How To Print Money In An Online Business (Full Blueprint)
4 months. 5 full rewrites. And over 130 hours. That's how long this has taken me to build.
Why did I put in this level of effort? Because I set one goal in building this:
To make it the best guide ever made on building an online business.
TO BREAK A BELIEF YOU MIGHT HAVE: I am 19 years old. I was born in the UK. I had no mentor. Everything I learnt was from doing. I fucked up big time repeatedly. I did not think I would make it. In May 2023, I had not made a single penny. I had only lost money. That was 8 months ago. This is enough proof you can win, regardless of your circumstances. I don't want to hear excuses. I want you to do something with your life.
From the psychology of audience growth, all the way to 10x'ing the total spend of a customer, I've included it all.
Every tactic, strategy and framework in this blueprint is here for a specific reason.
This post only focuses on the inputs to get one specific outcome: scale your online business fast.
Whether you make money or not, have 10 clients or none, this will work for you.
I don’t know how to run ads. And I don’t know anything about an Instagram growth funnel. If you are looking for a new bullshit business model to pursue, this post will not give you that.
Business is universal. So I’m sure this works if you run ads or sell physical products. But I have not done that. So I will not speak about that. Or make any guarantees for that.
I can make you a single guarantee though: if you read this post, and do the inputs, you will win.
Because success is just this: Inputs + Time. That’s it. I will give you the inputs today. All you have to do is add some time.
And guess what?
You’ll reach success.
And when you do, you’ll realise it’s not all it's hyped up to be.
All you need is £10k/month. After that, your returns rapidly diminish.
This is coming from someone who’s sole source of income is from scaling people from £10k/month to £100k+/month.
You probably don’t believe me. And that’s okay. Because I thought money would do the same thing for me, that you think it will do for you.
Anyway, enough bullshit. Let’s make some fucking bank.
I'll give you some context on what I've done. You can use this to decide if I'm qualified to talk about this stuff:
A lot of people made a lot of money using my 0-12k post. I’ve put more than 7 times the hours into this post than I did for the 0-12k post. Take that as you will.
This is the last screenshot of a payout from Stripe I can find from my old coaching business.
I’ve spent most of my time actually doing business, not talking about it. (I've made two posts in 8 months)
I have nothing to sell anyone. I have no course, coaching program, or any other information product bullshit.
NOTE on the last point: If you want to know how I make my money now, I've detailed exactly how I do things. Feel free to scroll to the bottom of this post to find out.
I hope that helps you make a decision if this is worth your time to read.
Let's begin.
Stage 1: Create a Burning Desire
“If you have to sell really hard, it’s because you haven’t provided enough value in advance” — Alex Hormozi
I will not talk about the tactics to build a YouTube channel. Or to grow a TikTok account. Or to scale your Instagram.
There are many people much better at it than I am.
I will only speak about the business and psychology side of things.
The stuff that will make you the most money from your audience. While still having the best reputation in your niche.
THE ONLY THING WE ARE SOLVING FOR IN THIS STAGE:
Create a burning desire in as many people as possible to buy your thing.
There is a single move that achieves this at scale.
So we're not only creating this effect in one person at a time, but our whole audience.
The only way to do this is by making content in a very specific way.
I’m going to break down exactly how I did it, and how we do it with the online businesses that work with us.
The first sale is always the hardest to make. So how do we increase the percentage of our audience who make that first jump?
A concept called value in advance is king here. I’ll give you three key points that put the importance of this into proper perspective:
People use your free stuff as a predictor of how valuable your paid stuff is.
People make purchasing decisions based on the value they’ve already received. Not what they’re going to receive.
If you have to sell hard, it’s because you haven’t provided enough value in advance.
There’s one critical thing we can take from these points. Make exceptional high effort stuff and give it away for free. This is the single highest leverage move you can make.
Why? The people who don’t give you money feel the need to give back. And they’ll do this by sharing your stuff.
Doing the above is how you build an excellent reputation, grow your audience at an exponential rate, and get the highest percentage of your audience to give you money.
