The Simplest Way to Make $10k/month - Case Study

And he then sold that company to a private equity firm in the US.

In this case study, we're gonna break down Will's entire journey into a 5-step roadmap that he followed to start making money online as a complete beginner all the way through to becoming

a multimillionaire.

We're gonna talk about how he created his first offer, how he got traffic without actually having a following, how he built a sales process, how he converted strangers into paying customers,

and how he ultimately scaled from just $50 to $16.4 million.

So if you are interested in building a business that gives you the sort of financial freedom that lets you travel the world working from your laptop, then hopefully there's gonna be

a lot to learn from this video.

So Will, let's say someone is watching this and they have never made money on the internet before, but let's say, you know, they're a working professional in their 30s or 40s or something.

And they're like, man, I like this idea of starting an online education business.

I like the idea of being able to help people, being able to use my expertise to help other people and being able to do it from the comfort of my own home, being able to have flexibility

to pick up my kids from school and being able to make great money while doing it.

What are the broad— what's the high-level roadmap that someone needs to follow in order to go from complete beginner to, let's say, $10K a month or $100K a year, that kind of thing?

Yeah, for sure.

Well, There's really 5 steps.

Okay, so step 1 is offer, then comes traffic, sales process, conversion, and value.

Okay, now I'll give you an example.

I worked with a gentleman from Canada called Kevin a few months ago.

He'd been an accountant with his son for quite a few years.

They owned 2 or 3 different practices over there, and he found my YouTube channel, found out that he could potentially sell his knowledge to help other people either start or grow their

accounting firm.

He came into the programme, and we worked on those things together.

Now the first thing that we did was design his offer.

And really his value proposition, how are you going to help people and when and why and with what, really, that's your offer.

And it comes with a promise, which is an outcome that you're selling to the person.

So let's say for example, grow your accounting firm, get more clients and make more money.

So we know what offer we're doing now.

So the next thing we need to think about is, well, how do we get traffic?

How do we get eyeballs?

How do we get attention on that offer?

And there's two key ways to do that: organic content, paid advertising.

You can do one or the other.

One is free, but you pay with your time.

One is paid and you pay with your money rather than your time, essentially.

Best thing to do is, is actually to do both in combination.

So we actually settled on a bit of content and mainly paid ads for Kevin.

So we had our offer, we knew what we were doing for traffic.

Next comes the sales process.

And this is pretty damn simple.

It's a lot simpler than people think.

For me, the best sales process is an explainer video, which tells the person who's watching all about you and how you can help them and what that kind of looks like.

A button to book a call.

When they click that button, they go to the conversion stage, where they are converted from a viewer into usually a sales call.

Kevin will then take that sales call.

And if they turn into a customer, he then finally provides them with value.

And you move through those 5 steps.

And within a few months, Kevin was already doing multi-five figures a month selling that, that program.

So

firstly, what is an offer?

And how would you coach someone through the process?

So an offer is a way that you're going to help somebody and a promise of a result that you're going to help somebody to get, right?

And really, I think of offer as 50% and marketing as 50% because you can have a great offer, but if you don't get it out there properly, no one's going to know.

And you can have great marketing and sell this thing, but if it's not good or it's not right for them, then they're just going to refund that.

It's all going to kind of fall apart.

So offer 50%, marketing 50%.

But to come back to the offer, it's really as simple as starting with a promise.

I help these people to do this by this way, this, this, this method.

That's what I call an I help statement.

Okay, nice.

What are your thoughts on niching down?

How niche is niche enough?

And how niche is like too niche?

Honestly, I'm not a fan of niching down.

And I don't really understand as such why people would niche down because by niching down, you are simply making your market smaller.

And there's less people that you can help.

So I've always been a fan of going after the entire market.

My last market was all losing traders on planet Earth.

My existing market is anybody on Earth with a skill or a talent or knowledge who wants to monetize it and build an e-learning company.

I can understand why you might think niching down is a good idea because it is a bit better for more specific messaging.

But the reason I don't agree with it is because you're making your market smaller.

Okay.

Objection, Your Honour.

If I am looking for a photographer for my wedding, I would rather hire a wedding photographer and pay them way more money than hiring a photographer.

You know, a neurosurgeon earns more money than a general practitioner.

They are special, they're more specialist, the market is smaller, but they're able to charge higher prices and able to stand out in a very, very crowded market.

You've got me.

You've got me there.

No, there are definitely certain niches where, I mean, let's say for example, fat loss is a really good example.

You, it wouldn't really make sense.

You could do the entire market, but it's less effective there.

It's more effective to have men get six-packs, women over this age to lose this many pounds, new mothers to get back into shape, that kind of thing.

So in a niche like that, it does make sense to niche inwards slightly, but not entirely.

Those are still very, very large markets to, to serve.

But for the most part, for most industries, I do suggest keeping it broad in most cases, not all.

Okay, I speak to a lot of people who are like, okay, okay, then I want to, I want to sell a course.

And I think I should price it at $50.

Yeah, dot, dot, dot.

And I'm like, easy, easy.

I've got a whole pricing paradigm makes it so easy for people.

Price is something that really overwhelms people.

But it really doesn't have to, it's actually quite simple when you have a paradigm.

So I'll share the one that I use with you.

There's 3 elements to price.

Number 1, what is the 12-month value to the person that you're selling to if they work with you and they get the average of the promised result that you're selling?

