Nick, I'm looking for the main constraint to landing my first paid client. I'm an appointment setter for a high ticket online coach and I built him a free chatbot for DMs and SMS. It books appointments but still makes some basic errors and I'm building it in exchange for a testimonial. The owner is open to commission-only ideas but doesn't have anything in mind himself. He's happy for me to work with other businesses and already employs an agency to run his ads. What should I prioritize? Should I perfect the chatbot to earn the testimonial, start outreach to other high ticket coaches, and propose a commission-based marketing service to an owner or something else?
A common issue I always see is people tend to think it's X or Y. They have to do option one or they have to do option two. That there's a fork in the road where every downstream option is mutually exclusive. All options are not mutually exclusive. You can do all of the things that you want to do simultaneously. The main core bottleneck is actually just the amount of effective focused time you are spending working. And so it is almost not always like sacrificing X in order to do Y thing. It's not like doing outreach or working on your current clientele. It is doing both simultaneously. And the benefit to that as well is when you do more and you're constantly pushing your zone of competence and what you are comfortable with, you will usually find better and more effective ways of working as well. So in the case of you know a hypothetical fella that was asking me what should I prioritize? Should I, you know, try and fulfill this current client? Should I start outreach to other prospective clients? Should I like try upselling the client on some sort of, you know, thing that I have going on? You should actually and legitimately just do all three simultaneously. You know, we come from a line of people that had to hunt, they had to cook, they had to secure water, they had to tend to their families, they had to, you know, constantly defend themselves night after night. You can't you don't just do one thing. We're obviously highly specialized today, but there's 16 hours available in the day. Everything there would might only take you an hour or so. You still have a lot of time available, right? To go hunting your saber-tooth tiger or to go get some water. So hopefully that makes sense.
Yeah, so he's referring to my low-ticket product called Maker School. Now, I don't know if you guys know, but there's a difference between a low-ticket or a pretty affordable product, and then a high-ticket or a I don't know, maybe 5 to $10,000 per month product. Um mine is low-ticket. It costs a very little money in the grand scheme of things, specifically relative to the the amount of value that I provide. Um so, basically the way that, you know, my positioning and and mental model works is my audience was beginners. They're people that want to get their very first customer for a paying service. And so, odds are they're not going to have a lot of money. Uh they're not going to be able to afford a high-ticket product. Yet, at the same time, I also don't want a tremendous amount of responsibility. What I find typically occurs with a high-ticket product is you end up being responsible not for just creating the product and then marketing it. You also are responsible for selling it, actively selling it through like a high-ticket call funnel, a sales funnel, uh some sort of flow like that. And then finally, um I personally have worked with a lot of high-ticket products. Sorry, my alarm's going off. And I find that typically because they have to make crazy promises in order to justify the return on investment, uh a lot of them end up kind of falling prey to bad business practices and uh that sort of stuff. So, this is where people will get you on some coaching call that's $10,000 a month or whatever and then do whatever the hell they can to sell you. Typically, you know, you have people making poor financial decisions cuz they're all incentivized to push really hard and it just ends up I think souring the whole business model. So, I I wanted none of that. I wanted no calls. I wanted uh something very scalable. I wanted something super lean that I could manage entirely on my own without a sales system or sales team rather. And then I wanted to just be able to, you know, wake up, do my marketing, um um crush with the business model and then do the same thing the next day. And uh that's ultimately what, you know, I did with low-ticket MRR. Now, that's not to say I couldn't start some high-ticket coaching program, but I don't really want to make my money primarily through like a high-ticket program or anything like that. Uh I don't really want to make my money through any sort of programs. I'd much rather make my money through providing real tangible value to the world. Education is just one part of that. So, yeah, that's why I'm not doing that.