It’s a triple win. There's no higher leverage move than this if you want to print money online.
But, there is a specific way we create content to make the above happen.
Before I walk you through how I did, and still do it, we need to get a deeper understanding of the concept. Let's continue.
People will use your free stuff as a predictor of how valuable your paid stuff is.
We want to make heinous amounts of money. Not a little bit. To charge those ridiculous prices, people need to believe it is worth that much.
The most common way marketers do this? Making lots of promises on the sales call. This is not a smart move. You’ll see why later.
There is another way though. This allows us to avoid the above problem. It's by hitting one specific benchmark: deliver more value for free, than the cost of your paid thing.
Here's why. Because you’ve delivered so much value for free, people believe your paid thing is more valuable.
Remember the two key points above. "People use your free stuff as a predictor of your paid stuff. And people make purchasing decisions based on the value they've already received".
Here's the cool bit. When you reveal the massive price of your thing, they believe they’re getting a deal.
Why? Because you've already given more value for free than the price of your paid thing.
This makes them predict your paid thing will be more valuable.
The prospect now thinks he's getting a great price. And it’s very hard for humans to say no to a deal. It’s the way we’re wired.
Think of your content as almost 'teasing' your audience for what's to come next.
People will always make that first jump if you give them the reason to. That reason is delivering so much value for free, that they have to find out what's in your paid thing.
Doing this creates uncertainty and mystery around what comes next. Both of these are powerful motivators in humans.
TACTICAL NOTE: People will always assume your paid stuff is more valuable than your free stuff. We can play on this. Think about it this way: you deliver so much value for free in your content, what does your audience think? "If he's giving all this away for free, imagine how good his paid thing is!" This is the question that creates the desire. The uncertainty of just how valuable your next thing will be.
Now you understand why this works, let's talk about the most effective way to do this.
I will start by explaining how I did this for my old business.
I had a YouTube channel. I posted raw, unedited, long-form videos. They were not pretty. But, they were valuable. I was often told they were the most valuable thing on the internet for the niche I was in.
That's the key. Because if you want to make the most in your niche, you must be the total authority.
You must build the reputation of being the go-to guy to solve the problem/get the outcome. I've done this twice now. Once for my old coaching business, and now for strongholds.com.
If you sell (or want to sell) expensive shit, make long-form content.
Why? It builds the most trust and belief between you and the prospect. And you get to deliver the most value in advance.
NOTE: trust and belief are the only two pieces that you need to make the sale. You build both of them up before you even speak to the prospect when you make content this way. It eliminates the need for 'sales skills'. Don't worry, we'll talk about this later in detail.
To make content that does the above, here are the things I've found work the best:
Long form (the video length that made the most people want to buy was 35-70 minutes).
High value. Tactical. No fluff. Get deep.
Raw, unedited.
Show you have their best interests at heart.
High effort, plan the video out before.
Presentations.
Completely solve one problem per video.
Give away the secrets. Hold nothing back.
Make content for the people watching, not the algorithm.
Always live up to the title. Deliver on what you said you would do.
Don't start your video with a fucking story. No one cares. Explain what you're going to be talking about. Then consider a story to pre-frame the value.
TACTICAL NOTE: I'm going to give you a gem here. You might've heard this advice: "Look at high performing videos, and copy the title". Let me ask you a question: if you made your own video, how did it perform? In the vast majority of cases, not very well. Why? Every other content creator will do the same. There is a fast increasing supply, with a fast decreasing demand. No one cares anymore. The video will get no views. Because there is no longer a desire for that type of content. How can we leverage this? Think about someone you look up to who's the best in their niche. What content do you wish he would make? Your steps: Make that style of content for your niche. Watch what happens.
The above is what I've found works best for creating that burning desire. Regardless of what niche your in.
You don't need to be famous to make money. I got to £12,000 per month doing this, and I was getting 300 views a video. I was not getting lots of likes on the internet, but it made me a lot of money in real life.
