Episode Overview

Podcast: The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast
Host: Brad Sugars
Guest: Daniel Priestley
Episode Title: Stop Chasing, Start Choosing: How to Create Demand That Lasts
Date: October 8, 2025

In this episode, Brad Sugars interviews entrepreneur and author Daniel Priestley about creating genuine, lasting demand for your business—moving away from chasing customers and toward becoming the brand people compete to work with. Daniel shares practical steps, mindset shifts, and powerful stories to help business owners create “oversubscribed” products and services that sell out by design, not by chance.

Main Themes

• Demand & Supply Tension: Why purposely limiting availability creates desirability and better business outcomes.
• Signal Collection: Shifting focus from chasing immediate sales to building anticipation and interest.
• Running Campaign-Driven Marketing: How to fill your business in planned bursts, rather than constant promotion.
• Ethics & Transparency: Creating honest scarcity and communicating it transparently.
• Audience Quality vs. Quantity: Why targeting your highest-value clients yields better profits with less drain.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Success, Redefined

• Shifting Definitions of Success:
  • Family vs. Materialism: Daniel reflects on how his definition of success evolved from material achievement (inspired by seeing Brad’s “yellow Ferrari” years ago) to prioritizing family life and impact.
    • “Today I got three beautiful kids and success is taking them to school in the morning... having a happy home.” (Daniel, 00:59)

Oversubscribed & Demand Creation

• Core Principle:

  • “If demand is high and supply is low, there’s room for profit... but if supply is high and demand is low, you’re probably going to make losses.” (Daniel, 03:24)
  • Rolex vs. Airlines: Airlines do everything right but operate on thin margins; Rolex creates artificial scarcity and commands extreme profits.
  • The purpose of marketing: not just getting the word out, but building “demand and supply tension.”

• Steve Jobs and Apple Product Launches:

  • “The guy was an absolute genius at creating a demand six months before they’re even gonna give you the products.” (Brad, 05:10)

Launch Mode & Pre-Marketing

• Building Demand BEFORE Launch:
  • Stop Supply-Side Thinking: Entrepreneurs need to manufacture demand themselves; waiting for someone else to do it is a mistake.
  • Practical Example:
    • Daniel recounts launching a software company with just a waiting list and no product built. Angel investment came before any coding, based on collected market signals.
    • “Within a couple of days, we had 750 people on the waiting list... and even had a question: ‘Would you like to see the angel investor presentation?’” (Daniel, 06:22)

Official Capacity & Sold Out Energy

• Know Your Capacity:

  • “Official capacity is the capacity your business has to leave people feeling delighted.” (Daniel, 08:38)
  • Don’t degrade the customer experience by squeezing in more than you can handle; communicate your true capacity up front.

• With or Without You Energy:

  • Creating an aura that the business will thrive either way: “With or without you energy is, I’m going to be fine with or without you.” (Daniel, 17:30)

Campaigned Launches vs. Constant Marketing

• Planning Backwards:

  • Map out how many leads you need to achieve target capacity.
  • Example: “If your business can take on 22 clients and you close 1 in 50, you need 1,100 people engaged.” (Daniel, 10:19)

• Build-Up Phase:

  • Focus on signals, not sales: get people to show interest (waitlists, applications, webinars) before opening sales.
    • “On the buildup phase, we’re just marketing for signals, not sales... getting signals for interest in buying something.” (Daniel, 12:24)

Transparency & Ethical Scarcity

• Communicate Demand Honestly:
  • Let people see “the moment of transparency—demand and supply tension.”
  • “Just simply tell people and be honest about it... some good news and bad news: it’s a really popular launch... but we only have this many spots.” (Daniel, 13:42)

Staged & Signal-Based Sales

• Release Phase:
  • "This is where you say tickets go live or you can now apply, countdown to that." (Daniel, 18:03)
  • After launch, follow-up call-outs to those who signaled but didn’t act can elegantly fill any remaining spots.

