​Click here to read the (prettier) web version.​

76% of people earning $50,000 or less live paycheck to paycheck.¹

For 20 years I earned way below that figure. Actually, I didn’t even have a “paycheck”—I was a gigging musician with no idea what money was coming in when.

So why did I stick at it so long?

Well, I believed that financial success was reserved for people who were willing to sacrifice their wellbeing… Or their integrity… Or both.

And I was unwilling to make that trade.

In this post, I’m going to save you at least that much. Most people never learn what I’m about to teach you—and so live their whole lives at the mercy of other people’s decisions.
​

The Old Way: Money or Your Life

My father set a strong example of a traditional work ethic.

He was an insurance broker, and he never denies that his work was enormously stressful. But he did well financially. My father had plenty of evidence that sacrificing wellbeing for material gain was worthwhile. So it made sense for him to encourage the same behaviour in me.

But to me it always felt off.

“In this world of infinite possibilities,” I wondered, “can’t it be possible to get paid and feel good?”

My world was very different to the one my dad grew up in. There was a PC in my infant school classroom which, though it was basic, stood as a symbol of the new options that would open up for my generation as we matured.

Still, not a single person encouraged me to “go my own way” in life. Fortunately, I had just enough of a “fuck you” streak in me to decide I was going to become a pro musician.

But that “fuck you” streak was eventually compromised.

I remember a conversation with my dad over his favourite modest lunch of ham & cheese rolls.

“You can’t play only rock & metal music, Dan,” he told me. “How will you pay rent? I know you don’t want to live here forever.”

“I’ll make it work,” I said. “I’ll find a way. I’ll never sell out.”

Cut to: 6 months later I was performing “Build Me Up Buttercup” at someone’s wedding.

Because wedding gigs paid, and metal gigs didn’t.

For 15 years after that, I convinced myself that what I was doing was different to the “rat race”. But in reality, the only difference was that I was working more and earning less than pretty much everyone I knew. I was sacrificing my wellbeing just like everyone else—in fact, probably even more so.

But there were examples of musicians who weren’t selling out, who weren’t compromising their integrity, who didn’t ever play “Build Me Up Buttercup”! And who appeared to have their wellbeing intact…

I desperately tried to spot the difference between myself and those other players.

Some of them were more skilled than I was, sure. But a lot of them weren’t. Of course, they came up on different scenes to mine. These were the only substantial differences I could see.

Many times I doubted my life choices.

“Would I have been better off in employment after all?” I wondered. Well, probably not…
​

The Danger of Being Employed

The average wage increase among major employers from 2020 to 2021 was just 3%. Meanwhile, inflation was at 6.5%.² So in real terms everyone’s pay was cut. (Statistically speaking, you’re probably in this category.)

And in a culture whose top priority is getting, having and being more, this creates a downward spiral for most individuals:

1. You experience a lack of correspondence between the effort you put into your work and the money you get out.
2. You stop putting in so much effort, which guarantees you’ll remain at the same pay grade.
3. You spend more and more of the little you do earn on cheap pleasures (due to lack of fulfilment).
4. You become more and more dependent on your modest paycheck.
5. You become needy, which makes it even harder to find opportunities.
6. You watch your self-worth go down the toilet.
7. You rely more and more on cheap pleasures.
8. You interpret any and all solutions as “too good to be true”—you feel imprisoned by the system, with no hope for a better future.

Perhaps this is a bleaker picture than you’d paint for yourself, but I suspect you can relate on some level.

But maybe, at some point in that journey, you tried to get a “side hustle” going. And unless you’ve been living under a rock this past decade, you’ll have considered social media as part of your strategy. But if you ventured onto any online platforms without some inside info, you’ll have encountered some problems:

1. You had no idea what to say
2. You had no idea how to say it
3. You had no idea how to get people interested in your content
4. You had no idea what you’d sell them even if they had their wallets out

In fact, “monetization” of a social media effort probably looked like a dark art to you. (It did to me, too.)

But I have good news: that inside info I mentioned does exist.
​

Social Media Secrets

It was only long after I’d given up on my teenage dream and started considering what I’d do next with my life that I finally saw what was different about myself and those other musicians I envied. They were marketing themselves (or someone else was doing it for them).

I’d been so naive! I’d really assumed that if I just got good enough on my instrument, opportunities would materialize out of thin air! I never considered that those successful musicians I envied may have made deliberate efforts to make other people aware of their value.

But when I started the next great phase of my life—creating my one-person internet business—I was determined to never make that mistake again.

