beginning, which is marketing. at the front end of any business, whether it is an AI consulting agency or something else. This is ultimately where you want to focus all of your energy and attention because if you don't have leads, you don't have a business, you barely even have a hobby. You know, if you're at $0 in revenue and you're spending literally any of your time on anything that is not just directly generating leads, you are, as a rule, wasting money. And my recommendation is quit procrastinating. You know that marketing is the only thing that matters. So, do the thing. Okay. So, now that I'm done with this beginners, hopefully you know where I stand. Let's break down the four major marketing mechanisms that actually work for beginners today. Those are platform sales, cold email, communities, and then cold DMs. And I'm also going to give you guys assets related to every one of them. So each marketing method comes with a bunch of trade-offs. I'm going to rank them across three axes. The time investment that they require, the capital and then ultimately the technical barrier to entry. So first off, platform sales like Upwork or Freelancer. com or Fiverr, etc. These generally speaking have the highest time outlay. They have very low capital requirements and they also have low barrier to entries. But they're also probably in contrast the least scalable marketing mechanism because most of them require a direct time investment that you need to provide in order to generate leads. That said, I've made well over $500,000 directly from just Upwork. Uh it's also why I recommend most people start because this allows you to go directly to the very top of the buying ladder. In case you guys don't know what that means, basically instead of having to gain people's attention and then convince them that they are suffering from a problem and then convince them that there is a solution to that problem and then convince them that you actually are the right fit to deliver that solution, you get to skip all that BS. You instead just get to talk to business owners that literally have money in their hands and have already declared to the platform that they know the problem, they know the solution, they just want you to fix it. So, while platforms like this do obviously come with trade-offs, it is a comparatively low barrier way to start gaining clients and then pay down uh you know the concepts of skill debt, client management debt, and like a bunch of debt that you don't really know you have to bring in a bunch of early revenue super quick. So, I'm going to use specifically Upwork as an example here just because it's where I have the most experience, although obviously there are people crushing it on a variety of platforms. The things to know for Upwork specifically are your CV, it has to pop, and then custom videos or assets. Basically, you need a way to make your proposal stand out. And for both of these, I have templates in the link below in the description. So, you guys can just take a look at that and then get, I want to say 80% of the way there. Uh, most of these tactics took me many, many years to learn, but ultimately have made me over half a million dollars. Okay, cold email. This one has a very low time requirement. Basically, you just have an initial setup and then you have a small ongoing time need. You have a medium upfront cost and then you have a very high barrier to entry. And so, that's sort of the lay of the land if you compare that to, you know, platform sales. This is a lot harder to get right. But then marginally speaking, you know, per additional lead generated, it costs a lot less. And the reason why is because in order to be effective, there are a lot of deep skills you need to know. But obviously, this has the highest upside. I've generated and helped people generate millions of dollars with cold email much, much more with Upwork because it's super high leverage if you learn how to write, you know, effective emails and cold email copy and, you know, how to set up your infrastructure and stuff like that. Cold email is basically a money printer. And the beauty is it scales independent of your actual time involvement. meaning you can send, you know, 20 emails a day or 2,000 emails a day with literally the exact same system, which is wild. So, to get you guys started, I have a high performing cold email formula plus a couple of scripts that you guys can just directly copy and then repurpose again down below in the description. But in general, I want you to know that your first campaign's probably going to be your worst. As long as you guys have the runway and the perseverance in order to continue, you can eventually get cold email to a place where it actually works for you. I'll also show you guys an example of both a cold email script and then a cold DM script in just a minute. Okay, let's do communities. Communities are very high time outlay. They're very low cost and they're also very low barrier to entry. But then you know in terms of the results they're pretty mid-tier. So what I mean is you can absolutely land clients hanging out in Slack or school or Reddit. You know I get people in maker school saying that all the time. Although it is something of a grind and it's not exactly the most scalable marketing mechanism. Certainly nowhere near as much so as something like cold email or ads or whatnot. The main objective with communities is basically just building authority and then becoming the go-to person in a group for a given subject, whatever that subject may be. And all of that requires consistency, which is the thing that nobody wants to hear. And all consistency is you just show up every day or every two days or every 3 days and just comment and post value and then DM people that ask you questions and just be around, you know, 24/7. I like to think of it kind of like fishing in Runescape. You know, it's very, very slow to start. When you get to a high level, you become super valuable because you can fish swordfish and that's fun. Also, the relationships that you build here in any sort of community, you know, I want you to know they're capable of growing