The $10 Offer That Made $750,000 | Shawn Blanc | 141

This is what product-market fit feels like. We couldn't sell it fast enough.

Sean Blanc has run every business model there is: affiliate income, sponsorships, an ebook, a flagship course, memberships, and even in-person retreats.

What if we just do it as one day? The whole Focus course in one day. We did it for like $10. We made an insane amount of money.

How much money did it make?

$750,000.

What are the other lessons that you take away from that?

Don't be romantic about how you make your money.

Over the past 15 years, he's reinvented himself in so many ways. He's actually pivoted from the course that built his business to a new venture that he talks about in this episode.

This actually ends up leading to the biggest breakthrough for the business that I've had in 15 years. So it's doing like about $100 grand for the year, and then I just hit $100 grand in a week. All of that came from the email list.

It's a crazy transformation. When he examined the business to find what was broken, he came back to a much more difficult question. What if the thing limiting his business was actually him?

I call it the burden of opportunity, where these are a lot of opportunities, but if you say yes to all of them, none of them will reach their potential.

What would you say to an entrepreneur who has a lot of good things going on but can't seem to focus?

When you have all those opportunities, you have to.

I like that. You'll definitely want to stick around with this episode.

You can get the same amount of work done in less time just by.

Sean, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

So we've known each other for a long time.

Yes.

You've been creating content on the internet for a long time, just like I have. I feel like we've kind of grown up together as our businesses and like learned from each other and all of that. The thing that I wanna talk about most today is reinvention. Mm-hmm. Because to stay relevant as a creator for a long time, you have to reinvent yourself. What's your approach been to reinventing yourself? And, and are you intentional about it or is it, has it all been accidental?

I think on the business side, what I have found after 15 years, which I think you know about this as well, is there is, for one, there's never a silver bullet.

Mm-hmm.

I'm always like, oh, this will be the launch or this will be the product or this will be the offer or this will be the new channel. that will finally unlock my business. And it never exists. It's never there.

I have never found it. I have looked for a very long time and I keep thinking, oh, this is the thing. For us, it would be our— a recent one would be our creator network feature, which has made a big impact and people rave about it, but it's been a marginal improvement on the success of the business, even though it'll drive 30 or 40% growth for individual creators and this is the best thing ever. And it's like, Okay. But it hasn't, you know, it was the breakthrough that I was expecting.

Right.

Uh, and it didn't fully come.

Um, and it's like these, these incremental things, right? So every time I think this is going to be the big thing, it turns out to be, well, it's just one more step forward. So I think reinvention of the business is always thinking, what do I need next? Or what does the business need next? Or what do my customers need next to continue to stay relevant, to continue to stay alive, to continue to have cash flow? to continue for me to stay interested in the business. So it always feels like whatever's working right now, I want to really enjoy it, but know that in probably 3 to 5 years, it will not be working anymore. And if I don't have the next thing lined up for what's going to work then after that, then you're going to be in trouble. Right. And so that's when I think of reinvention for the business, it's always like, do what's working now and don't sabotage that, But also I've got to be thinking about what's the next thing or what's the next lever that I need to pull or whatever so that as this begins to taper down, something new can kind of begin to taper up.

So if we were to go through like maybe 4 cycles of the business.

Sure.

When we first met, I think you were doing content about the whole Apple and Mac industry. And so it was apps and tools and all that. Is that accurate?

Yeah, I started, yeah, so I started in 2011 as like an Apple blogger. So I was like tech nerd stuff. And I would review like Apple apps. Um, like the iPhone was young at that time.

And that was the world that I was in as well.

Yeah, I think that's how we even got connected was like, cause you were doing app design. And so you were like an Apple nerd.

I had a few, a few of my own apps and then wrote a book about it. And so we're all in the same world.

So yeah, I started as Apple tech blogger reviewer. Um, and was in that space for quite a while and then I think I saw your stuff with your— it was like your app design, your handbook. I think it was like the first whatever product that you came out with and saw how that like, hey, I took something that I learned and then I sold on the internet and I made a lot of money from selling it on the internet.

Yeah, it made $20 grand in a week.

Which is amazing, right?

And remember from that, like the first iteration when it was mostly affiliates or advertising, what the revenue was like in 2011, 2012, like—

For me?

Yeah.

Yeah. I'd been doing it on the side for a couple of years, like just like as a hobby. And so I was doing only like affiliate stuff, like on Amazon and then some sponsorships, like, and it was just a blog. Like I didn't have a newsletter. I didn't have a podcast. This was just blogging.

And like Daring Fireball would be like the legend in the space, right?

Yeah. Like John Gruber was for sure like, um, you know, huge inspiration, uh, et cetera. Like I looked up to him quite a bit. So that those first couple of years, um, when I started I went full-time in 2011 and I was like, I'm going to do a podcast and you guys can support me for $3 a month. And it was like a Patreon style, but Patreon didn't exist at the time. And so you had to send me a PayPal, like $3 on PayPal. And then I would manually email you the link to my private podcast feed because you couldn't do authenticated password.

Right.

So it was like so janky, but I was able for that plus a couple other things, I was like 50 grand a year, maybe 55 a year for that first year. But that was, that actually replaced my previous salary 'cause I was working for a church before that. And so I was like, hey, oh, this is working.

My last salary was $63,000 a year. So, you know, as an amount of money, we were like, okay, this is amazing. It works.

I was like, oh, it worked. I can do this. Okay. And so then through sponsorship stuff, like it slowly began to grow. And I think it took like about a year till I got to closer to like 100 grand a year. I did my first product launch. kind of followed your path, like your framework, um, along with like Jeff Walker stuff. And it was like an ebook. And then that was the book. It was called Delight Is in the Details. And it was just about like when you sweat the details, it's more enjoyable for you as a creator, but then also like your, uh, your audience delights in the details when you also pay attention to them. So that was my first product launch and that did really well, but I didn't have an email list. And so I just literally like posted about it on my blog and I think I made like 5 or 6 grand in a week, which is still like awesome. And then that turned into then residual revenue as people would buy it over time. And so I was like, oh, you can make more money by selling direct products to your audience. So then I was like, I got to try this email thing. Like Nathan keeps talking about this email thing. So I built like a pre-launch list on MailChimp.

Sorry. I mean, I built my—

It didn't exist at the time.

I built my pre-launch list on MailChimp.

Exactly. We were all using MailChimp. And then I relaunched the book a year later and instead of doing like $6,000, I think I did like $30,000. And all of that came from the email list. And I was like, oh, why? Why did I just now figure this out?

And so when you get to this moment where you realize like, wait, I just made 50% of my previous year's salary or like the last job that I had. Yeah. 50% of that salary in a week or a month or, you know, and you're just like, I can't do this every single month, right? I can't do the same big launch all the time. But like, And there's a whole new world open to me. And it's just, it's a crazy transformation.

It really is. And it's fun because then I felt like I could build things. I could go into like a monk mode and design a product or build a product and then, uh, and then come out and sell it. And then not only get the launch revenue from that, but then all the ongoing residual, like over time. And, um, and it took me off this hamster wheel of having to keep my traffic up for sponsorship posts. having to link to certain things for the affiliate revenue. So stepping out of the Apple tech space, um, primarily for sponsorships and affiliates, and then moving more into like direct products directly for my customers.

Yep.

Um, was kind of that next phase of like reinvention for the business. Um, and I remember like personally feeling a ton of, uh, like imposter syndrome or like this fear of rejection of my future customers being mad at me. which we can get into this later. This has been a huge theme for me, was I was like, they are going to buy this ebook for $9 and they are going to come burn down my door and demand their money. And they're going to be mad. People are going to be so mad at me. I don't know. There was stuff going on, which we can get into this later.

Yeah.

And so having to push through that fear of the potential rejection or the negative feedback or whatever it may be and just be comfortable with putting my stuff out there and actually selling it.