So I learned about marketing.

Now, as with anything else in life that can bring substantial benefits, I found there was a learning curve here. And trying to get up that curve without guidance could’ve taken me a lifetime of trial and error.

But once I found that guidance, the benefits became real:

• I learned to grow my audience on demand
• I learned to marry my income to my impact
• I learned to marry my personal growth to the growth of my business
• I learned to find deep creative fulfilment
• I learned how to start building my legacy—my great contribution to humanity that will continue long after my death

I’m going to give you that inside info right now. And once you read it, you’ll understand how I do $10K months talking about my passion without ever doing cold outreach.

The system I’m about to teach you enables me to simply give value for free, educate my readers, then sit back and watch dream clients reach out to me (then pay me thousands of dollars to help them solve their problems).

Permission Marketing

Legendary author Seth Godin coined the term for what I’m about to teach you: permission marketing. It’s the exact opposite of dressing up like a clown, spinning a brightly coloured sign around and blocking people’s paths as they’re trying to get to work.

This shit is powerful.

Campaign Monitor reports an ROI of up to 4400% from permission marketing via email. They attribute this high return to the fact that recipients have already shown interest in the writer’s content.³

Griffith University found that permission marketing… ensures that marketing messages are only sent to individuals who have explicitly opted in, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates compared to traditional marketing methods.⁴

And research from Oxford Academic shows that permission marketing reduces the associated costs of acquiring new customers.⁵

But my favourite thing about permission marketing is that it aligns perfectly with the core spiritual principle of mutual benefit. It creates win/win arrangements between business owners and their audiences (which is all anyone with common sense has time for in 2024).

Now, if this sounds too good to be true then you’re just like everyone else who hears about it for the first time. But I’ve led over 1000 students through this territory and I see the same obstacles over and over again. Most of them are mental and/or emotional, and they can be dissolved. (I covered these in last week’s post under “The 9 Most Common Blocks For Social Media Beginners”.)

Here’s the thing: there’s only so much I can do to convince you that this works. If you really want to know, you’re going to have to try it for yourself.

And yes, it takes time to set up. Yes, it takes time to see results. But the alternative is to remain an employee or freelancer—at the mercy of someone else’s decisions.

You’ll also have to deal with having no-one in your offline life who understands what you’re doing. As much as you can find wonderful support networks around what I’m teaching here online, the truth is that most people in the world aren’t aware of this stuff yet. Be prepared for people to call you crazy. (Then be prepared for them to stare at you in disbelief when you show them how little “work” you do for your $10K months.)
​

How to Build Your Online “Stealth Marketing Funnel”

A “marketing funnel” is a representation of the journey a business creates for prospective customers.

Like any other funnel, it’s wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. This shape represents every business because there will always be more people at the top (encountering your business) than at the middle (learning about your business). Then there’ll be fewer people still at the bottom (purchasing from your business).

Funnels take all kinds of forms, but the one I’m showing you today is special because the people in it don’t feel like they’re being marketed to. Because, in traditional terms, they’re not.

In the stealth funnel, your prospective customer has—at each stage—volunteered to receive more information from you.

There are 3 levels in this funnel:

The top level is social media. At this level, first of all, your prospect has signed in to their social media account and scrolled their “for you” page. Here, they’re volunteering to see content recommendations which, hopefully, the social media algorithm makes appropriate to their interests.

For example, the first time you saw my content was likely on X. And you’d likely given the algorithm signals that you were interested in spirituality, online business, or both. So it showed you a post of mine. If you liked my post, it would have shown you more of them. If you followed me, it would have shown you more still.

At some point, you decided you liked what I was writing enough to read my newsletter, which is why you’re here. At this stage, you’re in the middle of my funnel.

Notice that I never asked you to subscribe. I have a link to my website in my bio on X, beside which is a brief description of what you stand to gain from reading the posts I host there. And I link to those same posts underneath my tweets (again with a description of what you stand to gain from reading).

At this point, you’ve given me the privilege of guiding you through my deeper ideas in a longer format.

If you really, really like what you read here, then maybe you’ll decide you want more help from me. At that point, you might pay me to help solve your problems.

But here’s the thing—and this is very important: I don’t care whether you do.

Remember, the funnel is narrowest at the bottom. I don’t expect to ever even hear from 99% of people who read my content.

But the 1% of you that I do hear from make my business profitable. And this enables me to keep sharing this information for free, which helps 1000s of people and—hopefully—helps realize the utopia my 50-year plan is aimed at creating.