far past what you initially may have wanted them to be. Like, I can't tell you the number of fantastic relationships I myself have made through communities and uh the really great relationships that I've seen people make in Maker School and beyond. So, a lot of people across communities are crushing it with this approach. Uh what I've done is attached a couple of templates that you guys could use to help structure out your own posts. Basically, like a highle skeleton you guys could just slot in your own things. The key part here is you just want to deliver value. basically solve a problem that people in the community are suffering from. It's actually pretty easy to figure that out. You can just filter the community by questions or something like that in order to get, you know, things that people are asking and that they need help with. And then you can just create a big content calendar solving each of those day by day or week by week depending on how active you want to be, plus reply guy in the community and sort of being present and so on and so forth. Okay. And then finally, cold DMs, which are kind of like cold email. They're just over social media platforms. These have high time commitments, low capital outlays. They don't really cost that much money cuz Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, these are all free. Um, but then very high barrier to entry because again they are like psychology techniques and so on and so forth. I want you to know that results vary pretty wildly depending on the niche and the offer. If you guys are just DMing random founders on LinkedIn and using a copy and paste template, you're probably going to get ghosted more often than not. But if you learn how to send precise and hyperpersonalized messages, or at least messages that seem precise and hyperpersonalized, and you do it consistently for a long period of time, this can be a gold mine. I actually just did an interview a couple of weeks ago with a young guy from Maker School. I think his name is Julian, and he closed almost $15,000 last month, predominantly from LinkedIn outreach. So, a lot of people are currently using this to crush. The real hack, in my opinion, is to make things seem customized and direct. And you do that by being informal. So, you don't want to be, you know, too formal, but at the same time, you also don't want to make it seem like you're not putting in any effort. There's like a fine balance you need to walk between um customizing the hell out of everything and then copy and pasting the same thing over and over again. Luckily for you, I have an example pitch in the link down below. Take a look at it. In general, when you guys are doing some sort of cold outreach, you should follow a structure that loosely resembles this one from Instantly. Instantly being a cold email platform. Start with some personalization. Then show them a value prop. Then talk about their niche. Then discuss their goal. Then give them a relevant case study. Then leave them with a cliffhanger before finally giving them a CTA or call to action. An example with a real piece of messaging might look something like this. Hey Sarah, I've been seeing XYZ wellness everywhere recently. a huge work. Uh, I help health companies automate their onboarding and reduce churn with a $15,000 a month minimum guarantee. Just helped a supplement company add 32K in revenue in one month. Can I show you how I do the same for you? No strings. Notice what's happening here. This is short. It's specific. It's very clear. No fluff. I'm not begging for a meeting. What we're doing is we're showing them that we did our homework. We explain exactly what it is we do. We give them proof. Then we give them a question. What's that $15,000 a month revenue added guarantee? And then we open the door. And you know, if you send this sort of thing to enough people and if you implement some niche specific techniques, you can perform really well. We have lots of people doing that right now within Maker School. So you can get this script and more lead genen templates below in the
description. All right, time to talk about sales. So let's say you did all of the above and your lead generation is running really well and you've now gotten to the point where you're booking meetings consistently. Well, it is now time to sell them. And here's the sales frame that I want you to remember. Sales today is not about tricking people like it may have used to be. It is about uncovering their pain, showing how your problem solves that pain, and then positioning yourself as the obvious investment. That is it. So, I personally use a very simple sales structure, and I've also taught the same thing to over 6,000 people now, many of which have used it to close deals worth as much as $60,000 upfront. I'm going to include this below in the description and give you guys a brief overview here. It's around 30 to 45 minutes when all said and done, and it's very straightforward. Here is the structure. You start by building rapport. Then, you set the schedule. Then you do discovery. Then you chat solutions. Finally, you chat investments. And then you send a proposal that includes all that information. So let's start with the first, which is rapport. So at all of my companies, I have always adhered to the idea that rapport is important and people tend to buy things from people that they like. Some disagree, that's fine. Uh but this is what works for us, so it's what I'm going to start with. Our very first job is simple. You just get them to smile. That's it. Uh in my case, I do this usually by providing a light joke or a compliment or something like that. Most of the time, I literally just ask, "Hey, where are you based? " And if they're based somewhere I know of, it's like, "No way. I love that city. How long have you been living there for? " It's not rocket science or anything. This is just like social lubricant. So, it can take as little as 10 seconds. Once you're done with that, you transition to the next stage by just saying something like, "All right, you guys ready to jump in? " The next stage is setting the schedule. And this is really where we