265 Here's How I Hit $100K/Mo With 0 Sales Calls

Scott Gardiner does around $100K a month and has never taken a single sales call. No closers, no discovery Zooms, no objection handling. Every offer is evergreen, bought at whatever hour suits the buyer, while Scott is somewhere else entirely.

He helps men whose marriages are falling apart, guys whose partners have already said they're done. And he got into it the hard way. Six years ago his own wife told him she was done.

Dominik sat down with Scott to hear the full story, from being made redundant during COVID, spending $15,000 on a mentor he could barely afford, grinding through a fitness offer with four offshore setters and $2,000 a week in ads, to the moment his wife said she couldn't do it anymore, and how that sent him in a completely different direction.

They got into a lot of the practical stuff too. Why Scott thinks sales calls are only necessary if your offer is unconvincing. How he uses a $7 sprint course to feed his weekly subscription. The difference between problem-aware and solution-aware buyers, and why so many creators are building audiences full of the wrong one. What his email strategy actually looks like, three to five times a week, workshops, loom videos, and a document with payment at the end of a survey. And his kitchen table test for anyone thinking about launching something new.

Scott is one of those guests who has clearly thought hard about all of this, and is honest about the mistakes along the way. I think you'll get a lot out of this one.

Check out Scott's work:
🌐 https://elevatedman.com.au/q
📸 https://www.instagram.com/iamscottgardiner/

Transcript

Beach Sign-Ups And Big Lessons

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I was on the beach with my family and I was seeing like 10 sign-ups in a single day. It was absolutely wild. I collected 15,000 and I had tears in my eyes. I think the sales course for me they make sense if you've got an unconvincing offer. People kind of buy out of hope of certainty. People don't sign up for a course, they sign up for an outcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We are here to share winning strategies and ticket acts from top performance in the online course industry. My name is Dunning Dragon and today's guest is Clock Gardener. Everyone in the high-ticket world will tell you the same thing. You need sale codes, discovery zooms, a closer, an hour of objection handling before anyone hands over real money. But today's guest does around 100k per month and he has never taken a single one. So no calls, no closures, every offer is evergreen, automated, and bought at 1am while he's asleep. And the thing he sells isn't a course or a dropshipping or copywriting. He helps men whose marriages are falling apart. Guys whose wives have already said, I'm done. He got into it the hard way. Six years ago, his own wife told him that she loved him but wasn't in love with him anymore. He'll tell you his audience size is a vanity metric, that most marketing is aimed at the wrong person, and that people will pay for hope, but they will pay a lot more money for certainty. This is Scott Gardiner. Scott, welcome to the show. Thanks, Tomek. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for reaching out. No worries.