Well, it helps to get past that because I think a lot of people have that in the early days of like, who am I to do this? Or someone else would do it better. Or any of those things. Even I've talked to people who are totally fine building it in front of strangers, but would not tell their family.

Yeah.

There's this little unknown author named James Clear who got to, I think, 100,000 subscribers on his newsletter before he told his family that he was writing that newsletter.

That's hilarious. Like, why is it? Yeah, it's, it's, it's because it's a different version of this.

He did not post to his personal Facebook page at all until it got to like a crazy amount of traction. He's like, okay, now I guess this is good enough that I'm not embarrassed by it.

That's crazy. That's hilarious. I think for me, the big thing was I just, I did it scared and I was afraid that things would go wrong and I just did it anyways.

Yeah.

And also I would like in the early days, I would send like an early draft of the book or a beta access to the course to people that I liked and trusted, and I would ask for honest feedback. And then they would say, oh, this is good, or, I like this, or whatever. And so then I would trust their feedback and they're being honest with me. I still feel scared, but the only red flags are the ones that I feel like my fear, and I'm going to do it afraid anyways.

Yeah, I like that. Okay, so then when did the Focus scores come in?

That came in in 2016, no, 2015, sorry, 2015. And that was like my first big, like a flagship course. And I had, because I was doing this Patreon podcast thing, people give me $3 a month.

How much money did you make off the, like, what did the MRR get to on the $3 podcast?

It got to like $40 grand a year. So I guess, yeah, so like $3,500 to $4,000 a month.

That's, that's legit.

Yeah, I had, yeah, I had like 800 people giving me, you know, $3 and then I raised the rate to $4 a month. Ooh, big moves.

And yeah, and then, yeah.

Yeah, good times.

I mean, that's almost a 50% increase, so.

It's true. It's true. From 3 to 4. And so I did a series on that podcast around productivity and some of the stuff that I had personally learned on values and time management and stuff like that. And I got more listener feedback during that series on the productivity stuff than all the other shows, because the show was called Sean Today and it was a daily episode. So I did, I think I did 1,000 episodes over the course of a few years. And so then I did this, I would have to find, when you're doing a daily show, you got to just find stuff to talk about. So I was like, I'll do a whole series on all my productivity stuff. And then that turned into, people loved it and wanted to know more. And so I'm like, oh, I could turn this into an ebook. And then I'm like, oh, I saw people doing these online courses where they were charging like $200, $300, $400 for the course.

And that seemed very expensive at the time.

Oh my gosh. So much compared to the $9 ebook. And so I was like, oh, I could do, instead of it as a book, I could do like videos and do it as a course and I could charge way more.

Also, I got to say, your stuff always looks so good. Maybe it's like the, you know, always caring about the details. But I remember your videos about the course and shot on a DSLR.

Right.

Right. Like there was a good setup there. You had depth of field behind you and then, you know, like a light in the background and, you know, like some of these things that are very, very common now.

Right.

But everyone was doing stuff on their webcams.

And so Well, I had a good, one of my best friends in Kansas City was an aspiring videographer.

Yeah.

So I'm like, he like, we traded basically for exposure and it was like, I gave him, I can't remember, it was pennies basically, but he had all the gear and was testing out the stuff. So it worked out very well for me. Yeah.

But it's, those are the ways that you stood out then of like leveling up. You know, I did it through, uh, like designing like long-form sales pages that were actually beautifully designed.

Yeah. I remember I, I studied those pages.

And so, you know, the same thing, you, you know, you could go and say, oh, if I have the right aesthetic and clearly a level of quality, and it had like this Zen-like feel to it. It's like, oh, the Focus Course, you know? And so, and everything just fit, but it stood out because of the attention to detail.

Yeah. Thank you. So we launched that in June of 2015, and that was Like that was like a life-changing launch. And I took everything I had learned from the previous, like Delight Is in the Details book launches, studied a lot of your stuff, had other friends who'd done product launches and just like, I teased it. Like I just, I launched the crap out of that thing and it did like $135,000 in that first launch week. And I had like my Apple Watch with the Stripe app, like on.

Yeah.

And so my wife and I called it the Bling Ding. where like every time someone would buy the course, I would get a Stripe notification. And it was like, oh, there was, 'cause we had like the launch pricing. So it was like $200 as like the early thing. And we're like getting these like blings. And so the last like day of the launch, I had kind of tallied up the math and I was like, okay, we need like 3 more sales and we'll cross like $100 grand.

Mm-hmm.

So I got like some really nice whiskey out of my cabinet and like poured 2 like little shots for me and Anna. And then we waited for like the third one. And when that sale came in, we crossed $100 grand. be like, cheers. And we had this little thing. But that was huge because previously I was, my business was doing about $100 grand for the year. And then I just hit $100 grand in a week. And I'm like, I don't know what to do with this. I wanted to buy a car. I wanted to move. Do I hire someone?

I don't know.

And I just, this was June. I just sat, I just put it in a savings account. I didn't touch it. And I would just scroll and look at cars and spend the money vicariously and think about spending it. But I'm like, I can, I could do something with this if I don't screw it up.

There's some of those moments that as an entrepreneur, you're like, wait, what happened? Especially if we were working normal jobs, we might work our way up from $60,000, then get a job at $75,000, get a job at $80,000, and then get a raise and up from here. And we'd go from maybe eventually we're making $200,000 a year or something like that, but we'd probably go on that journey over the course of 7, 10 years. I don't know.

Right?

And you have these moments as an entrepreneur and especially as a creator because you have so much leverage, right? This audience, the right product-market fit with an audience priced well, all of that. It happens so quickly.

Mm-hmm.

I remember fairly early on building Kit and getting to— I'm trying to remember what the dollar amount was in the bank. It might've been like $200 grand, something like that.

And I was—

this was just $200 grand sitting in a checking account. And I'm like asking this group of entrepreneurs, like, what do I do with this? Like, this is, this is not right. This should be protected in some way. This should be all of this. And this guy who's the CEO of Bench, the accounting company, just responded in Slack because I was talking about this. And he goes, hey, $200,000 is a very normal amount of money to have in a business bank account. And I was like, wait, wait, really? But it's exactly that same feeling you're talking about of like, you get $100 grand from your launch and you're like, what am I supposed to do with this? And it takes someone to go like, hey, This is normal. You don't need to spend it. You don't need to, you know, do all this fancy stuff with it. Like, this is the new normal.

Yeah, it's true. And it did become— it's interesting how that becomes normalized then. It's like, oh yeah, that's totally fine. What used to be so much money now is like, you know, the OS is like our baseline, what we always keep in the checking account all the time. Yeah.

Okay. So you did the launch for the Focus Course. I remember probably around that time we had the whole Kit team go through it. So you had this balance of direct-to-consumer and then you also had some companies.

Yeah, we started doing some public trainings as well, or corporate trainings as well where—

Yeah, it was really fun. We got a lot out of it.

Yeah, it's been a blast. And trying to figure out different ways to get people to go through that course. And that kind of has turned into my main thing for the last 10, 11 years now has been that focus course, figuring out different ways to get people to go through it, et cetera. Because the initial version with an online course, as you know, very few people actually finished the material. And the way that our course works is if you don't finish it, almost all of the benefit comes from the final pieces of putting it all together for designing your whole life and making everything click. So we started doing cohorts and we found that you get a lot more people that go through it that way. But even with that reinvention of the course itself, the material itself has evolved and matured and changed and simplified. in those early days, I felt like charging $200, I've got to put everything into this, my entire life's work, plus all these bonuses, plus all this stuff, or they're going to— I saw that thing, people are going to be mad at me. And now I'm like, how much can I take out? How can I simplify this down to the most basic, simple version? And so even reinventing the way that we're pitching the course, reinventing the way that we're delivering it over the last 10, 11 years, And so we got into the cohort stuff and, um, and then a few other things.

