How To Make Your First 25K Online When You Have ZERO Following

Welcome Back to the 2 comma Club podcast. Today I'm excited to introduce Richmond Den. He's a multiple seven figure entrepreneur, founder of the underdog movement, creator of the Tiny challenge, and he's helped thousands of students launch their coaching businesses and he's an awesome father of three. So Richmond, I want to ask you first and foremost, what is a tiny challenge for everyone who's listening?

Great question, great opening question. Thank you for having me on, John. I know you've interviewed a lot of awesome people here, so I'm very humbled to be on your podcast and seeing all the people that you come through, so really humbling. So Tiny challenge is a marketing framework for both beginner and experienced entrepreneurs. And so when you think about marketing frameworks, in order to acquire customer online, particularly in the coaching next way space, you have to actively market yourself. You can't just open up a website, put a link there to book a free call, and then Suddenly you got 20 calls booked in the next day. And that's kind of happy days. It doesn't really work like that, or you just kind of have a launcher funnel and have your 997 course and next minute you're making money while you sleep. So you need a marketing framework to sell your products and services online or your coaching programs online. And so you can do webinars, you can do masterclasses, you can do VSLs, you can do cold DM, you can run ads, you can do group challenges, you can do workshops. There's so many things you can do. You can even launch a YouTube channel or podcast. Like you need a marketing framework. And a Tiny challenge is in my opinion, obviously I'm biased, but it is the single best marketing framework that is available today for you to get started with the least amount of skill. So what is a Tiny challenge? It's like a traditional challenge, except that it's delivered and done one on one with just you and another person. So I want you to think of a normal group challenge which most people have probably sat in like a Tony Robbins challenge or whatever it is, or even Russell's challenge. And it's five days, it's in a group, you're with hundreds or thousands of people and you do the five days and it's good, but it's a good experience as an attendee. But to actually run one, it's actually very overwhelming and complicated and hard to execute. Especially if you have not made your first one 100k online. Because not only do you have to learn the tech involved, speaking on stage, Learning what selling one to many and then how to fill up a room, how to get them engaged for the whole five days, how to present an offer, all those things that come with a group challenge or even a masterclass webinar. It's very overwhelming for a person who has not made 100k yet. Yet alone, they don't have a proven message or a proven offer. And so a tiny challenge gives you the option of being able to do it with one person, just one person, which means you don't have to launch, you don't have to market. It's easy to fill up because it's only one person. You get a 100% show rate because all five calls are locked in at the agreed time that you both agree on. You can start today and it doesn't require you to learn how to speak, learn how to do all the tech involved, learn how to sell one to many. It's such a great way to start with the least amount of skill and risk involved. So, in short, that's what a tiny challenge is.

Thank you so much for that amazing example of a tiny challenge. I've seen the framework through an interview that you did with Russell Brunson, and I thought it was amazing. So much so that one day I personally decided to try it and I had an amazing experience. It was the first time that I put something out in the marketplace and was able to go 0 to 100 all the way up my value ladder and sell every offer in there. So I thought it was fantastic. And I want to give you a lot of praise on that for coming up with such an awesome framework. So for anybody who's listening, this works. And as we go through the rest of this podcast, please pay close attention and take some good notes, because I'm sure he's gonna drop a lot of good, good value for you guys. So, first and foremost, I'm interested to know how it is that you got, how you came across the idea of doing a tiny challenge versus like a.

One to many challenge, if you will.

Yeah, it was a convergence of two things that really happened. So I didn't start out doing tiny challenge, even though this is what we help our students do. I wish I had. I mean, I've been doing this for eight years, but my constant obsession of, number one, asking the question of what will I do if I had to start all over? What would I do if I had to start all over? And because we help the beginner coach go from zero to the first one. Okay, that's kind of our Avatar. I'm always asking the question of how do I help them win faster? So that was kind of like the underground process primary question I've been consistently asking myself over the last six or seven years anyway. But when I started running challenges, and this is about five years ago when they started becoming popular, it was such a, because I was running other methods and they weren't really working the way I liked and it wasn't really building trust the way I liked. And I thought, wow, this new challenge thing was such a great idea to build trust to, to deliver results in advance. They're with you for five days. It almost became a no brainer where the reciprocity was so high and it just made sense.

And so I did want to run them, but I've never run anything five days straight before in a group setting like that. So I was really scared of how do I even do that yet alone, how do I fill up a room? And what if no one shows up? And so I was so scared that no one would show up. So I didn't do anything for three months. When you don't, when you don't market for three months, you don't make any money. What was worse than not having anyone show up, which is at the end of that, it's not that bad. At least you do it and no one shows up and no one knows about it. But I had a bigger fear, which is what if one or two or three people showed up? And that, that was scary because then someone would see me fail. And I can't remember who I heard this from, but it's so true. You know, I don't, I don't. And since I heard this, it's like, you know, people aren't afraid of failing. They're afraid of other people seeing them fail. And when I, when I realized that, I realized that I wasn't afraid of failing doing challenges, I was afraid of having one or two people in the room seeing me fail. And so I decided, what if I just did a challenge to one person deliberately, but I wouldn't tell anyone about it because why would you be proud of that? Like, I mean, I. You did it, right? It sounds so not something you'd want to be even posting about, telling people about. But little did I know because then it took all the fear away. It's like, okay, well you know, one person shows up and I can do it anytime. I don't have to launch it. I don't have to worry about filling up a room. It just, that was good. And Then after I did it, I couldn't believe how easy it was, how convenient it was. And the close rate was extremely high and.