We’ve created a burning desire in people to give us money, but what do we do now?
We have to convert all that demand.
And this brings us to Stage 2.
There’s a lot more to this than just “sales”. It’s where the rookies always make a mistake that will cost them later.
I don’t want you to get this wrong, so I’ve pulled back the curtain on the entire conversion process.
Stage 2: The Conversion Process
This stage will walk you through the optimised sales strategy - The Conversion Process.
It builds on everything we've already done. You'll see where this gets smart as we go forward.
The later stages will cover the rest of the customer journey. From onboarding, all the way to them buying our most expensive thing. This is the work we have to do now, so we can print money later.
The first thing - we need them to register their interest. This serves two purposes:
Gives us a way to contact them.
They’ve committed. We’re planting the seeds that make the conversion process as effortless as possible.
A NOTE: We only convert through calls. And it's not because you’ll have a higher close rate. We talk about why in stages 3 and 4.
A basic overview of how this looks (so far): Massive value in advance → link in description → brief form → book a call.
Nothing fancy yet. It’s what you do between that matters. But, we will add in steps throughout this stage. This is the basis we’re going to build our entire conversion process off. We’re now going to dive deeper into each individual step.
Your CTA (link in description)
Make it simple. Tell them what to do. Give them a reason to do it. Any reason is better than no reason. Keep the CTA the same. Because people convert at a higher rate when they see the same thing repeatedly.
I don’t suggest doing a hard pitch in every video, but do have a link in your description. As long as you’re honest and transparent, no one has an issue with you having a product*.
*A NOTE: the most important thing in selling is conviction. If your product is shit, you will not have any conviction. When I ran my coaching business, I was more than happy to promote my stuff because I knew it was excellent. We’ll get to this later. I’ve put a lot of time into perfecting product strategy. Because it is the single most important thing in your business.
THE FORM.
This is a key stage of the conversion process. Here's why:
We’re finding out if they can afford our stuff. And if they’re willing to buy. This weeds out time wasters.
Filling out the form is more commitment. They’ve already invested time, and given their personal information.
A NOTE: as a general rule, the more steps someone has to go through, the less leads you will get. But the leads you do get will be more qualified and end up being a better customer. Meaning; they’ll pay more, get better results, and send you more business than all other customers.
There's one more step we have to go through before the conversion call.
This is what separates the top 1% guys in business, from every other kid trying to make money online.
Hormozi talks about an experience that puts the value of this into perspective.
He was looking at investing in a company that was a direct competitor to Gym Launch.
He takes a look at their numbers. They we’re selling the same number of new customers per month. But there was one big difference.
Alex’s company was doing 70x the profit of the competitor.
Yes, 70x. Because they were doing one thing differently.
This isn’t all sunshine and rainbows though.
You need a lot of existing clients, and you need to do a lot of work.
The good thing: I’ve already done that.
We call this step Customer Data.
I’ve given you a frame to view this from. Now I’m going to arm you with the understanding and the tactics. Plus a little bonus. I'll give it to you at the end of this stage.
NOTE: this is still important if you don't have any customers. Or if you're starting out in business. Because it will give you an advantage from the get go. You can apply the cheatsheet straight away regardless of your business size.
To give you an understanding of this concept, I’ll explain how I do things, and my line of thinking that underpins it.
I'll start by telling you the first thing I’ll do in a business that comes to us. We'll force rank all existing, and prior customers by two metrics.
1. Total spend. 2. Time stayed.
I’ll then exclude everyone who isn't in the top 20%. Because in coaching businesses, the top 20% of customers will make up 80% of profit.
Now, look at the top 20% of customers. What do they all have in common? What traits do they share?
When you analyse the traits of the top 20%, you’ll notice a distinct trend. They’ll have 3-4 big traits in common.
But why is this data so important? Because when we know this, we can force all prospects to go through the same process.
This forces all prospects to become our ideal avatar. Doing this step can make you 80x the profit of your competitors. Just like in Alex's case.