start getting important. So, the idea here is you lay out a road map and then you frame the call. Basically, you take control of the call and show them that you have a defined structure for it. So, you will literally say something like, "Hey, here's how these calls usually go. First, I want to understand why you booked. Then I want to dig a little bit deeper in your business, maybe chat some numbers. Then finally, if I think we can help, I will show you what that looks like and we'll talk about next steps. Does that sound good? Great. All you're really doing here is you're setting the frame. There's nothing mystical, nothing magical. Basically, just telling them what you are going to do and then later we it. So, let's actually do it. Well, this is discovery. And I think this is probably the most important part of the call because what's really interesting is if you just ask the questions that you want to know the answers to, the client will literally give you all of the ammunition you need to close the deal. A good example of this is, "Why did you decide to book the call? " Probably the highest ROI question ever, and basically nobody asks it. It's just like, "Hey, Peter, I know you get a lot of cold emails every day, so just tell me why did you decide to book a call with me and not the other 20 people that are sending you cold emails? What about my offer made you want to say yes? If you just ask every person that comes into any sort of salesunnel that question, you are like 70 80% of the way there. It's that easy. Another good question, what is the goal right now? You know, if you don't have a goal to move towards, some sort of north star, then a lot of the time you're just wasting your time. So, just get them to tell you what their goals are. And the whole reason why is because when they tell you what your goals are, you just get to frame everything that you do in pursuit of that goal. Another great one is, so assuming we fix this for you, what are you thinking it'll do to the company? Here they will literally tell you, hey, you know, if you fix this, we're going to make tons more money. Hey, uh, you know, right now this is costing us like 30 grand a month. If you fix this for us, you'll solve that leak. Hey, hm, right now we're currently spending $3,000 a month per person on three staff members. And if you build this system, we could probably just fire them all. Well, guess what? Now you know at least at a bird's eye view the impact or outcome of the system that you are going to be proposing them. And as long as you can frame that as a positive return on investment, man, you're golden. Another great question is why haven't you guys done this yet? So it's like, hey, what has stopped you guys from doing this up until now? You guys know that this has been a problem for the last 6 months or something like that as you have told me. So why are we only acting on this now? And basically the whole idea is you just ask a bunch of questions and then in doing so get all of the data you need to later close them. That is what discovery is. Okay, people dress it up in a million in one ways, especially enterprise consultants because they like to sound all fancy. But discovery is basically like, "Hey man, tell me where to shoot and then I'll shoot. " Obviously sales is not you shooting somebody. But hopefully you get my point. And then uh when you're asking the questions, the ones that I showed you guys a moment ago, my recommendation is also ask follow-ups that are relevant to your situation. If somebody says their goal is to close more clients, you know, just ask them, "Oh, no way. So um how much is a client paying when they get in the door? " And the whole idea is, you know, again, you are just building out like more, I guess, a wider perspective and multiple vantage points on the pain points they're suffering from. I find it also just demonstrates that you're an active listener. And yeah, this is really like at the heart of sales. Step four is to propose these solutions. So once you guys have got the full picture, you know, once they've told you everything you need to know about what pain they are suffering from, all you need to do is you just position your system or your product as a logical solution to that pain. And usually this looks something like, "Okay, so we've solved many similar problems to X, Y, and Z before, and this is a great fit for our system. To make a long story short, we're going to solve X by doing Y. Uh, my hope is it will save you Z dollars every month. Would you like to see an example of how this works? " And then, you know, because systems are visual, uh, and you want to make them concrete, you just give them a demonstration of what the thing looks like. you know, you have a system library or something like that with five or 10 systems that you routinely sell and you just have the ability to demo any of them at the time that the client wants. And the benefit to selling in this way too is it's vastly simplifies later on down the line because now you're showing them systems that you have templates for. Meaning, if they say, "Hey, I really like that. " Guess what you do when you deliver it? You just duplicate the thing and you spend 15 minutes touching it up or making minor additions to it. Right? So, this is like templated sales. It's productized sales. It's you starting kind of at the end and then working your way backwards, which is very valuable. And then step five is to frame the investment. So finally after, you know, we built up all this value, we've discovered, you know, all of their pain points, we press those pain points, we position our solution as being the right fit, we got to drop the price. And my recommendation is you always do this at the end because if you do it at the end, you built up a tremendous amount of value in the customer's eyes. Whereas if you try and drop the price at the beginning, what you're doing is you're just giving them a number that they're going to fixate on and then spending your entire sales call justifying it later on. Obviously, if somebody asks you point blank, hey, how much is XYZ solution? and they're very specific