How to 3x your ghostwriting revenue in 2026

I have coached over 2000 freelance writers on how to reposition themselves as premium ghostwriters. So this means identifying their information advantage, creating a productized service, and reaching out to prospects with a value first free consulting strategy. No more sitting around waiting for a client to find your website. No more competing on upwork or fiverr for who can charge the least. Just a predictable, reliable strategy for landing five figure clients. And this week one of our top students Inside PGA asked a really great question about setting ghostwriting goals for herself in 20 and how to accomplish them. And I thought it would be helpful to share it with you. And by the way, I hold this private workshop every Monday Inside PGA where students can sign up, ask questions and sit in the hot seat and get feedback on anything they're thinking through or stuck on or just want to improve. So if you have income goals for yourself as a writer Going into 2026, I would love to work with you. Here's an example of the sorts of questions people ask inside PGA and the level of detail I give in my answers. This week we have two really good questions that I want to spend some time on and then if we have any extra time, happy to field other questions that people have. So let's see, I think, is Caroline here? Hello, Caroline. Great to have you back. How are you doing?

Yeah, doing good.

You want to give me the TLDR here? What are you thinking?

Yeah, so exciting times in the business heading into year three, which is crazy. It's the first time I've done three years of a business at all. So I'm kind of in and it's obviously end of the year. So I'm very reflective and like let's start. You know, I have big dreams for my 2026.

That's right.

I'm also in interesting position client wise where I'm actually finishing up with all of my clients except one. Somewhere my choice. Somewhere their choice. So going into the new year with kind of one client, which I'm fine with. And now I get to build a whole new client portfolio, which for me is exciting, you know, starting the year like that. And so I'm just thinking about this third year, I know in your, you know, your video I've watched many times around like the four years, I don't know what the tagline is, but about like year three you get bored and you know, and you need to start asking yourself the questions. And so that's where I'm at right now. So I know that obviously your experience is like agency and I'm very much solo operator. And I don't. That's how I want to stay. And so I'm thinking about, okay, what is 2026? I have a revenue goal, obviously through napkin math. That means I have like X amount of clients. And then I'm thinking, you know, snow leopard vibes, like, what does that mean? Moving, you know, what does that mean on top of that, once I hit my capacity and figure out that what that is. And so I guess, like, where I'm starting with is, does the type of client that you want to attract change as you progress in your business? Like right now there's three qualifying questions. Are they an entertainment executive? Can they afford me? And are they cool? Like, do they have cool vibes? And do I think I want to work with them? And that's basically been my prerequisites up till now. And so now in year three, I'm thinking, okay, am I going after, do I need to start thinking more C suite level or do I need to start going after the Netflix of the world? Or I don't know. I don't know the questions I should be asking myself. So I think I'd like to start with like on the client side. When you were in that year three, like, were you changing your approach to clients or was it very much just like money? Like, was it a numbers game?

Cool. This is a great topic, great question. I'm game to jam on this as, as long as we want to today because I think this, this will be really helpful for everyone. And also I want a little asterisk before we dive in. This is why in the beginning you feel all the things you feel because you don't have compounding on your side yet you have very different advantages when you get to year two of doing something or year three of doing something. And I'm going to point some of those things out. But for everyone here who's closer to the beginning of their own journey, it feels more uphill because you're building momentum for the first time. By the time you, if you stick with something for two years, you will have momentum to use to your advantage. If you stick with something for three years, you will have momentum. You know, so even Caroline, like the first thing you said of this is the first time I've really stuck with anything for three years, you know, is like, that's that. And I mean like business related is that in and of itself is a huge win because there's a lot of things that you don't even, that you aren't even aware of until you stick with something for two or three years and then you start to realize, oh, I have all these advantages. So let's, let's talk through this because there's a bunch of different facets. So first is 20, 26. What is, what is your revenue goal?

Yeah, it's, it's 300k euros. So that's like let's say 350 USD.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right. And so divided by 12. So per month. Anyone want to help me with the napkin math?

I think it's like 25k or something. 29. So say. Yeah, 29. Say 30.

All right, so we'll say 30. Okay. So this is, this is really important to know because this is going to inform a lot of your decisions. Okay. Now again, for everyone here, if you're a little bit, you know, closer to the beginning of the journey, it's all the same stuff. Just drop a zero. You know, you got to get to 3k a month first, and then you got to get to, you know, nine, then you got to get to 15, then you got to get to 20ish, and then you can get to 30. Right. These are all just steps on the journey. Okay, so the first question that you asked is like, you're starting from. So let's, let's tackle the easy stuff first. You're starting from a blank slate.