It was insane. And that's when I realized this needs to be the thing for every person starting, every person starting out.

Or anyone selling a super high ticket offer. Like if you got a $25,000 offer and you want to sell one or two of them, run a tiny challenge, like what a bet. What, what other way could you sell it in such like, you basically going to have 100% close rate because it's, the reciprocity is so high when you run a tiny challenge. And, and like, I mean, Russell Brunson did a 100k tiny challenge and then I just recently did one a couple of weeks ago as well to sell 100k offer. And it was so good. It was so good. But that's, that's how it was started and that's how I was born. It's pretty much by accident. Born through fear. And I realized, hang on a sec. This is, this is actually really, really good. Kind of like when you, you're in the kitchen, you, you make up your recipe by mistake and it turns out to be like the world's best recipe. And I think most recipes in the kitchen are kind of made by mistake. You know, it's like, oh, just try this, try this. Oh my gosh, that turned out really good.

A hundred percent couldn't agree anymore. That's awesome.

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. So I heard a lot of like the side of the beginner side, but I'm, I'm really interested for my own case to start on the expert side. Right. So it's like you have all the different individuals that have these higher ticket programs that come through on the podcast and everything. And like, I'd love to know kind of how it is that you break it down or frame it any differently for those clients versus like somebody who's just starting off in the marketplace and maybe doesn't have all the status symbols and everything that pop up online.

Yeah. So this is a, this is a great evolution of the timing challenge. And at the start, I didn't create it for the advanced coach. Like it was not the intention. However, after you do 10, 15, 20, 30 of them and you come really good at and you make your first hundred K because it's such a great framework for beginners because then you learn your craft, you become highly competent, you learn your I help statement, you get clear in your niche, you have it, you get Clear in your validated offer. Like everything becomes clear after doing 10, 15, 20 tiny challenges. And then at some point the problem is, or so it seems, is this is not scalable. How do you scale a tiny challenge? Because it's one on one, five days and there's only so many you can do. And so at some point you naturally probably need to transition to like a group challenge or a webinar or something. That's one too many.

But here's the iteration that just kind of came again by accident, by accident is you, you can scale in two ways through a tiny challenge. And the first way is as you get better, as you make hundred K and as you get more experience, your prices are naturally going to increase. So then you might have a 10k offer, you might have a 15k offer, 25k offer. And the moment you launch those very high ticket offers, you can do a group challenge or a webinar or masterclass, or you can do a tiny challenge. And for the amount of time that you spend to sell a 25k offer, it's actually really, really good. So that's one way where you can start to grow a lot faster. And let's just say you did, let's just say you did four or five tiny challenges a month to sell a 25k offer and you close two of them, that's a 50k month, you're doing really well. And it's only a tiny challenge and you only have to find four or five people, not 500 people, you know what I mean? So that's one way to scale, is to increase your prices. And so you just buy, sell, selling super high ticket. But here's the other way which I believe will completely change the industry. I mean, tiny challenges already changed the industry because it is the best starting vehicle for every person starting out. But this idea came when I was interviewed by Russell. So we were just sitting there at the end of his, like, wow, this is, this is so fascinating. And he said like, what if, what if you did one? And you know, you kind of, because he asked me like, you know, how do you, how do you weed out time wasters in a tiny challenge? And it was a good question because the last thing you want to do is do a five day tiny challenge with someone and then you get a time waster, you know what I mean? So it's so much of your time, it's so much of your commitment and you don't want to have that. And so we do have various ways where you can weed out time Wasters. For example, you can ask for a fully refundable deposit. You can ask them to donate to charity, or in our case, for like the beginner coach, you can ask them to write a handwritten letter saying, for example, hi, John Marsh, commit to da da da, doing the work, getting out of my way. And then they submit the letter to you, and then suddenly they're committed. Apart from that, the fact that they're giving five days, five calls to you tells us they're committed anyway because no one turns up and gives away their time that easily these days, especially for a tiny challenge. So they're pretty committed, that sense. But then he asked, like, could you charge for it? Like, could you charge for a tiny challenge? And I thought, because at the time, again, we were doing it for beginners and we wouldn't recommend them charging because they're just beginners. And I thought, yeah, you probably could charge for a tiny challenge. I don't see why not. And that's, that's when the first concept of the idea of a paid tiny challenge came about. For someone more advanced, someone more experienced and kind of like paid masterclass or a paid group challenge, you can definitely do a paid tiny challenge if you're a little bit more advanced. So that's one way. Paid tiny challenge. But then this other idea was born that Russell kind of insinuated. Could you, like, do a paid challenge and then perhaps coach that person one on one, but have a few people kind of sitting in the same zoom room and watch you do that? And.

And then I guess when you pitch the offer at the end, you're not just pitching that at one person, but then you pitch to everyone sitting down. And I thought, that is, that's genius. That is genius. And so after he said that.

