[RTB:E44] Stefan Georgi Talks Landing Clients, Joining a Mastermind and Budgeting As An Offer Owner

Hey, you're listening to the Road to a Billion podcast. I'm your host, Stefan Georgi. I'm glad to have you with me here today. The Road to a Billion is a call and radio show style podcast where you can ask me questions about freelancing, copywriting, entrepreneurship, mindset skilling, funnels, relationships, money and more. The reason for the name the Road to a Billion is twofold. I've reached about a billion dollars in sales for myself and for my clients and my goal is to make an impact in the lives of a billion people over the next 10 years. I'm going to answer some questions on today's show, maybe a short episode. I have a guest lined up. He's not on right now, and so I'm not sure if the guest is coming or not, but we'll make lemons out of lemonade and if the guest does not arrive, I will just ask answer people's questions and help them out. And if the guest does arrive, then we'll talk with our guests for a bit. So, you know, that's what we're going to do. For those on Facebook live as well. I see five people. It's glad to see you all here. So let me update kind of where about my life for a few minutes and then I'm happy to answer questions we got about whatever. We'll make it like an open episode. So it's funny, I have a post on Facebook today about censorship and being sort of censored and fear of being deplatformed and things like that. And I've also been kind of dabbling with crypto more as some of you know from the previous episode of Maria. But one of the things I've wanted to do really badly is to write a book about freedom, which is something that I'm starting to work on. I've actually outlined several of the chapters and I think this stuff of even with like feeling like a risk of censorship and freedom of speech on Facebook kind of further motivates me to want to write this book. So essentially like, here's what the book's gonna be about and I'm just sharing because why not, right? The thesis is essentially this. When you talk to entrepreneurs and freelancers and most people and you ask about like, you know, what one of their highest values is, why did they get into freelancing? Why did they try get into business? Um, it's very generally like, because they want, they're like, freedom, I want to be free. And you're like, okay, cool. Like, what does freedom mean? To you. And nobody can give a really good definition. It's stuff like, it's like, oh, freedom means not having a boss or only working when I want to, or working on my terms, or not being stuck in a location or a million other things. And those are all perhaps attributes of this idea of freedom, but they probably aren't actually freedom, you know, in a really classic sense. Right? And so there's a problem, which is that so many of us are trying to attain freedom. We say it's one of our highest values, but we can't actually define it. So we can't define freedom. So we're working towards something we can't even define, which is problematic, right? Because if you don't know what it is, how are you ever going to get there? So that's a core issue at the heart of a lot of freelancers, entrepreneurs, and just people of the 21st century is we say we want freedom. We don't know what freedom actually is or what it means. Right? So part of it is like, how do we define freedom? And I'll get to that in a second. The other part of it, though, is even what you essentially find is that freedom is not a physical thing, right? So because here's the deal. Say like, I want freedom, but it's like saying, I, like, I'm gonna go. So it's like, you know, I want to get towards freedom, but you don't have a map and you don't have directions, right. You don't know how to get there. So, for example, if you're like, I want to go to some random restaurant in Atlanta, never been there, and you just get in your car and you don't live in Atlanta. Right? Right. So you live where I do in Las Vegas, or, you know, you live in New York, California, it doesn't matter, Right. You get in your car with no gps, no phone, no map, and you're like, I'm gonna go to this restaurant in Atlanta. Are you gonna find that restaurant in Atlanta? Right. Just getting in your car? Maybe. Possibly also, very likely you won't. Right. Sitting at a restaurant in Manhattan, you have no idea what the address is. Anything else? Get in your car, start driving. You'll pick your city, so you need a map to get there. And it's the same thing for getting to attaining freedom in your life. But where the analogy falls apart is while the restaurant is a physical thing, right? Freedom is not. It's a concept, it's an ideal. There's no. I can't just point to something and say that's freedom. Right. And so given that, like what does that mean? Well, it basically means we're never going to probably attain true freedom because we don't, even if we can define it, we don't, we don't know what freedom is. And it's not like a physical thing, right. We're never going to define it. But does that mean it's not worth pursuing it? Can we not at least get closer and closer in proximity to freedom? Right. And so if we're doing that, what does that really mean? It means that the goal for us is not to attain ultimate freedom as much as it is to practice freedom. It's looking at freedom as a process, as something that we practice versus like an outcome or an end state. Right. Like so how do we do that? Like it comes down to action and choices and specifically it comes down to conscious decisions that are non coerced. Right? So for example, if somebody, anytime somebody is forcing me to make a decision, I am going to. That's antithetical to freedom, right? Like I'm being coerced into making a decision. Now that could be a decision about, you know, like I have to go to work, right? Like I don't have another option. I don't think so. I have to go to work and you know, I have to do these things at work because if I quit I'll lose my job and the economic downside would be so bad