I want to dive in on the focus aspect of it because I think a lot of creators and entrepreneurs are notoriously bad at focus. Even as someone who I've achieved a lot of my success through focus, and almost everyone that I talk to when they have a breakthrough in their business and you ask like, what was it? You started doing like 6 more things? And they're like, no, I chose this one thing and I went all in on it and I, you know, stopped doing everything else. Uh, and that's where my success came from. You know, like I tell that story a bunch of times. I know that from my own lived experience and I hear it from everyone else. I'm like, yeah, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm still gonna do a million things. What's your approach to focus and what, like, what are the fundamentals that you're teaching in the Focus Course?

I think a lot of it is like, for me, focus is what I'm choosing to say no to. And like, removing as much of the stuff that I don't want to take up space in my life. And so not only for the business, for me personally, you know, as a husband, as a dad, as a man, like, what am I going to say no to? And then every— then all the, like, white space that I've created, then within that, I get to choose what I want to say yes to and, like, just hold, like, those boundaries for myself.

Mm-hmm.

So it's true, like you say, like, with the business, and it's like, Because for a while I had, I had other blogs too. Like we haven't been getting into it, but I had other businesses going and you and I were out to dinner one time with Noah Kagan in Chicago. And he was like, he's like, you have a focus business, but you also just told me like 3 other businesses. He goes, that seems like counterintuitive. I was like, no, it's fine.

He said counterintuitive. The meaner way to say it would be hypocritical. Right, exactly.

Like, what do you do? You say you teach focus, but you also have like these other things like, and You— it seems very distracted. When—

and we all do it, especially because this is one of those things. Some advice that I hate is what got you here won't get you there. Yeah. Because I think that it's— it's— that advice is true 50% of the time. You just don't know which 50%. There's a reason I don't like it. But an example where I do believe it's true is early on, you don't have any of the skills of product launching, copywriting, design, video, all of this stuff. And so going through a whole bunch of reps of like, I launched this product and it worked, and I kind of did this other thing and it didn't really work. You do all of these different things and that lack of focus to have a wide range of products serves you really well because you're actually, you could think of them as like semester-long projects in college that paid you money instead of racking up student loans.

Well, and they're tiny experiments in some ways as well.

Yeah. But you don't need to bring them with you. And so I went through that moment of like, I'd done all of these things, And I chose audience overlap as my lens to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. But then there's like 5 things that I sold off one, I shut down 3, you know, and then I put another on autopilot. And I think it's a very normal thing to do.

Yeah.

But it's great when you have friends like Noah and others who will like, like, huh, there seems to be some misalignment here. Let me call that out.

Right. And it's hard to say no to stuff that's making you money. Right. And it's hard to say like, this is actually a distraction, even though it's like generating revenue and creating— there's, because you can, as an entrepreneur, often you can see like the potential of that thing. Um, but I call it the burden of opportunity where these are a lot of opportunities, but if you say yes to all of them, you know, as we know, like none of them will reach their potential. And so deciding what you're actually going to, what are you going to shut down?

What are you going to say no to? Right. So I'm curious, what would you say to an entrepreneur who has a lot of good things going on, but can't seem to focus?

I've been there. You've been there. I call this the burden of opportunity where, because as an entrepreneur, you've got lots of ideas and you can see the roads in the past that they're leading to and they're all exciting to you. They kind of feel like you're like, these are your babies. And when you have all those opportunities, you have to still find a way to say no to some of them and choose the one thing that you really want to give your most attention to, to allow that to be the thing that's going to grow.

Do you have a framework or a process that you use to say no? Because that's the hardest thing for me. There's so many opportunities coming, and I'll even quote smart people like Richard Branson. You know, he says, opportunities are like buses. There's always another one coming. And I can say that quote, and then I'm like, I'm like, yeah, let's get on that bus and the next one. And I think as the team gets bigger, you can do that. You can run more and more things. But I struggle so much with focusing. And so I'm, I'm very curious, like, how you say no.

So it's going to be different for everybody. For me, though, that one of the frameworks that we teach is it's just values-based and then also margin-based. And so I'll explain these 2. So values-based obviously is what do you value? Like, what do you care about? Like, personally, as the business owner, as well as what do you care about for your team or for the business and for the company itself? Like, what are the values that you have? And so when you've got 2 or 3 kind of core values that you know what they are, you can name them, they're, they're familiar, you know what they mean to you. Then when I have an opportunity that comes my way, I can just like initial, like quick gut check. Does this fit like with my personal core values? If I start this kind of a business or if I take the business in this direction, does this align with what I feel like most important about? And does it match with my core values? Because if it does match, then when it's hard and when it's a grind or when it's not working or when you're really afraid, because it matches with your core values, you have like extra motivation. You have the energy, you can see the why behind it and it'll help you keep going. And then also when it matches and it succeeds, then you've built a life that you love.

Right.

And you're doing something that you love that aligns with the core values for who you are. And like, that to me is the dream. Like, that's everything. That's success right there. And then the other piece, the margin piece, this is really important for me personally. Um, I really want a lot of breathing room in my life. I want a lot of white space. I want a lot of just, um, opportunity to just Yeah. Be spontaneous during my weeks and things like this. I don't like a lot of meetings on my calendar. I don't like being pulled into the day-to-day for my business. I don't like having to do stuff to keep the business running. I just want options. And I also only want to work 25 hours a week and then be able to have slow mornings and early evenings and lots of time off and be able to travel and take my kids places and go camping and backpacking, all this stuff. So for me, I'm also always looking for what I pursue in the business. Is this going to give me more breathing room or is it going to give me less breathing room? Um, and if it's going to give me less, is it a trade-off like temporary or is this going to become the new normal? And do I see a clear path through to, to get back to like a lower, like calmer lifestyle? So for me, those are the 2 things that I'm always looking for.

Is there an example of something that You're like, okay, I really want to do this, but it— and, and its value is aligned, but maybe it's not margin aligned. And you're like, okay, but I'm going to dive in and do it. And, you know, for a season, because I can see a path to getting back to the life that I want.

Um, yeah, like a product launch would be like something like that, uh, or like a new feature, or when we do like a training or like an event or a retreat or something like that, where it's going to be, it's going to be intense. And sometimes it's going to be like 3 months intense or, you know, maybe 6 months.

Right.

Um, like I started a new business this year, which I think we'll get into. And so there was definitely like a shift in like my time and energy, like going into that. Um, but I saw the path through for like what I was trying to get to. And then sometimes there's things where it's a business opportunity that feels values aligned, but I'm like, it's not going to— I'm not going to enjoy it. Like, like a YouTube channel. I've always wanted to start a YouTube channel. I think it'd be super fun. I'm like, I just, I don't think I want the grind of like having to be on that constant cadence, doing it with excellence, coming up with ideas, all that stuff. I'm like, I just, I don't think I would enjoy being a YouTuber.

Right. Okay. Yeah. That's so interesting. You want the outcome, but you don't want the process. And so that's something you say no to.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, okay. So let's keep going in the Focus Course because so many people, at least my version of doing courses, was I would reinvent it. you know, or do something different. I probably did. Well, let's rattle them off. Did the App Design Handbook, Designing Web Applications Authority, Mastering Product Launches, Photoshop for Web Design, and then one on building profitable audiences. So I think in like a 3-year period I did 6.

And then you got your Flywheels course and a few others.

I have the Flywheels course. Yeah. So I mean, that was just back then. The Flywheels course is like born out of an obsession more than a business. Yeah. So I think I did 6 in 2 and a half years. And so he's always making something new. Um, I feel like you, um, who else is good at this? Ramit Sethi, uh, Marie Forleo, you know, with B-School. Like, you get some of these people who, like, this is their flagship thing and they do it over and over again.

Yeah.