The next month, I went out and I said, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do a paid challenge. I charge $5,000 for it. And, and in that challenge, because at the time I had run over 70 group challenges, and the paid challenge was, I'm gonna help someone build out a six figure challenge in five days, one on one with me. I'm gonna build out the six figure challenge because I'd done like over 76 figure challenges, you know, and, and then I'm gonna sell tickets for $500 only to five people who want to come in and watch me coach this person one on one to help her build out her six figure challenge. And then they can kind of draw some kind of inspiration from what I'm doing, and then they're seeing me coach this person and then eventually they kind of walk out with, you know, some great insights on how to build their own six figure challenge. @ the end of that challenge, I pitched a 25k offer to the person I did it on. But the pitch went to all five people who sat in that chair to.

Watch. And four people bought, oh, my gosh, that's so.

Awesome. That was a $100,000 challenge and it was a tiny challenge with what we call now a shadow seat. And that's credit to Eileen wider. So I presented that model to Russell's inner circle and Eileen was in the room and she's like, wow.

So that's how you scale one on one coaching. 100%. That's how you scale one on one coaching. People think you cannot scale one on one coaching. Well, times have changed. The way you scale one on one coaching is coach someone one on one through a tiny challenge framework. Have a shadow seat and you could have 5, 10, 15 people. 100 people there watch you coach that person one on one to solve one particular problem that they want to have solved as well. But then when you present the offer at the end, you're not presenting to just one person. You present it to 5, 10, 15, 20, 100 people. And since coaching has started, coaching has been around for about 100 years. No one has ever been able to scale one on one coaching. No one. This is how you scale one on one coaching. And so Eileen came up to me after and she said, richmond, that that shadow seating concept is so cool. And at the time, I didn't call it a shadow seat. I just called it like a voc. Like, come in and watch me do it. Like, I didn't have a name for it and I said to, oh, that's an amazing name. Can I use that as a term? He's like, I thought that's what you called it. I'm like, I didn't have a name for it. So credit to Eileen for giving me the idea and giving permission to use the term shadow sea. So tiny challenge with a shadow seat is the way forward to scale. So once you do tiny challenges as a beginner to get 100k, then you can go to a paid tiny challenge and charge $100, $200 and sell your, you know, 25K offer. And then after that, then you can go to a tiny challenge and sell shadow seats. And that's how you scout and so you don't really even need to move out of the model of a tiny challenge. This allows you to even get to a million or multiple seven figures. I did a shadow seat one only about a month ago, which I'm telling you about. And this one I went bigger. And so again, I charged $5,000 for it.

And had one person I was coaching one on one. And then I sold 100 shadow seats for $97. $97. And in that. In that one on one challenge, it was basically, I helped this person build out the perfect tiny challenge. Like, the perfect tiny challenge. And so we had a lot of people saying, I want to see Richmond help Darlene build out the perfect tiny challenge. I want to see how he does it. And what I made unique about this is, so I coached Darlene one on one for about 45 minutes, five days straight. But then I allowed an hour afterwards for just Q and A for them to ask me, how did you do that? Why did you ask that question? What did you think about that? Da, da, da. Because they. Someone already think about running tiny challenge, where they ran it themselves, and they're like, oh, so that's how. Like, that's how Richmond does it. And so they got so much value for 97 bucks at the end of it, I pitched a 25k offer to 100 people, and we had about 45 people apply for. Was nuts. It was nuts. We ended up closing 6 people to my 25k offer, and then another 7 or 8 down sold to a 5k offer. And so that alone was almost 200k just from that. And then the person sitting in the chair of my tiny channel, I pitched her 100k offer, and she said yes. So it ended up being like a $290,000 tiny challenge. $290,000. And it was crazy and probably. And when you add in the 100 seats that I sold for 97 bucks, that's an extra 10k. So it was a $300,000 tiny challenge.

300,000. That is so.

Amazing. Yeah. And you imagine doing four of those a.

Year. Right?

Right. You're on a million dollars. Like, you know, if you're. I don't know who's listening to this, but if you're looking for your first two comma club or your second one.

First of all, run a tiny challenge to get your first 100k. You get there easy. You don't need that many leads for it. You don't need to have anything fancy for it or a big list, because you only need one. Post a piece of content and you get one person, like It. And that's your ideal client. That's your first tiny challenge. You don't need 100 likes or a thousand likes. You don't even need 10 comments. But if you did get 10 comments or 10 likes from your ideal clients, you got 10 tiny challenges. That's. It's awesome. Get to 100k, then either do a paid model or do a shadow seat to scale it. And even if you had a $5,000 offer and you did a tiny challenge and you had 20 people as a shadow seat, and you pitched a $5,000 offer, you could easily sell. You could easily sell like seven or eight. Like, you could close a third of them and sell seven or eight of those, and that's a 30 to $40,000 payday easy. And you do that once a month. You know, you. You're.

Crushing. Oh, yeah, man. That was a lot of gold right there that you answered. One of the questions that I was thinking about, which was you touched on, like, the upsells and all those things, and I was curious to know if you were doing the downsell of the. The one on one. And it sounds like you are to the shadow seats, which is.

Amazing. Yeah, we don't pitch the. The down sell because you never. You never want to pitch two offers because, you know, it creates overwhelm. When you give someone too much choice, then it's very hard for them commit and decide. It's kind of like, how old are you, John? Do you don't mind me.