that I am being coerced. So I have to make this decision because the upside of not making it is limited. The downside's huge. That's the coercion side of it, right? And we want to move away from that towards decisions that are non coarse. But we're never going to not be like have a life that's free of coercion. Any parent can tell you that, right? I can't, like I get coerced to feed my daughter or take the dog out or do I don't, I guess I don't have to do it. But the downside of not taking action is way greater than the upside, right? The downside of my daughter starving is a horrible downside, right? So there's cortisol, but that's okay. It's okay. That's an okay coercion. Like it's never going to go away. But how do we make create an environment for ourselves where we're able to make an increasing amount of our decisions and choices free from coercion? So look at our health, wealth and relationships, right? You know, in your Health right now, you can eat whatever you want. You're young and healthy, you can eat whatever you want. You can eat a bunch of Big Macs and shitty processed fast food and whatever your prerogative, cool? But by doing that today, you're increasing the probability of coercion down the road because you're going to be coerced into taking medications or more doctor's visits, or having to work out more, or having to sacrifice and eat a really strict diet or whatever it is. So even though you're like, you can make the choice not to eat healthy today and it's like a free choice, it's not really something that gets us closer towards freedom. It gets us closer towards coercion. And therefore having a really unhealthy, shitty diet is not a good idea, not a good choice, doesn't lead us towards freedom, right? Versus if we were to eat a healthy diet. Now it's something that we choose to do that we don't have to, but we choose to do it today that that can help us to not be coerced down the road. Same thing with work, right? With a job, if you're able to get become a freelancer and start making enough money like, well, you're still coerced. You have clients, you have things like that. Maybe you have to become a business owner, but really you have to become wealthy enough to have passive income that then you aren't coarse. You don't have to do anything. You choose to work, but you don't have to do it. Relationships, same thing, like toxic relationships. You know, if you're in a relationship where you have to do certain things that are, you know, then detrimental, that they're toxic or they're hurtful, you know, there's a coercion aspect there. How do we get ourselves out of those relationships and into ones where we're still doing things for the other person, but we're doing it out of our own volition versus coercion more often. And the whole big thing there is an asymmetrical component of. Again, ideally, when you don't do something, there's very limited downside, but when you do it, it's at least neutral. And ideally there's even a really big upside to it. So that's the asymmetry. So is that making sense? Essentially, freedom is a process. We practice freedom. It is a process leading us towards a greater state of autonomy and away from coercion. If you have coercion here, freedom here, you're in the middle. We're trying to move more and more. This way, we're never going to get to freedom, but we can have an increased proximity. And by looking at it that way, you can then create a lot of ways to kind of govern your life, whether it's going back to crypto, because crypto, potentially, depending on the coin, could remove you from governmental coercion, like, economically, right now, again, depending on the coin, there's arguments that bitcoin could be shut down by China, the US all that kind of stuff. So I'm not saying that's perfect, but that's why crypto is worth looking at. Decentralized, even. To me, the Facebook stuff going back to that and the censorship, I'm like, all right, well, this is a platform that, you know, seems to be more and more coercive because it is limiting my freedom of speech from my opinion. Right. Unreasonably. And so it's coursing me into having to censor myself in order to stay on the platform. So that's where I'm like, fuck Facebook, right? And I'm on Facebook Live right now. But overall, you're like, okay, I'm going to get do less and less stuff on Facebook. It can govern a lot of your, like, decision making. So that's kind of where I'm at. I have it written out quite elegantly, to be honest, and I've outlined a lot of the chapters. So basically, it's like, you know, stating the problem, defining freedom, you know, talking about it as a. As a process and not an outcome, and then looking at the different areas of life, primarily health, wealth, and relationships, and how can we practice freedom in those areas and increase our autonomy and move away from coercion and whether that's through, you know, freelancing, and then even within freelancing not being where you have to, like, work with clients you don't want to work, how do you gain autonomy and ultimately get towards passive income for relationships is like, how do you get to a healthy relationship and healthy relationships and with your health, how do you, like, stay healthy? So it kind of covers the fundamental stuff, but I think it's a cool framework, and it's something that could potentially be valuable to people. