Aaron Reeves [00:00:00]:
If you start in something, don't have the expectation that it's just going to blow up instantly. Especially a community model, it's an attrition game. It's just staying in it long enough to see yourself win.
Nick Bennett [00:00:20]:
This is 1000 Routes. Every episode, a solopreneur shares how they're building, what they're building. We'll hear all about how they've made the bet on themselves, the uncommon route that they're taking to build a business that serves their life, and the reality of building a business of one. I'm your host, Nick Bennett. Before we get started, I'm excited to share a new program that I've been working on called Full Stack Solopreneur in partnership with my friend and legendary entrepreneur Erica Schneider. Now, unlike other programs, Full Stack Solopreneur is a hybrid digital program for independent professionals who are too far along for another course to be really all that helpful, but not far enough to invest in a private coaching or consulting service. In here, you'll gain access to both the full curriculum and monthly group coaching clinics to teach you how to create a legendary niche offer, how to build a content engine, and how to sell like a human. You can learn more@fullstacksolo.com that's FullStack S O L O.com.
Aaron Reeves [00:01:16]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Aaron. I'm the founder of Outbound OS and I help predominantly SaaS sellers book more meetings by giving them frameworks and systems to get more replies.
Nick Bennett [00:01:27]:
Hell yeah, man. Fantastic place to start. Let's rewind the clock a little bit. We met around March, so it's been almost a year now. It's March of 2024. We first started chatting and talking and you were still in house and you were starting to get a little bit of traction on LinkedIn. And we stalked, we talked and you had told me I think the B2C play is the play. And I was like, I don't know.
Nick Bennett [00:01:48]:
I was like, I think you're going to make a lot of money doing B2B services, dude. And you were like, I don't know, man. I think it's B2C. And it's like, all right, dude, hey, that's what you want to build. That's what you want to build. Fast forward almost a year now, and you've got this two Skool communities now. You've now gone fully solo. Like, you're killing it, man.
Nick Bennett [00:02:06]:
I love seeing it, but a lot happened between those two things. So let's begin. In the beginning, you decided you wanted to do this B2C or more B2C model. Membership model. You set up shop on Skool, like tallest. Talk me through some of the thought process behind what you did and what you're doing.
Aaron Reeves [00:02:24]:
Yeah, I think to be fully transparent, like, I just didn't try to reinvent the wheel. I just looked at people in my space and who was doing well. So this is when I think Brian Le Manner had only just started doing his framework stuff. Maybe he hadn't even started yet. But then it was mainly people like Chris Orlob and these sort of people. And then I realized like the revenue Chris was doing with his membership model and the biggest thing for me was like I wanted reoccurring revenue so I didn't have to stress every month and push to get sales. It's just on autopilot. So I saw what Chris was doing and it's incredible, right? Like I've had his product when I was an AE in an SDR and it's very good.
Aaron Reeves [00:02:57]:
But the gap I saw was everyone talked about the AE skillset, discovery calls, how to do a demo, how to multithread, and they just glossed over top of funnel. They were just like, oh, here's some stuff on email. And no one really went in depth on it, even though that's the most important thing to build the pipeline. So all I did was look at how well they were doing, but just built it for a slightly different part of the funnel, which is what I was really good at. And look at me. And yeah, that was the original plan for why I decided to do the membership model and build out the Skool.
Nick Bennett [00:03:28]:
The membership model is fascinating. I just launched mine with Erica Schneider not even two months ago. It's a grind. But one thing that I've noticed, it was kind of coming into focus for you at this time last year. Like your traffic is started to explode. Like you, you throw a post, get a thousand likes on LinkedIn and follower counts is just climbing like crazy. I think you had mentioned before we hit record, one of the fastest growing accounts in the niche. Yeah, dude, you're killing it.
Nick Bennett [00:03:57]:
I just. That is what makes a membership model really work. Talk me through your process because right now you have two Skool communities.
Aaron Reeves [00:04:05]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:04:05]:
One is free and one is paid. And I think that's an interesting model that I've been exploring. So I want to hear a little bit about your thought process. I know you also recently restarted your free one. So what's going on there? How are you monetizing these skill sets and helping teach this to people?