So let's say, for example, going back to my accounting client, Kevin, let's say he could add $50,000 to someone's business within 12 months.

Okay, so we've got that first thing.

The second thing that I then think about is, well, what is their affordability?

Okay, so of the person that you're selling to, the avatar, who are they?

What is their likely career?

What is their circumstances?

And roughly how much could they, you know, reasonably afford?

Number 2.

Number 3, I then try and charge roughly 10 to 15% of the 12-month value.

Alright, so let's come back to Kevin, say $50,000 is the average 12-month value, 10% is $5,000.

Then I look at those 3 things and say, okay, $5,000 is 10% of $50K, which is fair value to us.

It's fair value to the clients.

And then the only remaining question is, can the avatar afford that price?

Which is clearly yes for these people.

There we go.

We've got a fair value price around the 10 to 15% mark.

That's how I look at price.

Okay.

So many objections to that because, Will, this applies if you're selling a make money offer.

But what if I'm like a life coach or like a guitar teacher or like a piano teacher or like a dot dot dot?

Like, how could I?

I mean, you know, the value to them is like 50 quid.

So maybe I should charge 10 quid for my course instead.

I'll give you another example to kind of make this real.

Now, one of my favourite clients that I've ever worked with is somebody who helps people to stop drinking alcohol.

Okay.

Now technically, what is the 12-month value of stopping drinking?

Well, it's kind of hard to put a number on it, you would think.

But actually, he sells primarily to executives, to CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs, high-level career-style people.

So let's just think about this for a second.

If they are drinking alcohol, it's damaging their health, maybe their marriage, their relationship with their children, their career, their work life.

They're worse in meetings, they're missing work, that kind of thing.

So actually, it's worth— I mean, what is it worth to keep your marriage, to keep your kids, to keep your career, to keep money coming in and pay your mortgage and on and on and on.

So it then becomes a little bit easier to put a financial number on it for those people.

So you could even say to the people, like, how much is this worth to sort your entire life out?

Is it worth $5,000 to sort that out?

I would say yes.

Is it worth $10,000?

To the right person, yes.

To the right person, it's worth $100,000.

And I believe as of now, he's charging £8,500 for that offer for a year of working with him to stop drinking alcohol.

So does that make a bit more sense?

Yeah.

Okay, nice.

So what kind of questions are you asking people when someone comes to you and they're like, well, I want to build a business?

It's like step one is offer.

Like, yeah, I would say to them, okay, what is your skill or talent or specialist knowledge?

9 out of 10 people will give me something there, at least something.

But if someone said to me, I'm actually, I'm actually not sure.

I would say to them, okay, well, what do you love doing, or what do you consider yourself good at?

Now, I had this breakthrough with a client, I think it's about a year and a half ago, when I was having a very similar conversation to this, and someone said to me, well, I'm very good

at talking to girls and like arranging dates and going out with girls.

I was like, okay, that's, oh, that's certainly interesting.

And he turned it into a what is it called, cold approach kind of offer.

So, so there you go.

That was something that he was good at, but he didn't really consider it a teachable skill.

But it is a very teachable skill.

He's making a lot of money with that now.

You'd be surprised, people almost always have something.

Like, for example, my girlfriend Lauren, right?

We were having this conversation and I said to her, well, what do you love?

And she said, well, I love, you know, helping mothers with their babies and the nutrition and, and all of that stuff.

And I I said, well, who would be your favourite person to work with?

And she said, new mothers, to help them over the following 2, 3, 4, 5 months.

I was like, oh right, well, there's the avatar then.

So it's new mothers.

I help new mothers to— I don't know what the promise is.

I can't say it properly.

It's sort out the eating and sleeping and stuff like that to help them get their life back.

And next comes the pricing thing.

Do they have the affordability to afford what we would need to charge?

To be a functioning, profitable business?

Probably yes.

Tick.

And then this is kind of starting to, to come together.

So I think the variables thing that you mentioned is one of the key differentiators there.

Hmm.

Yeah.

As you were talking, I was— it was kind of coming to mind.

I think one big question is like, who can you actually help the most?

Because if a doctor were to come to me with that example, I would challenge them.

I'd be like, okay, so you're telling me that— okay, you've been through med school in the UK.

Are you telling me you can help a 16-year-old in Syria get into med school in Lebanon?

And they'd probably be like, no.

I mean, okay, cool.

So what country are the— and they were like, oh, obviously in the UK.

I'm like, okay, that wasn't obvious from your initials.

That massively changes.

Great.

Help people get into medical schools in the UK.

Now there are like 50 different medical schools in the UK.

There's public ones and there are private ones.

What's the area that you have the most expertise in?

Oh, obviously the public one, because actually I went to med school before the private medical schools.

Okay, fantastic.

And sort of through that kind of conversation, what we're landing on is Who can I actually best help?

And then it's sort of like, is that market big enough or do I need to go broader from that point?

So in a way, like, I guess my approach is to start niche and then broaden out from there to land on who would, who would my absolute dream client be?

The one who would shout my name from the rooftops and be like, oh my God, I love working with this person.

They love working with me.

It's the absolute perfect fit.

I completely agree with that.

I think it's nice to think of the offer first, the market second, and then the avatar third.

Mm.

Okay.

Yeah.

And when you've got those three things in alignment, you've got a good offer, right?