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna do Facebook Live comments, which I had 18 people on. So thanks 18 people for watching me rock that stuff. That's cool. And then the other interesting thing that I might do tied to this, there's a couple of things, right, I'm gonna mess with BitCloud more, for example. I Have my profit fixed formula E comm course. Honestly, I'm probably going to experiment and basically say, hey, anyone who buys $10 of my coin and BitCloud can have the course. That's the only way you can get it to start. And maybe several hundred people do that and it's cool. And then people get on that platform and they like it or maybe nobody buys it and no big deal, right? Asymmetrical upside. Because I'm in a good place financially, I don't care. I could sell the course pop fix formula to my list in Facebook, create some upsells, have about $100 AOV, probably sell 1000 copies, 1200 copies in the first couple weeks. Make 100,000, $120,000, which would be great. Awesome money. I could still use the money, don't get me wrong. But I don't need the money. And so rather than do that, I'm like, yeah, let me experiment, right? I'm going to try and do it on this to get people on this platform that I think is interesting. And so my upside of if a bunch of people do buy $10 of my creator coin on Bitcoin and then my coin values and I get noticed by more people on the platform, and then other people on the platform buy my coin, which further increases it, and then the platform becomes, like, more mainstream and a lot of mass people come in and mass adoption happens. Massive upside. Like, I'm way ahead of people, my coins high. I've got lots of followers. I'm like, you know, pioneering on the platform. Downside is nobody buys my, you know, thing, and I just like, all right, and whatever. Maybe in a couple of months they decide to release it through a traditional funnel, right? Asymmetry, massive upside, no downside, really. So I'm going to mess with that more. And then I'm really thinking about. And I don't know if I'm gonna do this or not because I don't want to overextend myself. But even creating an econ type of supplement company that really, the supplements are just a sneaky tripwire to create an experience company that's all about basically target towards millennials and I guess a little bit of Gen Z that is all about creating experiences. And like, so basically, if you have the supplement, then like, we ran out of Castle in Ireland, right? Your customer, you're on continuity subscription, like, hey, we ran out of Castle in Ireland. Available to the first thousand people who are our subscribers to supplement Come to the Castle. We're gonna have, like, I don't know, like Bono there. And like we're gonna have, you know, like this like crazy archaeologists and we'll have like whatever, different intellectuals. We'll basically create these crazy events that are all around like experiences, but they're only available to people who have the supplement. And then within that realm, if it's all about experiences and you're like, well, hey, how do you put yourself in the position, my millennial friends, to have those experiences? Well, turns out by having more freedom in your lives, right? Economic freedom especially, but also from relationships and other things like that. So funnily enough, you can start to actually like, I could sell the book that I'm going to write through the supplement company. I can, you know, sell stuff about how to become a freelancer, how to make money online, like biz Zoppy stuff without being bizoppy. But I can basically create all the shit I wanna do anyway. I could do that while building a company that potentially has massive value if you get a ton of subscribers. And then you're also no experiencing. So I don't know, this is shit I'm working on and thinking about and I wanted to share all of that and that's about it on what I got going on. But yeah, I'm pretty into that supplement idea. Cause again, there's the experience economy. Millennials value experiences over anything else. You know, the supplements would be stuff like, you know, just like mood, like sleep, go for like energy, right? Like focus, whatever, maybe sexier fun or names, but like they're not going to be like, you know, magical diabetes cure or any, you know, any bullshit stuff like that. It's going to be really good ingredients that like, I love that. I research that. I have a team look at. I'll get like a bunch of doctors and experts, like an expert advisory board of like, you know, kind of like sexy millennial hipster doctors, but who also went to like John Hopkins or whatever it is, right? You know, we'll have tons of like user generated content and then you have all kinds of events, whether they're like parties or cruises or like, you know, going and intellectual TED Talk type stuff. Just create all kinds of events for the community and make it so that really your subscription with the supplement, like again, high quality supplement, you love it, you take it, you notice the difference. But your subscription is almost like your membership to the community, which then enables you to have access to, to all these crazy events. And that's something I love doing. That's the thing that's funny is like I love events I love putting on events, I love creating experiences. I love supplements, and I take them and I sell. I'm great at selling them. Right. And it's all about a lifestyle that then encompasses freedom, which is really important to me. So what's funny is, as I've been sort of in a holding pattern of sorts for the last month or two and kind of like, that can be frustrating, but it's fun to see these different pieces, like, start to click together and to be like, man, like, you know, oh, a couple of these seemingly disparate ideas could actually all be part of something really big and very meaningful and very impactful to impacting the lives of a billion people in addition to the road to a billion. So, yeah, that's what's up. I mean, I feel like sharing this stuff is probably on some hand, like, not a great idea. Hopefully nobody rips me off. But yeah, I guess I'll have some proof that I had. I shared the idea first. And with that being said, since Zach is not on, let's just go to the Q and A's, which really are just from Max Uria. So, Max, I'll bring you on and you can ask your questions and we'll chat. If anyone else wants to ask a question, we'll do that. And then from there, if people don't, it'll be a short episode and I'll just get back to writing a book about freedom and doing some other stuff. So what's up, Max? How you doing? Nice. I'm here to substitute Zach. You doing good?