Like, how did you— obviously it's the title of the course, but how did you stay focused and keep, like, breathing new life into this every year for many years?

In some ways I didn't breathe new life into it.

Okay.

So, like, it You know, it had a big $100,000, $135,000 launch when it came out. We did more subsequent launches. None of them ever matched that first launch. Yeah, it still did. I mean, I don't know how many millions it's done over the last 11 years, so still done a lot of revenue, but, um, like the big launch. And so we did other courses on the side, like we did a course on margin and breathing room. We've done a course on time management. We've done a course on task management. So we did, um, add-on courses.

Yeah.

that after someone would go through the Focus course, they'd be like, okay, this is great, but I don't know how to manage my calendar. Okay, well, here's a course on how to manage your calendar. I don't know how to manage my tasks. So here's a course for that. So in some ways it was like we just started bolting on additional next paths, like do this next, do this next, and then created this, ended up with a whole library of stuff. So that was one way that I kind of got around that thing, but they were all part of the same ecosystem.

Yeah.

And then also, um, you have to choose which direction you're going to go. Are you going to double down on this thing and iterate on it and continue to sell the same thing to like really understand that core audience? Um, like Sam VanderWieland does this really well, like with her legal templates. Like she knows exactly her audience, exactly who to buy. And so she just has really doubled down on that.

She's doing like $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 worth of launches.

Yeah, just crushing it.

At a time when people are like, oh, courses and templates are dead.

And she's like, Okay. She's like, yeah, hold my beer.

My audience didn't get the memo, so I think I'll just keep cashing these checks.

Yeah. Um, so that's a path to go. Or the other path is you keep creating something new and you keep selling new things to the same people. And this is like, they're both valuable and they both work. It's just like deciding, do you want to keep creating the new thing or do you want to kind of double down on what you've got that's working really well? So for me, I loved just the topic of the Focus course. I love that ecosystem. Um, It's stuff that I could teach in my sleep. I love talking about it. So I loved building that out and kind of going that direction, um, and pursuing that, pursuing that.

Yeah. You know, a mistake that I see creators make is they, they focus on a topic that they're either passionate about in the moment, but not long-term or is trendy in the moment. And then there's no longevity in that. But it turns out like focus, productivity, some of, some of these ideas, um, you know, like great writing or how to build wealth or like there's a— there's categories of ideas that will always—

They're generationally relevant. Yeah. Yeah.

Someone could have written about them 100 years ago and the writing today will look a little bit different, you know, but it's the same. It's the same core principle.

Yeah.

Versus like how to do this one thing with this one tool. You know, if you did a— I care about design. So if I did a course on— well, I did Photoshop for web design.

Yeah.

We don't use Photoshop for web design anymore.

No.

Right. Or if you did one on Sketch, like we don't, we don't use that.

Completely irrelevant.

Even Figma, which dominates the market as the design space, you're like, well, maybe Claude Design is the thing. And so I think finding the container that's big enough that can hold wherever the industry goes, you wouldn't want to be known for something very, very specific, but at this point you could be like AI for design and that would be an interesting topic and how to do it. So making sure the container's Broad enough.

Right. Yeah.

But then you started to focus on, like, started to do other projects, right? And lose interest in the Focus Course. Is that right? I did.

So we're at 11 years now as we're recording this. It's like in a couple weeks. And around, like, I'd say it's probably 2 years ago, 18 months ago, 2 years ago, I started getting bored in the business. And it's funny you say, like, the what got you here won't get you there. This is only relevant 50% of the time. Like, I like to say the same thing, like, your business isn't your hobby. And so it's like, you will get bored in your business, but keep doing what's working. Um, and don't, like, don't sabotage it just because you're bored. And that's the 50% of what got you here actually will get you there. You're just bored of it.

There's another quote that might be, uh, um, too rough, but, you know, but it's that most businesses die by suicide, not homicide.

Yeah.

Like, they almost— nothing else comes in from the outside to kill it. It's usually something internal, like founder strife, uh, the founder getting bored, a team issue, you know, any of those things. Um, like businesses are rarely killed from the outside.

Yeah. Self-sabotage. Exactly. And so I could feel that, uh, that I was getting bored with it, but I got to stick with this, right? My business isn't my hobby. And so it's working. I'm going to keep going with, going with Swell, but I knew like, what's going to be the next thing? So on the side I had this other, not, it wasn't a business going, but I had this other, these other activities of like the community stuff. And I was around some people and they gave me some really helpful advice around like, maybe your business is stuck because you're stuck. And like, that was sort of like, oh, oh, oh, like it all started to kind of like click for me. I was like, oh, maybe my business is, is boring because I'm bored and it's stuck like because I'm stuck and there's something. something with me. Like the business isn't broken. My audience isn't broken. The offer isn't broken. Like I'm broken as the leader. Yeah.

And that's a scary thing to sit with.

It was, it was actually really liberating. Um, uh, like our friend Darryl was kind of the first person to mention it. And then several other friends like, uh, Tim and Barrett who've all been on the show, um, were really helpful in like talking that through. And so for me, like realizing, oh, I think I need to figure out some stuff for myself and maybe that will help like unlock what's next for the business.

Let's dive into the idea of reinventing yourself.

Yeah.

Because I think that that's so important when you start to realize, okay, I'm stuck. Mm-hmm. You know, I might be the limiting factor in this business. What are the things that you went through on the personal side and how did you start to unpack that?

Um, what's fascinating is, so this actually ends up leading to the biggest breakthrough for the business that I've had in 15 years, which we'll get to that. So I remember this is about a year ago, I was in Colorado and I've been doing these retreats in Colorado every summer for quite a while. And so I'm out in Colorado preparing for the retreat and I broke my toe. And so I was just sitting on the couch, I couldn't do anything. And we were visiting with family, so they're all at the pool and I'm just home at our rental, like hanging out by myself. So I just started journaling about like, what's the next 10 years for my life and for, for my business and what is this going to look like? And I'm writing stuff down and I'm journaling about 10 years in my marriage, 10 years with my kids, 10 years for my wife's business. And I get to the Focus Core stuff and I'm like, what does it look like in 10 years from now? And I had nothing. It was just, it was just—

Flowing in all the other categories.

Yeah.

You get to that category and you're like, it was just a black hole.

I just didn't, it was cloudy. I couldn't see anything. And that was when I began to realize, I'm like, I think, I think maybe I'm done with this. And I had like this was 1 year ago. And so it was 2 years ago that I realized I think I'm the one who's stuck. So in between that time, um, I started going to therapy. I started getting like some professional help doing like a lot of internal work. And that like opened up a ton for me and just like helped. I kept, I've told you about this like fear of rejection with like putting our stuff out there. And I realized I had like some, I had real issues of like fear that people would like not like me from like Childhood friends and just ways that you're treated in high school, like nothing major, but like it just sits there, you know, and it, you know, hangs out with you. I took it, brought it into my business with me. So being able to work through a lot of that, um, gave me like some confidence to be willing to try new things. And then as I'm journaling about the future of the business and realizing I don't know if I see a future for it, maybe I'm done with it. And just being able to be okay. With, I could shut this down after 10 years and it would be all right. So that was like a huge revelation for me of I could start something new and I could end this thing that I've been doing for the last 10 years. That is my whole online brand, my whole Instagram account. It's all about focus. This is all the stuff that I've done. I could let that go and it would be okay. I wouldn't be a failure.

Well, you said something, you said that earlier, right? That it was hard not to think of yourself as a failure. If the business is shut down.

Right.

And then contrasting that with what you just said of like, okay, I could get to that point where you're like, oh no, actually these are separate from me. Like I can, I can end a season, close a chapter and not be a failure, especially as you're like, oh, it made millions of dollars.

Yeah.

Um, how do you reconcile that? Like, how did you go from point A to point B where you're like, okay, let me actually separate my identity in that way?

