From Brain Surgery to $1.6M: How I Built My Dream Business | 074

I had brain surgery. It was a really tough recovery, having to learn walking, being able to even like lift coffee cup and all that kind of stuff. I never stopped working, never stopped building my business.

My guest today, Sam VanderWeelen, practiced law for 5 years before walking away to build something entirely her own. Since then, she's grown a $1.6 million digital product business.

My main strategy going into it when I started was SEO because I thought for what I do, people are going to Google what kind of contract do I need for X or how do I start an online business? I literally sketched out out what are the top 10 questions that I think people would ask related to what I do and wrote a blog post for each one of them.

I think it's way easier to capture existing demand and bring it over to you than it is to try and create demand or convince people that they need something.

I have had a saying, all roads lead to the email list. So every conversation, every marketing meeting, everything I get pitched, I'm like, but how does that help me with my email list? And I think having that attitude really, really helped. I have only ever sold 2 products. The ultimate bundle alone has generated more than $8.5 million to date.

And you're running it with a small team.

I have 1 full-time employee.

What tipped it over into actually making that product?

Okay, do you want to know the craziest thing? So I—

I mean, that's amazing. How long were you practicing law before you just left the industry?

A little over 5 years, and I would say 5 years too long.

Okay, so 6 months And you're like, this is great. And after that you're like, never mind.

6 months would be really generous. I would say about 6 hours. Not even lying. I literally like, I raced through. I went to law school, took the bar. I graduated at 23, became a lawyer, worked at this huge, what we call white shoe law firm. Thousands of lawyers.

What is a white shoe law firm?

It means that there's, it's fancy. It had really great like amenities that I was very into. This is when I learned something about myself that I'm really into amenities because I was more interested in like the coffee that was available outside than the work. But no, I sat down in this, like, you know, giant skyscraper of an office building and was like, this in New York or this was in Philadelphia where I originally from, grew up. And yeah, I just knew I had made an epic mistake and had massive student loans. So that was an awesome combination.

Yeah. And what type of law were you practicing?

I was practicing corporate law, so I was representing business owners, usually like a lot of shareholder disputes, a lot of intellectual property disputes. So, okay. Funny enough, it's kind of the big picture, big high-level version of a lot of what I deal with now.

On the creator side.

Yeah, with a lot of creatives or at least trying to prevent it from ever getting there.

Yeah. Okay. So something that you were telling me earlier is that you had more fun talking to the business owners about how they run their business and all of this than their actual legal problems.

Yeah. One of the things I would often get in trouble for was that when business owners would come in because they had some sort of dispute or like some sort of contract issue was going on. I just wanted to talk to them about business. The other big revelation that I had at the time, which I still don't understand, was like, to me, the legal industry is the only industry that you can get away with charging. Like, it is actually against their interest to be efficient. And in any other industry, we would not accept this. And so I would get things done very, very quickly. I still to this day, and I was just telling you, I knocked out a whole sequence in the airport. but I was getting penalized for being that efficient.

Because your billable hours were too low.

They were too low, but the clients were happy. And so I was like, this makes no sense. I was frustrated on behalf of the business owner. Yeah.

Your senior partners or all of that are like, slow down a little bit.

Yeah.

Like an expectation would be that that would be 10 billable hours and you did it in 4. Like that's not—

Yeah. Or I thought I would reach a settlement, for example, in a case of— I negotiating was my number one favorite thing, still is to this day. And I, I never miss an opportunity, but I wouldn't think like, oh, I think I can negotiate a settlement about this. And they would say, I think you can get a few more depots out of them, which is depositions, which costs a fortune, right? They're for at least $10,000 a deposition. And so it's like that, that is not okay practice. I will border on saying illegal. And so I had real tension with the industry I was in, but have these like massive student loans riding on my back, you know, thinking, oh, how am I going to pay these things? And had a massive, I don't know, mindset issue, I guess, with thinking, if I leave, imagine everyone's going to be like, you went all the way through all of this work and now you just left. And I didn't know what else to do.

Yeah. So I want to get into all of that and your journey into running a creator business and how you've done some pretty impressive things since then. But first, you said you love negotiation.

Yes.

Is there a favorite negotiation story that you can share or anonymize the details just enough that you're If you're able to share it.

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I have this one case, one of the final cases I had was actually where I was, I was pitching in on a case where it was more of like a personal injury situation. This guy said that he lost an eyeball in a parking lot of an apartment complex, and we had no proof that he was ever in the actual parking lot. There was not a police report, there wasn't anything related to this case. So long story short, I got involved with trying to negotiate a settlement with his insurance company. And my favorite thing to do was always ask the client, like, what, what would you like to see a settlement of? And if they said $10,000, I would try to go back to them with like, I got you one of 5, you know, to make them happy. Like, I think this is when I started learning surprise and delight. And so I would really find out what their expectations are. And so yes, I was able to negotiate a much lower settlement than what they wanted and then came back to them and they were just so thrilled. And that leads to more cases and all kinds of good stuff. Yeah.

Good stuff in this case being more work that you don't want to do.

Yeah, probably. Yeah.

For me, for me, I think you're like, I'm trying to quit the industry, but yeah. This is a good thing. Talk about that, like the surprise and delight.

Mm-hmm.

You had an anchoring technique in there, so explain that more. If you, what's the thing that you're asking so, so that you can set expectations and then beat them?

Yeah. So I wanna know like what, what would even just make them happy? And oftentimes they would say something like, oh, I would just get rid of this for like $10,000. I'd just be happy. And then I would know like if I got it significantly less, imagine how they're going to feel. Yeah. So I think I started doing this. I see how I don't think about it, but I see how I even do this today in business where I ask people when they're like, when I'm onboarding new customers of like, what's something you'd like to see? And then like we give it to them or something like this. So I see, I kind of build this in.

Yeah. What does success look like? All of that. What are you most hoping to achieve? We do that, uh, with a lot of the, uh, clients that we migrate over. We're asking, hey, what's the thing that would make this feel like a big win? And often they're like, oh, if I could just have this done within, you know, 4 weeks by the time, you know, I have this thing coming out or the podcast launch or a book or whatever else. And then we're looking at it and going, yeah, we can 100% hit that. But we're like, all right, that's what's most important. We'll make sure that we hit that.