Asking. Yeah, I'm gonna be 29 next week, so I'm 28.

So. Good. So I'm 42. I'm sure. I'm sure. As a kid, you remember on TV there was only like four channels. Yeah. Is.

It. Yeah, yeah, for.

Sure. Like, there was only, like, back then, there weren't that. Like, for us, it was like channel 7, 9, 10, and ABC or something like that. And when you wanted to watch something on TV, like, within 10 seconds, you would have picked the channel already. But now you want to watch something on Netflix or YouTube. You could be scrolling for half an hour because it's so much choice. And then at the end of half an hour, like, nothing on. I can't.

Decide. Right.

Right. Too much choice destroys commitment.

And so presenting offers, you never want to present more than one offer. So just present that one offer. And then on the phone call, it's like when they say no, then you say, oh, by the way, would you like to. Would like to hear the $5,000 one or the downsell one, which is kind of like a smaller version of the bigger one, you know, so yeah, you can 100% down sell.

100%. That's awesome. So one of the questions I have related to this, we've talked a lot about that, the shadow seat. And so I'm interested to know like, what strategies do you have for users that are getting people in there? Is it, is it a very similar concept to how you're already getting people in the tiny.

Challenge? Yeah. So in order to do a shadow state again, it is more of you've hit your first hundred K, you've established a huge amount of competency because you're going to be demonstrating your competency now in front of a group of people. And so I would not do it if you haven't done 100k. Cause. Or you haven't done certain hours of coaching. Cause.

If you're not good at what you do, it's not gonna look good. No one's gonna buy. So they're buying competency. Cause they're seeing you coach one on one. That's what they're buying. And I believe a demonstration of competency is the future of marketing. So that's first thing I wanna make sure everyone is like, oh my gosh, this sounds cool. And they go out and do it and then they ruin the reputation. Cause they haven't done enough of it. So that's key. But to answer your question, you need to, you need to figure out a problem.

That people are hungry to solve. That's step number one. And so for us it was, I've done it, I've done it 3, 4. I've done the shadow seat five times now. I've done the shadow seat 5 times now. So for me it was like when I did it to a more advanced avatar, it's like build out a six figure challenge. A six figure group challenge. And, and people were hungry to do that because they were running group challenges and they weren't making like they were making 10, 20K and they just found it hard to really crack to make six figures per challenge. And so it was a problem that people wanted to learn how to solve. And so that's, that's step number one. Pick a problem people will learn how to solve. And then the last one I did was now Tiny challenge is growing and it's becoming a thing. It was like build out the perfect high, converting Tiny challenge. And then I had a lot of my students, over a thousand students were like, I want to watch Richmond do that. It's like a problem that they wanted to have solved. And so that's the key. Pick a problem people want to have sold. And then I sold the tickets to just people who already kind of know, like, and trust me, I didn't sell it to a cold audience, although I probably could, but I didn't sell it to a cold audience. So I sold it to a warmer audience. And that's how, that's how I filled it.

Up. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing. So in terms of, like, for the more beginner side of things, like, how do you recommend that they go about getting discovered in the space and ultimately getting their first coaching.

Clients? Yes. So I always Recommend your first 10 coaching clients or your first 10 tiny challenges. It's always going to be the people that you already know, your family and friends or people who know kind of have heard of you. That's really important. So many times we go into this space and we discount, we discount the people we know. We have a story that says, I can't coach my cousin or I can't coach my friend or of course you can. You just got to set boundaries around it. But the people that know you are the people that are going to be most likely to buy and give you the best feedback. And if you were to open up like a brand new steak restaurant and you wanted to do like a launch, you would invite all your family and friends. It would just make sense. And they're going to be people that first eat there. They're going to be your first customers. And even if your sister's a vegan, you'd still invite her because your sister will come even though she's a vegan. And she'll do a story and she'll post and say, I'm at my brother's restaurant. And then suddenly everyone knows about your steak restaurant and she can just eat the salad. She doesn't need to be your ideal client, but you would still. Your job as a marketer is to let everybody know what you do, including the people around you. And that's the most important, letting your family and friends know what you do. If you don't let them know what you do, then they can't help market for you. And you never know. Once you let them know what you do, some of them may say, I actually want that. Then they may buy you, but not selling to them. But they may actually say that. When I started out, my sister in law, Jackie, so I don't know Jackie, she'll never listen to this podcast because she is so far from my Ideal client, but she would. But I let her know what I was doing and she became one of my first rating fans. She would share my posts, comment on my post, like all my posts. And she was not my ideal client, but she would comment, share, like it all the time, to the point where she had friends who wanted to get life coaching or get coaching, and then suddenly they saw it and then they would reach out or they would like it. And then that's how I started to grow my business. From my sister, who's not my ideal client, who was like the vegan in my world. And then she's sharing it, she's liking it, and then suddenly that's how I started to grow through just letting my family and friends know what I'm doing. Even if they disapprove, you still got to let them know. And so that's how you get your first 10. Just let your family friends know what you're doing. And I get that some of your family and friends will think that you've joined a cult. You've done.