I just had to sit with it for a while and like be willing To put the business on the table and to be like, this course, which has become my flagship thing that I've done for 10 years, that's what everyone knows me for. I love talking about it. I love doing it, but I think I could close the chapter on it and that would be okay. It had a good long run. It did what it needed to do, and I can thank it. I can thank my customers. Like, and then what I've learned from it, and now I can go move on to maybe the next thing.

You said thank it, and that's something that stands out to me. Like, I think that gratitude is the single most helpful emotion to get to closure. And we have all these experiences or things that we've been running or relationships or whatever else, and they're not all good and they're not all bad. Like, there's so much of it. And when you can sit with this idea, you can sit with gratitude and say like, you know, thank you for the revenue, the house that enabled us to purchase, the, the skills that I learned through it, through the relationships that I made, all of those things. And you can go through the, the hard things as well. And you're like, oh, thank you for the pain that this caused when, I don't know, the spammers took over the credit card fraud and all this.

Right.

Because I learned in this area and I grew, I became more resilient. Like, Thank you for, you know, the failed relationships because I learned how to navigate conflict. Like any of those things. It's a long way of saying, I just believe that gratitude is the single most effective practice for getting to closure and peace.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, Marie Kondo talks about this in her book with tidying up. She's like, if you've had this shirt in your closet for the last year, she's like, take it out, say thanks for teaching me that I don't like this kind of shirt. And now give it away and move on.

Yes.

Yes. Yeah. So that was a huge, like, just being willing to sit with it was kind of how I was able to come to terms with it and then start to say it out loud. And so, like, I mentioned it to my wife that, that evening, I was like, I think maybe I might be done with this. She was like, okay, tell me more. I'm like, I don't know, maybe, maybe I could move on to the next thing. Then I went to the mastermind in Colorado that I host and shared it with some of the guys that were there. And it's like, I think maybe I'm done with this part of my life.

Mm-hmm.

And them all going like, yeah, we know. Wait, what?

Friends are great.

What do you mean? They're like, we've been waiting like years for you to say that you're ready to move on to the next thing. They're like, we've seen it forever. We're just waiting for you to catch up. Um, so that was, that was interesting to be able to have that conversation.

Well, let's talk about masterminds for a moment because they've been pivotal for me in my life.

Yeah.

Uh, they have been for you. You've, uh, been to and hosted many. Um, what does it take to put together like that group of friends that you can, that can relate to your business and all of that, and then also can be on that level where they're like, oh yeah, no, we see you and it's time?

I think the, the biggest piece is like who's in the room. And I'm always looking for like values fit first. Like I want, I want to get life advice and business advice from someone whom I respect the choices that they've made in their life. So I'm always looking for, for that kind of a thing. So the groups that I go to, to be around and learn from, or the, the ones where I'm putting it together and inviting people, I'm always looking for that values fit.

Mm-hmm.

And then you just have to be honest with this group of people and like what's really going on in the business and what's really going on with, with me, um, as the business owner so that they can give context-relevant feedback and context-relevant advice. So I think what it takes to put them on is you just need a place like, hey, show up at this place at this time and you're invited. And it doesn't honestly take much more than that.

Did you ever have like an imposter syndrome putting together these events of like, who am I to pull together? Like I think of, uh—

Oh my gosh, yeah. Uh, every single time still. Yeah. I still have it.

So I, I was at, um, Social Media Marketing World in, I don't know, probably 2015 or something like that. And I remember the founder, which now I'm just going to space out his name, which is terrible, but, um, getting up there and giving like the state of social media.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it was like the, the State of the Union, but for social media. And I remember thinking like, wait a second, I understand why the president gives State of the Union because like a few hundred million people elected, you know, and like there was a bunch of votes, there was a whole thing. And, you know, that ended up that way, right? But like, you just picked yourself, you know, and you organized the conference and pulled it together. And it's like, yeah, pretty much.

Yeah.

And so, you know, we always want to get in. We hear about the masterminds. Oh, Michael Stelzner is the person who ran Social Media Marketing World. With the masterminds and everything else, like, I want to be in the room. I want to get invited. And the best advice is like, okay, then create the room. But then it's like, well, would anyone come? How can I?

Yeah.

Who am I to possibly put this together? Like, I need someone else to do that. But you overcame that. You started hosting these Breckenridge masterminds, and you hosted a ton of them. But like, what would you say to someone who's like, okay, I want to host my own? You know, what are the few things that I need to do?

My first thing for someone who's like, I think I want to host my own, would be you don't do it for the money. But I think the best reason to do it is not to make money from the mastermind. It's To make relationships. And then it's what it unlocks for the rest of your business and the rest of your life when you leave, when you leave the group. And so the very first one that I ever did, I remember talking to a good friend of mine and I was just bemoaning, uh, it was recently after I'd done like the $100,000 launch and like the business had kind of grown. And I was just like, I don't have anyone to talk about money with.

Mm-hmm.

I don't have anyone to talk about like hiring and teams. And I was like, I just, Like, I've now alienated myself in some ways as an entrepreneur.

I'm laughing because we name all of our studios in, uh, at Kit Studios after Taylor Swift songs. And the one right across the hall from where we're in is called Champagne Problems. And so you're like, oh, I have all this money and I don't know how to, like, you know, we're talking through champagne problems, which is a very dismissive way to, you know, like it dismisses real problems, right? It causes stress and anxiety. And you're like, how do I navigate? I have all this opportunity. How do I? Navigate it? How do I talk to family about it? How do I still show up authentically to who I am? And, and having people to do that with is so, so important.

Yeah.

And often, you know, whoever you went to high school with or go to church with or whatever else, probably not those people anymore, right? Because they're having very different life experiences.

Yeah.

So yeah, pulling to— I cut you off.

Right. So my friend was like, what do you want to do about it? Like, well, man, I would love to, because I knew you had your mastermind and that was like I had gleaned Like, oh, you can do this. You can get some friends that know about business and you can get together in a location together and you can talk about business for like 2 or 3 days in a row and just like go there and like just nerd out on all the business stuff. And I was like, I didn't know that that was a thing.

So I was like— And your costs are like a flight.

Yeah.

Everybody's splitting an Airbnb.

That's exactly what we did.

And some groceries.

That's exactly what we did. So got some friends together. Like I had a couple other internet friends that owned businesses. And so I reached out to some of them. And then I'm like, can you invite a friend? And so then, like, I asked my 3 friends, they all invited someone, and then we had like 9 people.

Yeah.

And like a couple other people heard about it. And once I had like, because like James Clear came, uh, Chase Reeves, uh, like all folks on your show, then I was like, I was able to get like a couple other people because I'm like, hey, this person's going to be there. They're like, oh, sweet. I'd love to come. And so we had this first one in Colorado and I had massive imposter syndrome because everyone's like, you know, has these incredible businesses and they're bigger than me. And they have, you know, James is like, his email list was only like 400,000 people at that time. And he was working on some new book, you know, but I was like, the value I bring is like, I can put the room together. I booked the Airbnb, I booked the chef. I told everybody when to show up. I booked the van to drive us all to the place. All everyone else had to do was show up. And that was such a massive pivotal moment for me of like pulling it off.

Yeah.

Um, and it was the first year of Craft and Commerce, and we literally, like, half of us flew from Colorado straight to here for, like, the first one of that.

Uh, there's something in that of, like, um, I discovered sports, like, well after college, and I love, you know, soccer and volleyball and all of that. And so I always play on teams that I don't belong on. And the way that I do it is I'm the one who organizes the team. So, like, my volleyball team is Uh, more than half the team are Division 1, uh, college athletes, right? I do not belong on the team. Um, but everyone's like, thank you so much for organizing the team, making sure it's all paid and all of that. And so you can play at a level and push yourself and be in rooms that you don't belong in if you're just willing to do the grunt work and be the glue that pulls it together.

