How to Focus, Specialize, and Scale Without Burning Out

Summary

Podcast Summary: Coffee With Cole: The Digital Writing Podcast

Episode: How to Focus, Specialize, and Scale Without Burning Out
Host: Nicolas Cole
Date: October 22, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This week’s live “hot seat” episode features deep, practical discussions with digital writers and ghostwriters at various stages of building their businesses. The focus: how to measure early success, learn and iterate without burning out, and productize your services to scale profitably and sustainably. Topics covered include metrics that matter, outreach realities, conference networking, time management, specializing, and avoiding the freelancer trap. The tone is candid, supportive, and intensely practical, with Cole guiding participants through mindset shifts around volume, patience, and simplifying your offer.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Success Metrics in Digital Writing Funnels

• Guest (Makita) asked if she should be worried after a client’s new Email Education Campaign (EEC) only landed one booked call out of 280 opt-ins.
• Cole’s response: The first and main measure of success is building and launching the EEC itself — “The client wasn’t doing it, now they are. That’s a win.” (06:00)
• Industry-standard conversion rates are 0.5%–1.5%; one call from 200 opt-ins is within normal range.
• Systems like EECs should be given a long-term view — “This could run for two years, not just two weeks.” (08:47)
• Advice for improvement: run bottleneck analysis, improve or extend the follow-up sequence, add testimonials, and continue iterating.
  Quote:

“You built the thing. You accomplished it. You achieved someone taking action over a relatively short period of time. The funnel’s working.”
— Cole (09:00)

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2. Outreach Reality: Desensitizing to Volume and Embracing Repetition

• Boris expressed concern about low response rates after 116 outreach messages.
• Cole: Normalize the numbers — for every 100 DMs, expect 10 responses and 1 client. Many underestimate how much outreach is required.
• Skills and context matter: some get faster results, but “it doesn’t mean the strategy is broken.”
• Follow-up is critical (10 nudges or more!); treat prospects as friends who deserve reminders. Quotes:

“The number one thing I see people struggle with is doing the level of volume required.”
— Cole (21:00)
“Every person is a potential friend. Pretend you’re already friends, and you’d follow up until they got it.”
— Cole (20:00)

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3. Conferences & In-Person Networking: When and How to Leverage

• Derek worries about making a big investment for a first conference.
• Cole’s advice:
  • Shadow people already succeeding (ask to “tag along” at a conference and observe their approach).
  • Medium-small events (50–150 attendees) are best — high-value networking and more depth.
  • Big-ticket, ultra-targeted workshops can be worth it, but everyday big conferences (1,000+) are not always efficient.
  • Specializing—even arbitrarily—helps you stand out and often attracts adjacent clients, not just your “niche.” Quotes:

“Just by saying you specialize makes you stand out and makes other people assume you can help them, too.”
— Cole (30:14)
“Simplicity is velocity.”
— Cole (1:00:00)

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4. Productizing Services vs. Freelancer Trap

• Andre asked how to justify building an EEC for clients without a social following or web traffic.
• Cole: You are not responsible for solving every business problem. Focus on the piece you’re hired for — “specialize in one thing.”
• Clients (and freelancers) often “round down to zero” when there’s “some” but not “a lot of” traffic. Even 1,500 monthly site visits is not zero.
• Explain that your service (EEC, in this case) takes them from not collecting or leveraging leads/emails—to doing so, which is a huge shift. Quotes:

“The exact moment I started making real, real money... was the day I said, ‘I do nothing else but one thing.’”
— Cole (42:00)
“The more you specialize, the faster you move.”
— Cole (1:00:00)

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5. Time Management, Prioritizing, and Avoiding Burnout

• Roman struggles with balancing a legacy client retainer, outreach, family, and life.
• Cole:
  • Don’t sacrifice health, sleep or relationships if possible.
  • Free up time from lowest-impact activities (TV, hobbies) or from old legacy clients who demand too much.
  • The path to growth is specializing and moving towards productized premium services, not endless “retainer black boxes.”
  • Letting go of legacy (retainer) clients is scary but often necessary to scale.
  • Appetite for risk is personal: some fill new client roster before letting go; others cut the cord sooner and invest freed-up time. Quote:

“The problem you’re feeling now is a ball and chain you signed yourself up for in the past.”
— Cole (52:34)

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6. Free Work: How and Why to Do It

• Cole’s advice: Don’t feel compelled to do “a whole month” of free work.
  • In social: offer one week’s content as a teaser.
  • In EEC: write just Day 1 or outline the sequence to show quality and future possibilities.
  • Always “future pace” — show them what they’re missing and offer to build the rest for pay. Quote:

“With free work, give them enough so they understand the value and can see the future. But don’t do it all.”
— Cole (57:00)

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• 00:00–02:05 | Introduction, overview of hot seat format, welcome to newcomers
• 02:05–11:30 | Makita’s EEC funnel: metrics, measuring success, and first conversions
• 11:53–21:49 | Boris’ outreach challenge: expectation-setting, volume, and follow-ups
• 23:21–31:50 | Derek’s conference dilemma: in-person strategy, event types, and specializing
• 32:37–46:36 | Andre’s “incomplete solutions,” selling EECs to low-traffic clients, and specialization
• 47:00–58:15 | Roman’s time management and letting go of old clients to scale
• 58:15–End | Lightning round of key takeaways from attendees

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The first measure of success is... the client wasn’t doing it, now they are. That’s a win.” — Cole (06:00)
• “For every 100 outreach messages you send, an amazing outcome is getting 10 responses and 1 client.” — Cole (15:00)
• “Every person is a potential friend. Pretend you’re already friends, follow up until they get it.” — Cole (20:00)
• “I started making real money the day I specialized and only did one thing.” — Cole (42:00)
• “Simplicity is velocity.” — Cole (1:00:00)
• “The path to growth is productized services, not endless retainer black boxes.” — Cole (52:34)

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Participant Takeaways (Summary at End)

• “There’s always a problem to solve.”
• “Do one thing and one thing only—the more you specialize, the faster you move.”
• “Now it’s all about the volume.”
• “Don’t be a jack of all trades.”
• “Measuring 0 to 1: you weren’t doing it, now you are.”
• “Treat every client as a friend.”