Redundancy Sparks The First Pivot

SPEAKER_01 1:31

So I want to start before any of this was a business. So back when you were just a guy whose marriage was in trouble. Take us to that day. What actually happened?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. So I guess um before I got into my entrepreneurial journey, it's such a such a weird word that like that's my baggage around that. But I suppose before I was an online business owner, I actually used to sell IT services to federal government. And we lived, we actually lived in Canberra. We my wife and I and our daughters, we live on the east coast of Australia. We're on the Sunshine Coast, which is great. And we've been here now for about must be about five years. And but before that, we're living in Canberra. It was a concrete jungle, it was really cold. I wasn't really doing anything I was terribly passionate about. And for me, it really started uh just kind of before the COVID. Uh so going back now, about probably kind of six years ago, the COVID shutdown, and I'd been uh headhunted for this for this job. It was a Microsoft partner. I thought I was pretty fancy because they were paying me a lot of money. They said you can hire whoever you want, and I did, but I was I was hired to build a section of the business that didn't actually exist yet. So when the shutdowns took effect, they came and told me they said, look, there's a lot of uncertainty at the moment because of what's going on around the world. And so what you're doing, Scott, didn't exist before you came here. So you and your newly hired team basically bye-bye were all made redundant. And what I learned during that, it actually went to another couple of gigs afterwards, which had nothing to do with what I do now. And I work for a software testing company and then another managed service provider. But it made me realize that while ever I was not captain of my own ship, running my own business, I wasn't really in control of my future, my family's future, my income, all that stuff. And so what happened, I actually got into the I invested in a mentor. I spent $15,000 that I didn't have. It was on a payment plan, and it was one of the best things that I did. And I got involved actually back then in in high-ticket sales, and it was for a fitness offer. And before I knew it, I had um I had my first 50 clients, and I was doing what a lot of people in that coaching or education space, you're wearing every hat. I was in the DMs, I was setting, I was doing the calls, I was doing the marketing, I was just really doing everything. And then then before I knew it, I thought, well, hang on, there's I used to dread Fridays because I used to do looms, I used to do feedback, I used to do voice notes. And as the clients kind of grew, I was like, and there was no recurring, right? Because you're just signing these people up for a fixed-term package. And before I knew it, like I was, I was basically losing, losing touch with my own marriage, my my kids, because I felt like I was putting out all these fires. And I learned something really interesting when I was doing the health offer. What was driving a lot of these guys and the women as well to improve their health, it was often their relationships. And, you know, kind of fast forward about another six months, my wife was, I can't do this anymore. Like I just I basically feel like you're treating him like a staff member, which I was. So she wanted out. So I actually invested in a marriage, marriage counselling, a bunch of different courses, probably spent about $9,000 of my own money on doing that. And it made me realize the difference between doing work that's valuable, having an offer that's valuable versus having one that's urgent. And by the time I closed my fitness offer down, it was costing me about $250 to get a book call in my calendar. So I had the four setters that lived in the Philippines, as a lot of business owners do, right? You kind of hire somebody offshore. And I was spending back then about yeah, maybe $2,000 a week on ads. And I'd be lucky if I got eight to ten book calls. And then as you know, the story, it's kind of like, well, they have to show up and then you have to close them. And as soon as I launched my my uh relationship offer, I got book calls for like $23, and it went absolutely, absolutely gangbusters. And so the the first eight months I continued doing the sales calls, and it was really surreal for me, Dominic. I remember one morning I was driving to the gym and I'd collected I so I'd contracted about $26,000 in a single day, and I'd collected $15,000, and I had tears in my eyes because you know what people don't see is the the three years, the my first three years failing, making a lot of mistakes. And that's what people don't see. And I just kind of had that moment and that was cool. I rode the wave for it for another few months, and I just realized I've just bought myself a well-paying job because I was here in the chair doing Zoom calls, and then when I started real, I thought I've got two choices, right? I can either stay doing this myself, and the entire business revolves on me signing new clients, or I hire a sales sales team. But sales team means commissions, and commissions mean it sales teams only they only really make sense if you're collecting paid in fools or you're using a buy-now pay later platform. And in Australia, like at the moment, and this happened a few years ago, a lot of the the buy now pay laters, like we had one that was open pay, there was another one that was pay right. A couple of them went into uh receivership, so they went bankrupt. And others just now they just won't touch a lot of coaching or service-based. Like e-comm's fine. If you've got an actual tangible product that you sell, they will look at it. But service-based businesses, because there are so many companies that were selling six-month uh maybe coaching programs, but the client's paying it off for two years. And so you've got all these people after seven months are saying, Well, I'm I'm not part of the program anymore. Why am I still paying this off? And it's not like a TV, you get a flat screen, it's it's still there in your in your lounge room, you can still, you know, you might pay it off over five years.

Subscription Model Replaces Sales Calls

SPEAKER_00 6:58

And so I saw the writing on the wall and I moved to the subscription model, and everything changed. It was just the best thing ever. I remember that year my family and I, we went down uh to Sydney for Christmas and I was just seeing the notifications. I shut down my my call calendar and I just saw these notifications. I was on the beach with my family, and it was just I was seeing like 10 sign-ups in a single day. It was absolutely wild, and it just kind of made me realize too that I think when you look at urgent problems versus this would be a nice problem to solve, uh, you know, back to that point, people kind of buy out of hope or certainty. And I just thought to myself, you know, this this I think the sales calls for me they make sense if you've got an unconvincing offer. But if your marketing is good, if you've got engaging content, compelling content, and landing pages that convert, you don't need it. Because buyer behavior now has changed as well. And that's another thing I learned during my journey is that maybe five, six years ago, it's just the norm, people jump on sales calls, but now people just want, they don't want, they want to be able to buy their own way. So if you've got somebody who's got a family or commitments and they've worked, I don't know, eight hours, and you're expecting them to jump on on a Zoom call for 45 minutes, and even if you do sign them, and I think a lot of the sales people, sales boros will probably hate this, but that's great if you can sign that person. But if you handle every objection under the sun and you go around and you're on that and they eventually sign up, they're probably doing it because they're just exhausted and they want to get off the call from you. It's a it's a testament to your sales skill that you've worn that person down rather than the obvious value of that offer. Does does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So you basically move the sales calls to your landing pages, ads, and everything else. There is no need to have people jump on the call, um, spend their time on something that they don't want to actually do. Um and especially, yeah, people like to just buy their uh buy their way in. As you already mentioned, that's that was uh well said.

Vanity Audiences And Solution Buyers

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Um you also said something I want to um talk about that audience size is basically a vanity metric. So you've seen people with huge audiences and no money. Um what do the ones who actually convert have instead? What would you say?