In traditional marketing, value is kept from the prospect until they part with their cash. They’re given just enough information at each level of the funnel to get them to the next, and the business owner’s goal with this information is simply to convince them that the products and services on offer are worth the price tag.

But the scale of the internet has enabled an entirely different business model. Business owners can now reach so many people that they no longer have to hold back their value. They simply share their most valuable knowledge and expertise freely, then serve the few people who really want to go deep on it. (There’s only so much you can teach in a newsletter before you have to move to a course or coaching format.)

Here’s exactly how to build this funnel for yourself:
​

Top-of-Funnel: Social Media Content

I posted a full guide on how to win on social media last week. Check that out, follow the steps, then return here.
​

Middle-of-Funnel: Newsletter

9/10 people who come through the programs I teach in ask the same question at some point:

“Should I wait till I have followers to start my newsletter?”

The answer is that you totally can wait. But there’s no correct time to start your newsletter. Rather, it’s about time and energy. If writing social media content is challenging you enough right now, stick with that until you feel ready to take on more.

When you are ready, a newsletter is the perfect thing to tackle next.

As I explained in the post I linked just above, writing is the perfect content type to begin with. And this is true whether it’s short or long form.

Why?

Because audio and videorequire at least 2 or 4X the effort to produce, respectively.

Plus, unless you can improvise spoken pieces that hit all the points you want to cover, every type of content begins with a written script anyway.

Another vital element of a newsletter is that it gives you a more solid connection with your audience.

If you write exclusively on social media but then you get banned, your audience is gone.

But if you write a good newsletter that gives your audience a reason to give you their email addresses? Now you can stay in touch with those people until the end of the internet.

Your newsletter is your opportunity to roll out the red carpet for your readers. If writing to them on social media is taking them for coffee, writing to them through your newsletter is taking them to dinner.

Here’s the exact process I use to make my newsletter as valuable as possible:
​

0. A Reminder

Aim for a 1/10 quality. As mentioned in the article I linked above, I know you’re never actually going to publish anything that’s a 1/10. But if you aim for a 1, you’ll end up at a 5. This is how we get you doing the reps without your inner perfectionist interfering.
​

1. Idea Capture

Keep a running note of topics you feel inspired to go deep on. Random thoughts, short-form posts you want to expand on, ideas you find in books—everything.

Some of these you’ll never use, but if you note 10 ideas you’re bound to find one that’ll get your creative juices flowing.
​

2. Core Idea

Write a short paragraph, expressing the main thing you wish to communicate in your post.

Here’s the core idea I started this post with:

People love to buy stuff but they hate being sold to. “Permission marketing” (a la Seth Godin) is the best way to create sustainable income in 2024. And the best model for permission marketing is the “stealth funnel”—in which social media content leads to long-form articles, which educate readers to the point that they’re ready to get value from your products and services. You’re giving them huge value at every step, always respecting their time, and demonstrating that your paid products and services will blow their freaking minds. It’s win/win all the way.
​

3. Title Ideas

Now, brainstorm just a few ideas and decide on a “working title” for your post.

Note the difference between a title and a working title. The actual title of your post is the single most important piece of writing you’ll do, but we’ll get to that.

You’re just looking for 4–6 words that represent your core idea.

~

Examples from this post:

• How to Create Your Own Clients Online
• How to Make Dream Clients Come to You
• How to Sell Without Selling
• Do This to Stop Worrying About Money
• Stop Worrying About Money
• How to Create Your Own Customers

💡 A word on “clickbait”: the idea of creating seductive headlines for content has a bad reputation because sites like BuzzFeed take it too far. Specifically, they make promises in their headlines that their articles don’t deliver on. But if you can deliver on a seductive headline, that’s called something else: value.​
​

4. Reader Identification

Now, it’s time to get inside your reader’s head.

The good news is that your reader is your past self—so you know them very well.

Think back 1–10 years to a time when your life was worse than it is today. Remind yourself of what you were like back then.

Now, brainstorm the problems you were facing, things you were confused about, specific issues you needed guidance on, etc.

Many people at this point ask “why so negative?” Simple: if your readers don’t have any problems to solve, they don’t need you. We’ll get to solutions later.

Be specific and exhaustive here. List as many things as you can think of.

I’m going to paste my reader in below, but before I do, a note: you may not fit the description below. Yet you’re here reading my newsletter! How does this happen?

Think of the list below as the centre of a black hole. It’s the point at which the gravitational pull is strongest. My newsletter should be irresistible to the past version of myself. But that doesn’t mean it’s trash to everyone else.

