Thank you very much. And sound pulling in 5k MR. Nice. I have two separate questions. Number one, I want to grow my MR, but I'm noticing a lot of business I'm offering to will gladly pay for the build, but when it comes to the monthly fee, they clam up. How can I reframe this to set myself up for more of a passive route to massive MR?
When a business likes the build but balks at a recurring fee, I reframe the conversation by offering a ladder of options. First, I sell a fixed‑price project (typically $1‑2k) that delivers a system I claim can add $10k of monthly value. If they accept, I then pitch a monthly retainer (e.g., $5k/month) based on the roadmap of additional improvements I uncovered while building the system—this can represent tens of thousands in lifetime value. If they decline the retainer, I fall back to a fixed‑price version of the same scope (around $3.5k) or a low‑cost maintenance retainer (about $250/month for Slack access). Should none of those work, I downsell them to my agency school—a low‑cost or free educational resource—where I can periodically re‑engage and upsell them later to any of the higher tiers. This creates a self‑reinforcing ecosystem: customers can start low and move up, or start high and later add services, mirroring the way high‑performing service businesses operate today.
Retainers replace unpredictable hourly billing with a recurring, prepaid service model. For example, if you previously billed 20 hours at $50/hour ($1,000), a retainer might lock in those 20 hours at a discounted rate of $45/hour ($900) paid upfront. This gives you guaranteed income and lets you schedule work knowing exactly how many hours each client will need each month, eliminating the feast‑or‑famine swings of hourly work. The real power of a retainer lies in what you bundle with the core service. Instead of selling just the automation build, you add items that make the offer a no‑brainer for the client: a regular strategy call (e.g., a 45‑minute weekly meeting); unlimited maintenance: you fix any API glitches, server outages, or platform issues at no extra charge; an availability guarantee, such as promising to respond on Slack within 15 minutes between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. Monday‑through‑Friday; emergency Q&A or training sessions where the client can ask “How do I update this?” and get immediate help; and access to any resources or tools you’ve built for them. These extras increase the client’s perceived value and satisfaction, improve retention, and generate referrals, while they don’t scale linearly with your time — so you can serve more clients without a proportional increase in workload. From a utilization standpoint, clients often use fewer hours than they pay for (e.g., 18 of the 20 contracted hours). You still receive the full retainer payment, meaning your effective hourly rate remains at your baseline ($50/hour) while you enjoy predictable income. Over a six‑month period, a $1,000‑per‑month retainer yields $6,000 lifetime value; after subtracting acquisition costs (say $150 per client), your net profit jumps from $850 on a one‑time $1,000 deal to $5,850 — a margin increase from roughly 85 % to 97.5 %. Working with repeat clients also lets you understand their business deeper, deliver more nuanced solutions, and earn more referrals. Finally, because you’re building automation systems, the value you deliver isn’t tied to your personal time: a system like my cold‑email setup that generated 23 leads last month continues to produce results even when I’m not actively working on it, adding another layer of leverage to the retainer model.
You already have a client paying you $2,000 a month that ends August 31st, and you want to reach $10 k/month. You’ve already landed a $3.2 k one‑time project and a $2 k/month retainer from that same outreach, which shows the approach works. Instead of abandoning it, double‑down on the proposal‑generator lead‑gen offer: it’s what got you the retainer in the first place. Use the classic Hormozi formula—sell a fixed‑price project (say $1 k‑$2.5 k) to get foot in the door, then upsell a monthly retainer (aim for $3 k‑$5 k). If you pitch 100 people on the fixed‑price offer, you might close ~15 deals (~$15 k up front) and from those, about three could take the retainer (~$9 k/month). Combine that upfront cash with the retainer income and you’ll easily surpass $10 k/month while building a reactivatable client base. In short, keep using the proposal‑generator cold‑email funnel, fix‑price then upsell to retainer, and you’ll hit your goal.
The most suitable niches and products or services to build for clients that allow a monthly recurring relationship are those that can be delivered as ongoing systems. In a nutshell, focus on things like cold‑email systems, CRM management, or voice‑agent solutions—any service that you can justify a monthly retainer for. For example, with a cold‑email system you could send 10 000 leads a month, provide a 45‑minute strategy session, a monthly report, and end‑to‑end campaign management with nurturing, and charge around $3 270 per month plus $98 per lead. With CRM management you could offer 40 hours of new‑build work plus unlimited maintenance on old systems, plus Slack availability, and price it at roughly $4 000–$4 120 per month (assuming a $120 hourly rate and a 20 % discount). For voice‑agent services you could bundle a weekly strategy call, a weekly report, call‑analysis, and up to 100 hours of agent uptime, pricing it around $2 180 per month. These three retainer models aren’t the only ones, but they’re quick to set up and sell.
Yeah, so this isn't true. I hit $10,000 and actually $25,000 without a set of templates that I resold; I was doing custom work much closer to what you're suggesting. And that's fine—you can hit those numbers without a strong templated or productized offer. The question is going beyond that: if you want to scale beyond $10K or $25K per month with a service, you need to start templating, systematizing, and standardizing. You can't just take on every custom project to build a unique ERP platform based on vendor data if you want a repeatable, scalable business. So, how do you structure an offer to charge $2.5K–$15K/month? First, understand that pricing depends on perceived and real value to the audience. Right now you're struggling to charge more than $500/month because you're likely delivering only $2K–$3K/month in value. To go beyond, identify problems you can solve for an audience willing to pay more. (I realized my pen wasn't plugged in—give me a second.) [plugging in pen] Here's the situation: you're charging $500/month and delivering maybe $2.5K–$5K/month. I was charging $5K/month while delivering $25K–$50K/month. The key is that you're looking at prices and thinking I'm charging 10× more, but I'm also delivering 10× more value. From the client's perspective, those who say yes to your $500/month expect a 5×–10× ROI, and the same people saying yes to me expect the same ROI. Thus, you don't need to fundamentally change how you construct the offer; you need to change the value you deliver and how you communicate it. For example, if you're building systems that save $50/hour for 5 hours/week, you save clients $250/week (~$1K/month). That's a cap because you're only saving money—saving money has a natural limit (you can only save 100% of what they make). Instead, build automations for sales, marketing, and growth. Saving a salesperson's time at $50/hour and redirecting it to selling yields far higher value: a strong salesperson on calls can produce ~$500/hour. Saving 5 hours/week at that rate saves $2,500/week or $10K/month. The system focused on saving keeps you poor; the system focused on growth makes you rich. Increase total organizational value by solving problems that are more costly to the organization. In practice, this means shifting from back-end fulfillment automations (hard to do) to front-end automations that directly drive growth, and convincing clients of that value.