We call this the “ideal customer journey”.
Now that you understand the importance, and power of the customer journey, I’ll show you how I did (and still do) it now.
First, they must have consumed long form, high value pieces of content from us. This happens before we get on a conversion call with them.
I’ll give you a two-step process to do this the most effective way.
If you have no high value long-form content—make some. I spent around 20 hours making a presentation on a single topic. It fully solved the problem. I made it in Google Slides. But it delivered massive amounts of value. That's the key. The length should be 35-70 minutes.
NOTE: A client of mine (£53.3k LTV) came because of single a tactical presentation I made using the above step. That’s how powerful this is.
2.If you already have high-value work made, this is what to do. Get the prospects to fill out the form. There should be a question on the form that identifies their pain points. Inject a piece of content into the sales process that solves one of them. They need to consume it before they get on the call. The content is not a disguised sales pitch. Why does this work so well? You’re proving to them that you can solve their problem. View this from your perspective. Who would you rather pay a fuck tonne of money to? A guy who is trying to convince you, but shows no proof. Or a guy that solves one of your problems before you even hand him a penny. Who are you more likely to give money?
Answer that question. Use your answer to decide if you want to read on.
Let’s get back to the tactics.
The conversion process so far: Free content → CTA → fill out form (identify pain points) → inject piece of high-value content that solves one problem → conversion call.
Even if you’re terrible at sales, you will still close the vast majority of deals.
Why?
Because of the work we’ve put in above.
You’ve now got this process. You'll see your sales skyrocket when you inject these tactics into your business.
But, I would be stupid if I didn't (briefly) talk about the conversion call.
So here's some key pointers for it:
Have 100% conviction.
You project your conviction (or lack of) through your vocal tonality. You can manually work on this. Be (almost) aggressive with your tonality.
This is not a “sales call”. This is a call designed to identify the optimum long-term decision for him. And then come to a rational decision together.
Be kind, not nice. Is this decision going to get him the life he wants? It's your responsibility to ensure he's making the right call.
You should be excited to tell him about your product.
Get the prospect to a point where he has 100% trust and belief in you. You can do this by asking him if he has 100% trust and belief. If he does not, you must find out why. And then break that false belief. I use logic to do this. E.g: “do you think I know how to get X result? Do you think I could get you X result?”
Appeal to his emotion first. And then confirm he is making the right decision by using logic, and rationale.
“Selling is a transference of belief, over a bridge of trust” — Trust and belief are king.
Belief = conviction (portray this through your tonality and excitement). Trust = talking in his self-interest, showing that you want what's best for him.
This is how I started calls: “I will be asking you a lot of questions to find out if I can actually get you an exceptional result. Because if I am not 100% sure that I can, I can’t move ahead with this.”
I understand these tips may sound counterintuitive. But the results they get are not. When I started using these underlying principles, I 'closed' almost every guy I got on a call with.
Internalise these principles. Reread them before you get on conversion calls.
We’ve covered a lot in this stage. We've built out a conversion process that is optimised for two things:
1. Maximising the conversion rate.
2. Only serving the best, most profitable clients. And filtering out everyone else.
CHEAT SHEET: The traits of the customers that get the best results, pay the most, and refer the most.
Already pre-sold on me. Reached out to me (all inbound). Consumed, and rewatched all of my long-form content. Already got results from my free stuff. Have a strong motivator to win. Proven they are committed. Willing to put everything on the line. Strong relationship prior to ascending to my most expensive thing (at the time was ~£50k).
NOTE: On the last point, I'm making a full walkthrough on exactly how I did that. It will be uploaded on my new YouTube channel soon. Feel free to read this is you want to know more about what's coming.
Stage 3: Service and Product
I want you to think about something. What if you could get clients that would never stop paying you? What if everyone that gave you money sent two other guys?
How much money do you think you would make? Probably a lot more.
The focus of this stage is making the above guaranteed in your business.
Let’s discuss how.
“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want” - Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s right-hand man.