Writing for one specific person gives your posts focus. Some of my readers will be dealing with all the problems on the list below. Some of my readers might be dealing with none of them. But if I don’t write this list, my newsletter is for nobody.

~

My reader:

A 25-year-old male who’s looking to solve the following pressing issues in his life:

• He’s tried self-help practices like weight training, meditation, journaling but has been unable to stick with them.
• He’s seen a glimpse of good results but it’s not been enough to convince him to prioritize self-improvement in his life.
• He earns above $30,000 per year.
• He’s highly interested in personal growth.
• He buys courses to learn new stuff.
• He wants to overperform at what he does.
• He wants to be at his best.
• He won’t believe in what I’m saying unless I give him great social proof and/or something practical to do that he can turn into a tangible win.
• He wants the advice he takes to be proven to work.
• He wants to be a successful entrepreneur.
• He believes he is driven but he’s lacking the peace of mind or self-control to keep his emotions from getting in the way.
• He is overwhelmed and feels like he’s losing control of his life.
• He feels he doesn’t have enough time to do everything he needs/wants to do.
• He feels he doesn’t know where to start with his goals
• He finds it difficult to make decisions and cope with challenges.
• He wants to feel more in control of his life.
• He wants to feel less anxious and worried.
• He wants to be able to make decisions easily.
• He wants to be able to cope with challenges.
• He wants to be calm.
• He’s constantly worrying about the future and is unable to relax.
• He finds it difficult to think clearly and enjoy life.
• He’s unhappy with his body.
• He takes things personally.
• He’s easily frustrated.
• He uses unhealthy coping mechanisms like junk food, video games, porn, booze and drugs.
• He argues with loved ones and finds it difficult to get along with others.
• He wants to feel less angry and irritable.
• He wants to be able to communicate effectively.
• He wants better relationships.
• He doesn’t get enough sleep, exercise or healthy foods.
• He’s often fatigued.
• He experiences frequent headaches and other health problems.
• He drinks alcohol at least 2 nights a week.
• He wants to feel more energetic, have more stamina, and be able to function at his best.
• He finds it almost impossible to keep his word to himself.
• He struggles with doubt and self-loathing.
  ​

4. Value Generation

This is where you guarantee that your post is worth something to your reader.

Brainstorm as many things as you can think of under the following categories, relevant to your core idea and working title.

1. Problems (things your reader experienced as difficulties in their life before finding your post)
2. Goals (aspirations and ambitions which your reader either has already, or will want to take up once they hear about them)
3. Obstacles (things that will get in your reader’s way on their journey from their problems to the achievement of their goals)
4. Benefits (good things that will appear in the reader’s life after they achieve the goals)
5. Objections (genuine arguments or limiting beliefs the reader may hold in opposition to the positive change you’re trying to help them make)
6. Stories (from your own life or other people’s, which illustrate the transformation you’re representing)
7. Research (from high-quality, peer-reviewed scientific papers, which support your point of view)
8. Processes (actionable steps which lead the reader from the problems to the benefits)

This may look like a lot. Don’t worry if you can’t find ideas for every section right away. And don’t worry if you can’t distinguish clearly between similar-sounding sections like “problems” and “obstacles” at first. This will come with experience.

~

Here are some examples from my value generation phase for this post:

1. Problems: worried about money, tried social media already and failed, monetization seems like a dark art
2. Goals: marketing with integrity, knowing what works to grow income, making positive contribution to humanity
3. Obstacles: self-doubt, feels of having nothing of value to say/sell, doesn’t know how to create good social media content
4. Benefits: income is attached to positive impact on other people, business is vehicle for personal growth, no more living paycheck to paycheck
5. Objections: “marketing is manipulative whichever way you approach it”, “I’m not a creative person”, “social media is fake”
6. Stories: me as teenaged musician
7. Research: real-world effectiveness of permission marketing, power of readers opting in, cost-effectiveness
8. Processes: how to build your “stealth funnel”

💡 Pro tip: ChatGPT is amazing as an assistant for this phase of your newsletter-writing process. Tell it about your reader, then ask it to generate ideas for each of the 8 categories of value generation. I’ll share my exact prompts with you in my upcoming free course, Freetirement Foundations.​
​

5. Outlining

This is where you take all the valuable ideas you generated in the previous section and arrange them into a narrative.

All successful writers use a predetermined structure **as a guide. Without one, it’s too easy to go on tangents and lose your reader’s interest.

