTuber videos to a med-school exam course that monetized from day one; Maria recalls freelance web design at 13 and a failed spy-themed forum.
35:57 – 39:28
15 · Getting scammed, $63 first years, and eighteen years of rinse-and-repeat
Maria describes losing her life savings to a scam at 18 and rebuilding from there; both close on the same lesson — build a website, learn a skill, teach it, repeat, for as long as it takes.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
A beginner with no sales training finds it easier to sell ten thousand things at $10 than ten things at $1,000, because low-ticket buyers require no mindset or delivery skill to close.
High-ticket skills become an anchor in low-ticket business: people used to closing $10,000 sales struggle to build the volume infrastructure a $27 product needs.
$5-a-day 'elevator ads' are designed to fund themselves: a $5 spend buys one $27 sale, and that sale's profit gets reinvested until the ad scales on its own.
Meta's ad-targeting AI has gotten good enough that a beginner with zero experience can post a picture and see sales within 24 to 48 hours.
Follower count stopped mattering once platforms shifted to views-based distribution; some students hit $30,000 months with only 3,000 followers.
Running $250,000 a month in ads at close to a 3x return works partly because the ad creative is just whatever already performed best organically, reused as-is.
A $27 price point doesn't cheapen a brand; Walmart and Dave Ramsey both serve budget-conscious markets and both built durable, respected brands doing it.
Product lines should stay hyper-specific rather than blended, because buyers pay more readily to solve one named problem than a vague outcome like 'be more productive.'
The real fear behind pitching every day isn't annoying your audience, it's a personal need for approval that has nothing to do with whether the pitch actually works.
High-ticket delivery costs more than money: it puts recurring sales calls on the calendar, which is specifically hostile to a parent's unpredictable schedule.
Wealth-preservation research frames family wealth as people and skills first, money third — without the first two, the third disappears by the third generation.
The safest way to validate a new product is to sell 100 copies organically before spending a cent on ads; speed-focused beginners skip straight to ads instead.
Takeaway
Volume beats price for total beginners
PRICING STRATEGY
For someone with no sales experience yet, ten thousand $27 sales are more achievable than ten $10,000 sales, because low ticket skips the mindset and delivery skills a beginner hasn't built.
01The core debate: one $10K sale or ten thousand $27 sales?
Revenue is price times volume, so the same $100,000 goal can be hit by selling one $100,000 item or 10,000 items at $10 — pick the version that matches your actual skill level.
02Why total beginners scale faster at low ticket
A beginner has no gap to charge $27, but a huge gap to close a $10,000 sale, because high-ticket sales require sales-call skills and delivery confidence they haven't built yet.
Low-ticket products need no live delivery, so they fit around unpredictable schedules like childcare, in a way that recurring high-ticket sales calls never will.
03The daycare Zoom-call pivot, and why they both hate memberships
Zoom calls locked to a calendar are a real cost of high-ticket delivery, not just an inconvenience — they can conflict directly with things like a daycare pickup schedule.
A one-time low-ticket course beats a recurring membership: the churn from people who forget to cancel or stop engaging outweighs the extra recurring revenue.
04High-ticket skills become an anchor in low ticket
Experience running high-ticket sales can work against you in low ticket, because the habit of expecting one sale to equal thousands of dollars fights the volume mindset $27 products need.
05One value ladder instead of three separate businesses
If you serve multiple audiences with a shared underlying outcome, look for the one destination they're all really after and build a single value ladder toward it instead of separate businesses.
Keep individual offers narrow and specific rather than solving a vague outcome — buyers pay more readily to fix one named problem than to become generally 'more productive.'
06Pitching every day without needing everyone to like you
The discomfort of pitching daily is usually a need for approval, not evidence the pitching itself is unwelcome — reframe a good pitch as a genuine service to the buyer.
07$250K a month in ads and turning organic hooks into ad creative
Effective ad creative doesn't need to be invented separately: reuse whatever content already performed best organically as the ad, since it's already proven to resonate.
08$5 elevator ads: how beginners should start advertising
A conservative way to start paid ads is a small, self-funding daily budget where each sale's profit funds the next day's spend, so the risk stays capped at what's already been earned.
09Why $27 doesn't cheapen a premium brand
The instinct to hide low-ticket products from your website to protect a 'premium' brand image is worth questioning — durable brands like Walmart serve budget buyers without losing respect.
Product lines built around solving one specific, named problem convert better than lines defined by price tier alone, because buyers are choosier about believing an outcome than a price point.
10The vision: the world's best online business school
The skills behind building a business are worth more long-term than any single revenue number, because unlike money, skills can't be taken away or taxed.
11Building a sales team without becoming a call center
A sales team makes sense once the same written offer that gets rejected on a page starts getting accepted after a live conversation answers the buyer's specific objections.
12New parenthood: nannies, sleep, and slowing down on purpose
Deliberately shrinking work hours around family time is a decision, not a default — both speakers structure their day around dinner and bedtime rather than working until it's done.
Live-in postpartum help, whether hired or family-provided, changes what's actually possible in the first months of parenting far more than willpower or planning does.
13Legacy building and the three-generation wealth problem
Long-term thinking about money is different from long-term thinking about wealth: research on generational wealth ranks people and skills above the money itself, since money without skills gets squandered.
14How both of them actually started
Most successful founders had years of unrelated, unmonetized side projects before the thing that worked — treat early flops as skill-building, not wasted time.
A niche audience where every single view represents someone you can specifically relate to is easier to stay consistent for than a broad audience chasing raw numbers.
15Getting scammed, $63 first years, and eighteen years of rinse-and-repeat
Getting scammed or losing money early isn't disqualifying — both speakers point to a financial low point as the actual trigger that made them build their first real business.
The core repeatable skill behind both speakers' businesses is the same: build a website, learn a skill, teach the skill, and repeat that loop for as long as it takes.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Low ticket
A product priced roughly $10-$100 that requires no sales call or ongoing delivery, designed to sell at high volume.
High ticket
A product or service priced in the thousands of dollars, typically sold via a sales call and requiring hands-on delivery.
Value ladder
A sequence of offers at rising price points, where a customer's first cheap purchase leads them toward buying a more expensive product later.
Elevator ads
A $5-a-day ad-spend strategy where a small starter budget funds a low-ticket sale, and that sale's profit is reinvested to scale the ad further.
ROAS (return on ad spend)
The ratio of revenue generated to money spent on advertising; a ROAS of 3 means every $1 spent returns $3 in sales.