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Well, I think that when you're building an audience is that it's it is a there's a bit of an art. You obviously have to, I think it helps what helped me. I wrote a book and like I actually wrote a book, I didn't just get ChatGPT to write the book for me. I wrote a book in the relationship space and it really positioned me as an authority. And so once I kind of got that bestseller status on Amazon, I put that on all of my marketing funnels, even if it was um so I'd run some traffic directly to the subscription offer. And it's kind of like, well, uh describe the situation that they're in and and articulate that I can actually understand, you know, their pain, what they're facing right now, and that would just go directly to the 67 US a week or the 129 US a week offer. And other traffic I would just run through the low-ticket funnel, which was my book, and that's probably even to this day, it's probably been one of my best low-ticket funnels because someone would buy the book and then on the next page, it'd be like, hey, congrats, thanks for buying the book. Um, by the way, it'll help you if you read it. But for a lot of you, I think it might just end up being a PDF that sits in your inbox and you're never going to read. The sprint course might be for you. And so what I did was I created really short lessons, three or four minute lessons, that had something tactical that would help that man who's trying to reverse that separation. And then at the end of the sprint course, they can activate a free seven-day trial that then just rolls over into the regular weekly membership. And that's how I did it. And I think what I obviously had to have some content that was going out that was targeting people who are just kind of more problem aware, not so much the problem unaware, because the the offer that I work with when it comes to a relationship, everyone's like there's no problem unaware, guys. Like it's very, very simple, right? Their partner has come and said, Hey, I want a divorce, or I don't want to be with you anymore, I'm not attracted to you anymore. I want out, I'm gonna move in with my sister. So they're all problem aware, and you've got to have a bit of content that talks about the why, like why they're actually in that position. But then what I've found, too many people spend way too much time building an audience that's only problem aware, which is why they've got broke people coming through their funnels and their landing pages and on their email list, and not enough of the people that go, hey, that's cool. I already know about this, but tell me what do I get if I work with you? And I think a lot of business owners struggle, not just I think in any space, but I've found especially therapists, because I launched a B2B offer recently, about less than two months ago, and it's helping other therapists build a counseling business like mine and not rely on the unpredictable one-on-one income. And they're all too busy trying to sell therapy. They're they're kind of selling the method rather than the outcome. I think building the audience, that's really what they want. At the end of the day, a lot of people just want to go, hey, what do I do? What do I get if I work with you? And if I work with you, what's going to change in my life? And I think that is way more important. You can have 200 people on your email list that genuinely want to hear from you. And if you can say, hey, you know what? This is a path that we know has worked for many other people. And if you do this, this is going to be the outcome, other than spending, you know, like writing an email to your list every day talking about the problems. And I think that's where a lot of people can build massive audiences because as soon as you throw a bit of content, whether it be an email or a reel on social media about the problem, it's going to resonate with a lot of people. Those followers and those people on your list, you've got them on the list so they actually buy. And I think if you put more content out around the solution, you're gonna you're actually gonna accelerate those people to go from just being problem aware and wanting to have a pity party to actually, you know what, I think I'm gonna pull my credit card out and ask this person to help me solve the problem.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

So would you say that's uh the difference between um the problem aware and solution aware buyers? Because a lot of creators have never thought about the difference between the two. And you are actually making that difference. So um what would you say in more details? Who is this solution aware buyer? So what do you want them to do?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Well, I think the solution aware buyer is they're the they're the people who go, you know what, I want to know what do I get, what are the deliverables? What's actually gonna be there? How is it actually gonna happen? So I think what a lot of people are taught, especially in the in the coaching or service-based industry, they talk about the what, you know, like what it is, what the problem, it's a divorce, it's uh it's bad health. And then they they might talk about the why, the why it matters. But that's half of it. The other side of the coin is the how and then the now. So you want to create momentum, you want content that is like, and this is where I think you can start using, you know, testimonials or like case studies where it's like you talk about this. Hey, if if you're in this kind of situation here, you've probably already done this stuff. So you talk about the things that they've already tried, the counseling, the couples counseling they've already tried, self-help, the alpha male programs that talk about, you know, just respect yourself, King, focus on yourself. There's a lot of that kind of content out there. But what they need to know is, you know what, how do I actually go about lowering emotional like for my offer? How do we actually go about lowering emotional resistance? And what do I actually do now? They want to know, after they've watched 50 different YouTube videos or read 10 new books, they want to know what they can actually say or do now that's gonna improve their situation. And this is where things like, I mean, look, lead magnets are still very good, or you know, MicroMax, something that solves a very narrow problem. What you're better off doing with the solution aware is give them something that it's easy to consume, maybe within about five or ten minutes, that they can implement straight away, and it's gonna solve a very, very narrow problem. But by solving that problem, it almost makes them aware that they desperately need the biggest solution, which is your core offering. So then all of a sudden it's just like, you know what, I've done this thing now, but now I've I'm faced with this, this is really the big problem. Can you help me fix it? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Exactly.