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Episode Tone & Final Thoughts

Candid and encouraging, Cole champions the long game, realistic expectations, and focusing on the “one thing” for sustainable success. He urges digital writers to embrace repetition, productize their offer, and focus on what only they can control—without falling into the trap of doing too much or expecting instant rewards. This is essential listening for anyone building a digital writing or ghostwriting business—rich with mindset shifts and actionable advice.

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Transcript

[A]

All right, what's up, everyone? Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Drop in the chat, Anyone? Have a good weekend? Feeling good. I just, I guess I am out of espresso. I just instinctively went to grab my coffee. I realized I, I just, I just chugged it before this call. So we're. We must be good. We must be getting in good shape. All right, well, we have a bunch of really good hot seats today. I kind of want to just dive right in because I want to cover as many of them as possible. Real quick. Any. Any newcomers? Any, any first timers here? We got almost 100 people here. That's great to see. Love to see it. Anyone here for the first time? Hunter, welcome. Noah, great to have you. Rick, great. Dan, Becca, Sarah, David. Okay, awesome. We have, we have a bunch of first timers. All right, so if this is your first Monday hot seat, this is where students will submit questions. We've been doing this for, I mean, a couple years at this point. So we have a ton of questions inside of pga, inside the FAQ hubs, inside the replay hubs. So our goal is we always try and tackle new questions if we can on these, just to keep building that repository and always be creating new things for everyone inside pga. And then sometimes, you know, we'll go down tangents. We might talk about a little more advanced things, but that's okay. I always, even if you're at the very, very beginning, I always like kind of future pacing a little bit because even if things don't make sense today, hearing it once, twice, 10 times, 20 times is only going to accelerate your learning more. So thanks everyone for making the time. I know blocking an hour is. It can be a big ask, so I always appreciate when people show up and, and we get to do this live. 120 people here, so that's great. Okay, let's dive right in. Do we have Makita here? Yes.

[B]

Good morning.

[A]

Good morning, Makita. How are you?

[B]

I'm great. How are you doing?

[A]

Fantastic. All right, so you want to talk client EEC metrics. You want to, you want to tell me what they are? High level.

[B]

Yes. So I did an EC for her. We launched it a couple of weeks ago. The interest has been really nice, but then her, not a lot of people. She only got one person who booked a call, so that kind of bummed me up a little bit. So just one.

[A]

How many. How many people opted in?

[B]

280.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And how many people visited the landing page?

[B]

See, I can just take a look here. 59%. So about I don't even know.

[A]

So 59% opted in?

[B]

No. Opened the email. Okay, I can share my screen. Do you want me to do that?

[A]

No, just these, these metrics are fine. I mean, but do you know how many people visited the landing page? So 200 people opted in. How many people actually hit the landing page?

[B]

I don't know. I don't even know. I can check that.

[A]

It should be. What, what platform are you using?

[B]

Kajabi.

[A]

It should be in Kajabi. That's like a core, core metric. But landing page visits I'm gonna guess is probably in the ballpark of like somewhere between 500 and 1500.

[B]

Okay, sounds reasonable. If 280.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, so what, what is your question in looking at these?

[B]

Because the, the open rate is high, but then the people who actually booked a call or you know, just 1%, it kind of worried me a bit. I just felt like I didn't achieve what I set out to do for her. You know what I mean? Even though the, the people who opted in into her email system are great, but then the, the fact that nobody really booked a call. I don't know if I should be worried about that or not. I feel like I should be.

[A]

Okay. When, when did you launch this?

[B]

October 7th. So two, three weeks ago.

[A]

All right. Two, three weeks.

[B]

Yeah. So three weeks tomorrow.

[A]

Okay. And. And what you built was a five day eec.

[B]

Yes. And then a three day FOMO at the back of that.

[A]

Okay, so just high level. So a couple things to point out. First of all, this is very important for, for everyone here. Okay. The first measure of success with an EC before did not have one after the client now has one. That is the first measure for success. So the fact that you built it is a win. The fact that they have a mechanism for capturing emails is a win. The fact that they have a mechanism for educating people via email that isn't dependent on their time because they're automated emails is a win. So it is, it is worth internalizing for every person here. I get asked the question constantly, how do you measure the, the effectiveness of building an EC or a weekly newsletter or, or creating social content or whatever it is the number one measure for success for all of these projects is the client wasn't doing it, now they're doing it. Okay, so that's a win. Second, second of all, this is extremely common. You have 200 opt ins, you have a 60% open rate, which is massive. And the thing that you have to keep in mind is that the, the correlation between Open rate and taking an action. An action is booking a call. An action is buying a product, right? You are, you are aiming for somewhere in the ballpark of half of 1% to 1.5%.

[B]

To do what? To book or to do any action.