Aaron Reeves [00:04:21]:
Yeah. So the reason I redid the free Skool is my original just wasn't what a free Skool should have been. So the point of the free Skool is it gets them on the platform, gets them familiar with Skool as a whole, but also acts as like long term nurture. It's like having someone on your email list where they get consistent value from you. So the whole point is they go in your free Skool, they ask questions, they engage with you to get resources locked behind levels so they feel bought into the community aspect. And then it's just, oh, if you want more support, more live calls, more resources than what you've already had, what's helped you, here's the additional offer as like an ascension. So the point of the free Skool is again, number one, it gets them off LinkedIn or X or like these other platforms where you don't own that audience. It's like rented, right? Like the algo can happen and get shadow banned or whatever.
Aaron Reeves [00:05:06]:
But if they're in your platform, on your newsletter, in your Skool, they're sort of like part of your mini ecosystem. And as well, like I see it all the time where people will be in the free and then they just ascend themselves to the paid because they get value from it. So they think I may as well try this out. And yeah, that's like a good portion of my subs for the paid. They come directly from the free and seeing the value in there. And the reason I restarted is again I was just pushing lead magnets to it. So it got a lot of people at like 1500, but it just wasn't engaged, it was dead. It wasn't a community, it was just a group of people versus now.
Aaron Reeves [00:05:38]:
People ask questions, people bounce ideas and it's like an actual community which is the most important thing.
Nick Bennett [00:05:43]:
What's the difference between the old space and the new space? What is the, the mechanism?
Aaron Reeves [00:05:48]:
Good question. I think like Calvin Hollywood is the best example of like how to do this. And what I learned so before it was me is about me as the creator. So I used to do daily posts in there where it was like LinkedIn. Like it was like a value person. So people didn't engage with each other because they were just looking to me to be the creator and talk versus now I put it on the people. So I incentivize people to talk to each other or ask their own questions and as they level up they get rewarded. So it's turned from people looking to me as the creator to looking with each other and asking each other questions and I don't need to be there.
Aaron Reeves [00:06:23]:
It's self sufficient without me. And I think that's what a great, especially free community is, where people get value from each other and help each other out.
Nick Bennett [00:06:31]:
There's like a fine line here. And because I joined, I've joined a bunch of communities and a lot of it is people trying to create what you just described inside their community. But the struggle is I don't join to necessarily hear from what other people think about outbound sales because they're probably there to learn from someone like you to do the thing. So, like, how do you balance that? And then also I get the gamification behind some of the engagement. But it seems like you're cracking the code in this. I mean, you have over 500 people in this newly relaunched version of this. So you're definitely figured something out. And I'm in there and I've seen what, I see what people are saying and doing.
Nick Bennett [00:07:12]:
Like, you have a ton of traction in there. So what do you think it is that is encouraging people to want to share and interact with each other compared to just saying I'm kind of just here to learn from Aaron?
Aaron Reeves [00:07:22]:
Yeah, I think it's sort of like setting the expectation. So within my start here and onboard. And the first thing people join is they literally see a video of me talking about how you can get the most out of the community. We have rules straight away. So when someone joins, we talk about never make an eye. I did this thing, make it into a question. So other people talk and we sort of position the value of yes, you can learn from me, but there's people in this community, like there's CEOs, there's CROs, sales managers, AES, like top performers. Yes, you can learn from me, but why just learn from me when there's people with years of expertise in here who may be able to help with your specific industry or your specific issue if they've gone through it as well.
Aaron Reeves [00:08:00]:
So it's how we sort of position it and set the expectation for people so they realize, yes, I can learn from Aaron, but that's what his LinkedIn is. It's just him talking in here. I can learn from all these different people and get all of these different perspectives, help me come up with a more complete picture. Instead of just one person's POV, I get 500. And that's the sort of the expectation, I guess.
Nick Bennett [00:08:21]:
I like that. So what was the moment where you felt like this thing could actually work? Like, what was it like getting that first paid member and you're like, okay, like I'm quitting my jobs.
Aaron Reeves [00:08:36]:
It's actually, do you know what's funny? Is actually the opposite. So I built up a wait list and I had such bad misconceptions and expectations of what would convert of a wait list. So I had like 200 people on it and they knew the price, they knew everything. So I'm thinking, I'm in the money. This is going to be great. I'm going to launch, get 100 people in 10k a month instantly. And I just had this expectation that I'd crush it, be flying away instantly. And then I launched 10 people joined on day one, which is still fine, like $1,000 a month.