Yeah.

And then you structure a plan around it and you can overdeliver because we were already planning to be done in 2 weeks.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's just, it's a silly example, but the other day a customer emailed me and she had a question. About something and like, I think that entrepreneurs can often forget, like they think this person's already paid them and they're kind of moving on to the next. Like, how do I just get more customers, more leads, more subscribers, like more followers, whatever it is. But this person emailed me a really good question and it was a complex question where I was not going to just shoot off. It was not a legal thing. She was actually asking me about business and I sent her a video reply back, like a pretty significant video reply with really walking her through and screenshotting and screen sharing and showing her all these things behind the scenes. And she wrote me back like in tears, was like, I cannot believe you responded, let alone the fact that you came back with this. And I get that from people. A lot of people will be surprised I answer my emails, but let alone with a video. Yeah. So I think there's just like little things like that you can do for people.

I like those touches because often the video is actually the same amount or less work than like typing out the detailed thing, but it feels so much more personal. It's like, I can't believe that. She took the time to do that.

Yeah. It's the benefit of, I think, really loving what you do. It doesn't— that doesn't feel— I don't even think about it. Right. I'm not sitting there thinking like, let me surprise and delight this person. She asked me a question about building an email list. I got really excited about it and I wanted to show her exactly what I did. So yeah, I think that you can do a lot to help people in that way and just, I don't know, giving back to our community, I guess.

Yeah, I like that a lot.

Yeah.

Okay. So the path You're 5 years, 5 and a half years into actively practicing law. What did the path out of law look like?

Yeah, so first it looked like starting a food blog, which was pretty hilarious. It was called Barrister's Beet, like B-E-E-T. Yeah, and it was terrible, but I'm so glad that I did it because I, I mean, I knew nothing about blogging. I didn't know about starting a website, like any of these things. And so I started this and it just got me kind of in the rhythm of like starting to create content that was not about legal stuff. And then in doing so, I then started seeing all of these, you know, food bloggers and health coaches and my, my like kind of community kept expanding of knowing. I mean, when you're a lawyer, you have your head down pretty much like I had no clue any of this stuff existed. And so I started seeing all of this and at first I thought, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to become a health coach because I want to teach people how to cook because I love to cook. And I wanted far, far away from the law. And I felt very bitter about being a lawyer. I wanted to get away from it. So I started taking all the classes and things that I needed to do for that and set all of that up on the back— in the background while I was still working full-time. And at first, that in 2016, that's actually what I left to start.

Was the food blog?

Yes. Well, like it turned into like a health coaching business essentially. But yes, that. Yes. So I left at first to do this and was very, I don't know, defiant about like, I'm not a lawyer anymore and all this stuff. I actually went to a conference in 2016 in Philly. It was a wellness conference, so it doesn't exist anymore. But they, there was like a line of people waiting to talk. I had nothing. I had like 70 followers on Instagram, right? So I had this little line of people that lined up and said, my friend told me you used to be a lawyer and I'm starting, like starting my own online business and I don't understand, do I need an LLC? My, my uncle told me I need an S corp and you know, all this stuff. I'm like, why are you guys asking me? Clearly this must exist. And it did. There wasn't a lot of us back then, but also there was a giant gaping hole in the market that I saw. And so when I started to at least expand my mind to the idea that, okay, I won't be like a lawyer lawyer anymore, but I can kind of mesh these two worlds. That was when I transitioned into selling legal templates.

Did you make money in the health and wellness side of things?

Yeah, I mean, I made a few thousand dollars. I think at that point I was probably spending more. So I was getting things set up. I did. I think I got all my good mistakes out because I spent thousands of dollars setting up a website that I didn't know who it was designed for. I didn't spend the money on copy, so it was bad. You know, I got professional photos, but it— nothing, it didn't make sense. And so I threw out every offering that I could. I did sell things and it was a great, great practice run, but I could not stop people from asking me legal questions despite not advertising it.

There's like this burning demand for the product that you're not even offering.

Yeah, it felt really frustrating. At first because I was like, why is everyone associating me with this? And honestly, it's still a little bit of a mindset issue that I struggle with where I will feel like people put me in a box. I feel like people like, yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I don't feel like I should be destined to this life of lawyerdom now that I did this thing. I have a lot of other things to say. So I sometimes get frustrated about that and I felt that at the time, but I also, I write about this a lot in my book. I talk about how I think there can— I think what I ultimately realized was there can be this marriage between like I had a really good idea for a product. I saw there being a hole in the market. And so I said, I'm okay offering this product because I love how I get to create the product. I love then what that all allows me to do. And so I love email marketing, I love creating content, I love podcasting, I like writing, right? I wanted to write a book one day, so I knew that it would be more like a vehicle and I stopped, I think, like, letting go of this idea that I had to be obsessed with my product, like my product itself. It was very freeing, actually. Yeah.

I love that. Okay, so let's go to revenue today and then jump back to how we built up to it over the years. What was revenue in 2024?

Uh, $1.5, $1.56. Yeah. Yeah. I like the specificity of it.

Yeah. Which $1.56 technically rounds up to $1.6.

Yeah, I think so. I think so too. Yeah. I would like to.

Yeah.

With interest.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Um, Uh, I mean, that's amazing. And you're running it with a small team.

I have one full-time employee.

One full— so I would imagine those profit margins are, um, healthy.

Yeah, very healthy. I mean, I think what makes me the happiest is how easy it feels. I don't, I don't mean that in like the spammy business coach way. I hate the way that a lot of people in our industry talk about this.

Do this one weird trick and then you're like—

Yeah, it's so easy. It's not completely passive. Like, my product itself is passive, but like I think at this point I feel very comfortable knowing what to do. I know what levers to pull and I know like this is about how much— I don't know how much more I can do than this. We'll see. But this up to this point, I've been like, okay, I kind of get— I get how this works and I thoroughly enjoy the work. And I think I have really, really cool customers. Like in my one product alone, we have over 4,500 people in it. And so it's just so cool to like— I feel a little bit like a business Dula, because then I get to go see them go create all of these businesses that help other people.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. So then building up from, from that, you've made the, you've listened to the line of people who were telling you like, you know, food, wellness, whatever. But let me ask you about, I have a legal question for you. Uh, what made, like, what tipped it over into actually making that product?