I call mine the LETSGO writing framework:

1. Lead (grab attention with a compelling statistic, personal story, or both)
2. Enemy (detail everything you’re against: faulty common perspectives, cultural norms, outdated ideas, etc.)
3. Transition (inspire hope)
4. Solution (describe your better way of seeing things, your winning theory)
5. Gamify (tell your reader exactly how to do things in your new and better way, guide them to a win in their direct experience)
6. Offer (tell them ways they can get further assistance from you)

~

Here’s the outline I created for this post:

LEAD

• 76% of people earning $50,000 or less live paycheck to paycheck.¹
• For 20 years I earned way below that figure, and didn’t even have a “paycheck”—I was a gigging musician with no idea what money was coming in when.
• Why did I stick at it so long? Well, I believed that financial success was reserved for people who did work that cost them their wellbeing…
  • Dad

ENEMY

• But then I learned that most of those people were struggling financially too!
  • The average wage increase among major employers from 2020 to 2021 was just 3%. Meanwhile, inflation was at 6.5%.² So in real terms everyone’s pay was cut. Statistically speaking, you’re probably in that category.
  • But in a culture whose top priority is getting, having and being more, this creates a downward spiral for most individuals:
    • visual?
      • Lack of correspondence between inputs and outputs
      • Feeling betrayed by the system
      • Spending a lot on coping due to lack of fulfilment
      • Need the tiny paycheck even more
      • Neediness makes it harder to find opportunities
      • Self-worth goes down the toilet
      • Coping increases
      • Solutions sound too good to be true
• Now, if you’ve found yourself falling into that sinkhole then maybe, at some point, you tried to get a “side hustle” going. And unless you’ve been living under a rock this past decade, you’ll have considered social media as part of your strategy. But if you ventured onto any of those platforms without some inside info, you’ll have encountered some problems:
  • No idea what to say
  • No idea how to say it
  • No idea how to get engagement
  • No idea what to sell
    • In fact, monetization probably looked like a dark art to you.

TRANSITION

• Good news: that inside info I mentioned does exist.
  • Social media platforms are designed to be so inviting—so “for everyone”—that 99% of people live with a dangerous assumption. Which is that if you simply make good content you’ll get millions of likes. This could not be further from the truth.
  • As with anything else in life that can bring substantial benefits, there’s a learning curve here. And trying to get up that curve without guidance could take a lifetime of trial and error. But once I found that guidance, the benefits became real:
    • audience growth on demand
    • unification of impact and income
    • continued personal growth with my business as the vehicle
    • a life of my own design
    • creative fulfilment
    • legacy
  • Best of all, I’m going to give you that inside info right now. And once you read it, you’ll understand how I do $10K months talking about my passion without ever doing cold outreach.

SOLUTION

• Permission Marketing
  • Legendary author Seth Godin coined the term for what I’m about to teach you: permission marketing. It’s the exact opposite of wearing a clown suit, spinning a brightly coloured sign around and blocking people’s path as they’re trying to get to work.
  • “Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them” - Seth Godin
  • This shit is POWERFUL (research)
• If you don’t think this can work for you then you’re just like everyone else. But I’ve led over 1000 students through this territory and I see the same obstacles over and over again. Most of them are mental and/or emotional, and they can be dissolved:
  • Balancing attention tactics with integrity
    • “The wisest man in history”
  • Hates being sold to and so hates the idea of selling (sleazy, inauthentic)
    • Doesn’t want to annoy people. No-one even wants to like a post—why would they buy?
  • Lack of patience/persistence
  • Doesn’t have anything of value to say/sell
  • Perceived market saturation
    • You are the niche
  • Fear of rejection
  • Fear of failure
  • Don’t know how to create trust
  • Doesn’t know how to create good content [link to last week NL]
  • Doesn’t know how to get content seen [plug foundations]
  • Other commitments
  • Tech
• There’s only so much I can do to convince you. The best way by far for you to test this hypothesis is to experiment with what I’m about to teach you. In other words, take action and gather evidence for or against what I’m saying. Don’t just try to passively “figure it out” without making any real-world efforts. Why? Because our culture still has no context for what I’m talking about here. The evidence for these tactics is small but it is potent.

GAMIFY

• How to Build Your Online “Stealth Funnel” (And Sell Without Selling)
  • funnel visualization
    • content
      • link to last week NL
    • newsletter
      • my system step-by-step
    • products/services
      • draw from 240 steps

OFFER

• Coaching

💡 If you’re really studying what I’m doing here, you’ll notice that not all points from my value generation phase made it to my outline phase—and not all points from my outline phase made into the actual post.