Why Community Beats A Video Library

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Um, you build this as a live community with licensed uh counselors, not a course, not some sort of video library or anything else similar that usually course creators have. So why a community over a course and when a course would be much easier to scale in your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yeah, yeah, look, good, good, good question there. I think like when it comes to, I mean, people don't sign up for a course, they sign up for an outcome. And I guess I hired the reason I hired licensed counselors with psychology degrees. I actually even enrolled in a batch of psych psychology degree in uni myself because I wanted to have a legitimate point of difference. There was a lot of, I think, unqualified life coaches that were running around masquerading as marriage counselors. I didn't want to be one of those. Um, but of course, I had to face the same decision when I was doing my uni, my university degree, I had to uh I face the same decision. I think a lot of business owners do. It's like, well, do I want to be a better counselor, a better coach, or do I want to become a better marketer? Because I saw a lot of people that were around me in the in the space in the industry who were way better counselors, way better psychologists than I was probably ever going to be, were that were making way less money than me. And I didn't want to be one of those. So I decided to go the ladder and go the um, go down the the marketing route. And and what made sense for me, when I first launched Elevated, there was no community. There I didn't even have a Facebook group. It was literally just a course with lessons that people got a login link, and my VA, uh one of my VAs would send out an email on a Sunday night saying, Hey, here's the Zoom links, here's the group, here are the calls for the following week. And it was just group calls, there was no one-on-ones, and that was it. There was no nowhere they could ask questions. The members couldn't actually, unless they connected outside of the groups on Facebook or Instagram or something or Telegram, there was no community, right? They couldn't ask a question. And then when I eventually moved it across to circle, I saw the power of the community can do a lot of the heavy work for you. So rather than just have a course that people go through, they do the lessons, it's there's no ascension, there's no continuity. Because what happens, let's say you've got a hundred videos, 50 videos, other hundred videos. If there's like an end to that and people go, I'm only here for the content, it's not really a course. It's a content library. And then at the end of that, people will just churn. You lose your, you know what I mean? Like you lose your members. So the thing that makes a community different is that I call it the three Bs. They need to believe in your philosophy. You need to have a unique selling proposition, which is what I did with the inception framework. It was like, this is what we do. It's our trademark communication framework and genie sequence and a couple of other things, which they're not gimmicky, they're they're actually grounded in real psychology. But so they have to believe in your philosophy, but then they've got to have a bit of a breakthrough. And this is where I think a lot of business owners who do run courses or even communities, they think that they lose their clients on the you know, on the 12th week or week 26 when the content no, no, they actually lost their clients probably in the first two or three weeks because they didn't actually experience the any any breakthrough, a mini win. You have to engineer, have something that's tangible that within the first two weeks people think, because what they're thinking when they join your course or your community, they're all they want to know is is this gonna work for me? Is anything gonna be different? And if you can create a fast win within the first, ideally within the first two weeks, they believe in your philosophy even more, they get that breakthrough, and you want to make them feel like they belong. And this is the power, then you're when you've got, I think communities and courses work really well, but you have to solve one specific problem. Some business owners out there, they're trying to do everything, they're trying to 10x someone's business, improve their marriage, help them get fit, give them step counts, give them diet. They're trying to solve too many different problems. And the issue is that it's very few people that will care about five, they just want one thing. And it makes your messaging, your positioning in the market, your marketing, and your and your delivery much easier if you're only doing one thing. So, what my team do, they don't they don't help guys who are looking to write their Tinder profiles or short-term dating advice. They're literally guys whose partners have left, and they're most of them are in long-term relationships. And so then when some guys, you know, over in Norway, we've got uh because I advertise worldwide, some guy on the other side of the globe is experiencing a problem and he posts it, other members are going, Hey, you know what, man, this is exactly what happened for me. And I was attending the groups uh and this happened, or I asked a question, and Mick gave me this advice or whatever it might be. And so it just reinforces that belief because they feel supported. And then that way I don't feel like I'm not personally responsible for in fact the members in Elevator, nobody can even DM me. There's no they can tag me in something, but I've got that freedom and I I can jump in because I enjoy jumping in and helping people, not because I feel like I've got like I don't know, we've probably got like over 800 members in there at the moment. But imagine if if those, you know, they're there, because there would be hundreds of people that are trying to DM me. And so that's kind of the way that I've engineered it is that the the group, the community model, does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. And these guys, like I've got members, a bunch of guys that are in there that they're they're still the OGs. Though those first, I don't know, 40, 50 guys that I signed myself on sales calls, uh most of those guys are still in there because if they feel like they belong, well they never want to leave.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Exactly, exactly. That was well