Okay. Do you want to know the craziest thing? This is not, this is not a story that is very consistent with me. But this is literally what happened. So I was having terrible headaches, which I ultimately ended up having to have brain surgery for. So I didn't know why I was having these headaches at the time. So I was trying everything. And one of my friends said, you should go to acupuncture. So I go to acupuncture for the first time. She puts all the needles in my head and my eyes and all of this stuff. And I'm laying there and I'm telling you, Nathan, I felt like I had a moment that was, I don't know, transcendental in some variety. And all I saw was a series— I was thinking about this, like, legal business, and I was kind of pushing it away, resisting it, all I saw was a series of doors opening, like one after the next. It was like, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, doors. And I came out of the acupuncture thing. I was like, I think I have to try to start that business. So that is literally what happened.

You had a moment of enlightenment.

Yeah, I think I did. Somebody came down and like planted it in my head. But I was like, I think I'm going to give this a go. And my husband had a long golf trip weekend planned with his best friend. And I was like, you know what, while he's gone, I'm going to learn how to build a website. I learned, I taught myself WooCommerce. I had already written the contracts, so I like templatized them, uh, learned how to upload them and started a website. And in 3 hours, someone bought one of my templates. Totally random person.

Uh, how much money did you make from selling it?

$347. And I still have the original sticky note. $347.

$347. And what, and the sticky note, what was that?

So I started the sticky note that said that in that month, my goal was to make $2,000 in, in gross revenue. And so then I would every time put like minus $347, like I hit, you know, so I was just, do how much? And so I ended up at the bottom, I still have the sticky note in my desk drawer. It says plus $2,447 because I actually made, uh, $4,447 in the first month.

You know, a little over double the goal.

Yeah.

In month one. No big deal.

I didn't think anyone would buy. I really, I really didn't. My, my main, my main strategy going into it when I started was SEO because I thought for what I do, people are gonna Google. It's a very specific problem.

Yeah.

And like how, What kind of contract do I need for X? Or how do I start an online business? So I literally sketched out what are the top 10 questions that I think people would ask related to what I do and wrote a blog post for each one of them. I taught myself SEO, made these posts, linked to my products throughout, and that's how I made the first sale.

Wow. So what did you end up that first year?

Mm.

How much did you end up making?

So because I started late in the year that first year, I only made like $26,000. Yeah. And then the first full year in business, I made $100,000.

There you go.

Yeah.

Uh, how did that compare to your legal salary?

Oh, well, so it's funny because a lot of people will think that, you know, you make a lot as a lawyer, but when I left, I think I was making maybe $74,000.

So to make a lot as a lawyer, you gotta be in.

You have to go for a long time or just give up your life and go to a firm that's, you know, so huge or something like this. But I, yeah, I mean, it was not that long before I was making, at least in my business in terms of revenue, more in a month than I did it all year as a lawyer, which is now, you know, very regular practice for me. Yeah.

Right. Okay. So then you're ramping up $100,000.

Mm-hmm.

Like give me the map between $100,000 and $1.6 million.

I, you know, it's so interesting. I think email list marketing, I mean, email marketing was huge. I, I have had a saying internally and then now with the team, um, the whole time that I say all roads lead to the email list. So every conversation, every marketing meeting we have, everything I get pitched, I'm like, but how does that help me with my email list? And so we turn everything around and I think having Having that attitude from the start really, really helped. And I said to a friend the other day, like, I feel a little bit like I deposited 10 cents every day and was thinking it was nothing. And I put it in a really good, you know, high interest savings account. And now looking back at it, I'm like, oh dang, that really, that built up. So I think, I think focusing on that email list over time is what really started to escalate the financial growth. And then ads, and then I started ads.

Okay.

Yes.

Let's stay on the email list for a second.

Yeah.

How many subscribers do you have on the list now?

47,000 now.

Okay. And that's, we were talking earlier, that's a pretty actively cleaned list.

That is cleaned once a quarter. So it's a very clean list. Yeah. Yeah. Super high engagement, tons of replies, high open rate, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So on the revenue ramp up, you were at $100,000. What was, what was the next year?

$333,000. Okay.

And then the next year?

Next year was $1.4 million. There's a bit of a jump.

Yeah, it was a big jump.

That was That was the year, that was the first year I went into ads. That was the first year and it was 2020. That was my first, the first year I did ads. And as you know, during that time, ads were just, it was cheap. They were cheap and worked really well. So it was like a great double whammy. I had really saved and saved and saved over the years. So I built up what I call a business war chest to the point that it was like, well, I don't know what I'm sitting on. It's like, I think the rainy day has come. I need to do something with this.

Time to grow.

Yeah. And it was time to do something. And I also knew with ads, hey, if this doesn't work out, this doesn't impact my business. Like it, it would suck, but it's not going to financially impact the business.

Right.

Yeah.

So then what ended up, uh, maybe what were a couple of missteps with ads? Mm-hmm. And then I'd love to get into what like really worked.

I think with ads, I would say my number one misstep was probably that I was too scared to scale them during that time. It, it was, it felt a little bit like a wild, like, you know, something was just going off like crazy because I remember the ad team just being like, you should just dump more, dump more, dump more. And it, it felt a little like an agency that you're using. I, yeah, I've always ever worked with an agency. I have not brought it in-house. And at the time everyone just like suggesting to scale ad spend. And I, I think I had hit maybe $30,000 or something in my ad spend. I'm like, that's good. I don't know why that was my, that was like my biggest number where I was like, that's just good. Yep.

It's time to pack it up and go home.

Yeah. Pack it up and go. And so I didn't, so I, I think that was probably a misstep looking back on it. I don't know. I, I also though, honestly, Nathan, I always have wanted to keep my lead gen diversified. So I, I never wanted to be like, my whole business is built off of ads and if that crumbles, then I'm screwed. So I think that was part of it is that I didn't wanna put all my money, let alone my attention there. Yeah.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So do you know, or like, were you running these ads on Meta? On—

Yes. Only ever on Meta. So I've never done, I've never done any Google Ads or anything like that.

And what was the funnel? For that? Like what types of, um, you know, who are you targeting with the ads? What, what was the creative like? And then, you know, was it straight to product or into the email list first?