Less Can Be More: Drop Model, Audience Quality, and Pricing

• Marketing "Drops" and Scarcity:

  • Inspired by streetwear, events, and even burger chains: sold-out is a feature, not a bug (21:29).

• Audience Analysis:

  • “The top 1% of people in your audience have 15% of the spending power…the next 9% have 45%... so 60% of the available budget is just 10% of the people.” (Daniel, 23:20)

• Pricing High (Luxury, Niche, Mass):

  • Gravity pulls business to low prices unless you intentionally resist: “Market forces want price at zero…you have to beat the market forces through planning.” (Daniel, 24:32)
  • Luxury: pedigree, exclusivity, awards, and referrals.
  • Niche: passionate subgroups and those who get the most value.
  • “She ended up pricing accordingly and saying, well, I only take on 10 to 20 clients a year and it’s a quarter of a million per client.” — On therapist Esther Perel (Daniel, 27:28)
  • Raise prices with demand/supply tension and audience segmentation: if someone signals premium status (e.g., “has a nanny”), segment and pursue accordingly (Daniel, 31:30).

Ideal Customer Persona & Value

• Zero in on who has most to gain from your work; targeting those with the highest perceived value leads to higher margins for less effort.

Environment Dictates Performance

• Best Advice on Success:
  • “Environment dictates performance is a really good one... we tend to behave in accordance with the people we spend time with.” (Daniel, 32:09)
  • Changing your environment (peer group) and exposure can pull you to higher performance levels.
  • "There’s just a natural tendency to go, I can up my game a bit because I’m around someone who’s doing a bigger thing.” (Daniel, 33:24)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Demand & Scarcity:
  • “There is a hyper reaction to things that people can’t have. That’s so rare in today’s world.” (Daniel, 21:42)
• On Campaigns:
  • “Don’t launch a product and then start marketing. Start marketing it.” (Brad, 05:48)
• On Pricing & Audience Segmentation:
  • “We call those three audiences the mass market, the niche market, and the luxury market.” (Daniel, 24:32)
• On Raising Prices:
  • “My prices went through the roof when I got on some big podcasts and I’d done nothing different. I just more people knew who I was.” (Daniel, 31:30)
• On Environment:
  • “Environment dictates performance… if they [young men in prison] can spend time with a landscape gardener, they go, ‘Oh, wow, this guy’s making just as much money as some dealers I know.’” (Daniel, 32:09)

Key Timestamps

• 00:26: Success Reimagined: Material wealth to family life (Daniel)
• 03:07: Oversubscribed: Core concept
• 05:10–05:37: Steve Jobs, Apple, and pre-launch demand (Brad & Daniel)
• 06:22: Waiting list-driven software launch example (Daniel)
• 08:38: “Official Capacity”—creating delighted customers (Daniel)
• 10:19–11:11: Planning launch campaigns by numbers (Daniel)
• 12:24: “Signal collection, not sales”—waitlists, applications, etc. (Daniel)
• 13:41–14:09: Transparency in scarcity; ethical communication (Daniel)
• 17:30: “With or without you energy”—business independence (Daniel)
• 18:03: The Release: “Moment to act” in a launch campaign (Daniel)
• 21:29: Drop Models and manufactured scarcity applied to various businesses (Brad)
• 23:20: Audience segmentation and the 80/20 of revenue (Daniel)
• 24:32: Niche and luxury pricing with examples (Daniel)
• 27:28: Esther Perel story—pricing for value (Daniel)
• 31:30: Raising prices with better audience segmentation (Daniel)
• 32:09: Environment dictates performance; best advice (Daniel)
• 33:24: The natural effect of peer groups (Daniel)

Summary

This episode offers a masterclass in moving from scarcity of clients to scarcity of product—positioning your business as a prize to be chased, not a service to be sold. Daniel Priestley delivers actionable frameworks for crafting high-demand businesses, with memorable examples and a human tone rooted in entrepreneurial reality. Business owners seeking scale, sanity, and satisfaction will find both strategic and practical wisdom within.