The simplest and easiest way to run a discovery call: somebody comes on, do your building rapport, make them happy, make them smile for a second. Then say, 'Hey, I know we've got a lot to cover, so I'd love to get into things. Here's how these calls typically go — I start off asking you some questions about your business. After that, we'll make sure there's a fit mutually on both sides. I'll walk you through the solution we have for you and how I think it could apply to your particular case. And then if it makes sense, we can chat about next steps. Does that sound good?' Then the first question is: why the hell did you take the call? You probably get brushed by 50 of these emails or Upwork applications or LinkedIn DMs per day — what made you want to jump on this one? That's literally all you need to kick off probably 80% of the call. The reason is: one, you're building rapport so they hopefully like you a little bit. Two, you're setting an agenda for the call, which is important because now the customer knows you're in control and understands where things are going and what's coming next. Three, you literally just ask them straight up, 'Dude, why are you here?' and they'll tell you, 'I'm here because my business is really struggling with XYZ and I was considering this solution and thought I'd give it a try.' Fantastic — they've given you the ammo you need to shoot them later. It's a shitty analogy, but they've given you everything you need to close it and make it a win for both sides. Just ask that question first and your sales calls will immediately go three times as good. Then later, after they tell you what they want to accomplish, ask, 'Have you done anything to try and get to the solution before?' If they say, 'Yeah, we hired somebody 3 weeks ago and they weren't really good,' ask 'Why weren't they good?' — 'Because of X, Y, and Z.' Now they've given you everything you need to close the call and everything you need to avoid too — just don't do what those guys did and you're good. People overcomplicate the sales process and end up talking about themselves for hours. You don't need to make it anywhere near that complex to achieve what both parties want: someone has a problem, and you come in and solve it.
Absolutely no — you should never stop client acquisition. Even if your calendar is absolutely 100 million percent full and you're like, I can't even take a conversation with another client, you need to understand that if you don't constantly breathe new life and oxygen into your business, there's no way for your business to grow. You will only ever continue existing at the same level. For instance, if you do client acquisition and outreach and you make it very time scalable and very efficient — maybe 20 or 30 minutes a day — what'll occur is over enough time, a week, a month, a quarter, you will get opportunities that are willing to pay you more money than your lowest current paid opportunity. So what you can do is swap out the lowest paid current opportunity for a new opportunity. That opportunity will make you more money per unit time, which will allow you to do things like invest in more growth to repeat that flywheel over and over and over again. Maybe over the next week, month or quarter you continue to do outreach at a higher rate. Now you get two opportunities that displace the other two lowest paying clients, and now you bring on those two instead. Now your total average earnings across the board — your internal hourly rate — is higher, and so you can continue to just scale. If you don't do client acquisition, what will occur is your roster will just start falling off because clients naturally turn. When the clients fall off, you will now have an abundance of time. You will now have to do a bunch of client acquisition or outreach, and then you will just slot in your first available paying opportunity. But rather than slot in your first available paying opportunity for a low rate, why not have a minimum rate where your opportunity cost is whatever the current client is paying you, and just do client acquisition all the time? It's one of the biggest traps in any sort of small business. People will always be like, I'm at capacity, I can't do more. The reality is if you want to grow, something has to give. And that might be, for the next week, month or quarter, an additional 20 to 30 minutes of your time. But that is the cost that you are paying in order to scale the rest of your business and continue growing.
Ah, great question. I like this because you're asking how you make the client's life easier—that's really the most important thing. You'll find that as clients grow bigger and better, they want less work on their end and prefer an all‑in‑one done‑for‑you service where they pay a set amount and get the result. I feel the same way: at this point I don’t want to be a partner who constantly discusses the best way of doing things; I’d rather hire someone who’s good at what they do and trust them to deliver a great job. This is taking ownership and minimizing friction—reducing client complexity. Clients don’t care about the inner workings of the black box that is your product; they only care about the input, output, and the interface. So what I think about this is that it’s great—exactly what you should be doing, and what you should have been doing all along. To be that someone, you just position yourself as the person capable of handling everything. You are the person who does cold email: I will handle your cold email systems from start to finish, completely autonomously. All I need from you is a brief three‑minute form you fill out right now, and I’ll do everything for you for 90 days straight. If I don’t deliver the X, Y, Z results I guarantee, you don’t pay a cent. Make it a complete and utter no‑brainer for them—get them to give you what you need up front in a couple of minutes, then you’re off to the races. Handle it completely autonomously, give them progress updates (but don’t disappear or demand anything). That’s how you do it.