Premium One-To-One Pricing Realities

SPEAKER_01 19:52

said. Um you also mentioned that if you started again, uh you would keep the premium one-on-one access, but only at a very high price point. So with with the core staying scalable, right? So why haven't you switched that premium tier on yet? And what would it take for you?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yeah, yeah, good, good question. Well, basically, I think I'm I made I made the mistake earlier and I'm paying the price for it now. I've got a lead, so I don't meet with all the the counsellors that work for me. I've got like one lead counsellor, and I basically I forgot the fact that he's thinking like a psychologist, he's think thinking like a counselor, not a business owner. And I guess therapists, a lot of therapists believe that the transformation, you know, I mean he's he switched his thinking now because he's seen the proof of it. But in the early days, a lot of therapists think that change can only happen in a one-on-one session. Whereas I believe that clients don't need another hour of talking, they need a better container for change, which is exactly what a community is. And so in the in the early days, I was still doing a few one-on-ones with a with a price I was charging back then, I think $200 uh Australian back then for it. Now it's like 650 US uh an hour, and I still get people that will pay it. It's not, I'm not saying that as a flex, by the way, it's not an ego thing. I'm saying that that's what's possible when you position yourself as an expert. People will, and those people who show up, those guys, they have much more intent. They don't want to just vent on those sessions. And ideally, I just would have kept it like that instead of what I did was I had a a base rate, and then we're like, right, if you want to get a little bit more hands-on support a 30-minute one-on-one, you can pay $129 US a week, and you can have a 30-minute one-on-one. The problem with that is that I guess it's not that scalable. And I've got my guys paid on a contractor thing. So what I've got to factor in now is, you know, obviously ad spend and I mean software is nothing, it's like $100, couple hundred dollars a month. But then you've got to look at your ad spend and then your wages. And I think that's what most a lot of businesses struggle is that they've got their overheads. Whilst obviously I'm not paying commercial rents and a lot of other expenses that. Go. I don't have to, there's no inventory. I don't have to worry about warehouses, housing, stock, and I'm not paying. So obviously, I'm my profit margins are not horrible, but they could be a lot better if I was literally only paying someone 10 hours a week to run 10 group calls rather than more hours a week. So that's if I was to start it over again, it's probably what I would look at doing. And I think I I'm already having those conversations with my staff in terms of phasing out that one-on-one and only having it as like a paid option, like a uh which we've got people can buy additional one-on-ones, and I'd look at essentially removing that what I call pro level or inner circle level support, just so my profit margin is a whole lot better.

Email Workshops That Sell Without Hype

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Um you have an email list of 50,000, 15,000 people. Uh, are you using that uh at the moment? So how how do you promote your products to the email audience if you are doing that?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, great question. Yeah, I am. I wish it was 50,000, but it's only 15, it's only 15,000 at the moment. Um so what I do with that is that I will email that list uh on average anywhere between three and probably three and five times a week is that I'm actually emailing that list. So I write the emails, I don't use ChatGPT or any AI. Um, and we've got a bit of a cadence. So what we do is that once a month I will run, well actually it's probably once every two months, I'll run a workshop on a topic. And it's really simple. I'll write an email out once a month though, and it'll be like, hey, are you are you separated or you're going through a separation but you're still living under the one roof? Or and you walk in on eggshells and you know your partner leaves the room every time you enter the room and it's really awkward, or hey, are you separated but you're still co-parenting your kids together? Or hey, have you gone through a separation because your partner cheated on you? Whatever it might be, I'll just think of a topic that's got to do with relationships around separation. And in that email, I'll just say, Hey, is this you? If you can relate, I'm gonna run a workshop in the next couple of weeks and show you what to do about it. Um, if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, all you're gonna do is reply, I'm in, and we'll send you the details. And of course, we get a bunch of people that reply I'm in. Um, but no surprises, when I send the details out, all I do is I block out uh an hour or 90 minutes on my calendar with a zoom link and I send it out to everyone on the email. It's not just the ones that said I'm in, because some people change their mind and I'm just gonna send everyone. And and then I just simply show up on that Zoom and I talk about the the what it is, uh, why it matters, I talk about how we fix it, and I go, the now, what you need to go away and implement now. And during at the start, in the middle and at the end, I just drop my offer document into the chat and I go, hey, if if you guys have had some fun, you got some value out of this, and you know, this only being you've had fun for the last hour or 90 minutes, imagine how much fun we could have together in the main community. Um, but there's no fake urgency. I don't have a gazillion counselors that are working for me. I've only got I've actually only got four. So the spots are limited. So what I want you to do is a document there, pretty much just has all the details there. If you want in, there's a quick survey down the bottom that's gonna tell us a little bit about your situation, how long you've been in the relationship, blah, blah, blah. And they fill it out. And on the other end of that survey is payment. Collect your payment options. And that's basically it. And that's how we that's how we actually use that. Other times on the emails, I will market the sprint course, which is pretty much hey, if everything you're doing right now is making things worse and pushing your partner further away. I've got a short sprint course, you can binge it in within a couple of hours. It's about the same price as an arm and croissant, but it's probably going to help your relationship. Armand Croissant's probably good for breakfast, but it's not going to help you fix your relationship. You can grab it here, it's only seven bucks, and then they go through that and they post their check-ins and then they can activate their uh, you know, their free trial at the end, which rolls over to the membership. So they're the main things that I actually um and then another one will just be literally an email um sharing something. Hey, this is what Mark was going through when he came to us. His partner was already out, and he's been working with us now, and now I'll have a little happy photo. They're going away on weekends, bit of social proof, and I go, look, we've got uh we've got 19 spots left. We open up 25 spots every month, it's not fake urgency, um, and then basically check it out there. And there's a short loom that I've got on that document as well, which is just basically says, hey, if you're watching this video, you maybe you've been chatting to one of my support staff in the DMs, um, or I don't know, maybe you you're responding to one of the emails, whatever it is, I'm just gonna walk you through in about five minutes. If you can get past your TikTok brain, hang with me for five minutes, I'm gonna walk you through what it is we do, and you can make a decision uh whether or not working with us might be a good fit. And that's it. They watch that and then they do it. So that's pretty much the cadence that I do with the emails, those those three things. That's a great strategy.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