It's true. My dad, this side story, I mean, I've been doing this for eight years and you know, in my culture you got to become a doctor or a dentist, a lawyer, you know, one of those things. And I was an optometrist for 10 years before I became a nice in 3 by 2 room. Which is clearer? 1 or 2? 1 or 2. For 10 years. 10 years. Not really fulfilling. And no offense, if you're an optometrist, but now I know you're not fulfilled, I can guarantee it. Like, how could you be fulfilled, right? For 10 years? You can't. But my parents wanted me to do that. And when I became a coach, when I became a coach, my dad asked me, oh, you changed job, you left careers to become a coach? And I said, yeah. And he said, what's a coach? Because he didn't understand what a coach was. And I didn't really have a word for it in Vietnamese to describe it. And so the best word I could say was it's like a teacher. I'm like a teacher. And he's like, you left optometry to become a teacher? And I said, yeah, dad. And he's like, why didn't you leave to become a dentist or a doctor? Like that's the next step up. I'm like, no, I'd just rather become a teacher. And today he's still, eight years later, he's still like, you should get into becoming a doctor. And this, he still doesn't approve of me being a teacher, but I think I'm learning quite a lot more than most teachers do.

Anyway. Yeah.

Definitely. The point is, I still let my dad know what I do, even though he doesn't approve, because guarantee when he. If he's got friends or people who want to get into coaching, he's still going to refer them to me, even though it doesn't prove what I'm doing because I'm top of mind for him. So your family and friends are going to be your first 10 clients. Like, or they know your first 10 clients. Let them know what you're doing, even if they're not your ideal.

Client.

That's awesome. I love that, that. That's a hilarious story about your. About your father there. Like, I totally understand it. I feel like a lot of the entrepreneurs that are listening are going to all of us. We're either visionaries or we're integrators, right. And like, for all the visionaries out there that are listening, like, we all dreaming about this day in the future, we hit this certain goal and everything, and we tell our friends and family, and a lot of them, it's just gonna go right over their head, you know, so. Totally get that. So what is it that you do when you've gotten, you know, your friends or family to, you know, kind of discover that you have this thing going on? How are you kind of communicating with them in a way where you're. You're explaining, like, nurturing the relationship to them involved in the program, if you.

Will? Yeah, yeah. So I like to.

You'll be surprised on how many people say yes when you just ask for support. It's. Human beings are more inclined to say yes than no because we have this thing inside us called the pleaser. We don't want to disappoint and fear of judgment. And you'd be shocked on how many more times someone says yes, whether it's in sales or in marketing or asking for support from your family and friends, whatever it is, you'd be blown away. And most people think most people are going to say no, but in fact, it's the opposite. Most people feel bad saying no. They feel terrible. And to the point where most people just say yes, like, okay, I'll do it for you. I'll help you out. Now, if you constantly ask all the time, then they're gonna hate you and resent you and all that kind of stuff. And there's a boundary to it for sure. But that first. Yes.

I don't know. The stats for it. But I would say it's 10 times more than what you think it is right now. And so it's a simple question of, hey, mom, hey, dad, hey, sister, hey, friend, hey, whatever. I'm about to launch my coaching business and it would mean a lot to me if I could just have your support, not permission, support. It mean a lot. And you could say that verbally or in text, and that's kind of descriptive text. It just mean a lot for me if I have your support. And so what does that look like? Well, over the next month, you're probably going to see me posting a little bit on socials, on a podcast, on John's podcast, or on, on YouTube or just posting a reel or posting a story or whatever. You're gonna see me posting stuff online. And if you could just support that, like, just a thumbs up or a like or a comment or if you liked it, you could share it or whatever it is. And that's all I ask for. That's all I ask for. And that's it. And the response will be, you'll be, you'll be very, very surprised on what they do and what they say. And, and that's your first 10, 15, 20 likes and followers online. And we know that snowballs into more people liking it because then the algorithm kicks in and they might share it, and then suddenly their friends are thinking, oh, I wanted to get into coaching. And they see it and that's how you do it. So just ask for support. So many times we don't ask. And what that means is you're saying no on their behalf. Let them say no, but you don't say no. And so I don't believe in saying on their behalf. Don't rob them. It's. Yeah, it's really. We have no right to say no on their behalf. We have no right to do it. So just ask the.

Question. Amen to that. I love that. You never know what you get when you, when you ask for help. Like, you'd be surprised, all the, all the people and resources that come your way as a result of it. Kind of like the law of attraction and like inviting them into your life, you know?

So one of.

The. You asked me to come on your.

Podcast. Like, yeah.

Exactly. I know that was in the line for a while, but it was like, you know, it's. You just ask. And I'm guessing that's how you got so many cool people on your podcast. It's just, just ask. Just ask. Just ask. Right? Like, you got some really big names on your podcast. I'm like, wow, this is.

Cool. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's. I was actually Brian Adamson and David Simons were two of the most recent ones that I did prior to the one we're doing right now. And just happenstance happened to reach out to actually, it was FHL.

International.

No. Okay. Besides the point, let's. Let's circle back to this. So I want to talk about your stuff. This is going to be fun. So your.

Your tiny challenges. I'd like to know more about, like the offer side of them, some of the people that you've helped out and like, what have been. What have been some of those really cool experiences and stories or offers that people have come up with after having worked with you and.