Content hamster wheel
The trap of needing to constantly publish new content to keep driving the volume of traffic a low-ticket business depends on.
Confinement nanny
A live-in postpartum caregiver, common in Hong Kong and Chinese culture, who cares for a newborn and mother during the first weeks after birth.
Resources
Things they pointed at.
19:30bookSam Walton's books on the Walmart business model
30:50bookA book on generational wealth preservation ('people, then skills, then money')
16:40toolMeta/Facebook ad-targeting AI
37:40toolGetacoder.com / Odesk (rebranded to Upwork)
22:42channelAlex Hormozi's live workshop model
Quotables
Lines you could clip.
00:12
“I think it's literally easier to sell 10,000 things at $10 than just 10 things for $10 make a $100.”
states the video's entire thesis in one line→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
01:35
“The shit burgers, I can eat with low ticket. I can be in my pajamas on my own time.”
“I made $63 in my first year, and then in second year I made $350.”
humanizes a seven-figure business owner with a real starting number→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
39:10
“Make a website, learn a skill, teach people how to do the skill, rinse and repeat.”
closing thesis, works as a standalone summary→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 07:29denseLow ticket vs high ticket for beginners
07:29 – 12:27denseValue ladders and pitching without guilt
12:27 – 18:49densePaid ads: spend, ROAS, and elevator ads
18:49 – 24:37Brand perception and long-term vision
24:37 – 32:02Parenting and generational legacy
32:02 – 39:28denseOrigin stories and how they actually started
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
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
metaphoranalogy
Thank you so much for doing this. I'm so excited chat. Okay.
I I have a bone to pick with you. You've oh my already. I think we should just start with a Let's just start with So my understanding okay.
Here's the thing. Right? We have we both give advice to people starting businesses.
Roughly, you know you know, broadly, revenue equals price multiplied by volume, shall say. Yes. If you wanna make a $100,000, you could sell one thing for a $100.
Yes. Or 10 things for $10. Yes.
Or 10,000 things for $10. Mhmm. And I feel like your whole vibe is to sell 10,000 things for $10.
Yes. Which goes counter to almost all conventional wisdom. Yes.
Including my view on this, which is that it's actually easier to sell 10 things for $10 Yes. Than it is to sell 10,000 things for $10. Yes.
So can you help me understand what's going on here? That is such a great question. And I do think that it's easier to sell 10,000 things at $10.
So I I stand by what I think. Oh. So you think it actually is easier?
I think it's literally easier to sell 10,000 things at $10. Yep. Make a $100.
Yes. Rather than just 10 things for Yes. $10.
And I have tons of students who are quickly hitting $100,000 months with Yep. Like $27 products. Yep.
So like the proof is in the pudding. Yep. This is what I think.
Yep. You have to know who I work with, and I work with complete beginners. People who are trying to make their first dollar, thousand dollars online, like really beginners.
And a beginner who has no mindset training, who has no sales training, who has no business experience, has a tremendous gap to ask for a high ticket sale.
They really struggle to practically execute what it takes to get a $10,000 order, a $1,000 order. There's a tremendous gap.
But they have no gap, no struggle to charge 10,000 or to charge $10. And so in my experience, I can go into quite a lot of different things about selling at volume.
Yep. Like we think of ourselves like the Walmart of our space. Mhmm.
And so I can go into that quite a bit. That is my bread and butter. Yeah.
But when I'm working with beginners, I find them hitting significant milestones like the 10,000 or a $100,000 months Yep.
Much faster because they don't need all the mindset work you have to go through to charge and deliver on a $10,000 thing. All the sales skills that you need, all the lead you have to attract an extremely qualified person to charge $10,000.
And so, I find that you get a lot of money really quickly if you're a beginner doing it at volume.
Interesting. And you have no delivery. I also think that low ticket problems are like, low ticket has issues, high ticket has issues.
Yep. We all agree. It's all it's all this all has got its shit burgers.
Yep. But the shit burgers, I can eat with low ticket. I can be in my pajamas on my own time.
Yep. Versus high ticket, it's delivery.
The client delivery. You have the sales calls or the the delivery calls. And so that's another reason why I like low ticket.
Don't have to talk to people. Interesting.
Yeah. It's a good question. So the hard part about low ticket is the volume part.
Like
god. Yes. It's the volume.
And I tell that to my students. I say, you don't understand the volume it takes Mhmm.
To make low ticket work. It's actually mind blowing. Yep.
But solving the volume game, the traffic game Yep. You can do on your own time. Again, I work with like new moms Yeah.
People who are like have they don't have a lot of capacity. They don't have a lot of time. And so, they can wake up at three in the morning and work on their traffic problem in a way they can't take a sales call at ten in the morning with their kit.
So
yeah. I definitely agree with you that the high ticket thing requires a heavier delivery.
Yes. And also then sales calls and stuff Yes. Puts Zoom calls in your calendar.
Yes. And so with my wife who's also an eMom, she's trying to figure out what what her new product should be and is genuinely thinking, should it be a low ticket membership community, 47 a month, 97 a month, or a small group women's entrepreneurs mastermind for, like, a few grand and, like, in person events and stuff?
And she doesn't wanna be on Zoom calls all day because anytime there's a Zoom call on a calendar, it means that it sort of derails that something could happen with a kid or whatever. Yes. And I think and I think part of it is like knowing like who like I attract moms just like me.
And so like they think that's part of it is like this for me even like as a single momma. Like,
didn't want to be on Zoom calls all day long with my kid in daycare. That was the whole reason I pivoted into low ticket was because my baby was in daycare as a four month old Yep. In daycare all day long because I had Zoom calls that I had to be on.
Yep. So I when I went to switch into low ticket, I was like, I don't care if I never make a $100,000 a month again because I was at 7 figures with high ticket.
Yep. I was like, I'm just trying to be able to pay my rent and pay my bills with low ticket. And it was in the switching and I and in the simplicity, I was able to scale.
Now, you mentioned memberships. Mhmm. I'm scared to tell you this, but I also hate memberships.
You hate memberships? I hate memberships. Yeah.
Also hate memberships. Yeah. Okay.
Love it. I always try and talk people out of it. Okay.
Good. Okay. So we don't we we agree.
Yeah. I hate memberships. Oh my gosh.
Juice is not worth squeeze totally agree. It's like they they leave off for three months. You might as well sell a $97 course.
Like And not have the friction of a membership. Yeah.
Okay. Nice. Runs off a bit about that.