My guiding principle for what makes it into my final draft is this: I will guide my reader through the promised transformation as concisely as possible. In other words, I’ll give you everything you need to know and do to get the result and no more. This is a highly skilled endeavour—I’ll be refining it for the rest of my life. Remember, aim for a 1/10 in the beginning.
​

6. Drafting

This is the part most would consider to be the actual writing in this writing process.

I used to rush through the previous stages I’ve detailed here, feeling like they were just preliminary. But actually, they’re just as important if not more so than your drafting phase.

Why?

Because if your outline is trash, your draft will be trash.

And if your value generation is trash, your outline will be trash.

And if your reader identification is trash, your value generation will be trash.

The most important thing in this kind of writing is that you deliver ideas that are important to the reader.

The more time I spend on everything that comes before my draft, the easier my drafting phase goes—and the more powerful the finished product is.

2 drafts is adequate for me these days, but at the beginning of my journey I’d often do 3, sometimes even 4.

Expect this to all be messy and time-consuming in the early stages.
​

7. Title Revision

Now you’ve finished writing, you’re in the best position to do the most important piece of writing in the whole process: the title.

My newsletters average a 45% open rate. Other people’s average as low as 18%.

To get an idea of what works:

1. Go to YouTube
2. Search for one of your working title ideas
3. If you don’t get good results right away, click “filters” in the top right, then under “SORT BY” click “View count”
4. Look for videos that have over 100K views
5. Note title and thumbnail text that stands out to you as something you could edit into a title for your own thumbnail
6. Notice that the most effective options almost always include a problem or benefit that would be relevant to the target audience
7. Try to make your title seductive, but NEVER compromise your integrity

As discussed above, you never want to make a promise in your title that your article itself can’t keep.

Go to dangoldfield.com and scroll down to see titles I’ve used. Notice one thing in particular: though I’ve been writing about money recently, you won’t find anything about getting rich or becoming a millionaire in my titles. Because I’m not either of those things yet.

What I am, though, is someone who earns a comfortable living fulfilling my life’s purpose—on my own terms.

I’ll be writing about how to earn your first million later. (Hold me to that.)
​

8. Editing

In editing, I follow a simple checklist:

• Make sure headline and Lead section target a big problem and promise a lower-than-expected effort of solving it
• Confirm I’ve delivered what I promised
• Create a graphic visualization of the core idea for featured image
• Include other emotion-provoking or educational images
• Check links
• Check spelling & grammar (I use LanguageTool)​
  ​

9. Publishing

For beginners, I strongly recommend Beehiiv (affiliate link). Beehiiv is free up to 2,500 subscribers.

It will send your posts out as emails and host them as “evergreen” content on a simple no-code website.

You’ll then promote one of your hosted posts once per day in a comment under relevant social media posts. **This is how you gain interested subscribers.

You can, of course, build your own website and host your posts there as blog articles. If you have web design/development knowledge then you know more about this than I do and you’ll be able to throw something together quickly.

I built my website in Webflow (affiliate link). It took me around 50 hours to learn the platform from scratch and put the site together (with a lot of help from ChatGPT.)

My emails are sent from ConvertKit. It’s less user-friendly than Beehiiv, but it has more advanced options.

💡 Don’t think too hard about any of this if you’re a beginner. It’s easy to transfer your list of email subscribers between one email marketing provider and another.
​

Bottom-of-Funnel: Products & Services

It may take you a while to get here.

Once I had the right information about how to do all this, my timeline was 5 months. That’s quick, relative to what most people achieve. But here’s something very important: I wouldn’t have cared if it’d taken me 5 years.

18 months ago, I didn’t know any of the business stuff I’m teaching you in this post. What I did know was mindfulness. In fact, I’d been teaching mindfulness for free for 3 years before I started talking about it on social media. And if someone had dropped a million bucks in my lap I’d have kept going.

My life’s mission is to help 1 billion & 1 people realize natural, effortless wellbeing. It just so happens that all this online business stuff helps with that—and that social media is the most effective way to spread the message.

All of this is to say: I’d be sat at this desk, writing this email to you no matter what was going on. And it’s vital you find that thing you’d want to talk about come rain or shine.

This unlocks natural inspiration, energy, motivation, persistence and consistency that makes forced discipline look ridiculous.

If you’re unclear on what your life’s mission is, read this.​

But don’t worry if you’re not crystal clear on it yet.

It’s okay for your mission to formulate over time.

All you need is a mutually beneficial direction to start moving in.

Hell, you could even start your personal brand around your mission to figure out what your mission is.