Stuff. Yeah. So what are they offering at the end of their tiny challenge? Yeah, well, first things first. It's. I'm blown away by how many of our students have got made their first client online through tiny challenges. And it's just become the momentum point because that when you think about it, they came from trying. And I'm not dissing other methods because I run two webinars every single week and I've done hundreds of webinars and I still do them. I still do group challenges and I have VSLs and I have funnels. And so all those strategies, I'm not, I'm a raving fan of all those things. Except for cold dm. Don't do cold DM like this. I run ads, I do organic. So I. All of those things work. They work so well, and that's why we do them. And I promote them and advocate them for the beginner. Though when you're trying those things, it's overwhelming. It's so hard. And so I'm so proud of so many beginners making the money online and that they didn't give up and they came to us and we were like their final hope, you know, and oh my gosh, I wish I'd found this guy sooner. And now that now they're officially paid kosher, got to validate offer. What I would highly suggest, particularly when you're starting out on what to offer at the end of your tiny challenge is a principle that's so simple that it hurts. It's a principle called offer more of the same. More of the same. So what does that mean? So an example is. And there's studies on this too, because you do a tiny chance, like at the end, I don't even know what to offer. Like, what should I offer. So if you went to, if you went to McDonald's and you ordered like a small fries, and you know how they got 100 menu items on McDonald's and they could offer you any upsell and even then you order electronic thing and you know, would you like a sundae, would you like a burger, would you like this special thing? But they can only pretty much present you maybe max two or three things for the upsell on you on out of the 100 menu items. And so if they don't present the right thing, they're not going to get the upsell. And it could cost them a lot of money. And so you think which has the highest probability of you saying yes to an upsell? If you went to McDonald's and ordered a small fries, it's not a burger, it's not a coke, it's not nuggets, not sundae, it's a large fries, it's more the same. Why? Because you don't guess. If someone orders small fries, you know with 100% accuracy that today they feel like fries, you know with 100% accuracy that they're not allergic to fries, you know with 100% accident, they like fries. Now if you offered a sundae, you don't know if they're allergic to dairy, you don't know if they feel like something sweet, you don't know if they're on a diet, you have no idea if you offer a burger, you have no idea if they feel like a burger or even want a burger or even could eat burgers or a soda or anything. Like everything else you offer on the upsell is 100% guessing. And guessing will always cost you money, always offer more of the same. And even the studies when you buy supplements online, so smart marketers, when they buy supplements online, and I'm pretty sure Russell has done research on this too, so if you buy like a, like a 50 pack of vitamin C and they always have some sort of upsell, would you like this diet book? Would you like this training guide? Would you like vitamin D? Would you like something else? And the number one upsell, if you buy 50 pack for vitamin C is a 100 pack. It's more of the same. More the same. Always converts the highest 100% of the time. Because when someone bought vitamin C, you know they want vitamin C. You don't know if they need vitamin D or something else. Like just don't guess. Once you know your ideal client deeper, then you can add in the things that you know they want on the Side as well. But at the start, do not guess. So what does more the same look like in a tiny challenge? More the same is definitely because tiny challenge is one on one. So more the same means that you probably should give some one on one in your offer. Don't just sell 100% group because that's not more of the same. Now you can have one on one with group, but you've got to have some one on one because that's what they're in there for. You also got to have some accountability because in a tiny challenge there's accountability because you assign homework, they do the homework and you hold them accountable because it's one on one. It's kind of one on one personal trainer. So you're going to have some accountability. So you're going to have some one on one. Doesn't mean it's all one on one. You can have some accountability in the offer as well because that's what they got. And you've got to have progress tracking in terms of like delegated homework. Here's the homework. Do it, hand it in. To me. Like kind of like that kind of progress chart. And you have those three things alongside your clear outcome and clear promise of the offer. You can, you can easily sell 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, and it can literally be more of the same. So if you go to a personal trainer and you had a couple of free sessions from them and afterwards you buy, you buy 20 sessions or you buy six months now what are they going to do over the six months? They're not going to take you to a marathon, they're not going to try to get you to swim across the ocean. No, it's literally six months of more the same. But people buy that. They just, people want more of the same. So don't try and upsell a marathon when someone just did a 30 minute training session with you. Or upsell CrossFit or upsell how to swim across the ocean. Just upsell more of the same. People will take it because that's what they.

Got. That is absolute like gold right there. Like that. I love all the stories you threw in there about McDonald's and everything. That is so fire. I remember Russell talking about the concept of the supplements, but the McDonald's one, for me, it really hits home because there's so much more variety like you mentioned on that menu item. And it's, it's so profound because it's literally like exactly as you say, more of the same. And I'm thinking of all these different Instances that I've seen that in marketing where it just works so well. So that. Dude, that was fire. So just got to let you.

Know that now you see it, you're like, oh, trying to be fancy. You overthink it. You try to be.

Fancy.

Right? Oh, is this. This cool gadget. Gadget. This cool thing and blah, blah.

Blah. Yeah, that's awesome. Definitely. So let's talk a little bit more about like your. Your own entrepreneurial journey. So you talked about how you went from optometry school to. Or not school, from being an optometrist to getting into coaching. Like, tell me a little bit about what that path looked like and how you even discovered it in the first.