That's really funny. So then okay. But like you so you said that you for for beginners, low ticket is easier because it is easier to overcome the mindset hurdles and stuff.
Mhmm. And it's a different amount of time required. Yes.
I would argue that, like, low ticket makes you become a content hamster on on the hamster wheel. And I think a content hamster
either way.
Don't you think? I think you're
just a con I think that's that's just the game. Like You know, the full time job is being a content person. Yes.
Exactly. We're content creators. Yeah.
Mhmm. I think that high ticket people who have all the skills it takes to do high ticket sales, all the skills it takes to do, like, you know, all the delivery on that, I actually see them struggle with low ticket. Mhmm.
Because all the skills that help you scale a high ticket business Yep. Act as an anchor in low ticket. As an anchor as in So meaning like Oh.
Like it drags you down because you're so used you're so used to one sale equals $10,000 that you really struggle at first when one sale equals $27. Yeah. And so it's so much work to build the infrastructure of a low ticket thing.
And so I think high ticket people, they actually have like experienced
high ticket people, business owners, have the hardest learning curve with low ticket in my experience. Interesting. Yeah.
Okay. So last time we were at one of these events, I asked you a question on the stage and Mhmm. You were like, Ollie, you're leaving tens of millions of dollars gold mine.
And I've I've actually heard from a bunch of people who watched that video on your YouTube channel being like, oh my god, I I you know, so they recognize my voice on one of your videos. I saw that too. And they were like, it's all either?
I'm like, wow. Yeah. I actually saw that too.
So we used to do low ish ticket. Mhmm.
By which I mean, we have we have like a thousand dollar thing and a $300 thing. Okay. And we've got like a couple of $27 things Yes.
That sell into the thousand dollar thing. Yes. But I was finding that the content hamster wheel Mhmm.
Was like super annoying with that. Mhmm. Because to make interesting money, we needed like we still even at a thousand dollars, we still needed quite a lot of volume.
Yes. But now that we've got a high ticker thing, we need a lot less volume, which is really nice.
Yeah.
I maybe. I don't do high ticket. But also we I I'm kind of leaning towards, like, I mean, could we just do best of both worlds?
Could we out a suite of is what I'm doing. I'm doing the opposite of what you're was just talking about this with Takis. I have almost 200,000 customers.
We get 200 new customers a day. Like, we've mastered low ticket Yep. And they just sit there and do nothing.
Yeah. Like, there's no high ticket. Yep.
And so, now I have a four year old, so my baby is four now, so I have a little bit more capacity, a little bit more time. And so, we're launching five high ticket products this year, the rest of this year.
Okay. And so, we're gonna be really doing, like you said, the best of both worlds Yeah. Where we're we've all everyday, we have 200 new customers that don't get talked to.
Yeah. That don't get like, no touch points, nothing. And so we're gonna be ascending Yep.
And so we are doing what the best of both worlds, which is both. But you maybe you're doing the best of both worlds in the opposite where you you have the high ticket. You're doing great with that.
Yeah. Yeah. And we do have some of the low ticket, but we we managed to connect them into like a So you what is so do you ascend or no?
Are they? You are.
We we don't okay. This is great if this this just becomes a coaching session. Yeah.
Okay. So the our his issue historically has been that we had one vertical that was like helping people do YouTube channels.
Okay. And then we had another vertical that was like helping people be more productive. Oh, yeah.
And then we've got this third vertical that's helping people start a business. Yeah. But what we found was the reason people wanna start a YouTube channel is because ultimately they want a lifestyle Mhmm.
And actually, the people getting the most value from a productivity course were the people trying to start a side hustle so that they could start a business. Mhmm. So that was partly what encouraged the the, you know, this thought of what if it was just like one value ladder, shall we say?
Yeah. Where the outcome that everyone really wants is Business.
Time freedom. To live life on their own terms. Okay.
They wanna be able to make money independently. Our audience has like 6 figure corporate jobs, but Mhmm. They it doesn't have the flexibility that they want.
And so one route is build a high ticket service, one route is start a YouTube channel, sell low ticket products. There's all sorts of routes to that destination.
But ultimately, that is the destination that they'll want, which suggests that there is some linking up Yes. Of the value ladders that we could do. So how would you approach that if you were us?
If that's a great question, I think if I were you, I would
everything like, you I think you can still this isn't me. This is my armchair theory, untested. But my theory I don't hate the specificity of each outcome in this high ticket.
Meaning, in your vertical where it's like, I like how specific it is. I think part of what probably worked so well today is because it was such a specific outcome each time it was. I'm going to become more productive or I'm going to start a YouTube channel.
Even though there's so much synchronicity between the three Yep. I like that they're they're so specific. What I would probably do is and like what I plan to do at least in in my thing as I build out the high ticket stuff is the eek the ecosystem of many many different low ticket products.
Yep. Solving many many many hyper specific problems. Yep.
And then all of those 200 customers are gonna get reached out to. Yep. And then, we have five different high ticket products that solve relatively different things.
Mhmm. Okay. And so, I think the point of sorting, if you imagine like factory lines Yep.
The sales salesperson. The salespeople is gonna assembly line them and send them down where they need to go. Yep.
But I what I wouldn't do is clump together all the low ticket stuff or clump together all the high ticket stuff. I my my experience is that, especially in the high ticket space and mostly in the low ticket space, people are more intentional and they're more choosy with where they're putting their money Mhmm.
And they're paying to solve specific problems. They are more likely to believe the outcome of Yeah. Specific problems, which you know.
I mean, yeah. Yeah. Like, this was actually the issue we had with productivity because being more productive is actually a very vague outcome.
Yes. That means a lot of different things to learn. To different people.
And so we were like
but okay. So currently, what we're planning to do is with within our hard take a thing, our last our last business academy Mhmm. Our students have a bunch of needs where they're like, okay, they're really struggling with sales right now.
And so we're working on a bunch of sales material. And so what I'm thinking is like, oh, in a way, we're creating a course on Yes. How to do sales without feeling weird about it.
Yeah. And that is a specific solution to a specific problem, which could become a lower ticket thing It could people. Exactly.
And then we just sort of make courses based on the priorities of our high ticket clients. Mhmm. And then slice and package them up as low ticket entry points into the funnel, shall we That's exactly what we would do.
Yeah. That's exactly. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Alright.
A few other Yes. Objections, your honor. Yes.
Do my worry is if I sell sell a load of low ticket things, I will end up having to pitch every day on social media. You would say, I've earned the right to pitch, etcetera, etcetera.