Aaron Reeves [00:09:05]:
But I was just so disappointed. I was like, what on earth has happened? Because my expectations were wrong. So I think that's a big thing. If you start in something, don't have the expectation that it's just going to blow up instantly because especially a community model, it's an attrition game. It's just staying in it long enough to see yourself win. So I didn't quit my job like instantly, only when it started to build up a little bit more. Sort of got to, you know, 2.5 camera, 5 camera. Then I was actually like, okay, this makes sense to leave now.
Aaron Reeves [00:09:34]:
But yeah, the initial launch, I was probably a bit ungrateful, you could say in a way to be.
Nick Bennett [00:09:40]:
Thank you for sharing that man. Because I think it's easy to look at your LinkedIn, your follower count, the engagement on your posts and be like, this dude, of course he can launch a paid membership and get 100 people and they're paying 100 bucks a month. Like I couldn't do that because I don't have all those things. That's the reality. Yeah, like 200 people on the wait list, 10 people buy and you go, okay. There's more to it than just attention. We need to create scarcity, we need to create urgency, we need to hammer the value and repeat it over and over and over. Like there's so much to getting that flywheel to spin.
Nick Bennett [00:10:18]:
So how did you start gaining the traction? I mean, so 10 people and I think there's about a hundred people in there now.
Aaron Reeves [00:10:24]:
Yeah, a bit lower. So like our peak was 78 and it's 76 now.
Nick Bennett [00:10:28]:
So yeah, like it was a big leap between 10 and 76 people right now. How did you start getting those paid subscribers?
Aaron Reeves [00:10:35]:
Yeah, part of it like, as well, like with some of the initials was like transferring people from one to one into the Skool. So I literally made it a no brainer. I was like. Because people were paying me like 150 an hour. So I just said to them, instead of you paying me 300amonth, transfer me 200 and just join my Skool. So you get all this extra stuff, all these extra group live calls for the exact same price. And the whole point of that was with one to one that like the LTV of how long someone's going to be there is a bit shorter because they may have a burst of four to eight calls, one to two months and they're sort of done. But I viewed it as if I get them in the Skool, they'll stick on for potentially six months, a year.
Nick Bennett [00:11:12]:
Right.
Aaron Reeves [00:11:13]:
So then I'm getting that value out of it anyway. So that got me to 15, 20 members. Ish. And then from there like I just tried to educate myself. I joined Max's Skool thing. I did a podcast with him actually as like a successful case study where I think in. I think we did 3K in a few weeks. Yeah, 3K added MRR in two weeks, which was pretty cool.
Aaron Reeves [00:11:34]:
Yeah, it was on his first ever student interview podcast thing. And yeah, just learning from obviously Hormozi’s Q&As, etc. About what you were saying. $100 million leads and offers. How do I create scarcity urgency and make my offer into a no brainer. And then it just started steeping up from there and then really, really just pushing the funnel. So I was getting, like you said, a lot of traction on these posts. But the funnel was awful to actually get people to the paid offer.
Aaron Reeves [00:11:57]:
So creating these different lead magnets and different landing pages and just going from there.
Nick Bennett [00:12:02]:
What's been the most successful acquisition model for you?
Aaron Reeves [00:12:07]:
Tough on email, I'd say though.
Nick Bennett [00:12:09]:
For sure. Yeah. I think email is like the unsung hero of…
Aaron Reeves [00:12:12]:
Email is, yeah. I've tried everything as well. That's the funny thing. Like I tried daily emails, I tried just doing weekly newsletters, I've tried doing a few. I've literally tried everything and I think now it's in a pretty good spot. So yeah, what's your cadence?
Nick Bennett [00:12:26]:
Like you're sending daily right now.
Aaron Reeves [00:12:27]:
I've just, funny enough, launched an ebook product.
Nick Bennett [00:12:30]:
Yeah, I saw that, I saw that. Yeah, the Outbound OS playbook.