about it, you know, for the most part, I will answer if they seem like they want to buy. But otherwise, I will almost always continue building value, asking them the right questions and getting to them to the point where they're almost asking me. So, like, dude, like, tell me how much this thing costs already, man, cuz it sounds like it's perfect. So, a good way to actually frame this, and just an example you guys could use in your own sales calls is, hey, based on what you told me to save you that $50,000 price tag, our project would cost 19 grand. assuming there's nothing else we need to add on, your investment would pay for itself in literally the first month. And that framing is powerful because they've already told you the size of their pain. You just kind of stick two and two together, right? Uh two important parts here for beginners. The first is again, always frame it as an investment. And then number two, when you drop the price, just shut up. You know, just don't say anything. It's pretty much the only like tense part or high-risisk part of a sales call. And you can navigate completely just by not saying anything after you drop the price. It's kind of like the first person to speak loses, right? So, when you say that $19,000 part in this hypothetical example, just say it and then wait. From there, you'll probably start getting some objections to deal with and so on. And I want to say that like handling these is a learned skill, uh, it can be quite the skill as well. It's not anything that I'm going to be able to show you guys in just a few minutes here on YouTube. But in general, some highle recommendations that can save you some time. If somebody wants it cheaper, don't just give them a discount. Instead, remove line items from your scope or remove some functionality from the system you are pitching so that you are not actually reducing the price or value of your service. And so that the person on the other end of the line is now forced to make a decision about what aspects of your service they value the most. This actually additionally gives you more information about what it is that they want. And it can help you, I don't know, reach some middle point later on. Also, if somebody gives you a vague, hey, I need to think about it. I want you to know that's almost never the actual reason that they don't want to move forward. They have an objection of some kind. Almost always, there's almost certainly some additional reason that's stopping them from taking action. You probably just didn't inoculate the sale. Uh do a very good job building the value. And my recommendation is if you find yourself in a situation like this, just go one level deeper and ask them, okay, yeah, that makes sense. Would this system solve the needs that you put in front of me? And if they say no to that, then you now have the real reason that they don't want to work together, which you can just handle on the spot. If they say yes to that, then you know that, you know, there's probably very little that you can realistically do here. And uh, you know, you can send your proposal and move on. And if somebody is unwilling to make a decision right then and there, I want you to know that that's okay. A lot of high ticket sales people will try and force you to push a client into making a decision on a call. My recommendation is you don't do any of that. You know, somebody says they have to talk to their spouse or whatever. That's okay. Uh we're consultants. We're not high ticket sales people. We're not car sales people. Okay? Our margins aren't 3%. Just tell them that you'll send them a proposal with way more details that's much more in-depth that writes everything out verbatim and uh give them all the time that they need and then just set your proposal to automatically follow up for you. Speaking of proposals, step six is sending the proposal. And the thing is, finally, because the systems that we are selling are technical, you need something written down. You know, it's like one thing if you just say it on a sales call or whatever, but we're dealing with technical solutions here. If there's any sort of expectation mismatch, that can lead to very, very bloated scopes and a lot more time and energy written. So, my recommendation is just always like have a proposal written with a scope on it. And you guys can check a previous video that I posted all about how to do proposals if you want an example of that. And then what's really cool is most proposal platforms like Panda do and better proposals and stuff like that, these have like um automatic follow-up features now. So what you can do is you can just fire the proposal off and just set it to automatically follow up over and over again over the course of the next week or two. You can also set like a time expiry with a specific offer. There are a lot of like downstream tactical ways of doing this, I would say, but basically when you take the layer approach to sales where you try not to close directly on the call and then you just send a proposal instead, like you will absolutely miss closing some clients that you could have otherwise closed. But I do find that in general, the people that you end up working with tend to prefer working with you because they didn't just make an emotional decision on the spot. They made both a logical and an emotional decision. And when we're dealing with like technical stuff like this, it's imperative that they make both. Okay. So, I'm going to include this script below in the description. Feel free to use it anytime. Let's move on to the next major pillar, which is onboarding.