Yeah.

Now, the benefits of being in year three, and this, I think this is the most underrated way to think about generating new business. The benefits of being in year three is that you actually have a lot of historical data or a lot of historical interactions that you can use to your advantage. So here are the categories of things that pop into my mind. First is you have every person you've ever pitched, ever. If you pitched someone three years ago and they didn't become a client, you should go back and pitch them again. Now the average person goes, well, why would I do that? They didn't, you know, buy the first time. Well, two things. One, you're assuming that they haven't changed and their priorities haven't changed over the past three years, which you don't know that maybe you pitched them three years ago, they weren't ready for you. Maybe, maybe today when you pitch them. Just yesterday they had an internal meeting about how they wanted to hire a LinkedIn ghostwriter. Right. You have no idea. The second reason, though, is here's a little, like, pro tip is do it in whatever, like, window you previously pitched them. So if you previously pitched them via email, don't Send them a new email, respond to the original email thread if you sent them a text message, obviously, like, respond in the text chain if you sent them a dm, respond in that DM chain. The reason is because when. When the person opens it, you don't actually just want them viewing the new message that you sent. You want them also getting reminded, oh, I talked to this person three years ago, or I talked to this person two years ago. And a. That increases your familiarity. Suddenly you. It's. It's not like a cold outreach. It's like a lukewarm outreach because they recognize you. And second is there's an implied, oh, this person is following up with me three years later, wow, this person is really on it. This person is really diligent. Right. So there's a lot of, like, unconscious assumptions that the person comes to when you do something like that. Does that make sense?

I remember you showing us, like, a thread of yours that was like three years worth of following up or something. Like, it was huge.

Yeah.

In email. Yeah.

So. So this is. This is really important. And these things, what I love about these things is that none of these are like big, difficult, grand actions. These are very fundamental things that anyone here can do. It just requires you to go down the checklist and go, let me go follow up with every person I pitched ever. Right. The second group of people is every client you've ever worked with, ever. Okay, so maybe you worked with someone three years ago and it was great. And then they went, my priorities changed. You should go back to them and be like, hey, long time no chat. What are you working on these days? Would you like to work together again? Right, so this. This group of people of previous clients, you. You have. You can divide this bucket in two different ways. The one is, you know, would you like to work together again? Basically re engaging them as a client or it's referrals. And the message. The message is very. I can't spell the word referrals today. The message is very simple. It's, hey, long time no chat. I really loved or. I was just thinking about you the other day and how much I enjoyed. Working together. Just wanted to let you know that going into 2026, I'm really focused on growing my ghostwriting business. Do you happen to know anyone. Geez, haven't had my coffee yet today. Can't type. Do you happen to know anyone that would be looking for a LinkedIn ghostwriter? I'd greatly appreciate an introduction if so, but no pressure. Hope this year has been great for you and would love to catch up with you have some time, like something like this. You want to ask every person you've ever worked with for referrals for an introduction because again, you worked with them at some point in the past. Now, I want to, I want to share a little tidbit here, which is oftentimes when I talk about doing this, people will say an objection back to me, which is, well, yeah, but what if I, what if I wasn't like, what if I didn't get the client some massive result? What if the client wasn't the happiest person I've ever worked with ever? Right? And a lot of the hesitancy that people have in asking for referrals is thinking, like, why would this person introduce me to other people when they stopped working with me? And I want to let every person here know that there's an unspoken code in the world of business that is business owners respect other business owners for being business owners. So even if you just work for yourself, you are a one person business owner. And business owners know how hard it can be to run a business, even if it's just you working for yourself. And on some level, people want to help each other. And in the past, when I have asked previous clients this, even, even if we only work together for three months, even if, like we didn't achieve some grand slam on and it was just sort of like a meh engagement, right. I would still find clients like that going, you know what, I was just talking with a friend. Yeah, they're looking for a ghostwriter. I'll introduce you right now. You just, you never know. And so these are really easy categories to crank through. Does that make sense? Okay, so those are the easy ones. So I would prioritize this and I would follow up with each one like five plus times. Okay, the next component is net new clients. Right? So, okay, so you've exhausted, you know, everybody that you've pitched in the past and you've exhausted previous clients that you've worked with. So now we got to expand to net new clients. Now if you go back to your revenue goal, this goal, this is a really important idea for everyone here to understand as you start taking steps forward on the journey, your next goal is almost always directly correlated to volume in some way. So it's not like, oh, I'm at 10 grand a month and I have to completely change my offer in order to get to 30 grand a month. It's not, oh, I'm at 10 grand a month and I need to Like Target, a completely different type of company, to get to 30 grand a month. It's almost never these really big actions. Okay. It's. It's always, what did I do to get. What was the volume that I deployed? How much outreach did you do? How many sales calls did you book? How many times did you follow up? How much content did you create? How many inbound inquiries did you get? Right. And then it's asking the question, okay, how do I. Or more my volume. So, Caroline and Rebecca, you just asked it, actually. But, Caroline, what was your average revenue month for 2025. Okay. This is awesome. Setting the goal of 30k a month is actually not that hard. And so the question to ask is, okay, so what were all the things that I did that got me to and how could I. And an easy. Just like, you know, to get the. The ball rolling. An easy question to ask would be, in a given month, how. How many outreach messages would you send? And how many looms do you have that data?