The first thing. You must attain mastery in your niche.
Alex has attained mastery in scaling businesses from 3M/year to 50M/year.
Huberman has attained mastery in science, and research.
Why do you think Alex and Andrew are at the top of their game? People aren’t giving them money out of charity.
It’s because they're excellent at what they do.
If you want to make the money I know you want to, you must deserve it.
The second thing.
You are excellent at what you do now. But you've got no experience delivering on the promises you made on the conversion call.
I’m not going to tell you to give people your service for free. Because I know you won’t do that. And I’m not keen on the idea either.
You don't need a grand slam offer. To start, your service is this; “I will get you this result. You have my word. I will not rest until you do.”
There are no rules of engagement. You’re not confined to giving them a course, or two calls a week.
You do what's necessary to get the result.
But here’s the hard bit—you have to live up to that promise. But if you can, you will make so much more money than all these guys that go straight to selling their dog-shit course.
A NOTE: People will take you up on this offer. But you have to give it time. A few of you will get your first client in 48 hours. For some of you it will be 3 months. Just don’t switch opportunity vehicles. There is no higher leverage move on the board. Stick with this one thing and you’ll win big—you have my word.
I’ll explain why. Because you’ve focused on only a few guys, you understand everything about them.
You see where they go wrong. You iterate. Over and over again. You work closely with these guys. Doing this achieves two things:
Your initial clients get an exceptional result. What do you think they’re going to do?
You’re service has become better. It is now good.
What do we do from here?
We open up the doors. But only to a few more people. You get the reputation of having an excellent service. People want to get in. The demand is there.
So guess what? We up the prices. A lot. And people will pay. Still limit your places. And again, double down on the making the product better and better.
NOTE: you will make less money in the SHORT-TERM doing this. Because you’re not on the phone selling all day, and reaching out. I want you to become number one in your industry. Not another ai guru clone.
In time, you will get to the point where your product is so good it brings you customers itself. This is how you out-compete everyone else you’re going against.
We’ve covered the overarching theory behind product. You now know why it’s so important. We’re now going deeper. We’re looking on the tactical side of things. The rest of this stage will tick two boxes.
Making sure they have an exceptional experience.
Delivering on the promises we made on the conversion call.
We’re going to start in the most important place; immediately after the guy gives you money.
I’m going to give you one quote to lean on. It is from the former head of packaging and pricing at Vista, a $50B private equity group (does similar work to acquisition.com and strongholds.com).
“The biggest driver of LTV is the first 24 hours after they buy”
This 24 hour period of key for two reasons:
It is where a lot of people will back out, and ask for a refund.
This is where people decide if they're going to ascend up our value continuum. It will determine your profit on the backend. Which is where you'll make the vast majority of your money - we’ll talk about this in stage 4.
To maximise our results, we want to have a choreographed experience for the first 24 hours. I’ll give you the four key pointers to build your own experience:
It starts as soon as he gives you the money. Immediately after spend time reinforcing his decision to move ahead with you.
Reset expectations. People get called scammers because they don't meet the expectations they set in the sale. This is where most entrepreneurs in this space go wrong. They sell so hot, they make all these promises, but they're impossible to live up to. I've managed to reverse engineer this process to great effect. I'll show you how in stage 4.
Make a number of small promises. Deliver on them throughout the first seven days. The key thing is communicating the work you're doing everyday. Why is this so important? It increases trust. And trust correlates with total spend.
If you want to become the category king, overdeliver. When I ran my coaching business I used this to great effect. I had an advanced course that I put a few hundred hours into building. When I got on conversion calls, I did not tell them about the course. As soon as I got off the call I sent them the advanced course. It’s only been 10 minutes and I’ve already given them something that's worth more than what they paid. Doing this makes ascending on the backend easy (stage 4).
That's the four components of the initial 24 hours. It does not have to be complex, but install the above if you like making lots of money.
Stage 4 will bring everything together. And you’ll see business through a different lens. One that has served me well. And I hope it will do the same for you.