Aaron Reeves [00:12:33]:
Exactly. It's been a lot more aggressive this week with emails where we're sort of doing daily from Thursday to Sunday, obviously with the launch and incentive and all that good stuff. But in general it's More of every few days they get a step. So if someone opts in for specifically my email lead magnet, then they'll get drip fed value and resources and extra stuff around email pushing them to the paid offers. But with the playbook now it's going to be reworked a little bit, but yeah, sort of every few days, two.
Nick Bennett [00:12:59]:
To three a week. Have you tinkered with the pricing model of your program?
Aaron Reeves [00:13:04]:
Like at all the price? And that is literally the biggest issue I found with it. So I started at 97, then went to 147. Realize that's a bit high for what I was doing. Went to 127 and kept it at that and stayed stagnant for two and a half months. Didn't grow MRR. And I didn't think, I tried all these things. I was like, it must be the product. I've got to change this landing page. I've got to do this.
Aaron Reeves [00:13:29]:
I dropped the price back to 97 and then the MRR shot up the month after. I was like, why on earth have I done that for so long and not seen the obvious thing staring me in the face? Like my churn was really bad, all these sort of things. And now the churns calm down. It's still pretty high. It's 12 percent-ish on 97, which isn't awful, but it was really high before.
Nick Bennett [00:13:49]:
So 97 bucks is like the magic. Is the magic number.
Aaron Reeves [00:13:53]:
Yeah, yeah. For me. Yeah. With what the offer is and my audience, that's what's worked best for me. But yeah, I think it's important to test. Like I'm happy I did it, a bit annoyed I did it for so long, but yeah, I think it's important to play around with different stuff.
Nick Bennett [00:14:05]:
Yeah, it's hard to like pinpoint. Are you doing annual?
Aaron Reeves [00:14:08]:
I do an annual as well. Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:14:10]:
How's the traction on that compared to the monthly?
Aaron Reeves [00:14:13]:
When I do sales calls like I used to do a lot of those as well. I'd only sell annual and that was pretty good. So I sort of used to give people like a little urgency offer. I was like, oh, if you're on this call then clearly here taking it serious, blah blah blah, here's a little discount. So then the annual was like pretty good on there. And then if not I just downsell to the monthly anyway. So that's like my sales call process in general. I think way more people sign up for the monthly.
Aaron Reeves [00:14:36]:
Monthly probably like 90 to 10. But the annual on calls is more certain. 50, 50. I'd say 60, 40 probably monthly.
Nick Bennett [00:14:43]:
All right, so here's an interesting one for you. We launched our community. We're also built on Skool.
Aaron Reeves [00:14:49]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:14:49]:
And we've been thinking about a lot of the stuff that you're talking about, which is why I'm like super fascinated by the way that you're monetizing this business. Erica and I have talked about doing the free Skool community. We've talked a lot about our pricing model. We launched that 899 per year. That was the only option. And we got a good amount of people in there. And then we upped the price after the launch week to 999 per year. And we got even more people in there.
Nick Bennett [00:15:15]:
But we decided we were like, okay, we're onto something. Like, we've proven this thing works. We decided we're going to be more aggressive with our price raise and we're going to raise it 4x. Just the amount of calls that we were doing, the amount of stuff that we're producing, then all the stuff that's going into it, we're like this, this is going to even a lot of this stuff out. And we introduced a monthly price, so we raised the annual from 999 to 3999. And then we introduced a monthly at 3 49. Now here's where things get interesting. I think just trying to riff through some pricing stuff with you is going to be helpful.
Nick Bennett [00:15:48]:
We've seen memberships fall off a cliff at that 349 monthly. Because we got a lot of questions of people being like, can we pay monthly? Can we pay monthly? Can we pay monthly? So we introduced monthly and then it didn't really. It's been okay. What we tried to do though was create like a VIP tier with the annual, not that you get a discount. It's not 10 months for the price of 12 with the annual, it's you get extra stuff. We upgrade you to smaller groups and things like that. And so it's been an interesting challenge to try and crack the code here of what is the magic number? And I think it's hard to say because not enough time has passed between the price change.
Nick Bennett [00:16:24]:
So there's like the people who feel like they missed out versus the people who never knew the price was ever 999, stuff like that. So I'm curious to get your take, having tinkered with the price and trying to anchor people into it and because you can use the impending price increase as a way to kick people off the fence. But at the end of the day, there's only so many times you can use price as urgency versus just creating scarcity and urgency within the program itself, like limiting the number of members, capping, stuff like that. I don't know. There's really no question in there. But I think the way that you're describing your pricing battles is very similar to some of the things that we're going through too.