[A]

To take an action. If you, if, if you have, if you have a 1% conversion rate on an email list in general, that is fantastic. That is like industry standard. Great. Okay, so just like me looking at this going, all right, you captured 200 people, you have a very high open rate and you got someone to take an action. The funnel's working, the funnel's working. So, so then it becomes a question of, and I'm, I'm going to jump to something a little more advanced here for, for you and for everyone, okay? Once you have something built like this, the next step, which is the next thing that you could help the client do, because they, they, they didn't pay you to get them a hundred calls, right? They paid you to build this asset that now works for them for forever, right? So the next thing that you can help them with if they would like your help, is what we like to call bottleneck analysis. So bottleneck analysis is you built this little funnel. Okay, great. So now how do you improve it? How you improve it, you have different levers. You could either help them drive more traffic, which increases the opt ins, which will probably keep open rate relatively the same, which will probably mean more people take action because you have the thing built, right? The other thing you could help them with if you're not going to help them drive traffic, is you help them go, all right, look, out of our five day EEC and our three day FOMO sequence, we booked one call, what else could we do? You could improve the three day FOMO sequence. Maybe, maybe you need to speak to the value of the call a little bit more or a little bit better. Maybe you need to add in testimonials, maybe you need to add in screenshots of what they're actually going to get, right? You can improve the three day FOMO sequence. You could extend the FOMO sequence. Instead of 3 days, why not 7 days, why not 10 days, why not 30 days, right? You could plug the action more in the Eclipse. So maybe you put it as a PS at the end of every day. So these are all little things that you can do and upgrades that you can make in order to make this number go up. But just to level set, I mean like this, like you did it, you built the thing, you accomplished it, you achieved Someone taking action over a relatively short period of time. And you have to, you have to keep in mind that what everyone forgets is that the whole point is that you built this thing that now it doesn't, this doesn't just run for two weeks, this could run for two years. So if you extend the time horizon over two years, if they book 200 calls, that is a massive, that's a massive ROI. Right? It's just often we forget and we're like, wait, why didn't it happen in the first, you know, week? Does that make sense?

[B]

Yeah, it does. And then the bottleneck analysis to improve this, would that be an upsell or just something I would do just to make her more happy with the way it's performing?

[A]

Well, it's always up to you. My, my philosophy is I love giving. We, we have a little saying which is the, the strategy is free, the implementation is expensive, so you might have a follow up call and go, hey, now that we have this built, I just want to lay out these metrics for you and just want to walk you through what I think you could do to improve it. Give them all the answers, tell them everything I just told you, and then say, and if you'd like my help doing that, if you want to build another sequence, you want to extend the sequence, you want to improve the sequences, let me know. That's a new project. Got it. Okay.

[B]

Yeah, it does. Thank you.

[A]

Yeah, it's a great, great question. Does that, you have any follow up questions? Feel good about that?

[B]

No, I'm okay. Yeah, I'll follow up with her. Thank you.

[D]

Great.

[A]

Good question, Makita. Thanks. And for everyone else, that makes sense. Yeah. Quick, quick. Happy birthday to Katie. Shout out to Katie, everyone. Congrats, Katie. Big 21. You can finally have tequila, you know? Finally. Well, fun fact for everyone. I remember when Katie first took ship 30 with us, then did captain's table, right? And then just became like a super. Went through our whole ecosystem, such an all star. And then I forget, Katie, what were we built? We were building something at the time and we needed. So it was pga, right? It was day one pga. It was like expanding captain's table and then it turned into pga. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And probably one of the best decisions we've ever made. Katie's. Katie's been a complete all star. Katie. I tell everybody all the time in my life. I'm, I, I talk about you and I'm like, Katie's one of my favorite people I've ever hired. Like, just amazing. I'm serious. I'm not just making that up. So thank you.

[B]

You guys are awesome.

[A]

Best job I've ever had. Best bosses I've.

[B]

Dad.

[A]

I say it all the time. Well, thanks for all you do and thanks, everyone, for giving her a little birthday shout out in the chat. All right, let's keep it rocking. Do we have. Do we have. Boris?

[E]

I'm here.

[A]

There we go.

[E]

Can you hear me?

[A]

Yep.

[C]

Very good.

[E]

And you, Shall I just start a little bit or you question first.

[A]

I. I read. I read through this. Is. Is your primary question just your outreach message or what. What would you like to dig into?

[E]

Well, actually, maybe kind of a basic feed feedback. I thought about it after writing it. Like, I don't know, is it a bottleneck or is it just regular? What I'm experiencing, The numbers are higher now, I can give a quick overview, but in terms of what is happening here, am I on the right course or do I oversee something really profound? That's more or less my basic question. And then we could dig into, depending on the time and how often this was. How often this was already discussed. I don't want to capture too much time. Yeah. So. Yeah. What?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, just I. I think outreach and things, things like outreach and EEC metrics, I think there, there can be a little bit of a learning curve in grounding yourself in what is an appropriate level of volume. Okay, so just to connect the dots from what we were just talking about, something I notice very often with reviewing EEC metrics is someone might say, you know, the EEC failed or the EEC isn't working very well because only 50 people opted in. I only got 50 opt inside. And I go, okay, well, how many people even visited the page? And they go, well, 100 people. Okay, so you got 50 people. That's a 50% conversion rate out of a hundred people. Right? And then deeper down the funnel, they're like, yeah. And then, you know, no one booked a call or no one bought a product or whatever. And I think there's this. Just to make it more of a broader lesson for everyone, you have to sort of desensitize yourself to how much volume is actually required in order to see certain things happen. Right? And the same is true with outreach. So here you said, altogether, I've sent 116 outreach DMS to these different leaks and faucets. I've received five responses. I've sent eight looms so far. Okay, now, maybe those numbers have changed or been updated, but we'll we'll just use those as the example. Right? Okay. Okay. So typically, typically just to level set for everyone, for every 100 outreach messages you send, an amazing outcome is getting 10 responses and is getting one client. This is like bare minimum baseline. If this happens, you have a. You have a win. Okay. Now sometimes, especially depending on the starting point of the person, right? Because some people start with maybe a couple more skills than the next person or a little more context than the next person. Right. That is the fundamental reason why with education, one person can take a strategy and see a result instantly, and another person can take a strategy and maybe it takes them a year because we start from different places. That's okay. It doesn't mean the strategy is broken. It means you have different skills that you might need to acquire. Right. One person might send 200 outreach messages and get 10 responses and one client. Does that mean that the strategy is broken? No, it just means that they have other skills that they need to acquire. I could send two outreach messages and get two clients. Right. So does that mean the strategy works, like, better for me than the next person? No, it's that I have more skills and I have, you know, 10 years of shit that I can use to my advantage. Right. So I think it's worth level setting here that you're. You're roughly around those numbers, right? You've sent around 100 messages, you've gotten five, give or take responses. We might want to find ways to bump that up. And then hopefully one of those leads to a client. Now, that might require more volume, but it's worth. First, I want to level set like this is completely normal.