Stage 4: Monetisation (intro to advanced understanding)
More than 90% of the hours I’ve put into business has been on monetisation.
Learning it. Applying it. Doing it.
This stage will give you a brief, but deep introduction to the monetisation tactics I've built. I also used these in my coaching business. I learnt these in the field. From experience, not books.
This is why I made the money I did. Because I know monetisation inside and out. Let's arm you with this understanding as well.
A Note: I've streamlined this stage. Meaning I’ve cut out everything that you don’t need to know. There is no fluff. Only tactics. And explanations on how to use them to print money.
To start, I’m going to tell you how we look at growing the businesses that come to us. There’s only two ways a business can grow:
You get more customers.
You make each customer worth more.
We centre everything we do in monetisation around one of these.
I attribute a lot of my growth to this principle: having ruthless focus on the one thing that matters most. And this is where the core three comes in.
I haven't shared this with anyone yet. This comes from one of our internal growth documents at strongholds.com.
The core three is a unique framework I built from the ground up. It is what underpins everything we do in monetisation. Each attacks one of the two ways a business can grow. Here it is.
The core three: Retention, Ascension, Referrals.
Referrals attack getting more customers.
Retention and ascension focus on making each customer worth more.
I’m going to talk about two of the core three; referrals, and ascension.
Why? Because there’s one move that will get you more referrals and ascensions - at the same time.
To explain this, I’m going to introduce a new concept to you.
This is the best place to start to get an understanding of monetisation.
It’s something called the price to value discrepancy.
The price to value discrepancy is the difference between the price someone pays, and the value they receive.
The bigger the gap, the better.
Why is this so important?
When you have a large difference between the price someone pays, and the value they receive, two key things happen:
You create a "viral effect" in your business.
Customers want to ascend (this is where you'll make the vast majority of your money)
We’ll unpack one at a time.
Viral Business
Let’s look at the definition of viral: “[Something] circulated rapidly and widely from one internet user to another.”
Your product is exceptional when you deliver significantly more value than they paid for.
And reciprocity comes into play here. People feel the need to give back to you. And how will your customers do that? They’ll tell others about you. Why is this so potent? Two key factors. Reputation, and referrals. Let's go deeper on them.
Reputation
“Reputation is why I’ve got everything I have” - Alex Hormozi.
Reputation is what people say about you when you're not around. It is the general opinion people hold about you. This spreads fast. And it will make or break your business. If you have a good reputation, you can charge more, and still have more people coming to you. You don't have to sell hard. Because people are already pre-framed that your product is excellent. How do you build a reputation? Two ways; you can do this one-one, or at scale.
Consistently providing an exceptional level of service to all your customers.
This is the fastest you'll build a reputation in the largest number of people. Through your content. This is why I'm big on making excellent stuff. People will share your stuff. You'll get the reputation of being the go-to guy for this niche. And you'll grow exponentially.
Referrals.
Referrals are my favourite acquisition channel. Why? They’re the only channel that compounds over time. One customer sends two, those two send four, those four send eight, so on and so forth. Both of my businesses grew only off word of mouth. I started with my the content strategy I gave you above for my old coaching business. This got me my first customers. From there my business grew from referrals and word of mouth.
Same with strongholds.com. We deliver an exceptional level of service. Where the sole priority is only our existing clients. Hence, we get exceptional results. Clients spread positive stuff about us. Everyone who comes sends us more business. Why do I say all this? To illustrate one point. Because business is universal. And if you do the same stuff as we do, you'll get the same result. And before you know it you’ve built the reputation of becoming the go-to guy. You’ve now got a viral business.
This is how you get more customers. Let’s look at how we can use price:value to ascend people along our value continuum.
ASCENSION - The Backend
Doing this right is how you can get at minimum a 10-20x total spend on your existing customers.
I don't need to sell the potency of this to you. So I will put it how it is: Focus on the backend if you want to make heinous amounts of money.