And you pull all those 3 things together, I think that's when you can really put a tick in that box.

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So there's kind of two parts to an offer.

The offer itself, the promise, the I help statement, the avatar, the market, which we've just talked about, and then is more the marketing material, the sales process, the copywriting.

There you're really building a sales argument, right?

So in the sales funnel, the sales process in kind of over there.

That is where you're going deep on what it is, who it is for, who it is not for, how it works, so on and so forth.

So you don't really go that deep until you're building the sales process.

Okay, nice.

What are the major pitfalls you see people fall into at the offer stage?

The major pitfalls that I see people fall into at the offer stage tends to be struggling to identify an avatar in a massive market.

Okay.

And a lot of that comes down to self-belief.

They just need to think about exactly what you said.

Listen, who can you help the most?

Who's, who's your ideal prospect that you'd love to get on a, on a call?

People sometimes struggle to really nail down on that.

Another thing is just believing that they have value to add.

And this is where the 1 to 10 scale comes in.

People think, oh God, I can't design a 10 out of 10 offer because I'm not a 10 out of 10.

I'm a 4 out of 10.

But that's the problem.

They just don't understand.

It doesn't need to be a 10 out of 10 offer.

It just needs to be good enough to help the zeros and the ones.

Again, coming back to avatar, those are the two big kind of mindset shifts that people need to go deep on.

Hmm.

Nice.

And to that first point where people are struggling to find the avatar within a big market, like what are the sorts of things that they should think about?

Yeah, so I usually think about male, female.

I think about the age.

I think about the country.

Affordability.

And finally, and this is by far the most important, the seriousness of the problem to that person.

Because within any market, there's people who are more serious, there's people who are less serious.

So if we take fitness for a second, well, somebody who is maybe a little bit on the older side, I don't know, 40 plus.

Yeah, they're in a different place, you know, physically.

They maybe got a wife, they've got kids, they've got a career.

It's harder and they've got less time, so it's more serious to solve.

Right.

I've actually got a client right now.

He only sells male fitness to people over 50 in America.

So that's a nice place to niche down for those reasons.

Whereas to contrast that, if somebody was, say, 20 years old, they don't care about getting fit.

They want to go out and get drunk and bloody party and all the things that young people want to do.

So it's much less serious avatar, much harder sale.

And then what's your take on, you know, the affordability thing?

Are we only targeting people with lots of money, basically?

Not necessarily, no.

And the reason that I say that is because, for example, I have a book that I sell, and that is $12.

Now, that is affordable to more or less anybody.

And in that book is everything that I ever learned from the first 6 years of my career, nothing held back.

Anyone can buy that.

And it's almost a gateway drug to my main programme.

Okay, so it's there for— it's really there to add value.

And anybody who wants to go deeper and go further can come into the main programme.

The reason I give that example is because it's not just about charging the highest price that you possibly can and making as much money as you can.

It's about serving as much of the market as you want to serve.

Like for me, I want to sell to as many people as possible.

I want to help as many people as possible.

And if I only had a very expensive program, I'd be ruling out 90% of the market.

So for me, it's useful to have the book, the course, the coaching program, the mastermind.

I even see the YouTube channel as like a free way to get started and get value.

So it's good to serve the whole market if you can.

Objection, Your Honor.

I'm worried that I don't have any skills that anyone would be willing to pay for.

What do I do?

Good question.

Well, one thing that I always share with people that tends to actually help them understand that they can teach and that they can help people is the scale of 1 to 10.

Okay, so let's take me at golf.

I've never played.

I've never held a club.

I am a 0.

Tiger Woods is a 10, probably an 11, to be honest, by this stage.

Now, I wouldn't actually want to learn from Tiger Woods.

I'd, I'd be embarrassed to stand in front of that guy having never played before, right?

I would really want someone who's about a 4 or a 5, maybe a 6.

Okay?

Someone that is far enough ahead of me, but not too far ahead of me.

So the first question that I would ask people is, where would you put yourself on that scale of 1 to 10?

That's the first question.

And really, if you're anywhere above, I would say about a 2.5 to a 3, then you can start one of these businesses and you can start by teaching zeros.

Okay, so let's say you're a 3 or 4 at writing.

I've worked with a writing consultant when I was writing my book, who honestly I think was about a 4 or a 5, and it was super helpful for me as a zero slash a kind of one.

Right?

If you're further ahead, then that's fantastic.

But a good way to think about it is if you're at, say, a 3, you can teach zeros.

If you're a 4 or a 5, you can teach zeros, ones, twos, maybe threes.

If you're a 7 or an 8, then naturally you can teach more, you know, the threes, the fours, the fives-ish, give or take.

And if you're a 10, you're probably only gonna want to work with sixes or sevens or above, because any less would be a waste of your time.

One objection I hear from a lot of people in our own,

in our Lifestyle Business Academy stuff is,

yeah, but that may be true, but I don't have any teaching qualifications.

You know, the objection there would be in your golf example, maybe you actually want to learn from someone who has a golf, who actually is a golf teacher and has a golf teaching qualification

rather than your mate who knows how to play golf.

That's a really good point that you make there.

And I do agree.

I think if somebody maybe has a teaching qualification, that is nice to have, but I wouldn't say it's essential.

And actually, sometimes when you get these professional qualifications as such, you can put yourself in a bit of a box because they give you rules that you might otherwise not follow,

or they teach you different ways of doing things and they stop you doing it naturally.