Yes. But I'm worried that if every Instagram story is like A pitch. A pitch, that people will start to not like me.
Well, I think I pitch a lot. I pitch every day. Yeah.
Four or five, five times a day. Yeah. I have three emails that go out.
Two of them are just hard pitches. I pitch all the time. Mhmm.
And they like you. And they love me, and my bank account loves me. So Right.
How I am I just like do do I just need to get over myself or it? Like so many people
who so many creators need to decenter their need to be approved.
Oh. Nice. Yeah.
I think that we need to I think I had to do that. I had to decenter my need to be approved and my need to be loved, and I just had to speak the truth.
Right? Because I say a lot of things that people disagree with, like controversial, but I also needed to just let people hate me in the comments and let that be what it was gonna be. But they don't even.
Like, thing is they don't even. Yeah. Sometimes I at your comments and I'm like, there's actually not that much.
No. Not at all. Not at all.
But that's the thing is like, you we face the fear of people hating me. We face Yeah. The fear of people not liking me.
And that really doesn't come true, and all that happens is we get paid more. We make more sales. Okay.
Yeah. And then everybody loves me, including our bank accounts. Yeah.
I love money, and I love pitching. Like, love it. I think Do you wanna know what I really think?
I think that this is kinda I shouldn't say that. I think people are lucky to hear me pitch. I think that me pitching to you is a gift.
I really believe that in the five room. Mean, you are lucky that I am pitching to you. It's genuinely in my heart how I believe because when I pitch to you, you take an action that changes your life.
I believe that. And I think that that is part of it. It's like my products change lives and I genuinely have that level of conviction.
Mhmm. And so, I think I'm being a coward if I don't pitch that much. Oh.
Nice. So great question because I I don't get asked that like it. Yeah.
Okay.
Organic versus paid for the cheap stuff? Yes. Or both?
Yes. So we spend $250,000
a month on ads to load ticket checkout pages. Okay. To checkout page.
Straight to like landing page for cold for cold, but organic we go straight to checkout page. Interesting.
Ad, long landing page only because it's such cold traffic. Yep. Usually, if you can't go straight to Checkup page, you should.
Interesting. Yeah. I guess it Yeah.
Chops out a piece of thing. Exactly. And then our return on ad spend is almost 3.
If you imagine ATM is like $1 going in, almost $3 coming out. So 250,000 going 7 ish.
Yeah. From ads. Yeah.
That's really good. Yeah. Yeah.
We keep it really simple. Our ad creatives are like my talking head, like very basically what you see on Instagram is also what we're running ads to. Because it's all effective.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So the organic content.
Basically, what performed best organically for free Yep. Then becomes a creative. Oh.
And then Rose, my sister who runs my ads Yep. Will say we need 12 variations of the same exact ad. So I want an ad of you in a dress in this dress saying it.
I want an ad of you outside on the beach saying it. Yeah. Like, it's just, you know.
Okay. Yeah. Do you run ads?
We've just started very recently. Okay. We have like five Five campaigns?
Okay. Okay. We'll run the five ads in one ad.
And we just did the whole like filming like 10 different hooks and like three different bodies and Yes. Oh, this is so code to like stitch them together to create infinite variations and that's really cool. It's so crazy to me how much money you are sitting on.
Like, even just the fact that you're making what you're making without doing like, you are millions of dollars being left on the table, I think. And so I'm so excited you're running ads because that's a whole another level.
Okay. So you're running ads to checkout page for warm audiences. Mhmm.
Straight to checkout page. How do you define do
you let Facebook just cook in terms of its Yes. Targeting
stuff? That's something that we teach our students is like Facebook AI's developments have gotten so good that they're better at finding your ideal customers than you are. Yep.
And so we just let them do everything. Yep. We we just keep it very very simple.
And that's what I tell my students, even my beginners. Like my What I tell my students is if you've made so much as $1 in your business, you should be running ads. And so a big part of what I do is really try to cultivate an advertising mindset to my beginner students.
Interesting. Because you may have started running ads before and it didn't work. Maybe you lost money Yeah.
Before, but there have been so many recent developments in the way Meta advertising is run that you can be the dumbest per like we are our ads are basic and we're not that good at it, but like we're making hundreds of thousand dollars a month because of Meta's AI stuff and Yeah. Because they're good at it. So we try to get every one of our students running ads as soon as possible because you just get sales right away.
It's instant momentum. Yeah. Like you you we our students will get sales within twenty four hours, within forty eight hours like like that.
Dude. And they scale every day. Like, day one, they might have one sale.
Day seven, they might have seven sales. Like, it's very quick because of AI. Alright.
Objection, your honor. Yes. I've heard that I love these objections.
I I have heard that, like, oh, ads are hard because you gotta be willing to lose $2 a month on ads, and No. That scares me for running ads. Gotta wanna lose $2 a month.
Yes. Yes. And it scares our students who don't wanna lose $2 a month.
No. What the fuck? We teach It's a great question.
Because we hear that two people say, don't spend money unless you're willing to, like, don't run ads until you're ready to flush money down the toilet. Like, we'll hear people say the same thing. We run what we call $5 a day ads.
Yep. And so, you start with $5 Oh. A day.
Okay. That $5 will get you a $27 sale. Yeah.
We call it like elevator ads. So $5 gets you $27, then you Yeah. Put that $27 in, maybe you get two or three sales, and it just slowly scales Interesting.
Based on your profits. Yeah. Because we're conservative.
Don't wanna lose money either. Right? And so, we want an immediate return on ad spend.
Yep. Our bare minimum is that your ads are gonna pay for themselves. That's bare minimum.
Break even, we wanted to have a two or three extra return on ad That's like what we push our students to do. So Yeah.
It's and it's not that like we're great marketers. It's the AI and what Meta's got going on.
That's what's actually working so well. Because Yep. My students are beginners.
Like, I love them both. Like, a lot of my students are technologically challenged, and they're just like, we're not good at it. But I always say like, if you can post a picture to Facebook, you can run a successful ad.
Whoop. So most people can. Okay.
Yeah. And so you just get them creating
a product? Create the product first or preorder or like if
want you best case scenario Yeah. What would like your most conservative, your safest route to run ads is you make the product and then you sell a 100 copies of it organically.
Yep. If you've done a 100 copies of it organically, scale to the freaking moon with your ads because you've proven the product.
Yep. But sometimes students want speed. They value speed over money which is how I am.
I'd rather spend money to get the results Yep. And get the sales, you know, via ads. You get the 100 sales organically or via ads first.