Back then the creative was way more fun. So we were doing like really fun, almost like produced commercials. So there was one where I was like chasing my husband around the kitchen with a frying pan. Uh, there was one where I was like cooking up something and then I pull out of the oven and it's like a legal template. So we had, we were doing like really creative takes on things, which I think helped at the time. Those ads To me don't work as well anymore, but I was doing that and it was, that was to a webinar, which is still the same webinar. So I've had a little over 350,000 people take my webinar up to date. So that is still the same exact webinar I'm currently running and it's highly, highly converting still. So the ad would be to the webinar, they go through the funnel, get sales, uh, ads and convert.

And then is that the recording of a webinar or you're teaching it live?

It's recorded.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not even having to be involved in—

No, for the first few years I— so I actually did something a little wacky that in 2019, I— when my dad got sick, my dad had leukemia and I was taking care of him. And so I needed to figure out a way to make my business run much more efficiently without me. So I designed this evergreen webinar and everyone around me said, you can't go straight to evergreen with a webinar. You've never run it before. You need to run it live. And I was like, well, I don't have time.

Yeah, the constraint.

No. So I did. And it started converting right away. I did not run ads yet to it. but I started to my own organic audience. It started to work well, and then that's what made me feel, okay, I can pour money from ads into this. I, it's converting to cold leads for me. It's converting to my own warm audience.

Mm-hmm.

So that's when I turned on ads.

Yeah. And okay, so then what were you spending like per lead? Do you remember those numbers?

And then, oh yeah, back then, oh, it was like, we were just talking about this the other day. I think it was like $6 or like sometimes it would be like $5 or something.

What is it now?

Um, now we're getting it down to like $11 to $16, which is like, okay, you're like really happy with this. Even that, they're like, wow, that's amazing. We were, we were shifting up towards 20-something last year, and that's— ads were not going well. And so we completely revamped our strategy and it brought it way back down.

What were some of those tweaks in strategy?

Well, for one, I got back involved and I started looking at what the audience targeting was. And so this has been like an interesting lesson for me, I think, as the, the founder, that I, I kind of stepped away and said, you know, you guys got it, you run, run the ads and you know what you're doing. And when they weren't working well, I let it go for a little while and then I stepped back in. So I looked at the audience targeting. I didn't agree with who they were targeting because they weren't my ideal customers. Like for example, they were targeting real estate agents. Real estate agents would never buy my legal templates cuz for one, legal documents are very like standardized in, in the real estate industry.

And that's— yeah, brokerage is like, use these. Yeah, that's it. And they're like, thank you, I will use them.

Right. So they don't need mine. So that, that was like one example of, so the targeting was off. I also thought the creative wasn't great, but. I spend a lot of time, money, and effort on voice of customer research. And so we keep, I keep like pretty heavy documentation on the backend of, uh, stuff that I'm constantly checking and, and being updated at least once a quarter. So I started getting more involved with actually the ad creative and the copy and going in and being like, I wanna change this based on our voice of customer. Okay. Yeah.

What does that voice of customer research look like? What's the process or flywheel that you use there?

So we meet with at least, the goal is at least 10 customers by Zoom per quarter, and we make sure that I'm not there so that people feel very comfortable talking openly about whatever their experience has been.

So someone that you've hired does this?

Yeah, I bring in my copywriter, so she meets them on Zoom for us, she records it, and then we work our magic with whatever program we choose.

It's kind of nice that it's better with you not there, because then you're like, oh, see, I would be there, but I can't because it would bias the conversation.

Yeah, exactly. I know. And I mean, I think it helps because people feel like, especially with what I do, people feel embarrassed, right? They'll think like, They feel embarrassed that they didn't know something. I don't know why, but everybody thinks they should know everything about legal. I'm like, you go to your doctor, you're not like worried about that, you know? So people would say like, I should have known. Or sometimes people buy my product after they've made a massive mistake, like they've gotten screwed over somewhere in their business. And so they often don't want to admit that or talk about it. And so I think it's just helpful to have these conversations. We then track the words we record, and then I can look— I can go in and see like repeated patterns of words and phrases that they say. Um, but I also get like kind of high-level notes from the copywriter of what the conversations were like. It's been really interesting to track those changes over time. Yeah.

What's an example of a change that you've made based on some of this research?

I would say when I started in 2017, people, I think like online businesses, creator businesses were so new that there was way more of this, like, I didn't think this kind of business needed legal protection, whereas I'm not noticing that as much anymore.

Yeah.

Because I think now we are seen as more legitimate types of businesses. And so now it's just like, well, what kind of legal protection does my online business need?

Like, totally shifted.

Yes. And I'm also seeing more beginners, whereas I would say in the— when I— the first several years that I started, my customers were almost 50/50 split of people starting an online business and then people who I call them oopsies people that were— they built and scaled up a business by accident and then were like, oh shoot, I didn't actually take care of any of the legal stuff.

Stuff.

So I would get these really big name people buying my stuff and they would be all hush-hush about it. I don't see that so much anymore. So now I see people only in the start really and then scaling.

I mean, Kit, I guess we were called ConvertKit at the time, but we had $35,000 in monthly revenue when we filed for an LLC.

That's wild.

It was just sole proprietorship. I hired a head of ops and she's like, "Cool, we'll clean up all this We're going to get payroll benefits and we're going to form a company.

It's a busy day.

You know?

Yeah.

All of those things.

I get it because some people don't know. They're like, I get a lot of people say like, I didn't know if this was going to be a thing. And so I wanted to see if, and then you get to this awkward point where you're like, whoops, it's kind of a thing. And you were so busy making it a thing.

Because there's so many people that go the other route where they're like, their business cards and their logo and their. They've done all of this stuff except make a product that customers want. Yeah, it's, it's a hard balance to find.

You know what I'm seeing now, though, that I didn't see before either? It was just like the— now people are kind of putting off the legal stuff because they're like, is this space too crowded? So now they're waiting to see if this is a thing because they're worried that this is like already too— they're too late to the party. Whereas I think when I started, people were the first to the party, so they weren't so worried about that part.

I was just thinking of a late-to-the-party example. In 2009, is that right? 2009, 2010, somewhere right in there, I got really into WordPress, maybe 2008. And so I was building WordPress themes and all of that. And I thought this could be a business. And I looked and there were, I found 3 examples of people. There's this guy, ADPNR, who had a company called WooThemes. Brian Gardner, who had this company called StudioPress.