And I think too, the thing is, um, like we want to be, I was talking to a friend about this just recently. We want to be invited into those rooms. And it's just impossible. You won't be invited into all the rooms. And with social media, all now everyone's like, I'm at this event. It's like, you know, I follow whatever, 100 amazing creators and they're all at different events. I'm like, oh, I wish I could be at all of those. I want to be invited. Like, oh, so sad for me. I didn't get invited to those. And it's like, for one, like they weren't thinking, oh, Sean's on the list. Nope. We're not inviting him. Truth is they just didn't think about me at all, which I may, I don't know if that's worse or not.

Yeah.

But the other thing is like, it would be impossible for me to even go anyways. And so it's like, instead of wishing I could be invited into the room, it's like, what is the room that I, that I do want to be in? And what is the feel that I want for that room? And what do I want for myself and what I want for other people if they were part of that? And then I can just, I can create that and I can invite myself and I can invite these other people and try to make them feel like seen and cared for and that they're important and that they're valued. And then also then I have so much more like empathy for then, 'cause I'm like, I can't invite everybody either. Like the list of who I want is, you know, hundreds of people. The list of who can actually fit in this Airbnb is 12.

Right.

And so like just physics say, I'm sorry, you can't be invited. Yeah. So I think, yeah, just being willing to take that bet and like be the one who organizes it and put it together. Um, I love that. Yeah.

Okay. So I want to get into the kind of the most recent pivot in the business. So you've been doing, you've been hosting the Colorado Mastermind, and then you also started hosting Mashup with Mo Bunnell.

Yep.

And that was a different format where you're able to bring not just 12 people, you could bring, you know, 45 or that sort of thing. And so the community has a lot of overlap, and that's been a wonderful event that I've been to many times. What I'm curious about is how that evolved into Aspen and where you're taking it now.

Yeah. So coming back to Colorado, my broken toe, I'm thinking about the next 10 years and I go, I think I could shut the— I think I could shut down the Focus Course. And it's like, well, what would be next? And at this point I'd been doing the Breckenridge retreats for almost 10 years. And then, like you said, like the list of who I wanted to invite to Breakdown Rage was way longer than the, like who could fit in the house. So my friend Mo, our mutual friend Mo, he lives in Atlanta and he was like, why don't you invite people to my place and we'll do as a bigger event and we can fit like 50. I was like, that'd be amazing. So we started doing, it's called Mashup. And so we've started doing these and even now Mashup is like, actually now there's like the waitlist for that. But so who knows?

Yeah.

Champagne problems. Um, And I was like, man, if I was going to shut down the Focus Course and could do something else, I would want to do more mastermind events and retreats. And just, I would want to host these established, successful creators and the community that's needed for them. And the value that I bring is they're going, you just tell me where I got to show up and then you're putting together the guest list. And it's like most of my friends and then new people that I want to be my friends, they're like, that's— thank you. And I love getting to do that. Like, I, you know, when Anna and I will go back at the end of the year and review, like, what do we love from the past year? Usually, like, the top 2 or 3 things for me, it's like my backpacking trip with my brothers that I do every year, whatever anniversary getaway Anna and I went on, and then it's like my Colorado Breckenridge retreat.

Yeah.

It's like one of my favorite things from the whole year. And I was like, man, that would be— I think I'm really good at this. I really enjoy doing it. Could I shut down my current business to give myself more capacity and more attention to do masterminds even better and like create an even better space for it? So that's what I went to with, you know, when we went to Breckenridge, it's like, hey, I'm going to shut down the Focus Course. And everyone was like, yeah, we've been waiting for you to say that. And I was like, I think I want to start something new on the mastermind side. And like, yeah, we've been waiting for you to say that. It's like, all right. Well, I'm glad I finally I'm glad I finally caught up.

Yeah. Also, they could have been a little more direct with it.

Right.

I appreciate the friends who will pull you aside and be like, hey, a little unsolicited feedback for you. I don't know if you're open to this, but, and then you'll just say it.

Well, we've been teasing it out for a couple of years and it just, I, again, massive imposter syndrome for me because just by necessity, if it's going to be smaller and if it's going to replace this other business that I've been running, I'm like, it has to be high ticket. And it's like, this is the first time I'm going to charge $20,000 for something. And so that feels very— I had a lot of fear, like the same fear, right? Uh, but I just followed the same playbook. I'm like, well, I'll do it scared. So, uh, I remember driving back from Breckenridge to the Denver airport as we were wrapping up the mastermind and basically had gotten like, quote unquote, like permission from all my friends to like, you've got to do this thing and like, tell us what you need and like, we want to support you. So just feeling like they were excited about it. And I worked through enough of the general details of, okay, I think it's going to look like this, these kind of containers. And I wanted it to be, I so wanted it to be different or new because I'm looking out there on the landscape and there's a lot of people that run higher-end masterminds.

For sure.

And I'm like, I want mine to be different. And so I sketched out all these things. I'm like, no, it's just going to be like all the others. We get together, We have some Zoom calls, we have a Slack channel. Like, I'm like, I guess what's different about it is like the unique makeup and like the culture of this group. And that's what actually will be different about it. It won't like what's on paper.

The container is actually tried and true.

Right, exactly. That's exactly what it is. And so coming to grips with, oh, I don't have to reinvent the container. I just need to like invite people to join it is actually all that needs to be done.

And be clear on who we invite, what the shared values are.

Exactly.

And all that, and that shapes it.

Exactly. And so. So that, so I decided to call it Aspen. And I think just as we think about community, Aspen to me is like such a beautiful picture because aspen trees in Colorado, it's actually one organism, like all the trees. It's a grove of aspen trees is just one. And they have this shared root system and like the way that they share values, the way that they share resources, share with each other and things like that. Um, and it's like, oh, that's. that's what this is all about. It's actually about, it's about relationships. It's about community. It's about connecting with one another. So I decided like, we're going to do it. We're going to shut down the Focus Course and I'm going to start this new thing. It's called Aspen. So I come home from Colorado and I sit down with my team and I was like, all right, like, here's what we're going to do. And they go, well, don't, don't shut it down. Like, we want to run it. Let us, let us run it.

Right.

And I'm like, okay, like you guys can have 2026. It's yours. And, um, and they're like, let's, We're like, let's just do one last hurrah for the Focus Course. And instead of doing it as the 4-week cohort, uh, I was like, what if we just do it as one day? Just a live day, like the whole Focus Course in one day. And, um, just, you can teach it your last time and like have fun with it. Get some new people to go through it, old people that want to experience it, whatever. And then, uh, and then we'll take over the, you know, the current community and all the stuff that's going on right now. I was like, that sounds great. And I think because I was now done with that side of the business, I was like willing to like kind of hold my hands open to it and like give it up. I didn't have any like control over how it needed to look.

Yep.

So we ended up like, we did it for like $10, like one day, $10, because it's a 10-year anniversary and we're like, this isn't about trying to make money. This is about, we just want to—

Share the message.

Share the message.

Yeah. And impact people.

Right. And then what ended up happening is we made an insane amount of money.

How much money did it make?

So I don't have all the numbers off the top of my head, but it made a lot of money, maybe $750,000 in the last 9 months. And because we're like, we'll have 500 people come. I was like, because I was getting bored in the business, we could see it slowing down. And so I felt like people aren't interested in this anymore, whatever. And so we recorded some ads and we're like, hey, I'm going to teach this one-day live event. It's the 10-year anniversary. We're just going to charge $10 for it. And then we had some bump sales and some upsells in place and we started doing ads on Facebook and our initial budget was $80 a day. And we were working with our ad guy and immediately, every— within 15 minutes, we were liquidating our ad spend. Like every single purchase was basically liquidating the ad spend.

Because of, so the $10 on the front end and then a few of the bumps would be enough.