So in a way, not having any qualifications and just being great at the thing, just naturally great at the thing, I think that gives you an edge, and I think that's an edge that should

be preserved, actually, because it's coming from more of a genuine, let me help you and let me share what I've learned way, rather than a do A because this, do B because this.

Sometimes a lack of structure can actually be the most valuable because it's the most genuine.

By the way, all the stuff we're talking about in this video is stuff that we teach to students as part of our Lifestyle Business Academy.

That's like an online business school that me and my team run, and our goal is to mentor you through the process of building a $100,000 a year lifestyle business in under 12 months.

So if you are interested in learning more about that, there'll be some details down below.

Who is this kind of online education business model not suitable for?

It's not suitable for people that truly do not have a skill or a talent or some specialist knowledge.

And they really do not have any self-belief in themselves at all.

And they would look at this and just say, there is just, there's just really no way.

I think if you truly don't have any of those things, it's not right for you.

But to caveat that, you'd be surprised.

Most people really do have something.

I mean, the greatest example of this is one of my older clients, a really fantastic lady who teaches knitting.

And when she came to me, she was making about $11,000 a month, which is already pretty good.

When she left me, she was making about $19,000 a month, which is a bit, bit better.

And when I tell people about the knitting lady, people are always really surprised at how many things you really can teach, some real things that you would never think that you can

ever teach.

I very much agree.

I'm kind of like, in a way, I want to say that online education business model is accessible to anyone.

But at the same time, like, for example, we've got people applying to our Lifestyle Business Academy.

And in a way, like, what are, you know, they put, they fill out a big application.

And what we're really looking for in the application is, do they have some kind of evidence of a pre-existing skill set?

Either through their professional or personal experience, which is why we ask the specific questions in the thing that could lead to a high-ticket offer for at least $2,000.

Exactly.

I mean, you have to have something to share, something to help people with, something to talk about.

One example always comes to mind for me, and I don't know why this sticks in my head, but I've got a client— so I used to have a client who simply helps men get visible six-packs.

That is his offer.

You don't have a six-pack, you want to have a six-pack, come into the program.

And to this day, he's making over $300,000 per month.

Per month?

Per month.

Bloody hell.

Helping men get visible six-packs.

That really blew my mind.

I mean, he was a little bit smaller when he first joined me as a client.

I think he was doing about $70,000 a month when he first joined me as a client.

But nonetheless,

there's so much money to be made with such simple offers.

And his offer is $5K and $15K.

5K for the a bit slower one, 15K for a bit faster one.

Yeah.

So the other big objection I hear is, but Will, or but Ollie, the market is so saturated.

I could teach people how to get six-pack abs, but like, there's everyone and their dog is trying to teach men how to get six-pack abs.

How on earth am I going to stand out in such a saturated market?

That is a very fair question.

It's a very fair question.

And honestly, whenever anybody comes to me with an idea for one of these businesses, the first thing that I say is go out there and find other people that are doing it.

And if you can't find other people that are doing it, it's probably a bad idea.

If a lot of people are doing it, it's clearly a very good idea.

Not only that, the world is a big place, okay?

And people buy people.

So if you had a get a six-pack program, if I— I don't think I could ever do this because, hey, I wish I had a six-pack.

But if I did a six-pack offer as well, people would buy yours because of you, people would buy mine because of me.

The truth is people buy people along with the outcome.

So if somebody came to me and said, well, I would like to help people get into life coaching, what is the simplest way that I can just get started and get the ball rolling?

I would say to them, right, let's start a YouTube channel.

Let's start making just 1 or 2 talking head style videos per week where you talk to your ideal customer about what you want to help them with.

And let's just start with a very small offer.

It could just be consulting sessions or a package of consulting sessions for a nice low price.

It might be $500 for a few calls, maybe $1,000 for a few calls.

And inevitably, as the YouTube grows, people are going to find the videos.

Some people— the power of 1%, which we can talk about in a second— some people are absolutely going to buy.

Those, and then you can grow in confidence, conduct the sessions, add value, and it all starts to come together from there.

So you don't have to start with ads and a big sales process and a high price and all this stuff.

You can just start that small, get it, get it, get it moving and get it working.

This is one of the reasons why I wrote my book.

I just wanted to write something where anyone can read it.

It's very, very simple.

It's step by step.

So I think people really overcomplicate this stuff.

Sometimes you really can just go out there and make some content and sell some consulting calls or just sell a— you don't even have to do calls.

If you don't want to do a course, you can just sell a course.

But just get started is the best advice.

Tell me more, like how do ads work?

A good starting point is around $1,000 per month.

The reason that I say that is because on average, depending on the offer and the niche, it's going to cost you around $70 to book a sales call.

And that's not to take one, but that's to book one.

Now, an average show rate is about 65%.

So if you book 10 calls, that might cost about $700.

You're going to take, say, say 6 of them and you would hope to close one of them.

And depending on your price, let's say your price was $2,000.

Well, you've spent $700 to make $2,000.

Now you've got a profitable ads funnel there.

Then you can start to scale into that.

Caveat, though, for certain offers, the cost per call will be higher.

So you need to be aware of your price point and also your close rate, your show rate, all of the nitty-gritty metrics.

You know, I've seen some YouTube ads.

It's like, you know, you know, they pay Rhett and Link to advertise Wix and it's like massive production value and all of this sort of stuff.

