HOT TAKE:
Only a tiny fraction of people who want to escape the 9-5 will ever sit down and write out a plan to actually escape their 9-5.

Today’s Topic - The Story of How I Got Here

Looking for Guinea Pigs

I’ve been doing this newsletter for 7 weeks now. I’ve been talking about this on Twitter/LinkedIn for just less than 3 months.

But I’ve been thinking about this for MUCH longer…

This is the post I made on Reddit over 7 years ago looking for “guinea pigs” to mentor. The post only had a couple of comments, but I had nearly 20 DM’s.

Instead of taking everyone (like a newsletter), I downselected ~5 who I thought best aligned with what I wanted to teach.

I sent out 3 or 4 emails, but my expectations were out of whack.

I wanted an engaged, interactive group of students.

I prompted that interaction in the emails, but no one ever responded. So after 3 or 4 emails, I kinda gave up.

2019 - Online Courses + Education is the Rage

After that, I got distracted by other shiny objects while being a husband, dad, and working with my engineering clients. Life was good! I had the freedom and flexibility that I wanted.

There was no urgency to build this new thing.

But the itch stuck with me, and online education was all the rage.

So that was it! The answer! I would package all of my knowledge into a course.

I could help people at scale and build a new income stream. Win/win.

I did some test marketing with Facebook Ads and once again, snagged a few email addresses.

Good validation? Not really.

Enough to get me motivated to build the course? Yup.

So off I went.

It turns out that building a legit course from scratch is on par with writing a book.

I built it in sprints. I would become obsessed for weeks at a time, then ignore it for months at a time.

But sometime around May of last year, I considered it “done.”

(BTW - if you’re wondering, yes I did all of this in the wrong order - course with no audience - bla bla .)

A Marketing Failure

Before I spent one minute building my course, I built the business model to sell it. I scribbled it up on a whiteboard.

I thought I’d sell it for $600 and budget $200 in ads to acquire a sale. The goal would be to make one sale a day.

Keep this in mind - I built my service business via Google Adwords. I assumed I could do something similar with the course.

I probably could. And I will sell it via ads eventually.

But here’s the problem.

Information products require trust to sell. There are two ways to gain that trust.

1 - Get people on the phone

2 - Expose them to your content over and over

I considered selling on the phone. But do the math. Let’s say it costs $100 in ad spend to book a call. Now imagine I convert 25% of those calls into a sale.

That’s $400 in ad spend + 4 hours in calls to make one sale.

So you’re looking at a $1,000 price point just to “break-even” from a cost + effort perspective.

The Content Marketing Approach

So earlier this year, I decided to give it a real go via content marketing.

Trust is built via the newsletter, social media, and just trying to be helpful in general. Because helping people was always my motivation.

It’s fun - but it’s also showing me that people need direct help that goes beyond 280 characters. And not everyone wants a video course to learn by.

In fact, even with my small audience, I’m getting people reaching out asking me for one-on-one help. So I’m trying to figure out what that looks like.

At the highest level, I want to help you find clarity in your journey. What exactly are you trying to do? What’s the roadmap to get you from here to there?

• Find clarity and create urgency

• How your unique skills leverage to a solo service business

• Develop your personalized business model

• Develop your personalized strategic plan

• Develop your personalized launch framework

• Understand your financial runway

The idea is that you would exit that program with a clear 9-5 roadmap.

If that’s something you might consider, I’d love to have a call to pick your brain a bit.

The Real Fun Starts Next Week

I wanted to share this origin story for context. Because next week we are diving into the weeds, so get your learnin’ pants on.

We’re gonna be doing math and strategic business design for the next two months or so.

Get ready to start taking notes. And remember, you can fast-forward this whole thing and go WAY deeper if you snag my course.

Until next time - LFG.

-Zack

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