And so, you can do it in the most safe, cautious way by getting a 100 sales organically first, and then start running ads to it. Or you can do what a lot of my students do, which is like kinda like, fuck it. I'm just gonna like start running ads to it, which is what I recommend.
Objection, your honor. Yes. A 100 sales?
Got three followers on Instagram. How the hell do I get a 100 sales organically? I don't need to tell you that followers doesn't matter, and that you have to work just as hard for your views as someone who's just getting started.
Mhmm. We are living We are not in twenty sixteen social media anymore, unfortunately. Because you and I would be the big dogs if we were.
Yeah. But any a real my students have tiny accounts, but they make strategic content that attracts buyers Mhmm. Which I teach them how to do.
And so, you don't need a ton of views. I'll have people who make $30,000 a month and they have like 3,000 followers. Like very tiny.
Because TikTok changed the name of the game. Now, it's about views, which anyone can get in your views. Just because you have a bunch of followers does not guarantee a bunch of views.
Yeah. Sadly. I wish.
TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn. Okay. Yep.
I'm only on Instagram. Yep. We're just starting TikTok.
Yep. Because I grow one platform at a time. And if you go to my LinkedIn, you'll probably see whatever I put on LinkedIn like when I was trying to get an internship in college.
Yep. Nice. So like, oh, but that doesn't mean they're not good platforms.
Mhmm. It's just I really believe you need to grow one platform at a time. It's really hard to grow multiple platforms at once.
I actually think LinkedIn is a very blue ocean. Mhmm. I think that you can make a ton of money on LinkedIn.
I just haven't had the bandwidth to tackle it yet. Yeah. We're in the process of hiring a LinkedIn person.
Are you? Okay. Yeah.
It's like no one's doing it. Yeah. And then you can get so much traffic from it.
Oh, gosh. Yeah. So fingers I'm gonna kinda be picking your brain about that.
How
many okay. So if if we started taking ads to low ticket okay. Low ticket.
Yes. One of my worries about low ticket is I heard a guy say the other day that if you want to cultivate a premium brand, which is what we wanna do, we're like an NBA alternative, etcetera etcetera, then $27 things Mhmm. Sort of sully the Yes.
Premiumness of the And so what I was thinking was like, don't show the $27 things on the website. Mhmm. We just run after them, and then they become Ascensions into the 300 or the 900 or the whatever.
You can. Think you
well, I don't think that many people are making that many sales from low ticket products on their website. Mhmm. Like most of the time, a low ticket product is converted to point of like a checkout or whatever.
Yeah. But I completely disagree with the premise. Oh.
That a $27 thing cheapens your brand. Mhmm.
We say we're the Walmart of our industry because we don't charge a lot. Yeah. But do you actually if you add like, I've read so many books by Sam Walton.
I've I've really understand the Walmart business model because that's my business model. Yep. It's an incredible brand.
Mhmm. It is like a it's it's company that's just kept growing up. Like, it's it's been through several recessions.
It's been through COVID. Like, it's been through the advent of online shopping, and do you know what its stock price does? It just keeps going up.
It's a fabulous industry to be in. Same thing with like Dave Ramsey. He specializes in the same people that I do, those, you know, beginners, like that that middle class America.
It's a fabulous market to serve, and so I love that price point. I don't think that it cheapens my brand. I think that what that points to is the people who say that having a less than opinion of people that don't have big budgets.
And I think that's more like internal work that needs to happen. Like, you're looking again, this is my perspective. Mhmm.
But like, it's a fabulous market in my opinion, and too many people turn their noses up at that market. Mhmm.
And that's why I was able to go in and scale so quickly because it was a very underserved market. Brand new beginners who have all the mindset issues, who have no sales experience, have no marketing, like, it's a hard market to serve Mhmm. But it's a very fulfilling market to serve.
Yeah. That's what we found as well, like, our thing. It's like serving that
exactly. But like, through the high ticket thing. So Yes.
Can do it more Yeah. One on one and Yes. All that jazz.
Which is lovely. Like, that's like, and that's that is in some ways very nice for a beginner to have that hand holding Mhmm. Which oftentimes is very helpful.
So Yeah. But also all of them can't afford our product because Exactly. It's way too expensive Exactly.
For a beginner that unless they're earning like a 250,000 a year Yeah. With their like tech job sometimes they are. Yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah. Tends to be our like Yeah.
Buyers right now. Yeah. But we were just looking through our sales calls and by far, it's like when people get a price, they're like, holy fucking shit.
I know. But like, about like even like Burberry or like other big brands, they have little little things. Yeah.
Got the perfume. Exactly.
Like like it's
Yeah. Cool.
I wanna know like Yeah. What are you like Let's fast forward a year. Where do you wanna be?
Like, what kind of maybe even five years. Like, what kind of business do you wanna be? Yeah.
My goal is for is basically to build the world's best online business school. Oh.
Beginners start their first business and scale scale to six figures. I love it.
Maybe low 7 Yeah. For a few of them. But like Yeah.
I think anyone with the right skills, if they learn the skills, can get to at least 6 figures in revenue Mhmm. Annual annually. And I think those skills are absolutely life changing.
Because even if you then then decide entrepreneurship is not for you and you go back to a job Mhmm. You now go in with confidence knowing that you could always make money by yourself if you wanted to. It's a skill that can never be taken away from you.
Yeah. Can't be taxed. Away.
Yes. Unless you have, like, a brain injury or something in which case, like, you got bigger problems. And so, that's kind of what I wanna for.
Yeah. Yeah. That's we're kind of working towards similar the same thing.
And
it's I think that you do something that not all have people emphasize, which is skills. Like Mhmm. People emphasize revenue Yep.
And they emphasize, you know, other things. But you emphasizing skills, the older I get, and maybe the more educated I get, the more I understand that the gap between the money that I have and the money like people who are just getting started, it's just that I have skills that I learned over time.
I wasn't born knowing any of this, and neither were you. And so that means that we can educate ourselves, and we can invest in skills,
and these skills can't be taken away from us. Yeah. 100%.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's our goal.
Okay. Yeah. Just trying to figure out how do we how do we get there.
Like, right now, we are because we're doing the high ticket thing, it scales with physical coaches. And so we just hired like a student success director, and now we've got a sales team. And now the So you have a sales team?
We do as of like two months ago. Okay. How's that going?
Because I'm kinda like working. Oh, it's it's actually great. Yeah.