Not a lot at all.

Okay, can we. Could we put a number on it?

Yeah, sure. Like outreach. Let's say 30.

Okay, we'll say 30. Yeah. And how did you get the majority of your clients if you were doing minimal outreach inbound?

That's why I got lazy.

And was that from content?

It was from contents, and it was from industry. Like, knowing people and actually. And going to events, they're the three buckets.

Okay. So just for. For everyone, whenever I'm doing these exercises, I never count referrals, ever, because referrals are not a lever you have control over. Referrals are a really nice cherry on top. So when you're thinking about growing your business, you don't want to think about growing your business with, oh, you know, 40% of my business came from referral. My strategy for next year is to hope that I get twice as many referrals. Right. That's. That's not reliable. So I always like examining the inputs minus referrals, because then when they happen, like, when I was building my agency, I never counted referrals, never thought about them. But some months, I would get 10 referrals, and we would close double the amount of clients. And I'd be like, this is amazing. But I don't get comfortable with that. It's like a nice surprise when it happens. Okay, so just to, like.

Yes. Just to clarify that I'm not. I don't think there were many referrals. It was more that, oh, your entertainment. Like, your entertainment industry. I saw your website. I Guess maybe it falls under content.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So. So just to make this as tangible, because. Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to tangibly come up with and measure inputs so that we can go, if we want, double the output, if we want, double the outcomes. How do we 5x the inputs? Right. So content, an easy place to start is like, you know, how are you posting on LinkedIn every day?

I was until like Q4, and then I did like three a week. But up until then I was posting every day. Yeah.

Okay, so let's just call the average. For a week. Okay. Yeah, for a week. Now, going back to one of my favorite frameworks, which is more better. New drop in the chat. How do we examine this input? Do we need more? Do we need better? Do we need new. The very first thing that we need is we need more. Right. So how do we reliably increase the input of, say, content is we would do one a day.

You know, you start a type share streak.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. And then once we do more, like is more hard. Is it hard to go from four a week to seven a week? No. Like, this isn't a big grand action. This is literally just a fundamental basic action executed relentlessly. And I think this, this is such an important concept for everyone here. The more that I that I spend time building businesses and the larger our businesses grow, the more and more I internalize that big steps forward have almost nothing to do with big grand actions. It is all you learn more and more basic fundamental actions. Your list of things gets longer and longer and you execute them perfectly every single day. That's the only real difference. Hey, by the way, if you're brand new to the world of ghostwriting, maybe you've heard the term, but aren't really sure what it is or how it's different from copywriting or content writing. Check out premiumghostwritingblueprint.com it's in the description below. Okay. This is a free masterclass that I've put together for writers who want to monetize their skills and love for writing. With ghostwriting, this is what I did. And ghostwriting completely changed my life. It's how I quit my job. It's how I quadrupled the amount of money I was making. It's how I've gotten to work with so many smart, amazing people, but also have time for my own writing. Like writing this book, the Art and Business of Ghostwriting. Anyways, check it out. If you're at all interested in making money from your writing, I would really encourage you to get into ghostwriting. And this free premium ghost trading blueprint in the description below is the best place to start. Okay, so first is more. Then once you're doing more, then it's better. How do you maybe use AI or gamma to make your carousels look better? How do you create more and more valuable content? How do you create carousels that are like, like, if you spend an hour on a carousel, what does it look like to spend five hours on a carousel? People talk about this with YouTube all the time. It's like, because of how content works and how these algorithms work, if you spend 5x the time, you might not generate 5x the views, you might generate 50x the views or 500x the views because of how much these platforms can scale. So here I like looking at time. If you have one hour per carousel, what would happen if you did three hours for carousel? Right? Just, just as like a, a way of brainstorming, like, how would I increase the quality? Right? And then new or different would be, well, maybe it's not carousels. Maybe it's short videos or maybe it's looms, you know, or maybe it's insert. Maybe it's infographics. Just insert. Whatever. Different medium. But most people jump to new and different. And this is not the answer. It's not the answer for a while. The answer is more, and then it's just incrementally better. So if you think about your goal and you're like, all right, so I got a lot of inbound, and this is what I was doing before. How do I double, triple, quadruple my effort here? Right? Same thing with outreach. You're like, I sent 30. Okay. What does it look like to send 100?