But for the sake of moving forward here, let’s assume you have at least a vague direction. And let’s assume you’ve been writing social media posts at the top of your funnel, plus newsletter posts at the middle of your funnel for at least a few months.

And let’s assume you’ve been promoting those newsletter posts under your social posts to invite interested readers.

Now it’s time to make an offer to those readers.

Now, when you hear the word “offer” you might be reminded of overblown “exclusive double discounts” and the like you’ve seen on TV ads.

Good news: you don’t have to participate in any of that nonsense.

When someone’s selling on TV they’re selling cold—meaning the people they’re making their offer to have never seen them before. And they have just 30 seconds to try to get money from them. They’re not trying to serve people. They’re not trying to help people. They’re trying to extract money from people. This is why it’s so hard to believe these ads even work—they have to target super-gullible people (because those are the only people who buy from them).

This is a million miles away from the kind of business you’re going to be engaging in as a purpose-based personal brand.

Personal brands sell to people who value genuine trust, built over time.

Personal brands sell to people they can really help.

Personal brands sell to people like themselves.

Now, I could write a whole email on how to make an offer (and I probably will).

For now, I’m just going to guide you to creating your first minimum viable offer. This will be a simple coaching service—because starting with this will give you data on what kind of product to create down the line.

What’s the difference? A service involves you working directly with clients, whereas a product is something you make once, then sell to customers independent of your time and attention.

Naturally, people expect to pay more for a service than for a product. Tony Robbins sells a year of coaching for $1 million. He sells books for $10.

This means you need less sales on a service to earn a living, which is ideal while you still have a small audience.

(The following is an edited excerpt from my popular article, “How to Freetire Yourself”, which lists 240 baby steps that take you from setting up your X account to quitting your day job.)

~

1. Invest in this tool called Tweet Hunter (affiliate link).

2. Set up your account.

3. In the left sidebar, click “analytics”.

4. Scroll down to “detailed tweet performance”.

5. Click “ENGAG.%” twice.

6. Determine which topic your audience is responding to most.

7. Start to prioritize that topic in posts and newsletters you write from here on.

8. In the comments under these posts, look out for people who seem particularly interested.

9. Copy the link to their comment.

10. Paste it into a DM to them.

11. Thank them for contributing to the conversation and—if it’s not already obvious—ask what resonated with them in your post.

💡 For bonus points, consider leaving a video or voice message. This can help form a stronger connection, but don’t do it if you’re uncomfortable.

‍

12. Ask what your new friend’s plan is relating to your topic.

💡 If they don’t respond within 7 days, gently follow up to see if they want to continue the conversation. (People are busy. few of them will ignore you intentionally.)
​

13. Let curiosity guide your responses as the conversation continues.

14. Comment on what they say.

15. Tell them modestly about your own success with your topic, then mention that you’re getting started helping other people with it for free.

16. Ask if they have any sticking points they’d like a second opinion on.

💡 Don’t be shy about positioning yourself as someone who can help. Yes, you may never have done this before, but the fact you’re able to write enough content on the topic to gain 1000 followers means other people have already decided your perspective has value—at least enough value for someone to want to hear your opinion on it.
​

17. If you can help, tell your new friend you implemented a system that solved the problem for you and that you’d love to see if it works for them too.

💡 You may not feel you have a “system”, as such, but if you solved a problem for yourself, you do. You must have gone through a series of steps. This period of working with people for free is about formalizing that system.
​

18. If your new friend is keen, arrange to connect with them on a video call.

19. Open your notes app.

20. Brainstorm the steps you took to go from having the problem to not having the problem.

21. Tidy them up and make them as clear as possible.

💡 Bonus: ask ChatGPT whether your steps will be clear to someone else who has no understanding of your topic. If it says “no”, ask it to help you clarify.
​

22. Give your system a simple name that focuses on the solution and gives a timeframe, for example:

• The 6 Month 6-Pack
• The 7-Day Home Makeover
• The 90-Minute Meal Prep Protocol
  ​

23. Go to slides.google.com.​

24. Start a blank presentation.

25. Lay out your steps.

💡 Your presentation does NOT have to look fancy. (Unless you’re teaching how to make fancy presentations.)
​

26. When your call rolls around, break the ice with some small talk:

• How’s your day so far?
• Where are you in the world?
• What do you do with most of your time?

Don’t rush this. Get to know your new friend. Joke around. That said, if they demonstrate that they’re keen to get down to business, that’s okay too.
​

27. State that your intention for the call is to find out if your system can help, and that if it can’t, no big deal—you’ve both made a new friend at least. But if it can, you’d love to help them implement it for free.