[D]

Okay.

[F]

Okay.

[A]

Second. Second is the first thing I always look at is, all right, so yeah, you could always send more messages, but the thing that moves the needle more is sending more looms. Because even if the person doesn't respond, right. The thing that's going to move them more is by giving them more education. Right. So all of this goes back to my favorite framework, which is more better new oftentimes.

[E]

So if you get no response, you also send a loom. I did send out like five cold looms because I started with cold looms. So nothing, no intro before, just the loom with a little sentences, little introduction and so forth. But I didn't get any responses on those. But yeah, so even if no answer is there and I find someone interesting, I can just make more looms.

[F]

Yeah.

[E]

Okay.

[A]

Yes. And not. Not only I think this, this is, this is the part that is the hardest for people to to wrap their heads around. But it is so simple. Not only should you send them a loom, but you should also follow up with them 10 times, and you should follow up on multiple platforms. Like, the, the amount. Let me, let me say this in a different way, okay? For, for anyone who has been maybe, maybe not someone who's, like, brand new. Like, you're brand new to pga. You're brand new to our little corner of the ecosystem. All right? So for people who maybe are a little more familiar with my work and our work, all right. I like to believe that maybe, maybe you like me a little bit. Maybe you trust me. Maybe you think that I can be helpful to you. All right? You care. You're like, yeah, Cole, you've helped me with some things. I want you to be successful too. And let's pretend that you or anyone here, you go to PGA's website one day and you notice that our opt in form for, for our, for our EEC is completely broken. Just broke. Like, like, it just doesn't work. You tried hitting submit. Like, the whole. It's just broken. And you care about me, right? For everyone here. If you saw that and you genuinely wanted me to be successful and you wanted to help me, what would you do? Yeah. Tell it to you. You would tell me. Yeah. And, and if you actually cared about me, would you only tell it to me once? Like, if you came back five days later and it was still broken, would you. Would you.

[E]

I would tell it till you get it. Till you hear it.

[A]

Exactly. I got the feedback. Right. So this, this is, this is the way to think about all outreach is, is that every person is a potential friend. Pretend you're already friends, and you would follow up with them until they got it.

[E]

That was actually really helpful because you said that in a video, and I listened to that before, and this picture of framing of having the other as a friend, and even though he doesn't speak to you, you can speak to him as a friend. Yeah. That is really, really helped me help a lot. And I started deepening the nudging. And this is also really. I got the point. It's totally important. In my CRM list, I have 10 spots for 10 nudges. Yeah. So I, I, I totally understand this point too. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So generally speaking, I will, I will tell you that you know the scripts in pga. Great feedback from your coach. Like, I see you're working with Ali. Great. Right. You can iterate on the messages. There's always little tweaks that you can make. You can Always try different things. But I will tell you that number one, the number one thing that I see people struggle to do the most is to just do the level of volume that is required. That's it. It's not like we need to obsess over the message. It's not like it's literally just you have to do the required amount of volume.

[F]

Okay.

[A]

Makes sense.

[E]

Totally makes sense. Yeah. I just wanted to be sure in a way so that I don't make a fatal mistake. I'm overseeing or something. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[F]

No, yeah.

[E]

Because for me, it's still in. Everything is in the dust. I believe it, and I see that something is starting to grow, but it's very little yet. But, yeah, to have this. The certainty that this is all right and this is the path to follow.

[A]

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Good question. Thanks, Boris. All right. Yeah, Just. Just to close the loop on that for everyone. The funny part about things like this is in the beginning, it's, you know, you're. You're struggling to get those responses or land that first client. But then one week, five people respond, and three people want to work with you. And then we do a hot seat where you have the opposite problem, and you go, oh, Cole, three people all want to work with me at the same time. Now what do I do? Right? So I think it's really important to remember and keep in mind that the entire purpose of building anything yourself is that you live in a perpetual state of. There is always a problem. There's always a problem to solve. Right? So you might as well just get really comfortable with that state of mind, because when. If it's not this problem, it's going to be now, too many people want to work with me. Right? So I just. This. This is. This is all part of the journey. This is very, very common. All right, let's keep it rocking. Do we have. Do we have Derek here? Hey, cool. What's up, Derek? How's. How's solopreneur life?

[D]

It is awesome. I'm glad I made the jump. That's very much worth it.

[A]

That's great. Well, congrats. Yeah.

[D]