Yeah, the ad spend was converting, the ads were converting so well. So we went from $80 a day to $3,200 a day in 2 weeks. So we scaled.

Just steadily ratcheting it up.

We just scaled by 50. So we went from like $3,000 a month to $100,000 a month in ad spend. And we were liquidating every 24 hours ad spend with like, actually like it was close to, at one point we were getting like a 3x return immediately. And then, so we had like 3,000 people that went through the first day. I'm like, crap, like this is—

This is working.

This is going bananas. So we added another day and we had 3,000 people that joined for that one. And we added another day, we had 3,000 people that joined for that one. Um, and this is, I mean, this is also like September, October, November, which in the productivity space, like that's the Super Bowl season for us. So everyone's interested in like life design and reinventing themselves at the end of the year and stuff like that. So like it was the right offer for the right price at the right time to the right person. And it just, it's like, oh, this is what product market fit feels like.

Right.

And it was like, we just couldn't, we couldn't sell it fast enough. And the people that were coming in were the right people. And so we had like, we were doing these Zoom calls, 7-hour-long Zoom workshop. We had 2,500 people live on Zoom for 7 hours going through this 150-page workbook. And like the chat was like, It was just crazy. And it completely changed the trajectory of our business. So our MRR like tripled in like 60 days. Our community size went from like 150 people in the community to over 400 people in the community. Um, and, but we had everything in place already for it. So it just like, they just slid right in. We had all the systems ready and it was just like, holy cow. Like I've always wondered, like there's no silver bullet, but this, if there ever has been one for like our business, like this was it. Um, and it just unlocked all this stuff. And so then, but my team had already said, we're taking over. So I just handed them like, oh, here's this like much bigger, much more thriving business. Uh, so they have been running everything for me and I'll show up and I'll do the workshops and have been teaching those. And, um, now we're doing like, we do one workshop a month and the Focus Course in a Day thing. And that's been, it's been amazing to see like how, like being willing to let go of it.

Yeah.

Then it opened it up.

So that $750,000 in revenue in 9 months, like, what are the other lessons that you take away from that?

I think, uh, this is from our mutual, like, inspiration, Jason Fried. Like, don't be romantic about how you make your money. And I felt like this was my life's work, my, my flagship course. And to be like, instead of continuing to raise the price year over year, for us to go like way down, like $10. Right.

What were you at before? A few hundred?

Yeah, like $500 for the on-demand. And then we would do it as a 4-week cohort. And that was $1,000 for the cohort. But there just wasn't like as much interest, like our cohorts, you know, we would have like maybe 100 people that would go through a cohort. And so it wasn't like, it wasn't growing anymore. And—

As you inverted it entirely.

We inverted it entirely. And we're like, what would it look like for us if this was easy? And how can we also get away with like lowering the price without making it feel gimmicky?

Well, the other thing is the conventional wisdom would say, sure, you can do that if you have a large organic audience. But you could never make ads profitable to that $10 offering.

Yeah.

And you had run ads plenty of times before.

Oh, we were losing money. I mean, such a great way to light your money on fire and hit your head into a brick wall over and over and over. Yeah. Trying to figure out ads because we had a lot of organic traffic and like a pretty good size email list, but no, like we could never figure out ads for like a couple of years.

At the $200 to $500 price point.

We were doing, well, we were trying like lower ticket stuff, like evergreen webinars, like free funnels into this and then like an upsell. And like, I mean, we were, you know, like a good month we'd make back like 80% of our ad spend. And then like, well, at least we have these people on our list and then we can sell them something later, which they usually would end up buying later. And we'd like, you know, break even after like 6 months, but just never, never really like took off.

And then you go this, you stop being precious about it, right? And you let go of all these, these aspects of it, invert the price, totally change the funnel. And then all of a sudden, you know, you go from a 0.8 return on ROAS.

Yeah.

To, you know, up to 3x. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's wild.

It was so fun. It was so fun. Like my team, like it was just crazy to be like, we're spending $3,000 a day on Facebook and we're bringing in, you know, $5,000 to $10,000 a day. Like just And what's funny is my business credit card maxes at $50 grand. It's like every week I'm like, I gotta make sure I'm paying off the credit off. 'Cause we're like spending all the, you know, all this money.

In the early days of Kit, we had to do that as well, where I think there was like, it was like a $35,000 credit limit.

Yeah.

And we were just like, we'd pay it off 4 times a month. I remember going to one of our team retreats and making sure to pay off the credit card. 'Cause I was like, the last thing I need is like a new team member who's joined has their company credit card and it like gets declined for their coffee at the airport. Could you imagine how bad that'd be? Like, make sure to pay off the credit card. And try to convince Amex to give us a higher limit. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

So this idea of like not being romantic about how you make money, what does that mean?

I think, well, it's again, it's removing yourself a little bit from the business and removing like ego, removing some of my pride. And because I remember thinking if we're going to charge less, like, well, maybe that's a failure too, or it looks gimmicky.

Yeah.

Or whatever.

And I thought you said it was worth $500. Now you say it's worth $10.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

And so just being, I think the fact that because I was ready to be done with it and was willing to just shut it down entirely, then I was like, well, now everything can be back on the table.

Like nothing to lose.

Nothing to lose. Yeah, exactly. And if the goal isn't to make money, if the goal is actually just to get this in front of people and to get them to experience the process and go through the material, and then we could even be done. Like after that, the relationship could be over. Like, you went through the course, we helped you with your whole life design thing. You've got your one page. And so like, you know, now best of luck. Like, you know, we've, we've served you. Um, I'm like, that could be enough. And so just being then like stepping away from like the fear of like, this has to make money to instead, actually, this just has to like touch people's lives. I think that unlocked some stuff as well.

You know, you mentioned Jason Fried earlier. I, If there's probably one person I've learned the most from in my business career, it's him.

Yeah.

And he has this idea that he talks about from learning to play the drums of how you can't play the drums well if you're gripping the sticks, if you're white-knuckling it, you know, and, you know, it's just like you got to loosen up.

Yeah.

You know, and I took a few friends flying on Sunday this week and, you know, when 2 different people got a chance to, like, fly the plane as we're flying over the Sawtooth Mountains, which I know you love, you know, it's the same thing. Like, you have, you know, it's such a tense experience. You're like trying to figure out how to fly this plane. It's a little bumpy over the mountains and all that. And they're just like death gripping the yoke. And it's like, no, you gotta loosen up and then just, and hold it, everything loosely.

Yeah.

So those drumsticks, you gotta hold them loosely. And it feels like the Focus Course, as it, as you lost some level of interest in it, as it was harder to sell out some cohorts, you know, raise the price, it's like, okay, how do we make this work? And then when you finally let go and said, you know what, anything is fine. Yeah, let's just be of service. And then it takes off.

Exactly, exactly what it is. Yeah, that's a great analogy.

Okay, what does the business look like today? And how do I— I want to get into that, and then after that I want to get, get into how you spend your time.

Yeah, so the Focus Course now, um, I have an incredible team that we just get along really well and they're phenomenal. Um, and they, so they run, we have a community inside. So that's kind of the, that's the model we've gone to is like the course into the community. And so they run all of that. We do like one live workshop a month and, um, uh, I teach that. We have another guy, a friend of mine that teaches it as well. So like if I get sick, someone else, you know, I'm not the, not the bottleneck. And we're still running the ads and they're still working really well. And you know, with ads, like you go, they go up and down for sure. Uh, seasonality.

And so try running ads during, yeah. Black Friday or election season and they don't work the same way as they did another time.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Constant thing. Um, and we're just finding ways to continue to simplify it actually. And like, how much can we remove from all of this stuff and make it simple, make it easy? Um, and so we actually have like a newer version of the material that I'm going to be teaching actually. Well, as we're recording this, I'm teaching it about a week from now.

Oh, nice.