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad to be here another day. So I got two big questions that I've had on my mind these last months, and they just came to my mind here. So one of them, which I consider most important and most applicable to the people that are going to hear this is the topic on how much.

Work.

And hard work is enough. Right. I heard a podcast from Joel Marion. He talked about this and the balance between your life and business and everything. But I hear a lot from people that are, for example, not as successful as you or people that are on their way. Right. They always say, oh, but you can only work less and allow yourself to not work 14 hours a day if unless you're as successful as Stefan and you already have the systems and the money and the people you know. So what's your take on that?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a very clear reason for the long adage or long time adage of working smarter and not harder. I think that generally there's exceptions to everything, but generally people who are working 14, 15 hours a day are probably extremely inefficient and ineffective and using that as a substitute for, you know, a lot of other things that they should be doing in their life. As far as, like, development and growth go, I think generally there's a point of diminishing returns after six or seven hours, eight hours at most. I think that a lot of our time is spent sitting in front of a computer telling ourselves we're working or we're not actually working. We're on social media. We're doing a bunch of shit that we shouldn't do. As a copywriter specifically, I think you cannot write for 10 hours straight. I think you can barely write for five hours straight. Maybe in your 20s. My 20s, there's a few times where I wrote like a whole letter in a day, right. And basically wrote for like seven or eight hours. I can't do that now. In my 30s, probably. But even then it was difficult and probably generally not the most effective approach. And I think if you want to do that, maybe it is. But even then, I think it's about the sprint versus the marathon, because ultimately it's a marathon, right? So you may have periods where you sprint and you work really hard for a couple weeks, but then you're going to find that you need downtime, too. And I've actually been talking about this with our Copy Accelerator members lately on these talks we've been doing as we've been on tour, is the paradoxical nature of downtime, which I've brought before, which is essentially that paradoxically, in order to be at your most productive, you need frequent periods of time where you're completely unproductive, otherwise you get burned out. And it happens to, like, everybody. And then think about. I've talked about to my email list diffuse mode thinking versus focus mode thinking. And focus mode thinking is hard concentration trying to solve a specific problem, while diffuse mode thinking is where your brain's sort of, like, turned off and you're just out. Like you're in the shower or you're at the beach, or you're taking a walk or whatever. And basically the focus mode thinking engages the one part of your brain only, like your prefrontal, you know, neocortex, I believe it is. While diffuse mode thinking actually engages all these different parts of your brain, and they're both equally important. You need to have the time for focus thinking, but you generally aren't going to if you're just concentrating. This one area of Your brain, you don't make deeper connections. You don't, you don't kind of draw from different experiences. And so. But the only way you really get diffuse mode thinking is by taking a break. And so that's why most of your breakthroughs and big ideas don't come when you've been sitting in front of the computer for five hours. They come when you're out in your backyard or you're walking, or you're at dinner with friends or you're doing one of a million other things. So, yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, I think lots of people don't agree with this, but to me, I think the idea that you have to work 14, 15 hours a day, even 12 hours a day, most of the time, is bullshit. Again, sure, there's exceptions, but very few. That's my take on it. Sure, I love it.