And how do you get people on that email list at the moment? Is it only through social media or ads as well? Or how does it look?

SPEAKER_00 26:43

May mainly paid ads. Uh so yeah, so I've always like I've only got about 2,000, uh just a bit over 2,000 contacts on my uh followers on my on my social. Um I think I think there's probably more on my uh elevated business uh Facebook business page, but uh just in terms of my social, uh my Instagram handle, I think there's a bit over 2,000 uh contacts on there. So it's mainly through and I'll put out a bit of organic stuff. I don't do it every day. Um I probably I go through periods where I do it, I block out some time, and then shit happens, life happens, I just don't, I don't film that real. And I've found, as I said, a less than probably about six weeks ago, I launched a B2B offer, which is for therapists and help them get there first. So I've got a a slightly different acquisition strategy for that where they go through still from paid ads, and some of it's organic. And what I do is is they're they're longer, they're not like the sprint course, they're about half an hour long, and I talk about a bit of mindset shifting content to get therapists thinking a bit differently about their business. And then the fourth video is a half content, half sales pitch. But what they're doing is they've got five days to go through the content and they have to post their feedback, otherwise they get removed and they go to what we call the naughty corner. Um, and pretty much what I say on there is a look, we make it really clear, uh, because this what we're doing, this community is a filter for implementation readiness. And so that's kind of how I go about growing things like the email list and getting getting people into my world is is a series of like almost self-qualifying funnels, if that makes sense. So it'll be like they go through that there, and when they when they buy that low ticket product, then it's like, hey, how tell me how many people on your email list? Are you using any any automations? Are you using landing pages or traditional web pages? What's your current monthly revenue? And they submit that. Um, or with the relationship offer, it's like, hey, tell me is it a short quiz? Which best describes your situation? You know, you're already broken up, or she's left it left within three months, over six months, any kids involved, what have you tried? They submit their details, and then that's just how we're growing that email this year.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Nice, nice. That's great.

Boundaries When Clients Share Pain

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Um, let's step out of the business for a second. So you were building an early version of this while your own marriage was on the line. So, what did it cost you so far doing both at once? The business and the marriage?