Um, and then we're going to take the summer off and then we'll kind of restart again in the fall, but in that business, I'm like maybe 10 hours a month. So very, very much removed at this point. Yeah.

And then what's Aspen look like right now?

And Aspen is, so it's like a newer, it's a private mastermind that I'm running. And it's like, it was the, the idea and the dream that summer when I was in Breckenridge talking with my friends, thinking about the next 10 years of if I was going to shut down the Focus Course, then what would I do would be this. And so it's just a, it's a small handful of people. It's invite only. It's, uh, it's extremely curated. It's for folks that are already established in their business. And it's very just like, I'm trying to be open-handed. This is our first year. So I told everyone like, this is the beta year. Um, so I'm like, give me space to like screw up. And I promise like you'll also pay the less, the least amount. Because like, if you're gonna take a chance on me, like I'll take a chance on you. And so like we get on Zoom basically every week. It's funny when I initially talked with everyone when they were getting ready to join, I'm like, how often do you wanna meet? Like on Zoom, like once a month max.

Yeah.

Like, I don't want to do calls. Then when we had our first retreat together in January, I was like, all right, well, we'll see y'all in February at our next call. And like, no, can we, like, we want to do every week. Like, we like each other.

Uh, yeah. Before it's, I'm busy. Yeah. I don't have time for this. And it's like, oh, this is so good. I'll make time for it.

Yeah, exactly. And it's just, I don't know, I'm holding it open-handedly and I try to keep programming right now, like, to a minimum and just allow the space to, like, Figure itself out with the people that are in it. Like, what do they need?

Um, you mentioned that you're spending 10 hours a month on the Focus Course. I bet anyone listening was expecting that sentence to end at 10 hours a week, and then you're like, nope, let's change that by 4 times. Margin is something that you've always been very intentional about in your life. First, what are some ways that you build margin in on the business side?

Yeah. Um, when we talk about this on the internet, this always ends up being the thing that most people are like, wait, You do what?

What?

You do what? So, uh, come back to Jason Fried. You and I were in Chicago like 10 years ago at, uh, one of those Basecamp 37signals things.

They were hosting a one-day workshop.

Yeah.

Uh, I think within their, in their office.

It was in their Chicago office.

Yeah. Which has 37 seats in it. Like, and so it was a small, small group.

And, and they talked about how their teams will work in these 6-week work cycles and then they'll ship Like a feature for Basecamp, the software. And then those smaller teams, it's usually like 1 or 2 designers, 1 or 2 developers, then they'll like take some time off. And so I was like, I love that idea of having a clear idea of what you're working on. And then when you get to the end of that, like stop and pause for a minute and then review what you've done, plan for what you want to do next. And then we added in this extra week, we call it a sabbatical week. So my company goes in these, we call them 8-week work cycles where we do 6 weeks of focused work, One week is a buffer and then one week is a sabbatical where we shut the whole office down and we just do this every 8 weeks. So we've been doing this for like basically since 2017 now.

Wow.

And what I love about it is it means there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. So no matter how busy like work is right now, I know that there's going to be like a big break coming up.

You do a mastermind and like you host Mashup and then maybe there's a mastermind and then like you're all going to Craft and Commerce and you're like, oh, but there's a break in another 2 weeks.

Yeah, exactly. So my whole team, which I only have 2 full-time employees, it's not like we don't have a huge team, but we all take like that sabbatical break. We'll shut the whole office down for a week at a time and they get to go home and just be with their families or hang out or go on trips, do whatever they want. And then for me too, I'm, I like to try to keep my working hours to 20 to 30 hours a week. And so with the Focus course, you know, about 2, 3 hours a week on that, 10 hours a month or so. And then, uh, about 20 hours a week running Aspen.

Mm-hmm.

And a lot of that, um, is mostly just, it's helping facilitate. And so it's like scheduling the calls, it's checking with everybody. Like I have a whole, like, people concierge system that I've built. So I know what everyone in the group, like what they're focusing on, what they're working on, what they're feeling stuck on. So I can help coordinate like hot seats for people or like navigate conversations or like bring up conversations, um, when we're getting together and stuff like that. Just hanging out in the chat in the Slack group and stuff like that.

Yeah. Sounds like a tough gig.

It's tough. Yeah, it's really hard.

I'm teasing you about that, but it's very intentionally designed.

It is. And I think, I'm 45 this year, and as my business has grown, I think you're in a position with this as well. As your business grows and you have those burdens of opportunity that we were talking about earlier, You can end up going in 2 directions where your business grows and now your business is a burden. And it's like, I accidentally built myself into a life, into a business that I don't like. And I have these, you know, like the golden handcuffs of your own business where it's like, I have to do this stuff to keep it going. And I have tried to make decisions as I've grown the business of what will lead me towards like more breathing room and more freedom and more flexibility in my life. And I would rather trade like bigger revenue numbers for a business that I love that also like provides me with freedom because that to me then is the long game of I can keep doing the work that I love, um, in like not a ton of hours. And I'm not like killing myself to try to make it work. I'm not constantly grinding. It's like at some point your business needs to like no longer, you're not the one who's like pushing it up the hill.

Right.

And in the early days, you got to push uphill and you got to go through those steps and you got to do the work. Um, but as it begins to mature and grow, like hopefully you've made choices that the business provides you with a lifestyle that you enjoy. You have that freedom that you're looking for or whatever it is that you— some people want to hustle all the time, right? Not everyone wants to work 20 hours a week and like go backpacking and do stuff like that.

I like both worlds.

Yeah.

Um, if, if you were speaking to someone who say had reached the financial levels that they aspire to, right? Maybe it's $200,000 a year or $500,000 a year where past them would be like, are you kidding me? This is our life right now.

Yeah, right.

But they don't have that margin and they feel like they're in the grind and they don't want to be like, what are some of the first steps that you'd have them take?

Yeah. So what's interesting, this is a really great question. What's interesting about our sabbaticals that we do the 8 weeks, where one week's off, that 8th week we don't get, it's not like we're doing less work. It's a forcing function of focus for the other 6 weeks. So because we have this week we're taking off and because we've been intentional coming into like the work cycle for those 6 weeks where we're working, like we know what it is that we're working on. And so there's clarity there.

Mm-hmm.

And when you have clarity, a lot of like the other busywork stuff just goes away. And you can get the same amount of work done in less time just by being clear on what you're working on and by saying no to all the other distractions. So for us, the 6th, that, that 8th week after the 6th is like, that's just free time because we were intentional, we were diligent. And so it's like, instead of just the reward for a job well done being more work, it's like, no, we're going to take that time off. And that's how I'm going to, that's how I'm going to choose to spend that reward. So for someone who is at that, that level where the money's doing well for them, but they're feeling like very overloaded, is I would schedule a week off and, or like maybe schedule a day off and just like, I'm going to take that week off. And you'll find that by knowing you have time off coming up, you're just a little bit more intentional. You're a little bit more focused, right? It's like I had a lot of stuff I had to get done before I flew out here for Boise. It's like, man, I got so much done on like the Friday before I like packed up for my trip. And when you have that like built into your normal life, it's like, oh, like I'm clear and I'm focused, I'm intentional, I'm not wasting time. And then I've created free time for myself and I'm going to choose to just keep that time free instead of adding in new work for myself.

Yeah. I mean, you've built a beautiful business and a beautiful life, which I appreciate you sharing all those details. And I think what's been so fun is just watching you continually reinvent what you've done over the years in a way that's always true to who you are and, you know, and with purpose and community and all of that.

So thank you.

Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, if people want to follow what you're doing, um, check out the Focus Course, any of those things. I mean, they can't go straight into Aspen or any of those things, right? That's invite only. But if they want to start to, you know, have a first step into your world, where should they go?

Uh, Instagram's the best place to find me, so I'm Sean Blanc on Instagram.

Sounds good.

Yeah.

Sean, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks, Nathan.

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.