And the other question was, you hear a lot about free work, right? And doing free work. I heard, if I don't remember wrong, you were with Saba and other copywriters in another show and you were talking that you were doing this service for E commerce. Am I wrong?

No.

And your idea was. So in order to get some case studies and credibility and start getting a consistent flow of clients, your idea was to do the whole service for free ride to get those testimonials, a case study and then apply it and leverage it to get more clients. So the thing is, for other copywriters that are hearing this, whether they're beginner, intermediate or advanced, what would be your take? Let's say they want to get to work with bigger companies, right. Let's say BioTrust or even not so big companies, Right. Would you consider doing some free quality samples for them? Would do the work of establishing yourself as an authority and demonstrating that you can provide the results. Or do you think that doing instead, let's say a period of free work with them would instead position you as not so good in your work because you're not charging for it. Am I explaining myself?

Yeah, I think you are. I mean, I think ideally the hierarchy is like this. Like ideally, get paid for the work, right? If you're having trouble getting paid for the work, then we go to like the more for free route. I think that, you know, within there. So if you're like, hey, I'm going to work for you for free for like a month, I mean, I generally don't. The reason I'd rather have given do the approach where you create some copy and samples for them. Or maybe you do one project for free is because. But I mean, ideally I'd like prefer that you reach out to them, having already done some kind of creatives for them as samples, right, that are relevant to them, an added value because then they can visualize working with you. If somebody says to me like, hey, I want to work for you for free. That's actually not that exciting to me because I'm like, well, I don't know if you're any good or not. I have to answer your questions, I have to manage you, I have to mentor you, or, you know, I have to put some of my team to do it. Like, you're going to take resources from me, whether it's my mental resources or financial resources or something else, like you're going to extract resources. And I have no guarantee that, you know, you're really good now if you gave a company like a, like a biotrust some of your samples and like, hey, these are really good. You know, we're not sure if we're hiring right now or not, but maybe, you know, circle back with us later. And they were like, hey, look, I really want to work with you guys. How about this? If you do need copy now, because I'll work for you guys, you know, for free. You like my samples, I'll work for you for free for the next month. You know, and if you, after that, if you like me, I'd love to. You know, I want to stay on like a paid position. If not, that's the risk on me. I mean, you could try. A month feels like a long time. It kind of sketches me out maybe a couple weeks. I don't know. I could see that working and there's a value to it. And you know, you can then be like, oh, yeah, I was working in Haster BioTrust for the last month, right? And then it's like, oh, that increases your credibility. So you could leverage that to have an easier time getting jobs in the future, you know, if you do a good job and then you get like Joel Marion to be like, hey. You know, even though before, like, hey, we liked your copy. Like we just now like, okay, can you. No problem. Can you just give me like a, like a testimonial or something or, you know, maybe a shout out and you get testimony from Joel Marion being like, max is a really good copywriter and we loved his emails. He was great, you know, whatever. That's like pretty powerful, right? That's worth a lot of money to you probably. So I don't have a perfect answer for that. But it can work. I mean, for me, if the E Comm stuff I just did, I reached out to my friend who's one of the owners of Paleo Valley, because I'm still having a hard time getting people to hire me to do E Comm stuff. To be completely blunt, I haven't tried that hard to do it. But like, you know, I think people just sort of. Maybe I'm charging a lot and E Comm people aren't used to my fees. I don't know. But. So I reached out to my friend who owned Paleo Valley and was like, hey, you know what? Like, I know I talked to us in the past. I'm going to do it for free. He sent me a couple of links. I'm going to go through, it's on my list, break down stuff, give it to him value. Because then again, for the case studies and the wins, that helps. Right? I have a couple of cases already and after that I'll probably do it for another person. I'll probably do it for free for like a couple months, frankly. But I'm going to do it when I want to. For me, it's also like, I don't have to do it. I'm just interested in it, kind of. So, you know. But again, if I do then want to become. If I want to position myself as like the E Comm expert, the econ optimization expert, you know, and I have a bunch of case studies and wins, like, it becomes very easy for me to do that. And so, you know, that's. That was my logic for why I'm doing some like, kind of funnel audits for people for free. But that'd be clients who are. For me, it's like, you know, like big companies, you know, doing at least seven figures, if not eight figures. I know they're going to like actually implement the stuff. I tell them I know they're gonna implement it pretty rapidly. They have a good team in place, all that kind of stuff. So it's like I'm not doing it for, you know, like Susie and Tom who, like, you know, it's like our first E Comm store. We don't know anything that doesn't do shit for me. Right. It has to be somebody who is gonna really implement this stuff too.