I've got a pretty short question, I think, so there's not much context as to outside of this, but I'm full time. I've got four clients right now, all LinkedIn, ghostwriting, and I was trying to figure out next steps about how to grow. So I actually spoke with or just trade messages with Nils and Thomas, and I was like, hey, any advice for someone just getting started? We're like, dude, there's anything that's been our success. It's been 100% conferences, masterminds, meeting people in person and just selling there. Like that's, that's what they told me. I was like, okay, well I've never been to a conference. I've never done anything like that before, but I guess I gotta figure that out. But so I started looking into it and the conference, or there's like a conference in like a month, it's decently big. And I was like, okay, cool, maybe I can hit that. Then I kind of got scared off. The conference ticket itself is 2500. I was like, wow, okay, that's big. That's not even flights or hotel or anything like that. So I mostly wanted to get your take. I think this is probably more of a emotional mindset thing since I like, like it makes sense to just meet people in person that are your ICP and just start conversations with people. But yeah, so I guess I'm just trying to get over that like mental barrier.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, so this is a good question for everyone here. This is definitely a little bit more of an advanced question because what, what I'm going to tell you, Derek, is not necessarily what I would tell someone day one on their journey. So we're going to future pace a little bit. Okay. So Derek first. A great mental model for getting really good at a new thing very quickly is watching other people do it. So I think you did, you did something great by talking to Nils and Thomas. They're. They're crushing it. I mean, they're like two of our biggest success stories out of pga. Like they're just. Oh yeah, demolishing. If I were you. And they're both really great guys. I'm sure they would, they would let you. But if I were you, I would ask them what is the next maybe not Mastermind, but what is the next conference that you're going to? And would you mind if I tagged along and just sort of like hung out with you guys and like got to shadow you a little bit? Because I. If you want to learn how to like in person, like making use of in person conferences and sales is. Yes, there's similarities, but there are also differences. And nothing will power level your knowledge more than literally getting to watch someone else do it. Right. Like what I would do is I would seriously just ask, can I just hang out with you and I'll buy your, I'll buy your dinners while I'm there or something. And yeah, I just follow you around the conference and just get to watch in person how they talk to people. That I think is the first big thing. The second. The second is if I was looking at conferences as a way of generating leads, what I would do is I would. I would prioritize Facebook events that are on the medium to smaller side. Big, big conferences are really challenging because everyone is sort of in a. I'm trying to take in as much as possible. It's like a. It's like very surface level with very little depth. And what I would do is I would try and find events that are like, maybe 250 people or smaller, you know?

[D]

Okay, 215.

[A]

Like, I think your. Your sweet spot would be somewhere like the 50 to 150 range. Like, you know what would be perfect, what would be an amazing investment is Vicki and I went and did the Hormozi workshop in Vegas.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Literally an entire room of business owners, none of which are doing any writing and all need ghostwriters, and the ticket is five grand. But you're in a room of 100 of, like, the most qualified people you could possibly be in the same room with.

[F]

Yeah.

[A]

And that is. That is the type of thing that I would look at because, yeah, you spend five grand, but you literally get to go talk to a small group of people that all have the money and all need what you have. That is the type of event that I would be looking for.

[F]

Okay, got it.

[D]

Yeah, that makes sense. I'll have to shoot Nielsen Thomas a message there because a lot of the. Well, right now I picked the niche of construction. So in that niche, there are five or six big conferences a year, but big meaning probably minimum thousand participant, a thousand attendees. Or there's the biggest one I think I've seen was in New York. That's like 30,000 people attending. I was like, oh, my gosh. But, yeah, I wouldn't. You wouldn't do that. Okay.

[A]

That. I mean, like, maybe, but you will. You will squeeze way more juice. Where I got the most clients was when I. The most clients from in person was when I started befriending a couple people in la. And they. They would invite me to these, like, really rich people would throw these, like, speaker series type of. You know, they'd have like 50 people at their house and maybe like one person come do like almost like a mini TED Talk in their house with a dinner.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, I started going to those types of things. Like 50 people, 100 people, max. I walked out of there with three new clients every single time.

[D]

Okay.

[A]

So I would Be looking on the smaller side.

[D]

Okay.

[A]

The other thing that I just want to point out, this is for you and for everyone, this is an extremely hard concept for people to understand, is that because so many people fail to specialize, it actually doesn't matter what you say you specialize in. Just by saying you specialize makes you stand out and makes other people assume that you can help them, too. So what I mean by that is, yeah, make use of construction conferences, sure. But something like a hormozi workshop or something that's maybe more general, like business workshop event or, you know, info mastermind or whatever. I guarantee you, if you go to one of those and someone says, what do you do? And you say, I specialize in ghostwriting, specifically for construction companies, I guarantee you, you will watch other people in other industries say, oh, well, I'm actually looking for the same service. I mean, it's probably. You could probably help me too, right? And that is the irony of niching down and of specializing is that when you say you specialize in a certain industry, all these other industries, well, if you specialize in it, that means you're probably smart enough to help me. And so you will. You will land. And you can land clients in tangential industries, too.

[D]

Okay, Got it. Makes sense.

[A]

Great question.

[C]

Thanks, Cole.

[A]

All right. Thanks, Derek. Yeah, in person can be really, really great. It's a different thing. I don't think that you should prioritize it until you get proficient at doing all the digital things. Like, all the digital things are so much easier and cost nothing. They cost nothing but time. Right? So you should get proficient on all the digital stuff. But over time, as you become more proficient, as you land more clients, you know, as you start to take ghostwriting more and more seriously, then I would. I would definitely encourage in person events because they can be very powerful. All right, do we have Andre here? Andy.

[C]

Hey, Cole. How are you, man?

[A]

What's going on?

[C]

All good, bro. Happy Monday.

[A]

Happy Monday. That's right. All right, talk to me. What's. What's the. What's the question? And what's the root of the question?

[C]

The root of the question is a conversation I had with Travis last week.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And he was like, yeah, this is actually something that you should take to the hot seat. I. I had submitted a question before, but he was like, yeah, by all means, go. So how do you justify selling either an EEC or a newsletter so, like, the email side of things to someone who doesn't have the social side of things and therefore doesn't have the traffic to send to either the opt in or, well, to the opt in, and then start building the list.