I was anti sales team for a long time. Okay. And then when I spoke to Taki and the whole sales list thing Yeah.
That made me even more yes. This just came up in my interview with Taki like Yeah.
Seven seconds ago. And then we found out we found that for the initial few 100 students that we sold, we sold we sold it through an offer doc. Mhmm.
But for our beginner audience who has all of the mindset issues and is has never invested this amount of money Mhmm. Before in their life in anything. The way they think of their own training is like, if the employer is not paying for it, why would why the fuck would I pay for my own training?
Mhmm. All of this stuff. We found that when we started doing the sales calls, the same people that would that would have would have said no to it on a Google Doc, we're now saying yes on a sales call because they chance to discuss their concerns and, like, but what about this?
What about that? What about this? What about that?
And then they become more educated about the product, which we can only do so much in a Google Doc on front end unless it becomes like insanely long. Yep. And I used to think the whole like, oh, sales sales sucks because now you're having to do daily sales meetings and now you're running a call center Yeah.
And stuff. But our daily sales meetings are actually pretty fun. Yeah.
And like, the sales guys of Ivy and we have a good laugh, and it's the meeting I look forward to most in the calendar. Mhmm. And I don't even tell them every day, it just like every Yeah.
Well, I think it really is like, especially like, you and I are we are so good at like the stuff that we do, which is like content creation. It feels very at least for me, because I'm in the middle of doing the exact same thing which is building a sales team. It feels very daunting to build like yet another infrastructure.
Yep. And I think you and I are cautious about adding infrastructure to a business. But I went to a workshop recently, because I run workshops also, and I wanna see like how Alex Tremozi was running So I like popped down there to see.
And they said something on the on the workshop, which is like, we're not in the business of optimizing, we're in the business of maximizing. Because someone asked like, why do you not just sell the workshop tickets via email? I would have just bought them via email.
I don't need a sales call. He's like, well, you didn't. Yeah.
But we're not in the business of optimizing. Maximizing.
Like, have 200 new customers a day. Yep. I need to be reaching out to them Oh, yeah.
To be yeah.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
So It's like the whole like return on ad spend thing. It's like Yeah. Well, you know, even if the ROAS is two, you're still making more money.
Exactly. Mhmm. Yeah.
I wanna ask you because you just became a new parent couple, like, almost a year ago right? Yeah.
That's right. Yeah. My gosh.
What has that been? That's because for me, it was so life changing becoming a parent. I wanna know what it was like for you as an entrepreneur.
Yeah. Okay. So firstly, I think girls have it way harder than dudes, obviously.
Like, that becoming a parent made was the primary realization was like, holy shit, it's way harder being a mom than it is being a dad.
Yeah. Because especially for the first, like, year in a bit. Yeah.
What's a dad to do? Yeah. You know?
Yeah. My job was done, you know, in a few seconds. And then, you know, my wife has the nine months of the first part of it, like, you know, all this stuff.
Mhmm. And then and and also, we currently live in Hong Kong a full, like, full time domestic help and nine nine nannies and stuff are insanely affordable.
Yeah. That's And so we've been able to outsource a lot of the pain that Mhmm. Other people that we've spoken to have had where they're like, oh, but you know, baby's not sleeping for like a whole year.
We had a night nanny too though. Yeah. Yeah.
So that's been Yeah. Insanely helpful. That's I think one of the most important things is like the sleep.
Yeah. Because we would do, like our night nanny came I think three
nights, three or four nights a week. Yep. And so even if you missed like one, you had one bad night of sleep, you just knew that like the next day Yeah.
You were for sure kidding. It's a game changer. Yeah.
In in Hong Kong and in China, there's this there's this concept of like confinement nannies. Mhmm. Have you come across these?
Yes. Yes. Because I think it's and correct me wrong, but it's like in that culture, you you as the as the mom are like in you're just like, I don't wanna use the word locked up.
Just stay put for a hot second. Yeah. Which I think is good.
Yeah. It's great. I think it's so so important.
Yeah. Yeah. And so that's what you guys okay.
So, like, those first one hundred days postpartum
Okay. It's all about, the mom recovering without having to think about anything at all other than breastfeeding. Yeah.
And so the confinement nanny kinda comes in. They live with you. Ours, you know, our daughter was the one hundred and fifty fourth baby she'd like looked looked after.
So she's like Oh. Insanely experienced, taught us everything about the and the latching stuff. And then she's the one who's like full time in the house, basically cooking for Izzy and like cooking her all the soups and stuff I watch a I watch a lot of Instagram stuff about it.
Yeah. Yeah. And she's also the one sleeping with the baby.
And then when it's time for the feed during the nighttime Mhmm. She brings the into our room. Yes.
Izzy wakes up, does the breastfeeding Yes. Thing. And then not having to do all of the paraphernalia associated feeding the baby.
It's not because it's not just feeding the baby. Right? It's the day doing the whole before, the after, the thing.
Yeah. And so all of those, like, ancillary bits get Mhmm. Gets get outsourced to the night nanny.
I almost think think of it as, back when I was working in medicine, the surgeon, chief surgeon wouldn't be there for the whole operation. That's right. They they come in once the patient's already opened, they do their bit and then they leave.
They leave. And then like the nurses, the juniors and stuff are doing all of the bits and bobs and the paperwork before and after. And so
even so, Izzy still got like moustaches four times and stuff. It was a Yeah. Terrible experience.
But had we not had the additional help You're dead in the water. You're dead. I don't know how people do it either.
I don't know how. And I what I tell my girls is like, if you aren't married yet or you don't have babies yet, work on your business.
Mhmm. Because you want you let me tell you, like motherhood gets so smoothed out when there's money.
Like, it's especially for me as a single mom, like having to have so much support in my life has just been I don't know how people do it even when there's a lovely helpful partner, and sometimes there's no lovely supportive helpful partner, and there's also no money to smooth over the edges, and there's no village. Yep. So, yeah.
Has it affected, like, being a parent? Has it changed anything for you business wise?
Yeah. A couple of things. Firstly, it's now curtailed the amount of time that I'm able to work.
Because left to my own devices, I'd worked all the time. Because work is fun and fulfilling and great.
Same. But we're like, okay, we should have we should do, like, you know, morning so each each morning, I take baby for a walk and Okay.
Coffee and stuff, which is kinda nice. And so that's a little morning start. So I start work at ten, finish work by around, like, 06:30 so that we can do family dinner time.
Mhmm. And then I do bedtime every other day, and Mhmm. Busy for bedtime every other day.