Yeah.

And, uh, there was one other and I was like, this market's too saturated already.

And I like, meanwhile, there's millions of people.

And then, you know, it ended up being, you know, cause, because there were 3 people in the WordPress theme space. I was like, ah, it's too crowded. And, you know, and so I think that that's a common objection, but even in like now what we think of as very crowded markets, you can carve out a niche. And actually I look for. A crowded market because that shows demand. And I think it's way easier to capture existing demand and bring it over to you than it is to try and create demand or convince people that they need something.

Yes. I, this is exactly what I wrote in my book that please do not be scared off by demand. It is proof of concept and I'm more interested in what the differentiations are like, like we were talking about now with Kit Studios and like, I don't, I think like, is there something missing? Is there a way that someone's offering it that there's something missing? I think in my industry, at the time there was like a vibe of the way things were being offered because in my industry people often lead with fear and there wasn't really anyone at the time or somebody that they were finding who was talking about legal stuff in like a non-scary way. So I saw that as an opportunity, um, even though there were already a lot of people doing it and now there's tons of people doing it. So yeah, I'm not scared off by that either. Yeah.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Uh, something that you're very good at. and very focused on is systems in your business.

Yeah.

Like what are, what's another system that you've implemented that has freed up a lot of time?

That's a good question. So I would say that now I have created the system of, well, our email is scrubbing, that's once a quarter, so that's good to make sure that's nice and healthy. Um, I would say that like pulling, even like the system of pulling in all of my opt-ins for Kit, for example, because over time now I've had the business so long that we have all these different things floating around. And so we've created a system that anytime a new a new freebie is created, we have like the freebie and the opt-in page and the delivery email. But then in Kit, we're using like the visual automations to pull them all together into a welcome sequence. So like getting the team to consistently check that, make sure nobody's stuck in like jail somewhere within the automation.

Stuck in purgatory or freebie.

Sometimes some weird thing happens. And so we check that kind of regularly. Um, but even just like little things like that, just making sure like all systems are go. I put into, into effect like a webinar, um, a funnel check that we're doing now. And so I have somebody on a monthly basis that's like checking all the data, even down to the emails in Kit. Um, we're A/B testing. We actually just used like a, a Zap the other day to A/B test in Kit, uh, that to, to run our funnel, uh, emails to two different audiences at the same time to see which, uh, of the emails actually perform better. Um, so that we're controlling for one variable at a time. So we're using like same subject lines but different emails, and then we're like swapping and doing different Subject lines, same email.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. Okay.

So stuff like that makes me want to ask if you, like if another creator came to you with a, I don't know, 40, 50,000 subscriber list, they've been running on Kit for a few years and they're like, uh, improve the way that I'm using it. What's one of the first things that you would go and implement or, or, or look at of like check, check how they're, uh, running their Kit account?

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I actually am just as obsessed on the like delivery side of what What the content is in your emails. Yeah. So I actually think like one of the most hidden growth tools is how good your emails are. So often people are just looking for all more like opt-ins and I'm always thinking if my emails are really good, not only is people gonna stay, which is great, and I give them ways to refer and now you guys, thank God, have given us the, the referral network. So we also are getting a lot. Yeah. We actually are getting a lot of like referral subscribers through, through that, through kit recommendations. But also, you know, I have little things built into the email for people to share.

Mm-hmm.

And so I think that. But that is often what I'm asking people is like, if they've hit some sort of plateau or they're not growing, I'm like, well, what's, what's in your emails? Are your emails in themselves valuable? I think that's something that I think about a lot as somebody who's obsessed with email marketing, that I don't even need a freebie to get somebody on my list because I pitch my emails themselves as being the reason you should be there.

And then what does your product landscape look like right now? Because you had the product for $347.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, what, what offerings and price points do you have right now?

So I have only ever sold two products. I sell all my individual, like, à la carte, uh, contracts that you can download. And then my main thing is called the Ultimate Bundle. So that's like a package of all the legal templates and trainings that you need to legally run a business online. That's the thing that sells the most. And the Ultimate Bundle alone has generated more than $8.5 million to date. And those are the only two things I sell.

That's wild. And what's the price point on the Ultimate Bundle?

It's about $2,000. You can do a payment plan that makes it a tiny bit more.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of creators and I've fallen into this trap where you're like thinking about all of the upsells or cross-sells or how you're going to do this or here's how this whole, you know, the product ladder or the, you know, this whole map. And we do like, uh, you know, Walt Disney has that, like the map of the IP and how it all fits together. And we see that and we're like, I'm going to create that.

Yeah.

And then there's these creators like you who are like, oh, I'm going to do this one thing really, really well. and then maybe I'll sell $8 million of just that.

Yeah. This is what I was talking to Pat Flynn about the other day. He was just like, a lot of people get distracted and then they go run off and, and then it kind of muddies the original thing. And I, I don't know, I just saw it differently. I mean, partially I saw it from a business perspective, like this thing is working and it's selling, so I don't really see why I need to reinvent the wheel. I've continued to make the product better. I did add things like order bumps and upsells and things like that that did bring in additional revenue. Yeah. It was easy. This year I added the option for, um, people to purchase like live quarterly calls with me as a group. Um, just as like an added bonus. They're totally optional. That was another big revenue driver. So I've done things like that. I go and do paid speaking things or something like that. But no, I just also, so part of it was that I didn't have any interest from a business perspective, but then life also handed me a situation that was like, nope, not making this any more complicated. I said, just keep it simple.

So you touched on that a little bit with your dad and treatment and all of that. What were the, what was the huge curveball that life threw you?

Yeah, the first curveball that I got was actually 4 weeks into my business. Those headaches I was talking about that I went to the acupuncturist for turned out to be a Chiari malformation in my brain. So I had brain surgery. I went to the brain surgeon on Tuesday, had brain surgery on Thursday. Wow.

They're like, we need to deal with this right now.