[A]

Well, there's a couple different ways of thinking about this. The first, which is the meta concept that I think is important, is oftentimes I notice that people feel this need to think they have to solve every problem inside someone's business. So I'll give you a more extreme example what you're asking. Imagine if, if I said, you know, like, how am I supposed to help someone with a newsletter when the call to action in that newsletter is to a product that I know isn't very good, I would need to, I would need to rebuild the product. And actually how they sell that product is over the phone and they don't do a very good job selling it, which, which means I would have to rewrite the sales script. And actually they're not even getting people to show up to the sales call. And so I would need to rebuild their entire tracking infrastructure system. And actually they're not reminding people enough. And so I would actually need to build their whole reminder sequence. Like, once the moment you pull on a single problem in a business, you realize that it is actually all connected. And so it is this. It's a faulty belief to think that because you start pulling that thread that you need to be the one who bears the responsibility to solve every problem. And in reality, that's not true. Inside our business, we, we hire people to do one very, very, very specific thing. Like we launched a new funnel, I don't know, a couple months ago, and we, we found someone to do nothing. We hired one person to do nothing but make the landing page of that funnel load faster. The only thing we hired that person to do, right? But we hired that person because they were like, all I do is specialize in making landing pages load faster, right? So the meta, the meta takeaway here is really recognizing that there are so many individual problems in a business that it actually is a mistake to think you need to solve all of them. Just focus on solving one. Okay, now the specific answer to what you asked is like, why would you sell someone an EEC who doesn't have social traffic? So there's two ways of thinking about this. One is the person, that person might not be the best person to pitch an EC to, right? Like, you have a gazillion people you could reach out to. So reach out to the people that you feel like you have the highest likelihood of helping. But the second way, which is the way that you maximize the most opportunity, is Realizing that what most people get wrong is they round down to zero. So I'll tell you what that means. Most people, they might have a LinkedIn profile and they go, I'm not very active on LinkedIn and they round down to zero. But when you look at their profile, you realize actually they're posting once a week or once every two weeks and actually their profile is getting like a hundred views a month just making up random numbers. Is that zero? Nope, it is not zero. Right. And so most, most people round down to zero not realizing that they're actually already is opportunity on the table. The even easier one than that is web traffic. Everyone rounds down to zero. They're like, I, oh, I'm not generating any traffic. Okay, is there, is their website actually zero? No, their website is, we get, you know, 1500 visitors a month. That's not zero, that's 1, 500 people. Right. And so oftentimes this question is, I, I notice tends to sit in the context of people thinking it's zero when it's actually not. Does that make sense?

[C]

That makes sense. That makes sense. And I think so in explaining this to. Let's assume, because yeah, I agree with you, selling an EC to someone who has zero like traffic or social presence, then yeah, might not be a good fit. But let's assume that for whatever reason we're selling an easy. How do you handle the conversation around if they can see a little bit into the future, like if they ask a question, okay, what happens next? Like once this asset is ready, it's up and running, how do I use it? What I want to avoid is getting into falling into a place where like this, selling an EC is an incomplete piece of the puzzle. And of course, like I can tell them, look like you have way bigger problems in your email marketing and overall digital marketing strategy. And like a one time 5k payment for an ECS not going to solve all of your marketing problems. Right, but how would you suggest handling that conversation so that it doesn't seem to them like I'm trying to sell them one thing which is setting them up to then buy another service to sort of like complete the loop. Do you know what I mean?

[A]

Well, yeah. So here's, here's what's ironic about selling services is that services fundamentally I want this to not get, to not get misunderstood. Services in many ways are incomplete solutions because, because they are connected to other things in the business that you don't have control over. Right. Like I could re, I could, I could create an EEC for anyone Here, and I could attract a shit ton of potential clients for you. But if you get on the call with the client and completely fumble it, I don't have control over that. And so every service fundamentally is in some way incomplete. So you have to recognize that, like, that's okay. Okay. But the second thing is that the. An eec, though, at the same time is a complete solution in the sense that once it is built, it works for them forever. So if you build an ec. So let's just walk through the hypothetical. Let's say you're pitching, I don't know, a marketing agency. They're really small, they're in Chicago, and they only get a thousand visitors to their website a month and they have no social traffic. You go, well, all you really need is one new client a month and that has a meaningful impact for your agency. Right? Yeah. Okay, so in order to get one client a month, don't you feel like, first we need to know who those people are, second, we need their email address, third, we need them opening the emails, and fourth, we need them educated on how you can help them. Do we agree with that? Yeah. Okay, great. So why don't we build an EEC that captures that web traffic and educates them so that you can have more elevated sales conversations with them. By the time they get on the phone, we'll prompt them to book a call with you. That in and of itself is, is a complete solution. Right, because right now they're not. That's why at the beginning of this hot seat, I said, like, one of the things that people misunderstand so much about services is that the measure for success for the vast majority of clients is you're not doing it. Now you're doing it. You're not capturing any web traffic now you're capturing web traffic. You're not educating people unless they're on the phone with you. Now you're educating people via email. That's the only thing you need to get them to understand.

[C]

Just zero to one, huh?

[A]

100%.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[A]

And I agree.

[C]

I think it's. It's easy to think that you're responsible for solving the problems that come up. Like you said, as you start pulling the string, so many more things are going to show up that you think you're responsible for fixing, but not really.

[A]

Yes, I will tell you, I will tell you. I'll tell everyone here the exact moment I started making real, real money. The exact moment was after I went full time with ghostwriting and I was like trying to write, but I didn't even really know it was ghostwriting. I was like, free freelancing, and I was trying to do a bunch of these different projects. And every. Every client that I landed, I fell into that trap where I was like, okay, you're paying me for a social media strategy, but you also, like, aren't doing anything with email, so I'll help you set that up. And then you also, like, are trying to run Facebook ads. I know nothing about Facebook ads, but I'm going to pretend like I know things about Facebook ads. I'm going to help you with that. And all that ended up happening was they would pay me a little bit of money. They'd be like, all right, we're going to pay you, you know, three grand for a social media strategy. And then I'd end up working 20, 50, 100 hours on this client that I'm. I end up making like a dollar an hour if you divide the, you know, the work by what they paid me. And I was like, this. This isn't working at all. The day I started making real money with ghostwriting was the day that I said, I do nothing else but one thing. All I do is ghostwrite articles. That's it. And when people would say, incomplete solution. Yeah, but, like, what about driving them to a newsletter? Do you run my newsletter? No. What about driving them to a sales call? Do you help me with the sales call? No, the only thing I do is this piece of the puzzle, and the revenue chart just, like, exploded up to the right. So I'm telling you, and I'm telling everyone here like you, you have to get comfortable going. I specialize in this one piece of the supply chain. You're going to need other people for other things. That's fine. But I'm the person for this one piece in the supply chain.