So it just means that, like, if I wanna do more stuff in the business, I'm like, okay, where's the time gonna That's one thing. But then another one weirdly is that, I don't know if you had this, but pre baby, I was already making quite a lot of money. Mhmm.
And so I didn't really care about making more money. Yeah. But now with baby, and seeing the value that money has in terms of being able to make your life easier Mhmm.
I'm like, you know what? Actually, having a bigger house would be nice because I'm gonna have to stay over and Hong Kong houses are expensive and like, you know, being able to And put our pennies here. The same in California.
Yeah. Yeah. Being able to fly business class and not have to think too hard about it.
Being a tiring animal when we go to Yeah. London. It's like Yes.
Okay. Cool. And so it's in a way has now created new levels of like, well, I guess we can just keep playing the video game and growing the business.
Yep. Yeah. What's what's been your experience of it?
I think it I like the phrase playing the video game and building the business because I think that's it. I can super relate to,
you know, you know, I would need more money or like like I can't work as much, you know. Like I can really relate to that. I think for me, at first it made me wanna completely retire.
Yeah. And so like I really about a year ago really struggled with why am I working.
I don't need to work to cover my bills anymore. Why the fuck am I working?
Yep. And even if it's not it's not a ton of time away from LA, I'm actually pretty good about it, but still like it's energy. It's just like it's a lot.
Now I'm juggling scaling a business and being a good mom. And that's hard to do both. It really is hard to do both.
So I really struggled like, why am I still working? Why am I not just retiring and living off of my dividends? And just like calling it a day.
Yep. But then I realized that I I really been playing with this concept of like the generational legacy building something that doesn't just cover your bills and maybe your daughter's bills, but like preserving wealth for the next three generations or more.
You know, they have this saying where it's like shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. Basically meaning someone like myself works, starts a business, builds the wealth.
Then the second generation, which would be Ellie, lives a life of comfort Yep. And then it gets squandered in Yeah.
Between that generation and that generation because this we're not taught. And so, now I realize that like we're really if you think about a family in a bigger and and I know this is very prevalent in Chinese culture.
I'm actually learning a lot about how it's set up and the way that, at least the books I'm reading Mhmm. Explain like how the family is thought of.
I'm learning so much from that and this concept of, like, we as individuals have a duty to our family beyond just us and our immediate generation. Mhmm. And it's been so powerful, like, building something that's is bigger than me.
And, they use the analogy of like planting a tree, I guess a copper beech tree, you plant it, but it doesn't mature for a hundred and fifty years. Mhmm. And, so, like, if we are the people in our families that plant a tree Mhmm.
That we don't even see the fruits of in our lifetime, but like that has reinvigorated me. I'm like, oh, I can't quit.
Yeah. Live off of my couple of million dollars. Yeah.
Like, that's the lamest thing. That's so lame. And so, I'm building
for my great grandchildren and beyond now. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
I've never vied for the Legacy thing, but I've never I've also never read much about it. Yeah. I have
I do. I'm getting I like, literally, I was like talking to Luke and everybody on the plane about this. It's called keeping it in the family, preserving wealth.
Nice. And it tricks you, because you think it's like keeping the money in the family. Yeah.
But it teaches you that the actual wealth of a family Yeah. Isn't as human. Yep.
It's it's like it's humans, it's intellect Mhmm. And then it's financial resources. So it's first, it's the people, then it's the skills and their intellect, our our brains, then it's the money as third.
And you can't if you don't have people and you don't have brains, you can't keep the money, so it's pointless. It's a great especially with you having such a little kid, and it's so lovely that you have a wife because I'm doing this all my own. It's a family as defined, which looks different for just me and Ellie.
It's just us. But you have a wife, and probably, you know, maybe you'll have more kids, maybe you won't, but you have like that proper family unit. Mhmm.
And so, I would read that book and really talk about it with your wife and be like, what Nice. Do we want our family to look like? Alright.
Family. Yeah. That's what's happening next.
Yeah. Easy.
Okay. Let me think. What what other I have another question for you.
So one of the things I wanted to ask you is you've, you know, you create so much content and you talk a lot about creating content, and I have people who are just getting started.
I wanna know how did you start? Mhmm. What made you start?
How did you overcome it? Like that getting on the bandwagon to stay and staying on the bandwagon of content creation, like you call it the content hamster wheel. Like Yeah.
How did you do that? Yeah. So I started out I really wanted to be a music YouTuber.
Okay. And so the first few videos on my channel are me trying to do music videos with friends. Can you sort by oldest and see them?
Oh, yeah. 100%. Yeah.
And so initially, filmed a couple like, a friend of mine who's really good at singing, a couple of things. Then I was sort of playing guitar in it. And then I filmed a video of me singing.
And it got like four views and five dislikes. So back in 2016 or something. Then And I unlisted that video for like ten years.
My god. I only relisted it like recently because that's funny. It's funny.
Yeah. And so this sort of career as a as a music YouTuber, and and even that, the music videos. Mhmm.
It took me seven years to make my first music video. Because each year, from like 2010 onwards, I was like, this summer is gonna be the summer in the school holidays, but I don't have the right camera yet. Mhmm.
I don't have the right microphone yet. Or like, oh, yeah, you know, I haven't quite decided. Should I use logic or should I use, like, this or that as a and I spent six years dreaming about being a YouTuber and never actually making a YouTube video until I was, like, in, like, halfway through med school.
It started off as as music videos, didn't really go anywhere, didn't think anything of it. But then I already had a business that was helping kids get into med school, and we'd sort of plateaued at around a 150 k annual revenue. And I was trying to think, like, how do we get more people to buy our stuff?
So I thought, well, if I if I teach the stuff that I I already know how to teach and just do it on video, maybe some people will think I'm legit and buy my thing. And so that was when I started taking the YouTube channel seriously by putting out videos around, like, how to ace the the medical exams Okay. Okay.
And my entire channel was, like, niche audience, helping specifically 17 year olds in The UK who are applying to only four medical schools of the 13 Oh, Very interesting. Oxford Cambridge Imperial and UCL, very specific.
Do well in one specific exam for this one specific, like, for these four specific medical schools. But I think part of the reason why it was I I was able to be consistent with it was every single view was someone that I could relate to.
It was me a few years ago Yes. Who was Yes. Specifically struggling with that thing.