How elaborate are these ads?

If I showed you my first few ads, you wouldn't believe me and you would laugh because I assure you, and in fact, I've still got these ads so I can actually show you these, these, these

old ads.

But they were literally a screenshot of a chart with a voiceover and subtitles.

And those ads made me

multiple millions of dollars, like multiple millions of dollars.

So your ads do not have to be fancy.

They do not have to be well-produced.

They do have to be well-written.

Okay.

The, the words that you're saying are 80%.

The production is 20%.

So that's why you can get away with rubbish, quite frankly, production.

As long as the words, the copy is good.

That's the foundation.

On the ads front,

one thing I hear a lot is, man, ads are getting more and more expensive over time.

Therefore, everyone's trying to do organic.

And then the people I know who are doing organic content are like, man, it's getting harder and harder to get views over time.

Therefore, we should probably do some ads.

Oh, dot, dot, dot.

Then people are like, oh man, SEO used to be a thing, but now it's happening in ChatGPT.

So now we need to do— Oh God.

What are your thoughts on that?

Word vomit.

Well, I do agree and I don't agree.

The reason that I do agree is because some things are simply hard, and it's a nice way to make you feel better to say, ah, it's hard, it's getting harder.

It's a nice way to comfort yourself into admitting defeat, right?

And for me, my challenge right now is, is YouTube and growing the channel and maintaining views and driving sales calls and that, that kind of thing.

But it's a fun challenge and I enjoy it and I stick with it.

So that's the reason why I do agree.

The reason I don't agree is because if you do it right and if you're good at it, it always works.

It always works.

And we have just started running cold ads again about, oh, about 10 weeks ago.

And I mean, good God, our numbers are just, just, just phenomenal.

So the ad platforms, I mean, for us, they're certainly not more expensive.

They're not harder.

Nothing's changed.

So I think it just comes down to, again, the— if you get the inputs right, you get the outputs right.

Yeah, really interesting.

If we were to start taking it seriously, what level of like input do I and/or someone in the team need to put into this to sort of really nail this?

We've just been relying on organic for Oh, correct.

Basically, this is what I would do.

So I would write 5 hooks, I would write 2 full ad bodies, I'd put those together and that would give me 10 ads.

My first batch of 10 ads.

Now, knowing what I know, Facebook and Instagram is the best place to run ads for companies like ours right now.

So I would run them there and I would run them at about $50 a day, $100 a day-ish.

I would run them into a VSL, into an explainer video to book a call.

And the first thing that I want to know is what is the cost per call and which ads are producing the calls and which ads are not producing the calls.

You can track that using the ad tracking software.

From there, any ads that are not booking calls, I would turn them off.

Any ads that are booking calls for a reasonable cost, I would leave them on and I would start re-putting the budget into the best ads.

To book more calls at good cost.

Now, the second thing that I want to know from there is what is it costing us to get a sale?

What's the cost per sale?

So let's say we spend $500 and we make a $5K sale for, for example, and simple math, right?

We're getting a 10x, putting $500 in, getting $5,000 out.

Fantastic.

This is very profitable.

Let's scale, let's spend more money on ads.

Okay, now at that stage, because of the profitability, you're not going to need to make any new ads, the ones that you've got are fine.

All you're going to need to do is slowly scale the spend, keep an eye on the cost per booked call, the cost per taken call, and the cost per sale.

Yeah.

And if you're profitable, you can simply spend more, spend more, spend more.

As you spend more, the ads are going to become slightly more expensive and all your costs are going to start to rise.

Eventually, the profitability is going to be much less so, and you're going to need to start the process again.

Rewrite another batch of ads that will get the cost back down again.

You're going to be profitable again.

And that is the game that we play.

Interesting.

And what is a good return on ad spend?

For me, anything 2x or above is great.

3.5x.

What are ours right now?

Our ads are about 6.7x right now.

So if we spend £1,000, we make £6,700 back in a month.

So nice and profitable.

Not amazing, but very profitable.

So we will scale into that.

Until the ROI is down at about 2, 2.5.

When it's down at 2, 2.5, we will stop scaling and we'll start making new ads, testing new copy for the explainer video, for the sales page, that kind of thing.

Okay, so it really is just a math problem.

It is.

It is pure mathematics.

Running ads is pure mathematics.

Mm.

I like that.

That's great.

And what are the pitfalls you see people making when they try running ads?

If I could give you 3 major pitfalls that people fall into when they're running ads, It's trying on their own, never ran them, don't have a clue what they're doing.

It blows my mind that people do this, but people do.

And those people almost always lose, lose the money.

They just try on their own.

Number 2 is not knowing the importance of copywriting.

Like I said to you earlier, people try and make fancy ads, but it is not about production.

It's about the copy, the words that you're saying that is critical.

You can have terrible production as long as the copy is great.

So number 2.

And number 3 is not tracking and not knowing the metrics that you've got to hit through the funnel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And if you do any of those 3 things, you're, you're probably going to struggle.

How important is daily tracking versus weekly tracking versus monthly tracking?

I'm glad that you've asked that because there's a bit of truth in 2 things that you said there.

Now, depending on how much you're spending, you should really be tracking daily.

It's so important just to keep your finger on the pulse when it comes to ads because you're spending money.

So you want to make sure it's being well spent.

But here's the caveat.