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Yeah, yeah. I mean, good question. I think it was like my wife at the time was like, you know what, our daughters don't care. They don't care about property portfolios or share portfolios and all the crazy shit and they're investing in the crypto and all the stuff that I was literally trying to do everything at once. They just want to spend time with their dad because I got to a point where I was we weren't actually weren't we weren't in this house, we're in a different house back then. But um, I started getting irritated if my wife wanted to come into my office and because we, you know, we we both work from home and my kids and they just wanted to spend time with me. And I just kind of looked at it and I was I was treating my wife like an employee. And she was yeah, she was just like, look, I just I can't do this anymore. You know, I don't want to wake up 30 years down the track um like my mother and miserable when she's like I'm fucking miserable with you. Because her her parents have gone through some some relationship difficulty. I mean they've managed to to reconcile fortunately now themselves. So that was kind of it. And and I just kind of had to realise like at the end of the day, did I want to what did I value more? Did I did I want to be if I have all the success in the world, but did I want to be uh single? Did I want to be divorced and seeing my kids every second week? And and I just think sometimes it's human nature. We don't we don't want to course correct until something's already broken. And I was no different you know, it kind of took me the point where you know your wife says, Look, I'm done. Maybe I need to move out be from like, Wait, hang on, what's it's it's cliche, I know, but um it doesn't feel cliche when you're in it. It's only afterwards you realize we you you val you value what's in your life, you only want to fix it when it's broken. Because otherwise you just keep you just keep doing whatever the hell you want to do because you think you're doing the right thing.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Yeah, it's unbelievable. It's the same for all areas in the life. Like we only appreciate things when we lost them. So um but yeah, you you said that very well. So uh it's better to keep focus on before it's actually broken. And I mean, you're here to actually help with people with that, so that's nice as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yeah, that's the other thing. It just gives it just gives you purpose. I I just genuinely feel you know, like I when you get the emails, you know, and occasionally, I mean fortunately I I don't get too much of it, you get you get a little bit of hate every now and then, but that's just it. When you put yourself out there, it's just you know, as I said, you just gotta remember you you're never gonna get uh criticized by someone who's doing more than you. It's always someone doing doing less than you. And when I get the emails from people saying you've literally saved my marriage or you kept my family together, that's just what drives me now. Yeah, that's what makes it worthwhile. Nice, nice.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

You also carry other uh men's separations every day now. So guys blocked on everything but uh email houses on the market and stuff. So how do you hold all of that without pulling you back into your own worst memory, let's say?

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Yeah, yeah. I think you've gotta have a bit of you've just got to have some firm boundaries, and I think it's it's easy to fall into the pattern when especially when you do have a an evergreen offer where people can sign up seven days a week uh on it, and I think you've you've got to be, I think, just disciplined enough to and and have those boundaries and so people understand because to be honest, I mean, like I I don't I don't have my calendars open for like I've said before, I have people, most of them are in the US, but a lot of guys in the UK as well that will pay 650 US or 300 US for a 30-minute session or 650 for me. As cool as that is, like, I mean, I don't have my calendars open on the weekend. And as far as I'm concerned, there's none of those guys, you know, it they can wait till Monday, they can wait between Monday and Friday. So especially I think when I've got a member and who joins that might be paying the 67 um uh a week, is that you know what? You know that that guy's going through a hard time in his life right now, but you kind of got to remind yourself that none of those guys paying that weekly subscription, none of those guys are are worth um then none of them are actually paying anywhere near enough money to grab your time away from my daughters or my wife on the weekends when they're doing their they're doing their dance or their acrobatic competitions. And so I think yeah, the challenge is is having that distance from the business because otherwise yeah, unfortunately we hear some really sad things that go on with these guys in their relationships. And I think if anything, on a on a positive note, it's a reminder that I have to keep practicing what I preach. And I think the way that I do that is is really just I said following my own advice in the community, and a big part of that I think is the boundaries and and making my wife feel heard, making her feel prioritized and valued and validated and not slipping into that uh you know, into that thing where it's easy to get disconnected and distracted by these things and actually just being present when it matters.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

The Kitchen Table Test For Offers

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Um two quick ones before we wrap. Uh I always ask people these. So uh for someone who has the expertise but hasn't launched anything yet, what's the first move for them? What would you say? So what just like just launched an offer like in in in business or yeah, yeah. So they have the expertise as you did, and they are waiting for their first move, basically. What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 34:11