Sure.

And it also goes back to something that I heard from Alex Catoni, which you also had on the podcast.

Right.

She asked Seth Godin what would. What would he do if he were a new copywriter.

Right.

And he told. So I would get really specific on the service, let's say for example, you with the E Commerce. And then he would, I think, volunteer or write for free just to get the results, as you say. So it's pretty much the same model. And I think that you doing that teaches a lot on doing providing value first. Right. As a first step to any relationship. So thank you, Stefan.

Yeah, absolutely, man. My pleasure. Thanks for the, thanks for the question. Thank you. Cool. All right, next we are going to have a question. If you guys put your questions in the Q and A, that would be ideal. Connor, I see yours there. Eric Chan had a question. So we're going to bring on Eric in a minute here. Not going to lie. When it's just me, nobody else. I'm like, how do I, how do I take Max off from being from sharing? Oh, there you go. How do I do here? Disable talking. Okay, cool. Eric questions. We're going to Eric next. Eric, what's up man?

Yo, what's up? Good, good, good. And you?

Good, man. Doing good. Cool. Yeah.

So just for the context, like, you know, when you're building a business, it's kind of like a path that you work alone, I would say, because people don't really understand what you are doing and why you're doing it.

So.

Yeah, so how do, how to be alone without feeling the loneliness in this path. So yeah, that was the question.

Yeah, that's a good question. I think. I mean a couple things. I mean, I think having like communities like, you know, that's one of the reasons I'm such a big proponent of masterminds is because, you know, having, once I started going to them and meeting other entrepreneurs, suddenly it was like I felt less alone. And even afterwards when I stayed in touch with people and we'd get on at the time it was like Skype calls. More often we get on Skype calls, we'd catch up, we'd be texting each other. That really helped. And I really think it's about finding a community of like minded people who are endeavoring to do the same things you are. And I think that helps. And I think that's something where, you know, the Facebooks of the world can be beneficial and helpful. Right. Like through the different, both free and paid communities. You know, it doesn't have to be that you go join like a 15,000 or $50,000 mastermind. It can be, you know, a $97 a month group or maybe, you know, maybe it's a free group and then really actually reaching out to people and checking in and I mean, and, you know, you have to foster and nurture those relationships, which is something I'm not good at. I work at it, but I'm not. I'm pretty bad at that, I think, as an introvert. And so social anxiety, you know, I struggle with that. But, I mean, I do it. I'm kind of almost forced to do it as part of being like a quote, unquote, public figure. Right. Because people reach out to me a lot and I'm always happy to hear from them. But. And then I think the third part of that is this is the toughest part. And maybe not. I'm not saying this is easy or even potentially could be almost impossible, but if you can try to, like, embrace the loneliness, that's cool, too. The times where you are lonely, you have to. If you can reframe it again, easier said than done. But to think about, you know, I'm lonely because I'm doing something hard and I'm doing something that other people aren't doing, and I'm doing something that is, you know, hopefully, you know, gonna make a difference in the world. And when. When all these. When everything comes together, you know, I know that I'll look back at this part and I'll actually have, like, cherish these memories and almost made me long for those times of loneliness because. Which is true, because, you know, once you have the things you're searching for, going back to freedom, never being an ideal, but anything like that, you won't be fully fulfilled, but it'll be cool. You'll be, you know, lots of things will be really good in your life, probably. But then you almost. You almost miss the struggle, right? You'll miss it. And it'll be this special time in your life. You'll think back of it as this, like, special time in your life where, you know, you felt lonely and you felt like you were, you know, you against the world and all that. You'll have, like, a fondness towards it. And so if you think about that as it's happening, it can help to take the edge off of the loneliness. It doesn't mean that the loneliness goes away, but it can take an edge off of it, too. I don't know if those answers help or not, but that's. Those are the best I got.

Yeah, I help a lot. Yeah, it's kind of like. Get used to the loneliness, like, something like that.

Yeah, that. And again, I mean, you know, the community aspect too, because you can. You can cut down on the loneliness quite a bit. But, you know, in addition to that. Yeah. What is there?

