Nicolas Cole explains why free content doesn't kill high-ticket consulting sales. He uses Alex Hormozi's model as proof: free courses funnel people into a $1,000/month community, $5,000 workshops, and $130,000+ executive programs. Each tier serves a different audience and feeds the next one up.
The fear is if I give away education, no one's gonna wanna hire me?
Yeah, so it's essentially what I put in my message. I'm very expensive selling these customized one-to-one solutions. I wanna get away from that and try and get some scale. But in order to do that, I've gotta serve more people. I've chosen writing because I'm, you know, it's very interesting. But I'm afraid that I dilute my value if I'm giving it at a lower price point when I'm charging clients, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can see you doing it at every single point in the ladder. What should I be doing?
You should be doing the same exact thing. I really— it's actually so incredible. Like, let's just pick on that for a second. Like, what is the narrative that you are telling yourself when you see me doing it and you go, well, Cole can do it, but I can't do it. Why do you think that?
Well, it's the— I think it's a worry that if I— that clients will cannibalize my own offer, that that high-ticket consulting exists at a higher price point, and then if I suddenly start writing about it and make it accessible to lots more people at a lower price point, or through a digital offer or a piece of software or something like that, I'll lose that very lucrative part of my business that is the only thing that's keeping me alive at the moment.
There are— my brain is spinning because there's so many different ways to explain why this is. A faulty belief. I think it's, it's worth prefacing with, I have worked with so many smart people, like, like people who run multibillion-dollar companies who also struggle to understand this as well. So you are not alone. This, this is a rampant perspective. Okay. The first is going back to what I was talking about. You have to realize that you are providing two completely different topics for two completely different people. When you are writing about something for free or for a low amount of money, $20 a month or $300 or whatever it is, versus working with someone individually for lots of money. Those are two completely different people. Those are not the same person. Okay. So you're, you're actually, you're actually not cannibalizing. You are expanding the amount of people you can serve. Okay. One of— just to share a little example with you, um, I ran— were you familiar with, or are you familiar with Category Pirates, this like paid newsletter that I built?
Through you? Yes.
Okay. So, um, what happened with Category Pirates was I started it with two other guys and we wanted to start a paid newsletter on the topic of category design. So we did that and the Substack grew. I think the Substack maxed out at like $150 grand a year. Maybe like $12,000 a month, something like that in recurring revenue. That was not the win. The win was multiple of our readers were CEOs or founders who loved the paid newsletter so much that they reached out to us and said, I love everything that you are teaching me inside of the paid newsletter, but I would like you to apply all of the same information to me specifically. The, the amount, the revenue gap between those two opportunities was astronomical.
Okay?
It's like, would you rather pay $20 a month or pay us millions of dollars in stock options and cash? And people did because it wasn't just the information. It was, it was, okay, I want to get on a call with you and I want you to tailor the information to me. And that, that is a completely different product. Another great example And honestly, despite the fact that I know all of these things to be true, I continue to realize how, like, even subtle ways where I continue to have this faulty belief and I need to keep expanding and expanding and expanding. You know what is, is just a mind-blowing example is if you go through Hormozy's stuff. First of all, he has all of these courses here, like he has an entire offers course for free. It's free. It's free.
Okay.
Do you know, do you know where else he shares all this information? He has a group on Skool called Vantage. It's $1,000 a month. He has 900 people in here. Anyone want to do the math on what that is? That's $1 million a month. That's a $10 million business for him to essentially say all of the same things in a different environment with more, a little bit more access, more opportunity to ask questions, more templates, more, etc. Okay, then he has here, if I go to workshops— let me ask you a question, have you ever felt like— these workshops are $5,000. We bought one, me and Dicky bought this, we went there. Anyone want to guess what we covered in the workshop? We covered all the same things. It's just we got to hear him and his team say it in person, increased level of access, and we got to ask questions, and we got to be surrounded by lots of other business owners who were all in the same boat. On the back of the workshop, what, what do they do? They go, well, this was fun with lots of people. Do you want an even smaller group and "and do you wanna work with our upper-level executive team where we tailor exactly what you should do?" That's $35,000, or maybe they increased it. We bought it. And then when you go do that, they go, "We have one more thing. Would you like an even smaller group than that, and would you like to ask Alex directly?" So now it's not just his executive team, but it's him, that is $130,000 or whatever. So look, look at— we go from free up to $150 grand for like a day and everything in between. And that's including— and then look at all of his YouTube videos and look at all the content that he produces everywhere else. And now he has his newsletter. And now, so like, All you have to do is look at that and go, it's actually the complete opposite. I am not doing anywhere near enough to maximize my situation. Does that make sense?
Very, very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, this, this is 100% a give yourself permission and get going. Good question. I appreciate you asking it. And trust me, everyone, these are— these continue to be daily and weekly lessons for us as well, over and over again. Like, I noticed it's like, huh, why, why can't that be true? It can be true. You should go try it, see what happens. Give people more. Yeah, Bill, same thing with, uh, with the boot camps that we've been doing. Every boot camp basically is, hey, come be part of the boot camp. Or if you want to not only do the boot camp but you also want to be in a private Slack with me and Dickie and get personalized feedback on each decision that you are making, join the mastermind. All that's changing is the level of access, the level of personalization.
Real quick, if you want to write online but aren't sure where to start, click the link in the description of this video and check out startwritingonline.com. This is a free masterclass I put together sharing all of our most helpful frameworks for beginners, like proven hooks to capture your target reader's attention, where to write online to get the most distribution on your work, and little growth hacking tips to to build your social audience and email list faster. Over 100,000 writers have gone through this free masterclass, and many even send us emails afterwards thanking us for sharing such valuable information for free. So click the link below this video to check it out and make this year the year you start seeing success from your writing online.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