It was a huge shock and I didn't know how, just, I mean, brain surgery doesn't sound fun, but I didn't know how bad it was going to be. It was really, really bad. And so it was a really tough recovery having PT and OT at my house every day, having to learn walking, you know, being able to even like lift coffee cup and all that kind of stuff. I never stopped working, never stopped building my business, and I was literally applying for podcast interviews like in between PT appointments in my home when I couldn't even lift my head. And the whole back of my head was shaved and everything. So it was like about a year after I had that surgery, I was like finally feeling a little bit better, able to turn my head a little bit more. And my dad called on a random Thursday, said, I don't feel well, I need you to take me to the hospital. I took him and he had leukemia. It was like the wildest curveball that I did not see coming.

Yeah, well, I mean, just first on, on having brain surgery and all of that. Like, it's wild to me that you built your business while recovering from brain surgery.

Yeah, I don't recommend it, but I, um, I actually have this picture I have to show you. I have this picture on my phone of, um, me in the hospital. I was in the hospital for like 2 weeks of just holding a peach, and I remember at the time thinking that this was like incredible content because you're just on like all these pain meds, and I was like, this is amazing, and I was gonna write a whole post about it. And I still have the picture and I'm like, I wonder what I thought was so insightful about this peach in the hospital. I don't know.

You make me think of, um, there's an essay written by George Mack. They just came out with it called High Agency. If you go to highagency.com.

Okay.

And, uh, he talks about, uh, Orville and Wilbur Wright as the highest agency people ever, but having just this insane number of things happen. And George describes high agency as, and someone who is high agency as like, if you were stuck in a prison in a third world country, but you got one phone call, who would you call to be like, Sam, get me out of here.

Right.

Who's going to be like, okay, so I'm, you know, who's basically going to hustle and do everything they can to like get you out of prison. Like that's the highest agency person, you know. And anyway, so George writes his essay. He breaks down all this stuff. It takes a half hour to read. It's so, so good. Highly recommended. He had some major illness or injury. I think, I don't remember, a parent passed away, like a whole bunch of things. And then he goes on to like overcome all of this and then, you know, go and invent powered flight.

That whole thing.

You know, like no big deal. You know, being like one of the highest agency people ever, where executing on this in, in an incredible way over like every single obstacle, just figuring out how to overcome it. And so hearing your story, like that's just such examples of high agency where most people would be like, brain surgery, I guess I'll take a year off and then maybe I'll go back to practicing law because at least I can get hired for that. And you know, and you're like, please.

Yeah. Not happening. Yeah.

Like I'm going to go and build this whole business. Yeah.

It's true. I mean, I, you know, sadly, I think that that's because that is the least of what I've been through in my life. Right. I mean, not only for what happened after, but even— and I write a lot in my book about— I had a really, really tough childhood, and I was like left alone a lot of times, just had a really rough upbringing. And so I didn't see any other way out. I also— that is why I became a lawyer, because I thought But when I was little, I would watch way too much Law Order, and I thought that that's what success looked like. I also thought it meant independence. And so independence to me was like, I'll go be a lawyer and I'll make enough money and I will get away from this really horrible situation. So imagine then that moment when you get there in the firm and you're like, oh shoot.

This is not it.

Not it. No. And I didn't do it for me. I didn't even consider me. I wasn't part of, I was never allowed to be part of the equation. Even growing up, I was never, my preferences, my like desires in life. Like me thinking about like what I wanted to go and do in my life, never, never part of the equation. So then you get to that moment where you're like, I thought this is what I wanted to do, but I did— it's not really what I want to do, it's what I want to get away from. And then I had an opportunity to continue to go. But yeah, I, you know, I have my moments where I feel like life's handed me a few, a few knocks here and there since 2017.

Yeah, yeah, it's the George in this High Agency essay, he says there's some people where life happens to them and there's other people where they happen to life. Like, you know, they're doing this opposite thing. But I mean, you had all kinds of things happen. So pick up the story with your dad's leukemia.

Yeah. So he gets sick and it became a full-time job for me. My dad was single. I was the only person to take care of him and he did not have health insurance. Uh, that was really fun and it's really fun getting health insurance once you have leukemia. So that was a trip and there were a lot of like pre-surgical things he had to do to even get ready to be able to have chemo. He had chemo every 3 weeks for many, many hours. We had to travel far to get him to the hospital every single day. Then once he started chemo, he needed blood transfusions regularly. He needed someone to go grocery shopping for him. I needed to pay for his life. So I also then became financially responsible for him. I chose that, I took that on. And so that's when this whole like, okay, I think I have to build a funnel because I hear this stuff about funnels and how it can bring in leads and have them do something and buy something without me having my foot on the gas all the time. And so I was kind of working on that as my dad was probably at his worst point. Then COVID happens, I became like a nurse by accident. I started like pushing things through his port myself. And wearing like beekeepers outfits because I couldn't get near him. It was, it was tough, to say the least. And then right after COVID, my dad passed away very suddenly. He was actually doing very well. And right before I saw you at Craft and Commerce, he passed away. And I was in the throes of grief thinking this, like my whole life had just collapsed and my mom gets killed. And it was a huge blow. It came out of nowhere, obviously. And I had only taken like 3 weeks off after my dad passed away. So that knocked me down. That definitely took me out at the knees. It was just like a year and a half ago. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so that, I mean, were you already working on your book at the time or did the book follow after?

I got the book deal the day my mom died. You literally can't make this up. I got a call from my agent, Wendy Sherman, at 3 in the afternoon. She told me that I got the deal. I was so excited and my mom was dead by 11. Yeah, it was really a crazy day and it was hard because you have a little time, as you know, but you have a little time after you get the deal that they hashed out the contract, ironically. And I took about a month to collect myself. And then they said, your first 10,000 words are due in however long. They had me on a very tight schedule at first. That ended up going away pretty quickly as I— as they learned kind of what had happened. And I just wasn't able to do it. And I didn't know. I was really at this crossroads. I'm like, what am I going to do? I, I like physically could not show up for the business. I couldn't produce content. As I said to you, like, thank goodness I have this email list. So the emails— and we didn't skip a beat. Revenue did not take a hit at all. It just kept going. Yeah.

I mean, the whole series of events is, is absolutely wild. But then to say that that like the business didn't, didn't falter.