To show you how, I'll walk you through the framework we use to build a backends that print money. This is what I call the value continuum.
THE VALUE CONTINUUM
All marketer gurus say the same thing in different ways: "Have lots of different products and sell every customer with a credit card and a heartbeat". Most people in this space run their business like this.
I take a different approach to this. And in my experience it's always been more profitable.
Overarching strategy: one avatar, many ascensions.
What most do: sell anyone, lots of different products.
Only speak to one specific avatar.
Because you’ll have higher response rates to your CTAs, higher close rates, and a higher LTV.
Have many ascensions on your value continuum.
Notice how I didn’t say “products”.
There is a difference. Each ascension up your continuum should be a natural progression to the next stage.
Let’s me show you how to do it.
Here's the formula I built for getting people to ascend: Excess value + New desire
Excess Value: At each stage of the value continuum, the value they get must be far more than what they pay for. This creates what’s called a raving customer. This is a necessary component of the ascension puzzle. If the price paid = value received, this is a satisfied customer. They will no longer ascend along your value continuum.
New Desire: Each stage of your value continuum should solve one problem. But, here’s the cool bit. There’s something called the problem-solution cycle. When someone solves one problem, the next problem naturally exposes itself. That desire to solve the next problem is the next stage in your value continuum. This is the driver behind the desire to ascend.
HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO WANT TO ASCEND
The formula above will do most of the work. But, you must have your value continuum mapped out from start to finish. It only needs to be a brief overview. This way you know what comes next in the customer journey, so you can guide them towards the next ascension.
This is what will make your business exceptional.
Also, you can start to plant seeds in their heads for the next problem. I’ll tell you how I did it.
TACTICAL NOTE: Letting people come up with their own conclusions is more powerful than telling them something. Why? Because they came up with it, they’ll ascribe ownership to it. And hence they’ll lean into that belief a lot more. We can use this to great effect. You'll see how below.
When you're on 1-1 calls, get your clients to do future visualisations.
They’ll contrast where they are now, to where they want to be. And they'll notice deficiencies.
Because we’ve provided massive value to them at this stage, they’ll predict you can solve the next problem.
Over the next few calls they’ll start to ask leading questions: “Do you know how to do [insert next desire/problem]?” And because you’ve mapped out your value continuum, of course you do!
The ascension happens naturally after that.
You'll still have a conversion call with them. This is where they'll give you money.
Make the ascension call a bigger event.
Plan it out in advance with them.
Get them to commit to solving this problem, and making the big investment multiple times before the call.
Use the tips I armed you with in the latter part of stage 2 for the ascension call.
If you don't ascend them to the next stage, someone else will. Because they want to buy. That desire is there.
Solve their problem and deliver an exceptional level of service. Collect your reward for doing so.
Overall; each ascension should solve a single new problem. And should provide a “higher level” of access to you. It should lead them to the next problem. This works best for 1-1 coaching services.
Get creative here. It will make you more money.
TACTICAL NOTE: Often the ascension is just a higher level of access to you. We've done this many times before. Where people are paying £1k-£2k/month, and we ascend them into a £50k/year thing. That's a 2-4x increase in profit. Just by framing the service differently. You should always be looking at ascending your customers to a higher level of service. Always.
NOTE: Play around with the price of each level in your value continuum. Do this based on your niche, your experience, and your reputation. We still do it to this day. You’ll find your perfect price point. We do this at all levels in business. Even at £100k/month.
There it is. The 4 stages that will build you an online business that makes you more money than you'll know what to do with (trust me).
There’s always more to talk about. But we'll leave that for the YouTube channel.
What I’ve included above is all you need to make the money you want to make.
Stick with it.
I’ve included a note at the bottom that, when it clicked for me, made doing this seem possible. I believe it'll have the same effect on you.
To end this off, like I promised, I’ll tell you how I make my money. I'm doing this for three reasons:
To provide transparency. Because there is a lack of it in this space.
To show you that I do practice what I preach. And that I run my business how I talk about in this post.