Yes.

The, the goal sort of takes care of itself, right? All you're doing is you're connecting the inputs and the outputs.

Yeah. And on that outreach question, back to one of my earlier questions is my. And if you got, if you're going to cover this, just let me know. But like, am I just. When I'm looking at outreach now coming into this part of, you know, this level of my business, am I, am I just ticking those three boxes like they're an entertainment exec may, you know, potentially they can afford my service and they look cool and have cool vibes, or is there other questions that I should now be asking now that I've already worked with entertainment execs for quite a while now? Proven track record blood. They, they, they. It is proven that they can pay my, or at least my current rate. Yeah.

Yeah.

Is there anything different I should be asking myself in this case?

The short answer is no, but the longer answer I'm going to touch on in a second.

Okay, sure.

So the last thing I want to cover, and I see it in the chat, I want to answer this question, Anton, Why not? Why not just do ads, okay, for everyone here? If you think the things that we're talking about here are hard, multiply them by 100 and that is what it's like to run ads. Everyone, including myself three years ago, thinks ads are really easy. Ads are without question the hardest way to land customers and clients profitably. And I know because we lit on fire probably a million dollars in ads this year. Maybe we broke even. I don't know. Maybe we've made a little bit on that. But this year, especially because we've started to spend and learn ads significantly more to continue growing our business, I cannot, from experience, I cannot emphasize enough how difficult and how unprofitable ads are for a very long time. It is a completely different skill. Completely different. Like outreach. And just going, how do I send twice as many outreach messages in a month? Is like an unbelievably simple and reliable strategy relative to ads. Ads are. You need 50 different skill sets, and you have to be willing to light tens of thousands of dollars on fire before you figure it out. So I just, I want to level set for everyone. Like, the grass is not greener. There is not some magical world on the other side of the fence where all of this is easy. Okay? This, this is the easiest, lowest cost, most reliable path forward. The, the third. The third bucket that you talked about, Caroline, is events. And I think, I think for people who. This isn't where I would tell a beginner to start, but as you get into year two, year three, I actually think events are an amazing way to spend time. I, I, in year three, year four of our business ended up going to a lot of events. Okay. So you can think of events the same way that you think about inputs, which is, how many events did you go to in 20?

25? 1, I think. One memorable one, let's say.

Okay. Okay. And was that event like, did you get a client or did you spark up some good conversations or anything from that event?

Yeah, I got two clients and I ran a workshop, so it was very, very successful.

Okay, so let's. I again, like, why these exercises are so fun for me is because if you ask the right questions, the answers always reveal themselves right. So if we look at this drop in the chat, if Carolene went to one event in 2025 and got two clients, and Carolene wants to land more clients in 2026, how many events should she go to?

All the events.

This. This sounds like a. Like a act question, right? How many events? More than one?

Yeah. Like, I do have an event calendar already. 2026. Event calendar is full based on that already. So, yeah, it's part of the business next year, I think.

Yeah. This. This is an input. Right. Events are a channel, and so, like, it's really important to break these things out. You have outreach, you have content, you have events. And if anyone has any other questions on this, drop them in the chat on this. On this topic, Andre, if we have some time, I'll. I'll get to that. So, Rebecca, at what point should Caroline focus on increasing close rate versus just more leads? So I think default, no matter what the. The game is always, how do we get more leads? Like, there. There will never be a world where it's like, I'd prefer to have less leads, you know, so generating leads is the thing that you have the most control over. Now, that is a good question, though. It's like, if, you know, Caroline, if you have any data on this, if you book 10 sales calls, how many people do you typically close? Do you. Do you have a sense of that?

Well, they're inbound, so most of them. I'm not fighting an uphill battle, like, going in cold. Right. So they're coming to me like, I want to work with you. So it's like, not. It hasn't been that difficult in saying that. I just want to preface that I have barely done a lot of these type of calls, but that has. What has. That's what's come to me. So I would say, like, let's say 85% of the calls, but it's because it's inbound that. Yeah, that's a big part of that.