Don't judge your ads based on daily fluctuations.

You've got to look at things in— I mean, we look at them in 2-week blocks and 1-month blocks because any less, you can get fluctuations, you can start to panic.

I've done this in the past where I've panicked and changed things and there was nothing wrong in the first place.

So that's what I would say.

Keep an eye on them daily, but don't overreact daily.

What does an offer actually look like?

Like, is it like a Google Doc?

Is it a sales page?

Is it a— like, what is it?

I think you're talking about when it comes to kind of presenting it to the prospect, right?

And the place that you're going to present an offer to a prospect is usually the first touchpoint is either ads or content, actually, because that's where most people find out about

you and therefore find out about your offer.

As well.

So it's usually described in your YouTube videos, your Instagram Reels, in a paid ad that you're running.

Yeah.

And then from there, they go into the funnel, the sales process that we talked about a second ago.

And that's where you're going to find well-written copy and images and proof and examples and stuff like that.

Okay, so let's say I'm selling a coaching program on knitting, for example.

So content and ads.

So I'd be making content about knitting, and I'd be making ads about knitting.

And then, and then what?

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

I'll walk you through the sales process.

So what happens with this client is people find her videos on YouTube primarily, and they'll see a video, they'll click the video.

In the video, they will hear her say something like, oh, if you need any help with this stuff, I'll put a link in the description where you can find out more.

So that's the first call to action.

Then people go to the description, they click the link, they then land on an explainer video.

With a bit of copy below the video that just explains why her, who she is, what they're gonna get, that kind of thing.

And then they can click a button and make a purchase.

And then they go into the program.

You know, we've released a couple of courses where, you know, we hired like a fancy studio and shot it on fancy cameras and tried to make it look like masterclass levels of like production

value.

Then we've done some courses where I'm just on my standing desk with this microphone recording literally Loom videos, not even using the fancy camera that I've got right there.

Just speaking to a webcam on a Loom instead of going through slides or like doing elaborate things, just like drawing stuff out on a Figma file and sort of constructing it.

And the feedback we get on those is like worlds apart from like the super polished, super production value masterclass level where people are like, whoa, I finally understand this.

I've watched loads of YouTube videos about this.

I've actually taken a bunch of courses about this and I finally understand it because seeing how Ali just cobbled together his thought process and how he landed at that conclusion.

Just made it click.

It made it click in my mind.

So I'm like, man, I should just do Looms more often.

It is really fascinating, isn't it?

I've actually found that in my first company.

I mean, my first ever product was a 3-page text Word document for $50.

Yeah.

And then I remember turning that into a few scrappy videos in a Dropbox folder and people loved it and people got great results from it as well.

And even with this new consulting company that I'm running nowadays, the program started as just Word docs.

With text and images, and then I would do a Loom video on top of the Word doc.

And again, people— there was never any complaints about the production quality at all.

So it just goes to show, not only should you not go above and beyond on production, but if you do, it can actually be worse for the customer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's almost something about like when something looks like it was filmed on your webcam, it feels more authentic than if it looks as if it was filmed on one of these bad boys with

like the whole shebang and like a slider that's doing a second camera shot and, and all that kind of stuff.

It feels like you're, you're getting the real stuff, not the, the fake overproduced polished stuff.

100%.

100%.

I've been thinking about this a lot.

This is how my YouTube channel started and grew.

I made a few videos with 3 cameras, a slider, a script, B-roll, planning, and they got like 700 views, 1,000 views, 200 views.

And then one day I was rushing a video out and I shot it on my iMac built-in camera without any script, without any bullet points, with some rubbish Amazon mic that I bought for like

$30.

And it got half a million views.

I couldn't believe it.

And people loved it.

And a lot of the comments were saying, wow, this just— it's like I'm in the room with you and you're just talking to me.

And that was a real breakthrough for me, just learning people don't want perfection.

Perfection scares people off sometimes because you can tell it's overproduced.

It's not genuine.

How does one run a sales call, conversation, discovery call, interview, whatever you want to call it?

Yeah, it's so much easier than I think people imagine.

So when you get on a sales call, the first thing that you should be saying really is, why are you here?

What, what's the problem?

What, what can we help you with?

That is where any good sales call should start, because that's why they're there.

They have a problem, you have the solution.

If they don't have a problem, well, the call should end pretty damn quickly because they're, they're never going to buy something to solve a problem that they don't have.

Now let's say that they have a problem, then you would talk a little bit more about, well, how long have you had the problem?

How serious is the problem?

Why do you want to solve the problem?

Are you in a position to solve the problem?

So you kind of talk a bit more about the where they are now, where they want to get to.

And one of my old mentors used to call it widening, widening the gap between where they are where they want to get to, and you are in the middle with the solution.

So you start with the problem, you gather some intel on their background and where they would like to go.

If you can genuinely get them there, then you'll say to them, well, listen, I think that I can help you with this.

Would you mind if I tell you how?

Then you will deliver a pitch where you'll go through the program and what it is and why it is and what they get and all of that kind of thing.

And then with their permission, You'll share the price with them.

And then after the price, you're into the, what they call the close, where they'll usually have some, maybe a question, maybe an idea, maybe an objection to cover with you, which oftentimes

is just fear usually.

And then you, it's your job to work through that with them.

Founders, the face of the business, usually close at about 35%.

I think that's the average that I see.