Like some sort of miracle. Honestly, I don't understand. I, I went dark in terms of like my content. My weekly emails continued to go out. I actually had somebody hop in and like take my past emails and kit that had performed really well. And we just like, you know, refresh them if there was anything time sensitive in them. And so that's what we did, I think, for a month or two after my mom passed away. And so, yeah, we did. The bare minimum. And I was like, surely this is going to tank it. I, I thought this was it. I just— what else was I gonna do? I mean, I leaned more heavily on ads, right? I was like, ads are working, so let them be my lead gen. And we kind of—

and then lean on the email list less, you know, you're not doing fresh organic content.

Yeah. And we run one sale every year just using like a kit sequence that we— there's nothing live, there's nothing— it's just all email-only sequence that we run. And we ran it in the summer anyway, and it did just the same. Normally the only other component is I'd be on social media, maybe pushing it. I'd have a podcast episode about it. We just said, let's just run the emails and kit and see how it goes. And it did great. Yeah.

What was— which year was that?

That was in 2023. Okay.

And so revenue was— it climbed from 2022?

Oh yeah, it went up and I worked way less. Yeah, I worked way, way less. I actually think— I mean, you know, obviously I don't wish any of this happened, but from from all of it, I learned a lot about what I was wasting my time on and what— actually, right before she like retired, stepped away, I had a VIP date with Melissa Griffin and Melissa was like—

I like Melissa.

Yeah, she was—

I actually just caught up with her not too long ago.

Oh, I would love to.

Someone that I like thoroughly miss from the internet.

Me too. I think she would probably get a kick out of seeing what I've done since I like met with her and did this. And she was instrumental in that too. Like, this all kind of happened at the same time, but she was like, why are you putting so much effort into social media? Like, she was, I think, the first person who really planted this in my brain, who I really looked up to and thought she was doing it so well. And she put so much into email marketing. And I was like, oh, that's a good question. Why, why am I? So in the sense, like, all of this did teach me to, I think, audit my time and my effort in the business a bit more.

What were some of the biggest things that you, in hindsight, were wasting time on that you were able to cut out? And then it sounds like email was the thing that you scaled up the most.

Yeah. One of the things I stopped immediately was any free stuff I was doing. I was doing all these free, what were they called, summits. And I was doing so many. I had just gotten, because I was a legal person, I stuck out. So I mean, I was doing multiple per week sometimes, let alone a month. Month or doing like all these like free little online conferences and things that I was getting invited to, just lots and lots of free stuff. I was also teaching in people's courses and everything for free, um, which now I do only as a paid opportunity and they can keep it and record it. So that was a big, I don't know, just like a time reduction, but it also introduced this new revenue stream of paying me for trainings. So that was pretty big. I would say also adjusting my social media behavior, um, for one, making sure that all of my content was always evergreen. So now my deal with myself is that anything I post on social is evergreen. It's leading to my list at some point. And so whether you see my thing today or 6 months ago, you're going somewhere on my email list if you take action. I don't do social content just for fun and like engagement or to build a social presence of some sort.

Yeah.

To the biggest.

And then is your newsletter, is it fully automated or are you writing it?

I write it every week. Yeah. I love it. Sam sidebar. Yeah.

Uh, and I mean, that goes back to what you're talking about of just this is high level of investment in the content.

Yeah.

You know, basically what you're saying, if you got ahold of someone's kid account, the first thing you would do is go in and look how high quality are these emails? Like I'm writing stuff that's really, really great.

Yeah. I'd be curious what people's replies are because I think I learn a lot from my replies. I get a lot of the classic, like, you're the only person whose emails I still read. Or like, I just got one from a woman the other day that said, gosh, I thought I signed up for a lawyer's emails and what I got was so much better. Which I thought was like, wow, that's like a tagline, you know? And so that's exactly what I'm looking for. So I think that tells me a lot as well. Yeah.

Yeah. Tell me about the book.

Oh, yeah. I'm so excited. So my book, When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy. I really wanted to write because of so much of what we've talked about that I felt really passionately about this idea that not only could you build a business no matter if you were going through hard things in your life or have been, Through hard things, but also for those people who have a business or want to, who don't feel super called to building on rented land, as we say, and like want to build a sustainable business for the long run using strategies that we've talked about, like email marketing and funnel building, all my favorite things, uh, and evergreen content. So that's what I'm teaching you how to do in the book. I love that.

Um, so at the time that this comes out, the book will be release and all of that, where should people go to check it out?

Yeah, so you can buy my book anywhere books are sold. You can go to samvandermeulen.com/book to grab the book. Plus we have bonuses there for people. If you are able to purchase soon, then you can join us. We're doing like a live book club experience called the No BS Book Club in May. And so I'm going to run through in 4 live 90-minute sessions with people like actually implementing the book because I really want this to be tactical and people to implement.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. That makes sense.

Yeah.

What's something Is there something that you wrote into the book that you're like, okay, this is the most meaningful thing to you or that early readers have said like, oh, that's what really spoke to me?

For some reason, people really like this part where I talk about how I think that community over competition is like a BS thought because I talk about this idea of—

Have you and Haley talked about this?

No, but I can't wait to talk to her about it.

So yeah, uh, Haley's been on the podcast a few times. Uh, she has, is the mastermind behind Kit Studios and all this, right? Um, amazing team member, but she has a talk, uh, that she gives titled, uh, something around like community over competition being total BS.

That's so funny. That's the title of my first podcast episode ever. They were like, what do you want your first episode to be? I'm like, community over competition is BS. And it's like the thing I hear back the most from people people in our space being like, thank you for saying this, this is so freeing. So let me clarify, by the way, what I mean. So you can wish your community well, or your competition well. This has nothing to do with that. I just find it to be like, I always say like, do you think Target follows Walmart on social media? Do you think they're like, hey, we don't have this blanket, but like you should go to Walmart across the street and buy it? No. And they're not cheering each other on. Hopefully they're not doing anything nefarious either. But like, just, you don't need to worry about your competition. Like, just do your thing. You don't need to be following them, consuming their content, cheering them on. Like, this is not a normal business practice in any other industry. And I'm like, I just want to free people from this, that you can like go do your own thing. I also think competition is healthy for business. And so it's not a secret, like they are trying to vie for similar customers. Maybe, maybe you have a different customer base. But yeah, I just— the number of people who've written to me as I have this tip in the book saying, stop following these people who do what you do. You're not going to buy from them. You're not buying their product. You don't need it. So stop. They're like, thank you so much for saying that. Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And the competition side, you just made me think of, this is a total aside, but did you see the Rippling deal?