Cool. So in that case, let's not solve a problem that we don't have.

Right.

I would say, because when I was building my agency, the majority of the conversations that we had with people were cold. I would say that you're. Out of 10 calls, you should be aiming to close at least three of them. Like, at least 30% close rate. 30% close rate is sort of default. Just like general industry, even different types of businesses, agency info doesn't really matter if your close rate is like 20% or less. Yeah, you probably have a deficit in the ways that you're running your sales call, and you need to find, you know, you need to work on that. If your close rate is above 30%, you're in gravy town. Like, we had some months where we closed 50, 60% of all our calls, and it was, like, insane. I mean, we were growing like crazy. But 30% is a really good default. And, yeah, Maryland. I mean, you could always raise prices and things like that, but I. I think it's important. In business, you will never have a shortage of things you can do. You will always have a list of infinite things that you can do. The question is, what is the list of things that you can do that have the lowest risk but the highest likelihood of generating an output? And so let's just ask the question in reverse. Which thing is riskier for a business? Not risky and, like, catastrophic, but just risk? Right. Which thing is riskier? Increasing the price from where you've had it or doing more of the thing that has worked in the past? Which one has more risk? Well, increasing the price has more risk. Right? So the first thing, it always comes back to build order. It always comes back to, in what order do you make these decisions? The first thing is, well, let's max out all the things that basically have no risk. Like you sending more outreach messages has no risk. You creating more content has no risk. You going to more events unless you're spending a ton of money on tickets, like, has no risk. Right, Right. Then maybe once you have a full client roster and you're like, cool, I've got five clients. They're all paying me six grand a month. Now what do I do? Then it makes sense. You're like, okay, now that we're here, order of decisions, it would make sense for the next client to increase prices.

Right?

Makes sense. Yep. Okay, so the. The very last thing I want to touch on, Caroline, and this is just something to leave you with, which is the whole point of niching down, is that you specialize. But the. The real benefit of specializing isn't necessarily that you only work with that specific sort of person. The real benefit of specializing is that so many people in the world don't specialize that it makes it easier for you to tap into lots of other tangential industries. An example I love using, and I'm sure everyone here can resonate with this drop in the chat. Has everyone here seen the trend of celebrities launching liquor brands? George Clooney launches Casamigos. Right, okay. Has everyone here seen athletes who retire and then start a podcast or become Public speakers. Right. Has everyone. Everyone sees these things right. Unconsciously. The reason that this happens is because the world believes, and on some level, we all do. The world believes. Because you have been so successful in this specialty, I assume that that success will in some way translate to the next thing that you do. If LeBron James starts a podcast, which he did, the default assumption is, well, you achieved so much over here that your prop. Your podcast is probably also going to be pretty good. Right. And this is the whole. This is like the big secret of niching down that so many people don't understand, which is when you specialize and there's an unconscious conclusion that people come to, which is because you've gotten so good at serving entertainment execs, for example, Caroline, there's no reason why you can't help me too. And so for you, if you want to widen your opportunity net a little bit, I think it's worth asking the question and going through that exercise of building a little client constellation, which is, yeah, you specialize in entertainment execs, but what are all the other tangential industries or all the other tangential roles where you could. Or they would come to the conclusion, yeah, you could probably help me too.

Okay.

You know, like, I see no reason why you can't tap into some of these other opportunities. You know, you don't. I. I guess what I'm saying is you don't have to be so strict with yourself. You're. You're allowed to work with these other people.

Yeah, I think I've been so strict. Well, a. Because I love the industry. It's my industry. Feel like I was. Yeah. Brought up in it. But also because I've trying to avoid any shiny object, and I have you always in my head going, no, no, don't do that. Like, as in terms of taking other opportunities. But I see how that makes sense now at this point, for sure.