28. Share your screen and run through your presentation.

29. Ask your new friend if they think your system can help them.

30. If they say “yes”, tell them you’ll go away, design a schedule of coaching calls, send it over, then confirm dates.

31. Mention that if the process goes well you’d love to get a quick video message from them explaining what it was like working with you (this is KEY for when you start charging fees).

32. Open your notes app alongside your Google Slides presentation.

33. Type “CALL 1” at the top of your note.

34. Underneath, write bullet points for the MINIMUM your new student needs to know to begin the process of implementing your system into their life.

💡 You want to avoid overwhelming someone with information on any call, but especially the first.
​

35. Write separate bullet points for what they need to DO during and/or after your first call to get an immediate, small, beneficial result.

36. Continue to plan in this format for as many calls as your student needs to achieve the same transformation you did.

💡 Structure your calls so they each give 1 main takeaway and 1 tangible result to be achieved before the next call. (Meet with your student in whatever frequency makes most sense for your process. If you’re unsure, just take your best guess. Now is the time to experiment and figure this stuff out, so that when you start charging you can confidently tell someone what’s required.)
​

37. Once you’ve scheduled the calls for your first student, start looking for another one. (Repeat steps 8-18.)

38. Tweak the process as you go. Do whatever you must to get the result for your students.

39. Repeat this process until you have at least 5 video testimonials.

40. Go to carrd.co (affiliate link).

41. Sign up for a free account.

42. Create a simple landing page using one of their templates.

43. Include, in this order:

• A headline focused on the problem your system solves and/or the benefit it achieves
• Your strongest testimonial
• Bullet points listing the pains you experienced back when you still had the problem you’re solving
• The story of your transformation
• The actionable steps your system guides people through
• Bullet points listing the benefits that come from implementing your system
• Any free bonuses you can include
• More testimonials
• Your guarantee
• A checkout link
• Frequently asked questions

Include sub-headlines above each section that summarize them for people who want to skim-read.

💡 There are many options for checkout links and payment processing. I use Stripe. Gumroad is an easy alternative.
​

44. Decide on a price for your coaching package. If you’re unsure, describe your service to ChatGPT and ask it what the going rate is for similar. It’s okay to charge less than that in the beginning, but your price should equate to the value your 5 testimonial providers received:

• Did you help them sleep better? what impact did this have on their personal and professional lives?
• Did you help them get fit? how much will this save them in medical bills?

Also, consider how many clients you can fit into your schedule, and how much they’d have to pay you for you to be able to quit your job and start doing this full-time.

💡 I used to teach music for $40 per hour. I now teach mindfulness and business for $300 per hour.

Music, for most people, is a hobby. But mindfulness and business transform people’s lives.

If you’ve transformed your own life in some way, that transformation is what you should be selling to other people. That’s where the real value is.
​

45. Again, repeat your outreach process, but now instead of offering your transformation for free, offer it for the price you decided upon.

💡 It's totally normal for fewer people to be interested once your service is no longer free.

If someone offered you a Lamborghini for free you’d take it, but you’re not out buying one for $200,000.

That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the Lamborghini.

Equally, people opting out of your service doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with your service.

💡 If 1 out of every 200 people you speak to signs up (yes, 200) then you’re doing great.

If 0 out of 200 people sign up, reduce your price.

When your calendar is full, increase your price.

~

Of course, there’s way more detail to all of this. But with perseverance (and perhaps a little more help from ChatGPT), you can absolutely use the information above to create your own clients and Freetire yourself.
​

You Know What’s Coming Next…

If you read this whole post then you’ll know that I’m about to offer you further help.

Positioning this offer at the bottom of my post gives you the greatest context for the kind of help that’s available—meaning I don’t have to sell you on anything.

If you get stuck on any of this you just want to get going faster than you could on your own, click here to get in touch with me and we’ll get right to it.

Win/win for the win,
dg 💙

~

SOURCES:

¹https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2023/11/217191-majority-of-us-consumers-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-yet-still-plan-to-continue-spending-lendingclub-report/

²https://www.brookings.edu/articles/with-inflation-surging-big-companies-wage-upticks-arent-nearly-enough/

³https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/knowledge-base/what-are-some-very-good-examples-of-permission-marketing/

⁴https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/425496/Jebarajakirthy4877015-Accepted.pdf?sequence=2#:~:text=

⁵https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/6/2/JCMC623/4584249