So the first thing is is that um I think you've really gotta you've gotta stress test that offer and not get emotionally. This is the thing. I think it's like if you look in the uh let's just use the coaching or the the therapy space, um, yeah, people don't want the the modality they don't want like here's the thing uh you could you could do breath work, you could do meditation, you could not watch TV for an hour before you go to bed, you could wear those weird glasses that have got you know the yellow lenses that block the blue light. You could do all those things, right? Which takes a bit of discipline and a bit of effort and a bit of time to get a good night's sleep. Um, you could do all those things, or you could just take a Valium and you know, watch Netflix to midnight, take a Valium 10 minutes before bed, and you know that you're just gonna go to sleep. And so what I th I would encourage anyone before they go on launch is think about does your offer have enough hope or is it more aligned with certainty? You have to be able, as I said, you have to be able to have an urgent problem to sell and and basically just stress test it. Like honestly, something that is 80% good enough on one page. And I would say to someone, you need to pass what I call the kitchen table test. If you could get one bit of paper, you know, a bit of paper and put down your offer, slide it across to someone across on the kitchen table, you can't say a word, you can't talk. The person has to read it and they either nod and go, yep, I'm in, I'm gonna do it, or no, don't want to do it, don't understand it. And you can't go, oh I know, but I mean this. I want to clarify. That will stop a lot of business owners describing, you know, I'm gonna help you regulate your nervous system better. I'm gonna help fucking people don't want your nervous system regulation. People want what's on the other side. What is having a regulated nervous system gonna give me? Is it gonna give me better sleep? Is it gonna help me, you know, I all they want to know is I'm 35 years old and why why the fuck do I have erectile dysfunction? Why can't I sleep? Why is my partner doesn't want to have sex with me? They want to know, hey, if I do this thing, what's the outcome? So I think I would say to any business owner is look at the urgency, look at how clearly you can communicate. Here's what's gonna happen when you work with me, and then just simply send it out, send an email, send it out, and then you will see because it at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what you think of the offer or your mate or even what I think of the offer. What matters is what the market thinks of it. And so, as I said, it doesn't have to be because otherwise people will spend and they can. I've already seen it with some of my relatively new um B2B offer with therapists that have been stuffing around for two months trying to decide on a niche versus the person who just puts it out there in the email on a document, gets eyeballs on it and gets real-time feedback to validate it. And if it doesn't, if it doesn't have legs, you pivot and you and you and you basically go again. Because it's yeah, something I say it's 80% good enough is better out there in the world with someone's eyeballs on it. There's something that's you're refining for six months, wanting to make perfect, that nobody sees and it's buried in your desktop.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

And for someone who is, let's say, two years in, uh he's stuck at the same revenue as before, what would you have them change first in their business or think about what to change?

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah, well, I think at the end of the day, you've kind of got to look at the demand, and and this is something that I feel whenever you usually see if somebody has been and they know what they're doing, right? Let's just assume that they've got um uh you know, they understand a bit about sales or or marketing, and they're just kind of stuck at that no matter what they're doing. I think it's worth actually testing a different audience, a different offer. Most of the time, whenever I see someone who goes from say they're stuck for a couple of years making 20, 10k, 20k a month, whatever it is, and then all of a sudden you see that they're doing a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollar months, it's usually it's not one, there's no magic funnel or uh an automation follow-up system or a sales script or you know, or an ad or a bit of marketing copy that is all of a sudden just gonna like turn uh an average offer into one that prints. Usually it's just a better offer. Uh, you probably see it and you probably see you, you see landing page, you think this is shit. This copy is terrible. Um, but that person's making a lot of money is just because the offer's better. There's more demand for it. And it's the likelihood, and that's what I would say to anyone who's kind of stuck, is ask yourself, what is the what's the perceived likelihood? Pretty much when you strip back marketing and you look at any offer in its rawest form, it's pretty much this. It's like, you know what? It's desired outcome without the thing that people don't want to do. It's the making $100,000 a month without having to do sales calls or you know, lose the weight without having to eat chicken and broccoli. It's it's usually desired outcome, yet minus that thing. And that's pretty much the the formula for most successful marketing. And the thing that stops people, people will pay more, as I said earlier in the chat, is certainty. And that's why people will pay uh a plastic surgeon $20,000 to get liposuction, and some fitness coaches online struggle to sell a $300 fitness package because it might take someone six months or a year to lose that weight, and it's it's questionable, will I actually reach the result? Whereas they know they go spend that money, and anethosis goes and puts them to sleep and they wake up 40 pounds lighter. And so that's why they'll they'll pay a whole lot more money. So that is is probably what I'd recommend. If you're stuck, um I would be looking at what is the the perceived effort that somebody believes they're gonna have to take to get that result, and what is the is the perceived likelihood. So the likelihood of achieving the desired outcome needs to be high and the perceived effort needs to be relatively low. Beautiful, beautiful.

Who To Help And Where To Find Scott

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Scott, this was great. Thank you very much for coming. Uh, where do you want people to find you and who's the right person to come looking?

SPEAKER_00 39:46

So look, basically, if if you're a guy and you're um and your relationship is, you know, has seen better days, whether you're going through, if you're looking at either reversing a separation or ideally preventing one from happen, hit me up at uh on on Instagram. My I'm not sure if it's in the chat here or whether you'll post Dominic afterwards, it's just I am Scott Gardner. I've got like an old one which is like a coach Scotty G, which is like I haven't put anything on that, on that account for like over a year. Uh, and that was pretty much when I had the the fitness business. So yes, this is I am Scott Gardner um on Instagram. Or if you're if you're a therapist too and you want to know how I basically created a seven-figure counseling business in under two years, hit me up as well, and I can show you, I can help you grow a business just like mine and replace that unpredictable one-on-one income with a um with a recurring revenue model. Thank you very much, Scott.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Uh that's the show. If you got something out of it, come and see what we do at datadrivenmarketing.co. Uh, I'm Dominic. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.