Yeah. And this is, you know, I always, whenever I talk about this concept, I try and talk about it very specifically and slowly because it's very easy to misunderstand. All right, so, Ashley, I see your question in the chat. I want to. I want to double click on this for everyone. Okay. This idea of branching out first of all, is not because whatever niche you've picked doesn't have enough opportunity. Every niche has a tremendous amount of opportunity. All I'm. All I'm saying is that you don't need to be so strict with yourself in the sense of if someone else that is somewhat related to what you do also wants your Help. You can help them. You, you're allowed to do that. However, there are some nuances, right? Like rule number one, is it. It should be the same service or very similar service. So, Caroline, if You specialize in LinkedIn and someone in a tangential industry goes, I would also like help with LinkedIn. That's great. If you, if you specialize in entertainment and someone in a tangential industry says, I really love what you do, but, but I'm looking for someone to write my TikTok scripts. That is a mistake. You want, you want to keep the specialty for everyone here. You want to keep the specialty in a service. Now, the small exception to that rule is when you have different variations of the same service. So for example, maybe Caroline, you provide LinkedIn ghostwriting and someone says, hey, I fit the bill. I'm exactly what you're looking for. But I also want you to republish my LinkedIn work on X. That's not super different. It's a modification that's up to you. If you want to take that on or you work with someone, you pitch them an EEC and then they want help with the newsletter. EECs and newsletters are both email. They're related. Okay? So this, this idea, there, there's a lot of nuance in what I'm saying. So it's really important to understand that. The second thing is you only want to take on people who are in tangential industries and not very different industries. Okay, so I'll give you, I'll give you a simple example. If you specialize in working with Google AdWords agencies, and then someone comes along and they're a meta ads agency, you could probably still help them because they're like, tangentially, it's digital marketing and advertising and all these platforms basically do the same things, right? But if you specialize in Google AdWords agencies, and a bank comes along and is like, hey, we're a bank and we're in finance and we need something completely different, that's probably a mistake because that industry is completely different and has a completely different vernacular, has a completely different set of rules. There's a completely different information advantage. So these are the two big things. Everyone here, you really need to internalize this. It should be the same service or a very incremental change on the service that you specialize in. And it should be the industry that you specialize in and tangentially related industries. It should not be a completely different industry. Does that make sense? Yes. Awesome. Well, there's a lot here. Seems like you Got a good game plan?

Yeah, Yeah. A lot of work to do. I'm excited.

Any follow ups?

No, I feel like I just need to execute now and then come back when I have the next problem for you to help me solve.

Awesome. Well, happy to. I mean, this is what I love about this is when you go through the exercise, the path forward is very obvious, it's very linear, it's very simple.

Yeah, I think it was about, like, what questions do I need to ask myself to get to that? Right.

Yeah.

Instead of trying to get sidetracked. So.

Awesome. Well, great question.

Thank you. And, and by the way, if there's anyone on this call in Barcelona, please message me because I'm trying to get all the people in Barcelona together, but it's hard to find everyone. So, yeah, please, please message me because the Christmas markets are starting. We got some fun to be had over here. So. Yeah, DM me, please.

That's awesome. If you put that together, Caroline, let us know. Take pictures. That'd be great.

Oh, there'll be pictures.

Awesome.

No snow. There won't be any snow, but there'll be. Yeah, there'll be pictures. Thank you so much, Paul. Thank you for taking the time to help.

Of course, of course. Great question. All right, we have a little bit of time. Andre, you want to. You want to jam on this question you dropped. Jamie, you want to spotlight Andre. What's up, man? How are you? Awesome. How are you? Happy Monday.

Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Yeah, man. I was thinking about this one last week, but then just missed the submission and then noticed there's a little bit of time today. So as opposed to digital business owners, contractors in any niche care about attracting people that they can actually service.

Right?

They can, of course, like their social media following can be made up of people anywhere.

That.

That's just a backing of their expertise. But when it comes to building their email lists, a lot of them care about filling their email lists with people in their area. And because the way to build their email list is an eec. How do you address this problem.

All.

The way from the landing page to the content of the emails?

This is a good example of you need. This is true for. True for every industry, but you need to separate what you have control over and what problems you want to help them solve versus all of the problems in their entire business. So a question that people ask often in PGA is if we're talking about an eec, they'll say, well, why would a business hire you to do that? Because that's. That's not a complete solution, Right? Like, you need an ec, but then you need a weekly newsletter, but then you need help booking the call, but then you need this infrastructure help, but then you need help piping all the data into airtable. But then you, like, that's how businesses work. The moment that you start pulling on a thread, you realize that everything in the business is connected. The thing that takes you a little bit to understand, and this is, this was the number one mistake that I made at the beginning of my writing career. And that is why I have become such a big believer in productized services. What takes you a while to understand is that you are not responsible for solving every single problem in the entire business. We have 30 plus people on our team. All 30 plus people do not work on solving every single problem in our business. We have one person that solves one problem. We have another person that solves another problem. We have another person who solves another problem. Right? And so you need to separate and go, yeah, I'm helping with ecs. But when you start pulling on the ec, that doesn't mean you have to, like, also solve their SEO and you also have to rewrite all their landing pages and you also have to be in charge of their tracking. And you also. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. And how do you, how do you draw the line? Because, I mean, of course I can see myself telling them, like, hey, this is just like one very small component of your entire digital marketing strategy. However, I. And maybe that's just the wrong way to. To think about it. But I don't want. I'm not too comfortable saying, like, hey, this is like, I'm not going to do anything beyond this. And then everything else is your responsibility. Kind of like I don't care about.