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah. And beyond getting used to it, it's like almost. Embrace it. Like, almost feel like, all right, like, cool. I get to experience this. It's almost like a blessing. I get to experience this loneliness that most people don't because they don't do exciting, brave, you know, adventurous things. But I do.

Yeah. Okay.

All right, cool, man. We'll get going. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Do you see some more questions coming in here? Which is cool. So I think Connor was next. Connor said, well, actually, Connor, I'll bring you in and I'll let you ask a question here. So, Connor, I'm going to allow you to talk and then. Yeah. You want to share your question for everybody. Hey, Stephen, can you hear me? Yeah, I can. Perfect. Sorry about that. That's okay. So I was wondering if you had any advice regarding. And especially in marketing at like a middle sort of management level for us in the industry, what do you recommend for networking, especially with things being so remote and still digital? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that I would go back to sort of what I. Some of the answers I just gave to Eric. I mean, I think that, you know, joining Facebook groups that are, you know, relevant to your industry and your skill set and profession, and then actually posting. Right. Actively posting, sharing stories and lessons learned wins. I mean, I think the best thing is sort of, hey, we had a really cool win. Here's what it was. Right? That kind of stuff. And no solicitation. You're not trying to be like and hire us or buy our product or whatever, but it's just like giving value that's like true value and actually valuable through various Facebook groups, I think is a really, you know, good one. I mean, there's like the Justin stuff and talk copy, there's direct marketing partners, which Dbron runs. There's nothing held back, which is like a Facebook group that's been really popular lately, you know, and various other ones. So I think that's. That's one aspect of it. And then, you know, things have been remote. But there is more. There's a lot of events. My. I'm basically back to as busy for travel schedule as I was pre Covid. And I think that so going to different events and things like that, I think obviously masterminds are great and again, I'm all about that. But even if that's not a thing right now, then it's like they're doing affiliate Summit east in New York and there's going to be. I'm sure thousands of people there trafficking Conversion is doing their event at the end of September or middle of September. We're doing our next copy accelerator event at the end of August, beginning of September. There's Internet marketing party in Austin, which I'm the speaker next Thursday, which is like $37. So, you know, I think it's. Yes. That's really just like going to events and then, you know, Facebook groups that are relevant and then they actually posting value and replying to people commenting. I mean, really, they're really the fundamental stuff. But it really does make a huge difference. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. Connor, thanks for the question. Cool. So. So Patrick Chan was next. Moving on Patrick for his question. What's up, Patrick?

Hey, Stefan.

How you doing? Good, good.

I've been following you for a while. Love RNBC and all. Did some gig, got some gigs with it too.

Awesome.

Yeah. So I want to know, because I've always been someone who, I mean, I really admire that you really put the time and effort to create communities and all that. And it's something that I personally know, I'm actually not a big fan of. Not because I don't care about people, but it's just because I can get very intense. So for me, it's rather that I'd rather, for lack of a better term, I don't know how else to say, but it's like I'd rather not put the effort into caring so much.

Sure.

One of the things that I do want to do is eventually go from copywriting and like you said, go into product owner. And one of the things that I want to explore was, like you said, the supplement industry. So I've been curious to know, since you started one or currently have one, how did you divide up your budget when you first started?

Yeah, that's a good question. I've kind of broken this down before, but this is all ballpark numbers. I mean, I think. I mean, do you have a budget, for example, in your head, like something you could put into it, or are you kind of curious what the budget might look like as well?

I remembered you saying you started, like, it's possible to start with 5,000, but I'm willing to put 10,000 in the future.

And your copy is at a pretty high level, right? I mean, not like necessarily a list, but you feel you could write your own copy and feel good about it, right?

Yeah, I feel like I could do it. And if not, well, I mean, I'm surrounded by people who are very talented. Can Give me feedback. But yeah, I feel like I can do it.