I think it might help other guys like me who want to build big shit. I wish guys I looked up to would let us see inside their businesses. And their thought process for things. (Because that's the best way to learn). So I'm doing it for the rest of us.
Anyway, here's me opening the book.
I am the founder of strongholds.com. We scale online info/consulting/coaching businesses from £10k a month, all the way to £100k a month and beyond. We only accept applications where we can see that 10x in the diligence process.
I do not sell courses or any information. I make my money actively growing businesses, not talking about it.
At strongholds.com, we have a team of subject matter experts. They are each specialists in one area. My team and I deploy our individual expertise to grow the online businesses that come to us. Everyone we work with is a long-term thing for us. 12 months minimum. I do this for three reasons:
Everyone that comes to strongholds.com must have an exceptional experience. The best ever type shit.
I want to maintain, and continue to build on the reputation that my team and I have worked hard to establish.
I believe you should only have to get rich once. And I would like to make that happen fast for the guys that come to us. Whatever their goals may be.
We do not charge a monthly flat fee. We take a percentage of the revenue of the business. Why? To ensure my business continues to deliver a level of service unheard of in this industry. Because if our service wasn't exceptional, we wouldn't make any considerable amount of money.
I hold a philosophy in life that has served me well: take bigger swings, fewer times. Meaning, we severely cut our supply, and spots we have available. This means we work with fewer guys, but deploy more resources into the guys that are already with us. They have a better experience, we continue to cement our reputation, and we both make more money. Another triple win.
And that's what I'm all about. Always ensuring people get more from me than I get from them. And oftentimes that means leaving money on the table from my side.
I hope the way I make my money shows I do practice what I preach. Where if you focus on service, and customer experience, you do make the big money.
So that’s how I'm going to £100M. By actually getting in the trenches and growing businesses all day.
Not talking about it. Or teaching people how to do it.
That’s why people seem to like my stuff–because I actually do this shit everyday.
I truly hope you’ve got some value out of this.
A (potentially exciting) Note: Finally, I'm now able to start allocating time to sharing the stuff that built my business(es). Meaning I can start making (more) content. I’ve decided to start a YouTube channel so I can do this. If you want to know what's coming, feel free to read this.
MY FINAL MESSAGE
When I made no money, I remember looking at these guys, a similar age to me; Iman, Sebastian Ghiorghiu, Luke Belmar. Comparing myself to them made me feel completely hopeless.
To me, the success they had looked unreachable.
Let me tell you something: it is easy to become wealthy.
Why do I say that?
Not because I have some course to sell you, but because of reality.
How can I make a stupid amount of money, in such a short period of time as a 19 year old?
One thing. I actually did the stuff people say they do online.
Most gurus online are lying. They do not work the hours they say they do. And most of them don't make the money they say they do (why do you need to sell a course if your business is so successful?)
How can I say this? Because if they were doing what they claim to do, their real results would be different.
Let me give you an example that you're familiar with: Alex Hormozi went from 0 to $5,000,000 a month in 3 years. And he's now grown faster on social media than all these other kids.
How? He's actually doing the stuff he talks about.
Why do I say all this?
To tell you one thing: if you do the stuff you will win. Point blank period.
It is easy to rise up the leaderboard to near number one. Because most of the guys (claiming to be) at the top are doing nothing.
Remember; there influencers, not businessmen. They spend most of their free time partying and talking about stuff they haven't done.
I hope this inspires you, and shows you how easy it is to win.
Because virtually no one is doing the stuff they say they do.
And the ones who are, it shows in their results. Always.
Finite.
MY AIM WITH THESE: Pour as much value as humanly possible into you so you can become uber successful and if the stars align, one day work with us to take your business into the stratosphere.
On that note; if you're interested in working with Lukas, and the rest of the team at Strongholds.com to scale your business, we're always happy to consider working with you. If you have an online business, doing at least £10k/mo and want to scale to £100k/mo and beyond, apply here to find out if we can help you get there: https://strongholds.com