No.

Uh, competition thing. So this, it's fascinating. Anyone watching should go and look it up because it's like corporate, corporate espionage.

Oh no.

Um, and so from a legal side, you'd enjoy it, but But basically what, what in this lawsuit, what Deal is accused of doing. So these are, you know, like big corporate payroll and HR providers and all that. They're both multi-hundred million dollar companies, insanely fast growing, all of this. And Deal is accused of having a mole inside of Rippling who then will search like and like send all of this private data back to who they work for at Deal. And they set up like a honeypot to catch them.

Oh my gosh.

It's, it's a wild thing.

Yeah.

So that's the extreme level of competition.

Yeah.

That's not legal.

Right. Yeah. That, don't do that. I'm definitely not recommending that, but I feel like what's happening on the small, like creator side is that you follow all these people who do what you do or want to do. And then it just starts creating all of these stories in your head. They're already doing it. They're better at it. They're already successful. They have all the customers already, you know, like I'm not as smart as them. My house isn't as beautiful as theirs, so I can't create content. I've heard every story about why, and I'm just like, so why are we following them? Like, you're not going, I don't need to follow other lawyers. I'm not buying legal time. I can write my own. So I don't understand why, like, I wish everyone well and I want everyone to succeed, but I don't need to put it in my face every day. I don't know. That just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, for sure.

You have such a wild journey as a creator. Like, on one hand, you have hit revenue numbers and done it at such an insanely high revenue per subscriber. That anyone would be impressed with that. But then to do it overcoming the amount of adversity and things in life is even more impressive. And so we're actually going to have you out at Craft and Commerce in June to tell your story and all of that from the stage, which would be kind of a fun full circle moment because I mean, it was not that long ago that you and I were talking at Craft and Commerce, you know, about what was coming next and all that.

I think I might have made you cry by accident because I told you about my dad and you very kindly shared about your stepdad. And so then you were like, well, thanks for making me cry. I have to go now.

There was like 100 people around and all that. And we're just like standing there crying.

Yeah, it was funny, but not funny.

But it was an important moment.

Yeah, I know. I just feel like once you're in like the grief club, unfortunately, then you want to know other people. But yeah, I, so true story, when I was at Crafted Commerce, I was like sitting there and just looking up, I mean, you guys always have incredible speakers. I was just telling my friend yesterday, it is the best business conference in the game. I think I learn so much every time I go, but I was sitting there and I was like, if I ever got to speak here, I would retire. And so now I'm giving a keynote and teaching a workshop. So it feels like extra. No, really.

This is over.

It's done, guys.

You're like, all right, I wrote the book. Yeah, I spoke at the best conference.

Yeah, I was like, where else is there to go from here? But yeah, I guess I do need to set bigger goals. It's, it's a bit of a problem for me as I, as I embark on this book. Honestly, it's pushed, it's pushed me to be like, oh, you can get on bigger podcasts, you can get on bigger stages, you can do these things, right? Because it very much right now feels like it's happening for someone else. And I'm kind of at the— as we're sitting here right now, I feel like I'm at a very interesting time in my business where My legal business is very natural and easy for me to run, but now I wanna spread my wings a little bit and talk about some other things. How do I do that without not killing my original business that works so well? You know, so it's, it's gonna be really interesting to go to Craft and Commerce and talk about this.

Yeah. So what do, what's next as far as, you know, if we were to record this podcast 2 years from now?

Mm-hmm.

What do you think? Actually, my friend Clay Abare, who's been on the podcast has this question and it says, if we were to meet a year from now with a bottle of champagne, what are we celebrating?

Yeah. I hope that we would be celebrating that I, that I owned it. Like that I stepped out of this. I kind of act like I'm being put in a box, but I am actively keeping myself in a box because all my friends are like, no, you're the one that we're asking all the time about emails and funnels and stuff.

So like, right.

It's not just legal. Yeah. And so like, I'm like, everyone sees me as a legal person. They're like, well, we don't. You know, so I think owning that a bit more, and this has really stretched me to, to own that. And so I'm very curious to like, I would hope that we would be toasting to the fact that I stayed open to the, up to the experience because I don't exactly know where this is all going to lead and all these different interviews and things I'm getting to do, which are so cool. Um, I hope that I would start to become known maybe more for writing and maybe some more thought leadership type stuff, uh, related to email marketing and funnels and And like, I don't think there are very many women in that area of the space. I think like that would be really cool. But yeah, definitely not being known as just that legal person.

That sounds good. Well, you have an amazing story. The business that you've built is really, really impressive. And thank you for being open about the whole journey, the highs and lows, the numbers. Like that is such a gift to share with everyone listening and, you know, all these creators of No, here are the specific numbers behind a business. Here's what works. Here's the cost per lead. Like, yeah. Uh, all of that. Here's how to have a business grow even as you step away from it in a huge way. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of that.

Yeah. Well, thanks for having me here at Kit Studios because this is amazing. And I know I was telling you like, this is such a huge perk for all of us to come and do this. It is so hard as a creator to have a space that not only looks great, but has all the professional elements. So like. I was like, this is going to be such a huge bonus add for us as, as kit members.

It's pretty fun. You got the tour earlier, walking around to all the different studios. We've got 5 here in Chicago. I can actually hear a little bit of construction happening outside the studio.

It feels very real.

Right now because they're like 95% done. There's still a little bit more happening. But where should people go to, uh, sign up for your newsletter, check out what you're doing. And then, uh, we talked about the book earlier. but make sure to plug that as well.

Yeah, so you can buy the book anywhere, um, that books are sold. It's called When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy. And then obviously come over and join Sam's Sidebars, my weekly newsletter on Kit, where I share behind the scenes marketing strategies and weekly legal tips. Um, actually, thanks to you, Nathan, because when I ran into you at Craft and Commerce, I said, what's one thing I can do to improve my, my newsletter? And you said, add a legal Q&A to it. And ever since you told me, I do that every single week for the last like 3 years. Um, so go get that, Sam Sidebar, down below and then say hi on Instagram. I'm @samvandermeulen on Instagram.

Sounds good. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.