Because I'm.

I'm constantly questioning how I can go above and beyond. And yeah, of course I don't want to do everything for them, but I do want to give them as much as I can while respecting my boundaries and not. And like, not do everything under. Under the sun.

Right? So, okay, so first, often when, when people are thinking through decisions like this, a pattern that I notice is that they often think in binary extremes. So what. What you just said is to mirror it back to you. You just said, cole, how do I draw the line without. And then you jump to the extreme and you go without saying, I don't care about any other thing inside of your business. I don't care about you, I don't care about any other problem. Right. That's a very extreme way of saying that. It's a very extreme way of thinking that. Right. We can say the same thing, but just reel it in on the extreme spectrum and just say, yeah, I specialize in this thing. It helps you solve this problem. This problem gets connected to all of these other things in your business. I'm happy to explain to you how that works. I'm happy to do some free consulting, right, and like, help you connect the pieces, but that's not what I specialize in. What I specialize in is this front end. And I can say the example back to you, which is like, hey, Andre, I'm happy to. Let's do like a separate 30 minute, like paid consulting jam, just you and I, and I'll help you with just your offer, but unfortunately I don't help you with anything else. Like, do you still want my help just on that specific thing?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Right. So, like, exactly. Right. I don't need to solve every single problem in your business. You still want my help on something specialized. That is how every business owner thinks about things. That. That is how business works. Right. I don't hire, I don't hire someone to run my Instagram and solve all of our tech infrastructure problems. I hire someone just to run my Instagram. Right, of course.

And you marrying that back to me, I can immediately see myself mirroring this back to them and asking them like, hey, I mean, you take care of H vac. What happens if a client comes and it's like, hey, can you take care of my electrical? Can you take care of plumbing and this? And you're like, no, I just H vac.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. Oftentimes you have. This is why, like, one of the mantras I hammer home is that oftentimes clients don't know why they're asking for the thing that they're asking for. They don't know. And so it's your job to educate them, right? So when they're like, hey, how come you also don't help me with my SEO, for example? They're not asking you that because they're expecting that of you. They're asking you that because they literally don't know how these things work. And so I think that one of the skills to build for everyone here is not internalizing these questions. Like, when a client asks you a question that doesn't mean that they expect something from you, you have to pause and separate yourself and go, the reason they're asking me this question is probably because they don't understand. And so it's my job to educate them. And so to answer your question, like that's all the meta, like that is how to think about this question, right? To answer your question really directly, if, if, if a local H vac contractor wants to target people locally, well, you could go build an offer that is, you know, an EEC tied to paid ads that are targeting people locally. That's a very different type of offer. That's a pretty big shiny object. I don't know that I would encourage you to do that. So a much easier solution is you build an EEC that is on the homepage of their website so that every person who Googles them or every person who lands on their website who is probably local, you have a way of capturing their email. You don't need to solve every other problem in their business. That's just like the low hanging fruit opportunity right in front of them.

Of course, yeah, that answers my question. That's a very good way to address this problem without, like you said, just chasing what's, what's shiny and maybe going down a path that I don't even want to go down. And this is funny because earlier you mentioned the whole paid ads thing and yeah, it's crazy. Like I don't want to go down that, that path, at least not today. So yeah, this makes sense. This makes sense. I think it's a good way to, to address it and sort of give it, give them that little extra that, that they're looking for without giving in to their demands, which sometimes they don't even know why they're demanding in the first place. Right?

Yep, exactly.