Sales reps, it's 20 to 25.

So when you bring in a sales team, you have to sacrifice some, some, some close rate there.

It just is what it is, unfortunately.

What are the pitfalls you see people make, especially beginners, when they are doing these sales calls for the first time?

The number one mistake that I see people make when it comes to sales calls, as crazy as this sounds, is not following the script.

Now, a sales call is a process.

We keep talking about processes and systems, and a sales call is a process that helps you understand if they are a good fit, and it helps them understand if this is right for them.

That's why it's so important, because otherwise without that it would be unethical because they wouldn't understand and you wouldn't understand.

Yeah.

So the main problem is not following the script or not having a well-built script.

The second problem is— it kind of sounds weird, but being a bit too scared, being a bit too on edge, overthinking it, talking too much is a, is a massive one that The prospect is there

to talk, you're there to listen.

Okay, that's that respect that you should have for them for attending the call.

And the third thing is not being able to handle objections and not understanding that objections are often just fear.

They're just a bit scared and they don't, or they don't, maybe don't want to say it's a little bit too expensive when they don't know you've got a payment plan or something like that,

or they need to speak to someone and get someone's permission.

Really, they don't.

They just want to get off the call, get away from the pressure, then decide and tell you later.

The problem with that is though, they often will get scared and they'll just say, oh no, I'll do it later, and then it never gets done.

Or they speak to their wife and their wife has a maybe a bad understanding of this industry and puts them off when this could have changed their life.

So it's so important to hold them accountable.

And if you're selling something great, that is perfect for them,

then it's, it's, you'd be lacking integrity to let them go without, without coming on board.

When I tell people that, hey, you know, this, this thing you sell, like, could be a $5,000 thing.

People, people are like, what?

Like, surely no one would buy that?

Because like, I wouldn't buy that.

My friends wouldn't buy that.

Like, I don't know any friends of mine unless they've spent a lot of time with me who've bought an online course because they view online courses as a scam.

Whereas I've bought a shit ton of online courses and I consume them at double speed because it's like, obviously it's the best way to learn.

And so this is such a difference between sort of, I find that there's quite a lot of mindset work that needs to be done when someone comes into like our, like academy, for example,

to help them realize that it actually is possible to make money from people who are not like you.

Because if you were the sort of person that would never sign up to an online course, I mean, they wouldn't even be in our program.

But like, I often say to them, like, you know, you guys paid quite a lot of money to be part of this program.

What was it that made you

You know, by like, oh, you know, I've been watching your videos for years.

You know, I feel I can trust you.

I'll kind of buy whatever you sell.

Some people are like, oh, you know, I really thought about it.

And, you know, I really liked the way you laid it out in the emails.

I'm like, yeah, all of this is email marketing.

All of this is the stuff that we're teaching you.

And all of this is like the process.

But I find that there's a lot of mindset gaps where people, people just cannot believe that it's even vaguely possible that someone would want to buy a $5,000 quit alcohol thing.

You said that.

In such a great way.

I had a YouTube comment this morning that I spotted.

And a guy commented on one of my videos and he said something like, well, if I could just make 10k per month, that would completely change my life.

I don't believe it when I see people like yourself talking about 100, 200, 300+ thousand per month.

And it made me think,

the world, the traditional education system,

people just aren't taught this stuff.

They have to discover this stuff.

I know it sounds ridiculous to make this much money.

I just wish people would see that it is actually possible because, because it is.

I mean, I do it.

You've done it.

We know loads of people that have done it.

Yeah.

But to come back to your point, it just starts with seeing it and slowly understanding it.

I think when you understand it, it makes a lot more sense.

Like what we just covered with the, the ad metrics and the steps.

So I think if you see people making massive amounts of money and it seems a bit unbelievable, to be fair, you know, trust but verify.

Yeah, right.

And just learn and just look into the process.

And as you do that, your mindset will open.

You'll be like, wow, actually I can see that, I can understand that.

And as you understand it, eventually you'll be able to do it yourself.

Yeah, this is, I think, one of the biggest— I've like a lot of the people who are currently part of my team or have ever joined my team, have said that, like, in the first, like, month,

they've just had this enormous, like, firmware update in their mind, this massive level up where they're like, oh, I now know what's possible.

Because they've, most of them have never worked for a small business before.

They've only ever been cogs in a corporate machine where they don't see where the revenue is coming from.

The numbers are not even vaguely on their mind.

But just being able to see the Slack notifications that today we had 8 people sign up to our YouTube Academy and pay us $1,000 from not interacting with any.

And we can see that, like, oh, that person clicked on a Facebook ad.

Which was for our $27 thing.

That person came in through our email list and they've been on the email list for 3 and a half years before they bought anything.

I was like, okay, that's interesting.

This number of people bought this thing, you know, all the comments of people.

And it's like they start to see like, oh shit, this is how money is made in this world.

And it just like completely breaks their mind.

And even things like where, you know, I paid, you know, quite a lot of money for your program, paid like a shit ton of money to join this other program.

And then team members are like, oh, Fuck, like, I only just paid $60,000 for this, like, coach.

Holy fuck.

It's just like 2 years of a salary of a junior doctor in like one transaction.

And it just breaks people's minds and then it makes them realize that like, oh, okay, $10K a month.

That's just, that's like nothing in this world of like entrepreneurs and stuff.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I mean, I remember when that guy gave me $50,

I just couldn't believe it.