And every single view was increasing the odds that that person would then buy my course. And so, in a way, my channel was actually monetized from day one, even though it took me a year to get officially on YouTube because people were buying the course. And so one thing I'm very bullish on is that if someone wants to if someone if someone's goal is to make money, essentially, make money on their own terms, financial freedom, etcetera, then the creator path where you spend years making content in the hope that people will follow you and stuff, maybe 2016.
Yeah. But now now in 2026, it's just not the it's not the And if you have a thing to sell, even if that thing that you're selling is like a paid coaching call Mhmm. You yeah.
You're trading your type of money, but like, you know, it's kinda nice money. Yeah. People signing up to your Calendly link and booking into half an hour, like, coaching session.
That's super nice. Can You transcribe all of those. It helps feed your content ideas.
You get to know your audience because real people.
But it means that even if you're getting a 100 views on an Instagram reel, if you have something to sell, you might get one sale from that. But if you don't have anything to sell, you're spending years and years grinding your head against a brick wall of getting a few views here and there in the hope that maybe one day will make it big.
Yes. And I I don't like the I I don't like a strategy that relies on luck. No.
Me either. Yeah. I love that.
And I think for you, it's like, used to something a lot of it was really, really good, but something that you said I really wanna pull out is one view you each view meant something to you. Yep. Each view was someone.
Mhmm. And I can relate to that because I never was like, oh, only got one comment. I was like, I can't believe someone commented that this was helpful.
Like, I would freak out about everything because I knew I was helping someone. I think sometimes my students, they'll get so fixated on, oh, it only got 200 views. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?
Would have killed for 200 views. Like, are you kidding me? I was doing this for three people back in the day.
So I love that. One final question I wanna ask you because we have something we have a lot of things in common. But I love cause you have shared that like you had a bunch of different businesses that didn't really take off.
And then like eventually you found Yep. Like the business that took off. And I was also a very late bloomer.
I always say like I made $63 in my first year. And then in second year I made $350.
Mhmm. Took me years to make any kind of money. It was very, very slow.
I like your income. I am Yeah. Copy that.
Because it's like in my first year, made like $5 like
negative 20. You know, that kind of thing. Yes.
Exactly. It's so helpful for people to see that like, oh, Maria's not even that good at this. Yeah.
She just kept at it for a long time. What kept you from quitting? I
think I just found it really fun. I I think it's also the skill acquisition thing. You know, Tony Robbins talks about, like, you know, these six human needs, and the two needs of the soul are growth and contribution.
Oh, interesting. And so, like, when I started my first business of doing like freelance web design and saying yes to things and having to learn web design, and then the second one started with freelance web design?
I started with like 13 years old. Started with yeah.
I
was doing like WordPress sites back in the day. Get out of here. I was seeing WordPress and then later Squarespace.
Oh, sick. Yeah. I yeah.
Yeah. So I I was doing like WordPress initially, and then I learned I learned PHP because I was trying to create my own like Rude. Sort of text based video game and I completely flopped.
And then I learned JavaScript to try and make And some
then CSS, like all of And and
I tried making money from an affiliate site back in the day. So I I found an affiliate link on like Trade Doubler know exactly.
I didn't ever anything with that, but I know that. And I found a WordPress site, because like for StarCross two video game, I have sell them this guide Yeah. Specific keywords on the thing.
That was when I was like 15, 16. Then I tried making a forum because I was super into like these spy kid books. Okay.
I was like, there's all these kids out there that wanna be spies like me. What if we made a forum where they can talk about lock picking and hacking and like martial arts and all the skills that like spy kids need to learn? And so that didn't go anywhere.
But that taught me about like forums and how to set up like, what a b b forum back in the day exactly what it was. Yes. Oh my gosh.
And so all of that was what what I was doing. And then when I was 18 years old getting to med school for the first time, I got scammed out of, like, my life savings. I lost, like, a thousand dollars because Oh.
Someone scammed me out of it. And I was like, okay, I need to make this money back. And so I was like, I still have the Evernote file from 2012 where I wrote down what am I good at.
Was like, okay, good at teaching because I've been doing private tutoring for years. I did really well on this exam to get into med school. I don't know how to make websites because I've been doing this shit for five years.
So why don't I make sell courses on how to do this exam and market it via website? And at the time, it was hard to make a good looking website Mhmm. I knew how to make a good looking website because HTML, CSS, yeah.
You really had to like Yeah. Like fight to get it together. Yeah.
And so that's that was the first business that then went well, sort of 5 figures in year one, and then 6 figures in year two, and then sustained 6 figures, then I sold it, or another 6 figure, you know. And then that morphed into the YouTube channel. So And it all started because when I was 13, I decided, what would happen if I learned this web website thing and tried to sell my services on getacoder.com?
Okay. It wasn't even Upwork at the time.
It was Odesc they rebranded. Yeah.
Man, if anyone takes anything of this, just we've been at this shit for a hot second. And then, like, a few a
couple weeks ago, I was I was making changes to, like, the CSS of one of our sales pages on WordPress, I was like, damn. Eighteen years later, I'm still doing the same shit just, like, trying inspect elements. Trying to I think that wasn't even around by where I started.
And when that came on the scene, like Chrome inspector tools, I was like, what? I'm trying to write custom CSS. Shitting Claude and call him a dad.
Like, trying to make the line align height and let the spec thing look not shit. And so this year has been eighteen years of like doing the same sort of thing. And you Which is like, make a website, learn a skill, teach people how to do the skill, rinse and repeat.
Rinse and repeat. And here we are. That's it.
Wow. Great conversation. Yeah.
Thank you so much for Thank you for the free coaching session as well. Oh my gosh. Low ticket things.
I'm gonna ask you about your sales team stuff. So Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Whenever you want. Yeah. Yeah.
Alright.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The conversation opens as a friendly ambush: one creator lays out the conventional-wisdom case that high-ticket sales are easier than low-ticket volume, and Maria Wendt disagrees immediately. What follows is 39 minutes of two people who each teach beginners for a living stress-testing that disagreement against ad spend, delivery cost, brand perception, and their own kids' nap schedules.
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
A student case-study interview: how a full-time stepmom with three chronic illnesses built a six-figure low-ticket business on 30 minutes of ads a day and a lot of repurposed content.
A business coach walks through pricing a first digital product at $5, building a PDF bundle, and choosing between paid ads and organic reels to scale it.
A single-camera talking-head walkthrough of the six steps from zero to a first sale, filmed on a living-room webcam, that hard-cuts into a $27 course pitch for the last two minutes.
Digital-product coach Maria Wendt breaks her seven-figure playbook into seven concrete rules, writing each one on a flip chart live as she explains it.
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