Okay, this is good, man. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Yeah, good question. The last thing to end this topic for everyone, the last thing I want to share is. It almost doesn't matter what industry you're in because this works for pretty much every industry. If you ever want to know what is the simplest and most effective content strategy, either for social or for email, the most effective strategy. But the reason I'm thinking about this is because of like local in person contractors, right? Plumbers, electricians, gardeners, whatever the most effective content strategy is, here's how to do it yourself. It's not talking about you, it's not talking about the brand, it's not talking about how great the company is, it's not talking about your latest discount. The strategy is, here's how to do it yourself. Now, of course, whenever I share that, the obvious question back is, well, Cole, if I, if I help a client Tell a customer how to do it themselves, then they're not going to need the client. And that is like the, if there was like a misunderstanding or a faulty belief that existed in the world of digital marketing, that would, that would take the top spot every single year. Which is people thinking that if I educate a customer for free, they're not going to need me. So let me walk you through a very basic example that just happened to me. So I moved to Arizona. This is the first house I've ever bought. Huge learning curve when you buy a house. Because now I got to take care of everything myself. And when I bought the house, it was brand new remodel. And they said, we just redid your, your air conditioning units and, and like the big units in the garage that power all the, the ac, right? And one day like three months in our AC breaks. This is like the dead of summer and I'm like, it's 120 degrees outside. What the hell? And I found a local contractor and I went on their website and they actually had some resources on like, here's how to, here's how to fix this problem yourself. You live in Arizona. This happens all the time. Here's how to fix this problem yourself. They had a little how to guide. So I walk out to my garage, I go into the big unit that, you know, has all the water and powers the, the ac and they're like, find this thing and you know, unclick it. And if there's water inside, that means that it's clogged. So I unclick it. Oh, there's water in there. It's clogged. And I'm reading the how to guide. And then in the how to guide they literally go, if there's water, here is a complete step by step of how to fix this problem yourself. And they're like, step one, you gotta buy these materials. Step two, you need to go get this vacuum. Step three, you gotta plug in the vacuum and you gotta suck it out. Step four, you gotta make sure that you don't make this mistake along the way. They told me for free everything that I needed to do to fix that problem. Does anyone want to guess whether or not I did that myself or I called them to just do it for me? I called them, they told me the answer. They said, you can fix this yourself for free. They even said in the content, this isn't that hard. You don't need to be a professional, you know, air conditioning unit expert. You can do this with homemade supplies. And I still called Them. So why did I call them? I called them for a couple very basic reasons. One, I didn't trust myself to do it the right way. They're telling me I gotta pour, like, apple cider vinegar and a random concoction down a tube that I have no idea goes into what part of my house. For all I know, I'm going to make it worse. So I don't trust myself to do it the right way. Right. Second of all is I value my time higher than the cost of fixing it. I'm like, if I call them, it's going to cost me a couple hundred bucks. If I try and do this myself, I am easily going to spend five hours doing this. I value my time very highly. What else could I do with those five hours? Right. So whenever you're. The reason I'm walking through this is because every person here, you have the opportunity to educate clients on this idea, which is when you tell the customer the answer, when you tell the customer the answer, nine times out of 10, the conclusion they come to is, I don't trust myself to do it, and I value my time higher than the cost of doing it. So there's this. It's almost like the rule of opposites. If I tell you the answer, you're actually more likely to hire me. Whereas if I don't tell you the answer, then the next person who gives them the answer is the person that they're going to hire. Right. So this is a really, really important concept. Does that make sense for everyone? The best thing you can do for yourself, your own content, but for every single client that you work with is tell the customer the answer. Here's how to do it yourself. Right. Great. All right, well, this was solid. Happy Monday. Real quick, before we jump, what's your biggest takeaway from the day drop in the chat? Because we cover a lot in these, but what's the point if you. If you don't implement it? So what's your biggest takeaway? What's one thing you're going to apply to your business? One thing you're going to do differently? Andre, you don't have to fix everything. That's right. More better, new. That's right. It's a great framework. I wish I came up with it, but I didn't. That's a hormosiasm. Specialize in one service, one service to one industry with tangentially related industries as an option. Inputs and outputs. If you want to accomplish a different goal, if you want to set a bigger goal for yourself, all you have to do is walk through that little 15, 20 minute exercise of reverse engineering the inputs. What inputs led to where you are right now and how do you triple the inputs? Most things are just a volume game. Be generous with educating clients. Yes, A little saying I love is, the strategy is free, the implementation is expensive. I will get on the phone with a client and I will tell them every answer. I will tell you exactly what you need to do. If you want to go do that on your own, by all means. But what's the conclusion? When you tell the client all the answers, what conclusion do they come to? They don't trust themselves to do all of that without making mistakes. And they value their time higher than the cost of hiring you to do it. Awesome. Great conclusions. All right, everyone, thanks for showing up. Happy Monday. This was awesome. We got a couple weeks, a couple more weeks to crank through and then have a little vacation. End of your Christmas vacation. So thanks everyone and we'll see you next week.