That was just, it was my first ever experience of somebody giving me money just to tell them things that I knew.

And it was really— it just started to open my mind.

And then when the 2 or 3 other people that I messaged on Twitter also bought it, I just thought I'd unlocked some kind of magic parallel universe.

Like, hold on a minute, it's possible for people to give me money to just tell them things that I know.

And it was really interesting.

That was the little mini breakthrough for me.

And that's all it takes.

And it doesn't have to come from a sale.

It can come from maybe this video, maybe people will watch this and finally realise, wow, it's actually real.

You know, but that's all it takes is just that one discovery to change everything.

So how do you deliver value?

When it comes to delivering value is you cannot beat one-to-one consulting.

If you do one-to-one consulting, you will have the highest success rates

of any way of delivering by, by far.

You can't beat it.

Equally, on the other side of that, if you're going to do a course, I would strongly suggest having some kind of human touchpoint in their group coaching, one-to-one, at least email

or chat support.

People, for some strange reason, often feel bad about asking questions.

And in some cases, I can understand why they Maybe they're a bit nervous, or they're not sure that it's a good or a bad question.

But for some reason, people often don't ask questions.

So you have to be there for them.

And WhatsApp chat works very well for that.

Slack works very well for that.

One-to-one group coaching can work very, very well for that as well.

Another big thing that I've learned is the minute that a customer comes in, you've kind of got a 24-hour window to make them feel comfortable and overcome kind of that natural buyer's

remorse.

Okay, the way that we do that, we get them in a WhatsApp with me.

We give them a welcome doc that maps out what they've got access to and also a timeline broken down by week.

And I voice note them as fast as possible.

The minute I see that chat, I voice note them.

Yeah, welcome them in.

And that works wonders for just making people feel good about, about starting the process.

So having those two things can work very well, especially a process.

You can have a Notion board, which works very well, or even just a Google Doc can work very well.

So that's, that's very important.

From there, a well-built training programme is critical, broken down into weeks, or you can even do into months if it's a longer programme.

And it has to be structured the exact way that things need to be done for them to get the outcome.

As simple as that sounds, I've seen programmes in the past they're just a mess.

You've got to think, what do they need to do first, then, then, then, then, and as they go.

And if you build the program in that manner and you support them and hold their hand, so many people are going to be successful with the program.

What are your thoughts on guarantees?

I'm very conflicted when it comes to guarantees because most people use them in the wrong way.

I know a few people that have a guarantee when they really shouldn't because they trap you in the contract so that you can never claim it anyway.

And if it's used in that way,

it's just a bit, it's a bit sketchy.

There's a right way and a wrong way to use a guarantee.

Like, we don't have a guarantee.

We just say to people, listen, we can't guarantee it.

It's simply not guaranteed.

And if you feel bad about that, don't come in.

You know, I think that's the right way to use a guarantee.

Equally, we had a guarantee in the old company, but it was very bloody simple.

It was watch the training program, track your trades for 3 months, follow the strategy properly, send us the evidence.

And if you do that, and some people did do that and we did refund them as well.

So if you use a guarantee in the right way, I think it's very beneficial.

Just, just use them in the right way and sometimes you don't even need them as well.

Oh, but this sounds like a lot of work.

I already have a full-time job.

I've already like, you know, I've got kids and like, you know, by the time I get home from work, I have no energy.

Like, oh, and like, they claim to want the thing.

And I'm sometimes amazed by the audacity of what they want relative to how much they're willing to put in, in terms of like, yeah, I want a six-figure lifestyle business where I can

work 4 hours a week.

It's like, okay, you know, six figures puts you in like top 1% of earners in the UK.

It's like, you know, people train for 20 years in like medical school and specialty training to make 100 grand, like, and you want that within like 6 months by working 4 hours a week?

Okay.

But like, you know, so there's a little bit of unrealistic expectations, I think, here.

But in your experience, like, How much work or effort or time does it take someone who maybe actually has a job to be able to whip up one of these like online education businesses?

For sure, it does come down to how much time and energy they can put in.

So for example, we've had people come into our Done For You programme and build a business from complete scratch and launch it within 4 to 6 weeks.

But they were putting in hours, they were putting in energy, they were I would say a little more than kind of part-time, 1 or 2 hours a day, let's say.

Equally, some people do less than that and it takes double to triple the time.

So I would say if you've got an hour a day, you are going to be able to do this very successfully.

If you've got more than that, you're just going to get there a hell of a lot faster.

So I would say about an hour a day is the baseline.

I find that people that start with maybe an hour a day, when it starts working, that quickly becomes 2 or 3 or 4 hours a day and it really starts to compound on itself.

I actually, I woke up this morning, I was in bed, grabbed my phone, I was lying next to Laura, my girlfriend, and I went on my Instagram.

And I— there was a message, I press play on the message.

And it was a guy I had 1 hour of consulting with about 2 years ago.

And he'd left me a really lovely voice note just saying, hey, well, we haven't spoken in a very long time.

Just to let you know, that consulting session that we had, man, it changed my life.

I've learned so much from that.

I'm watching your YouTube, I just got this amazing career opportunity with this big YouTube guy.

And it all came from that, that 1-hour session that we had like 2 years ago.

And one thing that he mentioned in the text just above that was the fact that the more success he saw, the more excited he got.

The more excited he got, the harder he worked.