[C]

Makes sense.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. Okay. I can see how this. How to explain this to a client or potential.

[A]

The only. I. I've probably said this, I don't know, north of 5,000 times inside PGA. And it's okay because sometimes you need to hear it that many times. But I'm telling you and everyone, the only thing that you need to get the person to understand with an EEC is that right now they are doing all of it manually. They are educating people on calls manually. They are having coffee meetings, saying the same things over and over again manually. All an EEC is, is take all the things that you're doing that cost you a lot of time and automate it. So whenever someone Says like, what is the purpose of an eec? You should ask them the question back. Well, what questions do you find yourself answering the most for customers? They're going to go, oh, well, they're always asking me this, this, this, this and this. Great. You just outlined the five day eec. We should probably go do that via email. Wouldn't it be great if by the time they had a conversation with you, you already talked about all those things? There's a reason just for everyone. There's a reason why we hammer EECs in PGA. Because they are an incredibly valuable, incredibly easy service to sell. That's the only thing you need to get the person to understand you're wasting a ton of time doing this over and over and over and over and over again. Let's just automate it.

[C]

Makes sense. One last question. This is a bit more. It's higher level, but in your experience. I know it's like generalizing, but.

[A]

Is.

[C]

It easier to sell an easy and then upsell a client to social or the inverse?

[A]

It's. That's like, that's like asking, like, which social platform is better, X or LinkedIn? Okay, they both have a billion users. Like, I'm sure either one is fine. You know what I mean? And like, that is another just little meta. Meta takeaway for everyone here is whenever you find yourself asking which is easier, the vast majority of the time, grass is always greener and the thing that is easier is the one that you stay focused on.

[C]

Yeah, I've learned that the hard way many times.

[A]

So, yeah, good question, though.

[C]

Thank you, Cole.

[A]

I appreciate you always. Thanks for showing, man. All right, these are good questions. Is this helpful for everyone? This feels like a good hot seat today, everyone. Getting some good insights. All right, great. Okay. Do we have Roman. Roman Lopez here?

[F]

Hey, I'm here.

[A]

What's going on? How are you?

[F]

Good, how are you?

[A]

I'm doing great. All right, talk to me about time management.

[F]

Yeah, it was based on the call you did last week, which was really, really helpful for me. That's something that I would really think about. And like when you said that you stopped going to the gym and that you work on weekends and like you stop having breakfast, I was like, wow. Not that I'm gonna do those things because, like, we're talking about different levels right now. Right. Nor do I want to yet, but, you know, it's. It's like just something to think about that's like out of the box thinking in terms of making space for things that need to be done because My current situation is I have one retainer client from my old copywriting life. So it's not like a ghostwriting retainer and focusing my time on outreach. So outreach is 100% trying to hit the volume detailed in PGA which is 100 and then 10 and then 1. And up until I asked this question, I wasn't getting any. I got two sales calls booked this week, so it's actually like right on the dot. Yeah, I hit 53 so far and so I got two book calls. Yeah. So it kind of changes the question a little bit because now it's like not so of a freak out. It's more so. Okay, well, let's say when it happens, when I do get an EEC client, I feel very stretched right now at 23 hours per week with this is in toggle of focused work.

[A]

Right.

[F]

With I got kids and a baby coming in the. And just like, you know, thanks and just a lot of stuff to do, you know, like that just get in the way of, of of work. And so I feel stretched. And if, if I were to start an EEC client right now, I'd probably have to make some decisions on like something, you know, that is it the gym. I go to the gym as well four times a week, you know.

[A]

So yeah, I just wanted to have.

[F]

A conversation on like, you know, when it comes to prioritizing, how do you make decisions on what goes or specifically when it comes to outreach because that is my priority right now. What is the thing that I need to double down on? I spoke to a bunch of ghosts and they, they get a lot of success from doing free work and, and sometimes instead of the volume, outreach just kind of doing like 10 top 10 and going really all in on those top 10. Some people go to conference conferences and things like that. So I'm looking like, is there an 80, 20 of, of outreach that I could do on the weeks where the time gets crunched? Right.

[A]

Yeah, I mean it's a good question. The, the honest answer. And, and not to. I want to clarify what I said last week. I don't think that the answer is give up going to the gym. I don't think that the answer is push yourself to, you know, only get five or six hours of sleep a night and just, you know, up your caffeine intake. That is not the answer. And whenever, whenever I've done that in the past, it has always led to more harm than good. What I, what I advocate for is there's really only, there's really only a couple Things that you can give up in. In life. Okay, let's just. We'll write these out. You have sort of like free time or hobbies. You have, like, health and usually relationships. This is like the one that I wouldn't touch. And then you have efficiency of existing work. Okay. So if you think about things that you. You have going on in your life, you're like, all right, first of all, how much more time do I need? If you land an ESC client, how much more time do you need? Maybe like five hours a week, you know. Okay, so where do you find those five hours? Well, you can either sacrifice the gym or sacrifice time with your partner or sacrifice sleep. I don't think that that's the best bucket to pull from though. Right. Because those, those are pretty high and valuable and important things. So the next bucket is. All right, so, you know, do you enjoy watching Netflix two nights a week? You know, do you have, like, some other hobby that you really enjoy? You're like, oh, I really enjoy, you know, reading every night. Like, you might have some sort of free time or hobby thing that you need to give up in order to do that. The third and the most likely culprit is whatever work you're currently doing. So my guess would be that your legacy copywriting client is consuming too much time and headspace and bandwidth. Is that true?