Place. Yeah, and every entrepreneur has to go through this path like they, they're doing something. It's not really the calling. They feel like there's more or they're not fulfilled or they're not making enough money or whatever the thing is. And then they have to transition into.

The unknown really is the unknown.

Or in my case, you know how they say ignorance is.

Bliss? 100%.

Yeah. I'm grateful for my ignorance.

I didn't know, I didn't. I shouldn't say this, but I didn't know how hard it was, you.

Know. Yeah. Yeah, for.

Sure. Wow, wow, wow, wow. And I just thought it would be running a business will be easy and, and I didn't. I actually legit. I didn't know I needed to speak like, you know, public speaking and do lives and do events and stuff. I just thought written content and, you know, like people would just come in word of mouth and, you know, do a good job for 10 people and suddenly it's all word of mouth from there.

And I. And public speaker was my biggest fear. So ignorance played in my favor. I had no idea on all the skills I had to learn and how hard it would be. And the reason why I had no choice was because when I left optometry, I literally burnt the boats and I didn't re register. And when you don't re register in optometry, it's not a simple go back and re register. You got to go through years of process to get it back. And so, and so for me, it was like I had, I had. There was no other option. I really just had to go all in on coaching now, which was great because it forced me to. Had I kept my registration for optometry, I would have ran back very quickly because realizing that how hard it was and you know, putting yourself out there and getting Rejection and rejection and, you know, not. Don't want to scare the beginner entrepreneur, but that's the truth. That's the truth. So to transition, sometimes ignorance is bliss, but also to transition. What really, really helped, and I know that this will be hard for some people, is.

You'Re gonna have to be very deliberate with spending time with the right people, listening to the right people that support you, and also be realistic enough to know that some people will not and be okay with that. And I think the biggest litmus test of your life will be when you're going through adversity and finding out who your real supporters are.

I say this to my students.

Achievement will only demonstrate a man's competence. Like, that's. That's all it does. That's what achievement does. But adversity will demonstrate a man's character. And so when I say a man, it's people. And so, you know, achievement, it's awesome. You're competent, well done. But adversity will show us your character and will show the people around you their character as well. So when you're going through a hard time or transition in your life, and for me, I had only two supporters from my friends and the majority of my friends, and they cared. They really cared. But I think if you really care about someone, then you just need to trust that they're going to make the right decision and trust that they'll get the right lesson from it. You don't really.

Yeah, you got to be careful of telling people what to do rather than just trusting that they know the right step and you can ask the right questions and all that kind of stuff. And then my wife Penny was a big, big role in that as well.

My in laws didn't support for sure. They thought I was crazy. My parents did not support. They thought I was crazy. And a lot of my friends did not support, except for two. And then it was Penny, my wife Penny. So I only really had three people that supported me, and I really had to just. It was hard. But that's the biggest key. Find some supporters around you and stick with them and transition, because you're going to need help in that.

Department. 100%. I think that that's some of the realest stuff that I've heard on here is, you know, those adversity moments, they really. They really show you, like, who you're surrounded with and levels of support that you either have or don't have. Like, one of the things that I'm sure you alluded to that you experienced that I'VE also experienced in a lot of other entrepreneurs is like, the people that you thought were by your side through it all. The moment that hard time comes, like, they just kind of. They go their own ways and everything. That was actually.

The. It's a good thing, really, when you think about it, because definitely once I don't want, like, who wants friends like that anyway? Like, you know, like, you want to know who's really got.

You. Yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree anymore. It's like you want to know that, like, when shit hits the fan, like, you have the right people who are going to be by your side to deal with it, rather than the ones who won't. And then if you're standing there relying on them when it does and you actually can't, it's like, oh, now you got more ground to cover and you're less prepared. So very important. Yeah. So one of the things that I've noticed is a big recurring theme among a lot of the individuals who have been on the podcast is how important their environment is to ultimately their success. So I don't know if you have any, like, tips in terms of like, catering your environment to the goals and outcomes that you're ultimately trying to go after or something of that.

Nature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So environment goes in. In my opinion, environment is twofold. Number one, the people you spend time with, for sure, like setting out, you know, expectations. So if you're, if you've got a family, your kids, if you've got a wife or husband or, you know, people immediately in your home that, that your business impacts. Number one is setting very clear expectations of how life is going to be. You know, it's not a 9 to 5 anymore.

You know, it's, it's, it. This. Weekends are not weekends. You know, that kind of. So it's very clear boundaries and expectations of honey or hubby or whatever it is. This is, this is, this is how it's going to be. And it's not like it's all the time, or maybe I'm running a vet or I'm away, like, so setting very clear expectations, but also knowing that it's all these early sacrifices for a better life in the future. So consistently communicating expectations with the people around you to set yourself environment up for success. Otherwise you will get caught up in. I don't know if there's a name for this.

But it's a lot of entrepreneurs, particularly if they've got family at home, they feel guilty when they're working that they should be with their Family. And when they're with their family, they feel guilty that they should be working. And it's like this double bind guilt trap thing because of the lack of communication of expectations. And even with my kids, like I have to consistently communicate that.