Cool. Yeah. And I think about from a budget perspective too, because copy is one of the big expenses really. I mean, you know, again, I think if you are going to white label something to start, then it's basically like zero expenses on the inventory side to begin, right? Because you're only selling once you're shipping. So that's what's great about the on demand model. You know, over time you may want to move to like, you know, custom formulation that you, you know, have. There's better science behind it all that kind of stuff. But to launch at least you know, custom formulation on demand, there's a basically zero cost there. So really your cost would be the, you know, funnel, like development, you know, creation, whatever. And then like the like traffic is really kind of it in a way, right? So it's like, okay, you create the copy. You know, you can do a tech sales letter to start, you know, the design you, you could do yourself and like, you know, some of those platforms out there. But having a good designer is probably worthwhile. I mean, I think it's worth investing $3,000, let's say 3,000 into that. Then there's usually some tech and integrations and things depending on where you do it. So I probably budget like a couple thousand bucks for that. You know, there's. If you're gonna do, I mean, depending on where you're getting processing, if you're doing like clickbank, then you have to worry about it if you're gonna use Stripe. But I would be careful using Stripe unless you know, you feel like you're really super, super, super, super, super white hat. Like not even like ethics aside, right? Like let's assume you're gonna be ethical, but it has to just be like, just so, you know, stripe, sketchy side. But you know, if you use like a, like digistore or clickbank or something like that for the processing, then there's really no cost there. And then really be like traffic. I mean the big thing for me would be like if you're able to use your network to have people send to their email list, then the traffic's pretty much free. You're just paying them a CPA customer service. I mean you can start with just having a support email that you answer so you don't need to pay for a call center to start. Like insurance, stuff like that. You want that. If you go through a place like clickbank or and you use a third party on demand company, like generally you can be covered under their insurance to start. So you don't need insurance. So honestly, I mean, man, that's where I go back to like $5,000 to start. Like, I just think, because again, copy is a big expense but you can write your own copy. So. Yeah. And then otherwise if you have 10,000, I mean like I would put the other 5,000 into acquiring customers potentially. Second, my dog's freaking out. Sorry about that guys.

It's all good.

But yeah, I mean I feel like that's. Yeah, I don't know, I mean if you could like buying email list drops is something like I like, I don't really think is like a worthwhile thing for the most part these days.

I don't think so either.

I'd rather be buying somebody on Facebook or native or YouTube or like. Or again you go to some people who have email lists and you're like, hey, I'm going to guarantee, you know, depending on the size of the list, right. I'll guarantee 50 sales at a, you know, like whatever CPA that you could afford. Right. I mean our 20 sales at like a hundred dollar CPA which is like $2,000. But like if you think that, you know, if their list is like $2,000 is like, you know, reasonable enough for them and there's still the upside of it, obviously, I hope it's going to do way more than that. You know, I think that's a model where you get people to test and you can alleviate some of their risk and get data. But your biggest thing once you launch is really just getting like the data, you know, more than anything, that's what you want. You want the data because then, you know, because once you have data, if your, you know, company and your funnels are doing really well and converting at a higher rate then at that point because it's very easy to go and get way more people to send traffic and affiliates and you can get an agency if you want to work with an agency or you can buy your own media, all that kind of stuff.

Oh, wow, okay, cool. Yeah, because I do well, yeah, I do email marketing now for a company and also I also have a computer science background. So just setting up the site, I think I can do that myself. But eventually, yeah, I'll just hire someone to do that.

Cool, Sweet. Yeah, I guess one other thing would be maybe like an affiliate tracking platform. But again if you do it on clickbank, then they track for you but you may end up doing something like Hiros or I'm blanking. But one of those one of those kind of like platforms that tracks your sales and stuff like that for you. That might cost you to start like a couple hundred bucks a month. That's just one expense. That would be worthwhile expense out the gate. Just so you're tracking data and make sure that whatever. So even say you're using clickbank or like you want to make sure, you'd like to know that their data is like matching the data. Like, it's nice to have like a third party kind of system that's. That's tracking it as well. But yeah.

Cool.

Thank you, man.

My pleasure, man. Awesome. So that was just about it. We're going to keep it easy today again, you know, see if we can reschedule with my guest for another time. But beyond that, I'm going to go do stuff and go live my life, basically. But thank you for joining me. Thanks for hanging out. Hopefully those who did join found this to be a valuable episode, as always. It's kind of funny because I was kind of thinking to myself, man, I really want to do an episode where I answer questions. It's been a while, so it kind of worked out from that perspective. But we'll be back next Monday with Coffeezilla at a special time, 11:00am Pacific Time on Monday. And I think that that's going to be a very highly attended and pretty crazy episode. So I am really excited, Max. You see, I'm trying to sneak in a question into the chat, but you're kind of too late, so. All right, thank you, everybody. Hope you all have a great day.