[F]

Yeah, some weeks are pretty tough. And it's. It seems that it's front loaded on the ear earlier in the month. It's like, here's all these emails that you have to do, and. And then it tends to slow down. So I'm learning that maybe I do more outreach and ghostwriting stuff on the second half of the month.

[C]

And.

[F]

But I mean, at the end of the day, it does consume. It's like half of my hours, essentially. Yeah.

[A]

So this is, this is the, this is the vicious cycle that I try and help people get out of. Because.

[E]

You.

[A]

The problem that you're feeling now is a ball and chain that you signed yourself up for in the past. And the problem with retainers is that retainers end up being these black boxes. Client can ask whatever they want of you, essentially. And the thing that I try and get people to focus on is getting out of that state of mind and into a productized service state of mind. You do the same thing at a premium price over and over and over again. So what you just suggested is a band aid solution, but it doesn't solve the root issue. Right. The band aid solution is, yeah, I front load the work. I Keep the retainer. And then I focus on this new thing on the second half of the month. But I'm, I'll tell you, I'll be honest with you. The real answer is that you will have to come to a point where you go, this old client that I have is actually consuming the bandwidth of 2 or 3 of my new potential clients on this new potential path. I need to let go of this thing in order to open space for another thing. And until that, that gets addressed, it's, it's so much easier. This is the mistake everyone falls into. I did too. It's so much easier to go, oh, well, maybe I should just give up going to the gym and work harder. And that it, it's, you're not solving the thing that's keeping you stuck. Does that make sense?

[F]

Yeah, it does. Yeah. And, and I, I told Travis as well, like, I'm basically like, my motivation is to get to that point where I can tell this client because sometimes it's frustrating work that, you know, two weeks notice. You know, I'm doing the business full time now. So it's that balance where it's like, I'm trying to do enough outreach so that it replaces that income. But yeah, would you do it, like, would you get like two clients first, two EEC clients first, three EEC clients, or is that like a personal decision more?

[A]

It's, that is, that's where it becomes a personal decision because it, it becomes an appetite for risk. You know, like some people go, you know, my appetite for risk is very low. And so I want three clients over here before I let go of this one. Other, other people's appetite for risk is very high where they go, you know what? I can see that this client is consuming a ton of my bandwidth. I'm just going to let them go now and I'm going to free up all this time and then I'm going to triple down on my outreach. And I'm confident I'll figure it out. And I bet by the next month, like, it'll all even out. And so that, and, and that is a great example of why you pay for it somewhere. Like, if you want to wait for the three clients before you let go of the first one, you're going to pay for it in time and effort and probably some stress because you're trying to straddle that bridge. Right? If you, if you don't wait for the three clients and you let go of the first one to open up bandwidth, you have more time, but you're Going to pay for it in a different sort of stress. It might be a little more financial stress for a month. And so that, then it just becomes a question of which bag of problems are you more okay with? Because there's always going to be a trade off.

[F]

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Cause I'm in a good spot right now, I think with these two sales calls coming up. Because it shows that the volume of outreach and the work that I'm putting in. Cause sometimes I feel guilty for not putting in enough outreach, but it's working. And then just one final question, pre work wise for EECs, because I can see how it makes sense for LinkedIn if I can offer like a month of LinkedIn for free just to show people what I could do. How would you do it for an eec? Would you do a full EEC for free? In a way that it's like when the work is over, it's like, okay, well now we do paid work. You know, with LinkedIn, it's like you like my first four posts, let's continue paid with EEC, it seems like it's.

[A]

No, the, the key, the key with free work is don't, don't feel like you have to do a month, you can do a week, you know, don't feel like you have to do a whole eec, you could do a day. The, the key with free work is to show them enough of an example so that they, they get the thing, they get the level of quality, but you also have to future pace for them a little bit. So if I was doing that with social content, I would go, hey, I created a week's worth of content for you and future pacing. I actually created A list of 30 ideas of things that if you wanted to work together, we could create over the next month or two. For an ec, I would go, here is the first day of an ec, so you can see the writing quality, you can see how I outline this. You can get the idea of what an EC EEC is and here's an outline of the whole EEC if you want me to build it out for you. So free, free work. The secret with free work is always here's enough so that you understand and you can see the value. But let me also future pace for you. So all the client has to do is go, yeah, I want that EC to be brought to life. Great, go do that.

[F]

Nice. Yeah, just tease them. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's, that's really helpful. Thank you, man.

[A]

Yeah, of course. These are good Questions. All right, Philip, we're out of time, but we can. We can tackle these next week if you want to. All right, this was great. There were a lot of really good questions this week. I appreciate everyone showing up asking such great questions. Real quick, before we jump, what is one thing that you learned? One thing that you. You're going to take away. One thing you're going to apply to your business, to the way that you execute your work, maybe your weekly schedule, the way that you reach out to clients. Yeah, Ron, there's always a problem to solve. Always. You are surrounded by problems, Andre. Do one thing and one thing only. The more you specialize, the faster you will move. Simplicity is velocity. Now it's all about the volume. Free work. Give them samples. Don't be a jack of all trades. No, jack of all trades is like a recipe for disaster. You have to get out of that freelancer mindset. You have to let go of those old clients that you sold a year ago. You know, where you're like, you pay me a retainer, but you can ask whatever you want of me. That. That is the thing that is holding you back. Measuring 0 to 1. You don't have any EC now you have an EC. You're not creating LinkedIn content now. You're creating LinkedIn content. Just by saying that you specialize will help you get more clients. Yep. I'm telling you, it is. It's like a life changing light bulb moment when you say you specialize in one industry and all these other people say, can you help me too? It will happen. Treat every client as a friend. You're already friends. Pretend you went to college together. Pretend they used to be like the best friend of your roommate. You know, talk to every single person like you're already friends. Awesome. Bunch of really great takeaways here. All right, happy Monday, everyone. Thanks for showing up. This was great. And we'll see you next week. Back at it. All right, cheers.