All right. So, after you close that deal and you've collected payment, you now need a process to onboard the new client into your ecosystem. Onboarding sets the tone for the entire relationship. If you guys get this wrong, you will create endless headaches for yourself and your probability of upselling them later on or retaining them, which I'll show you how to do, is going to plummet. Whereas, if you nail this, you know, you'll look very professional. You look very organized and the probability of making more money goes way the hell up. That's why you should frontload everything into a kickoff call. And there's a link to my SOP, standard operating procedure, down below in the description. Here is how a good kickoff call always goes. First, you start with an introduction. Then, you do goals and timelines. Then you chat communications for finally doing platform access and two-factor authentication. Let's start with the first. So introductions and framing. You know this is very similar to what we were doing on the setting the schedule for the sales call. It's like one minute tops. What you're doing is you are thanking the person for joining. Uh you're chatting who's who on the call. You know if people have multiple I don't know directors or associates or whatever. They just set the frame, which by the way is, hey, my goal by the end of this call is I want our company to have everything we need so we don't have to bother you or ask for permissions every day for the next week. You know, somebody that's done many of these projects until now. The biggest issue in the space is logistics. Two-factor authentication codes, passwords, access, and stuff like that. And these can be a nightmare if you let them drag out. So, instead of chasing these things for weeks, I just want to handle it live on this call. I also want to cover timelines. I want to cover how we're going to communicate with you, then walk you guys through any platforms that I need to sign up for. Does that sound good? Obviously, they're going to say, "That sounds great. " And you now have built instant trust. You've implied or I guess explicitly stated that you have done this thing before, which builds more social proof. Uh, and then you've shown them that you have like a dedicated process for handling what are problems that routinely come up with other freelancers. And by the way, if they've ever worked with any other freelancer that has done something like this or any other agency, they know exactly what you're talking about. permissions, access, logistics, etc. end up being like the biggest headache for any sort of systemsbased thing. So, step two are goals and timelines. So, here I'd recommend laying out exactly what's going to happen over the course of your client engagement. Cover timelines, cover how long it's going to take for various things to happen, and so on and so forth. Cover what they can expect to get at every step. And then after you're done, we'll sign them up to the platforms that we need. This might be something like, hey, our goal is to start today and then I want to wrap this up within 3 weeks. Obviously, if we could deliver the project earlier, we will. The project will be split into three clear milestones so you always know where things stand. Here's how they work. When you do stuff like this, clients love it. Uh odds are they've been burned by consultants before who typically start working with them and then disappear into a black hole. When you do this, you're showing them that they will not have to chase you. You're almost always on top of things. And speaking about being on top of things, that's where communication expectations come into play, which is step three. with communication expectations. You say, "Hey, you'll get one daily update Monday to Friday over Slack or over email or over WhatsApp. You know, it'll include where the project's at, what's coming next, and if I have any blockers that I need you to help me with, and if you have any one-off questions, I'm just going to batch them and then cover them in that daily check-in. Does that work for you? " This one move will literally save you 90% of all of the back and forth chaos in any sort of client engagement. You know, one of the big issues with clients in practice tends to be if you don't set firm boundaries, which as a beginner, you probably do not know how to do, clients end up swallowing up a disproportionate amount of your time on silly like questions or random calls or hey, I had an idea for the thing. Just don't let them do that. Build your own structure in and then tell them that, hey, you know, if anything comes in between the last instance of our thing and then the current instance of the thing, I'll just cover it on the current instance of the thing. Or if anything comes in between today and tomorrow, I'll just cover it all tomorrow. If you do this, you are now framing your relationship on your terms and it saves like 99% of all the headache that you might have in any sort of engagement. Okay. Then finally, I personally do platform access on step four. I think a lot of people screw this up. You know, I don't just send a list of login and then wait for weeks. My recommendation and what we have had over 6,000 people in Maker School do now is just handle it live on the call. You can literally say, "Hey, so today we need admin access to your Slack and Santa. Let's set both of that stuff up right now. " you know, if a two-factor authentication code pops up, I'll just have you read it to me and then we can proceed. We can get all this stuff done in the next 3 minutes. Sound cool? Sounds great. You know, when you do it like that, what realistically would have taken 20 emails back and forth or you coordinating weird 3minute window between 9:00 p. m. and 9:03 p. m. You frontload all that and you deal with it here. And then also, because you had the client sign up to the platforms later on down the line, you don't have to do a handoff, which means jump into the client's workspace and then reset up and duplicate all the stuff that you've already done. it's already there to begin with, which saves you so much time, so much effort. Okay, last step is wrap-up, which is just a quick check-in where you ask them if you have any questions and then you confirm, "Okay, great. Let's kick this off. I'll give you guys your first update tomorrow. " This just closes the loop out and reassures them that you are effectively off to the races. By the end of that 30-minute call, the client will know exactly how you work. Uh you will have everything you need, and there will be zero silly back and forth that doesn't actually contribute materially to making more money. Let's move on to