I'm going away to Miami this, this Saturday and daddy's gone for five days. And daddy would do my best to call you every day, but some days I might not be able to and you know what I mean? And sometimes daddy's working here and if you want, like spend time with daddy, I'm gonna spend time in about half an hour, give me half an hour. But if you want to stay down here. And then they do, they start drawing on my paper and stuff. They start pulling up my laminate and do things like just consistent communicating and then they're still important. But this is what we're doing now. So that's, that's key. Otherwise the guilt would just crush you. And then we cannot operate at our best when we're operating in guilt. So that's, that's kind of external environment communication of that.

And then from an internal environment is how you communicate with yourself and setting up boundaries and guidelines with yourself. And so for me, the ultimate enemy to anyone's success is distraction, is distraction. So I'll give three practical hacks to remove distraction. Three practical hacks. Number one.

I don't set a wake up alarm, so to speak. I go to bed at a certain time. Like I have a go to sleep alarm. And I naturally wake up. Like I naturally wake up around about, you know, anywhere from 4:30, 4:30am If I sleep in, like 6am Is asleep in for me, you know what I mean? So I just naturally wake around there because I want to wake up at least an hour before the world wakes up, before I have this thing where I have to beat the sun. So if it's daylight savings, I need to wake up earlier. Like I cannot let the sun beat me. So I must beat the sun. And if you beat the sun every single day, then you've got an hour or two hours before the world wakes up, meaning the world, meaning your family or whoever's staying at home with you. That's important because that's your time and you can get so much done in an hour or an hour, half, two hours. So that is important. So I'd rather do that than have the last two hours of the day to myself because studies have shown that you have more productive sleep when you sleep before midnight or sleep before 11 o'. Clock. And so I'd rather some people like, oh yeah, I'm gonna do my last two hours on myself at the end of the night and sleep at 1am no, I'd rather do it in the morning, it's better that way. And just the idea of beating the sun, you feel like you're just ahead rather than behind. So that's hack number one. Hack number two is on your phone. I don't know if anyone's listening to put out their phone. And you know, like on my phone I've got my apps here, I got four by five. So I got 20 apps and then I scroll across, I got another 20 and that's all I've got. I only got two pages and I think that's the max you, you should ever have on your phone. You know, some people got like eight pages, nine.

Pages. Like I couldn't even imagine. Like what are you putting on there? You know, like a bunch of.

Games. Like, I mean I've got more apps than what I have shown, but I don't use them. And you can search for them, whatever it is. But this is distraction. And so I want to remove as much distraction as possible from an app perspective. And I don't know how many people have six or seven pages. They're all distractions. And every app on your phone is designed to distract you. And so I don't want that. And then the third, so I'm very diligent on what is going to distract my phone. And everything on my phone is designed to, you know, it's purposeful. And then the third thing, and I don't know if this is controversial or not, but it's related to my phone too. For the last five years I have, my phone has been on silent 100% of the time. Time.

I cannot receive an emergency call. I just, it just. And it's probably a bad thing cuz I, I have family. Like what if, what if something happens and you don't pick up? You know, and so apparently you can, I can set a number now like if Penny calls me, if her number goes through and she calls me then, then it supersedes the, the, the do not disturb thing and it actually rings. So I got to figure out how to do that because I know she only called me for an emergency anyway, but I believe anything else. If they wanted to reach me, they would drive to my house and reach me. You know what I mean? But touch wood, I've never had any major emergency where I looked at my phone two hours later and I thought, oh Crap, you know what I mean? So it's like that. And then someone can tell me otherwise. If someone really needed me, that will call Penny, because Penny's phone is on. Or they'll call my business partner, or they'll call someone. That's all my assistant. And my assistant will just reach out to me very quick, very quickly through email or messenger or whatever it is. And so I have people around me that if they know it's an emergency, they can contact the people around me and then they'll tell me. So I never have my phone on silent. I mean, off.

Silent. That's awesome. I love that. We've been. My girlfriend and I have talked a ton about, like, distractions. We actually this week got rid of our tv, which is pretty crazy, pretty random. But we just thought, yeah, it's like, why not, you know, like, get rid of it? So, yeah, that's really cool. I've been. I've been on that new not disturbed kick most of the day, but I gotta do a better job around social media. I think that's the one area that, like, I know that a lot of us get sucked into that. And I think there's certain settings or certain browsers you can use that allow you to put limits on that. So definitely recommend looking into that too. So as we're getting closer to the end of the podcast here, I know there was one more thing that I wanted to talk about before we transition to the end, and that's the book that you have that you're in the process of putting together. So if you wouldn't mind sharing about that, that'd be.

Awesome. That's correct. Tiny Challenge forwarded by Russell Brunson as well. Forwarded by Russell Brunson. So this gives you the whole framework of how to run a high. Converting Tiny Challenge from A to Z, from picking the hook, from doing day one, seamless delivery, the scripts, everything like that, how to present the offer, what homework to assign, how to assign the homework, how to hold accountability, everything. So if you have not made your first 100k online, this is the way forward. And you can do it with a very small list. Like, you don't need 100 followers, you just need 10. And you got 10 tiny challenges. You know what I'm saying? You don't have to run ads to this or anything like that. You don't have to learn speaking, you don't have to learn the tech, you don't have to learn all the complicated things. You can get started right now. And once you've mastered that to get 100k. Then we've got an extra chapter at the end on how to do a shadow seat. Tiny challenge.