Aaron Reeves [00:17:00]:
And I think the hardest thing with when you change pricing is you won't know straight away. It's like a lagging indicator of the empire. So for you, switching to monthly, you won't know until two months down the line. You look at your churn and then if you realize because you're giving them this monthly option like churn shot up, then you're like, oh God. But you only realize when you do it for long enough, if that makes sense. And that's why I think it's so hard. Like, I know a lot of the Skool games winners. Like when I was in Max's community, I spoke to all these team like Dan Miles, hopped on tons of calls with him.
Aaron Reeves [00:17:28]:
I just built, built that relationship. So they did 300k in a month. Kevin Wong, he's incredible. He did incredible in Alex Hormozi’s The 100 as well. Don't know how much I can say about that, but yeah, he did really well.
Nick Bennett [00:17:40]:
Yeah. These guys are like animals though. They're doing, when you're talking about 300k a month, they're investing a stupid amount into advertisements and retargeting and that's the name of their game.
Aaron Reeves [00:17:50]:
And it's funny. Right? So Kevin Wong, he does like data for all the top communities. So like Keytron, Max, basically all the top people on Skool, he works with them, looks at the churn, looks at their analytics. Right. And I think a big part of like where people go wrong is what you've just said. They like pump and dump their membership. Why? They think, oh, if I just dump money into ads, I'll get all these people in and yes, your acquisitions higher. But then you churn and your delivery and everything else is just shock.
Aaron Reeves [00:18:13]:
I think a big part of a membership model is doing a lot of it organically and just slowly growing with it. It doesn't have to be rapidly fast. You don't have to hit 20k a month instantly. I think a lot of it is just like the slow game and building it up and getting those case studies and then it just grows and compounds versus just like dumping money into ads and trying to grow as quick as possible. Because it just becomes, yeah, like Max, as we just said, he went from 300K. He's at 165 now. Still great. But, like, you've turned 50% of your business.
Nick Bennett [00:18:42]:
You know, I think a lot of us have this idea in the back of our mind because we all see ads for stuff like this on Instagram or anywhere. And you see ads for any type of membership program, and it's very much like high, high urgency. Yeah. You don't do this thing right now. And so whatever. They get 150 bucks out of a bunch of people, and it's not sticky, so it leaves a bad taste in people's mouths. And then you kind of have this bad sentiment across the board and it makes it harder for everyone. I agree on the slower burn model.
Nick Bennett [00:19:13]:
So a lot of people in my program, we talk about good, better, best pricing models, or like, good, better, best offer ladders. And a lot of people want to insert a membership or some sort of cohort or something like that community aspect in their good or better slot on their offer ladder. And so, like, some of this stuff about just what it takes to really grow it, it's a combination of a relationship play and a traffic play. And it's been tough to balance. Like give you an example. I don't generate a ton of traffic just based on my LinkedIn and that stuff, but I have a highly engaged audience base. Erica generates a ton of traffic. And one of the things I thought this was gonna be, this is a mismatch on expectations like you were talking about.
Nick Bennett [00:19:54]:
One of the things I thought this was gonna be was people hit the cart, they check out Touchless sale. I don't wanna do sales calls. Erica was like, we gotta do sales calls. People wanna be heard. People wanna just feel like you get them and that if they can relate with you and how you're describing this stuff, like, they just wanna feel heard. And so I was like, really on the fence. And she was like, let's just try. We got nothing to lose.
Nick Bennett [00:20:14]:
I was like, okay, fine. Turns out that was the single greatest thing that we could have done that got us over the hurdle, that got us more members than any other tactic or technique or anything else. And it's just this weird place between traffic and relationships where this membership model sits.
Aaron Reeves [00:20:32]:
And I think as well with that, unless you're like a Justin Welsh, where you have hundreds of thousands of followers, people have been following you for years, you don't have that relationship. Do you know what I mean? You can build that relationship with someone, if they've been following your content for a while, they've got tons of value and then they'll just convert. But I think as well as you're growing a brand and really trying to scale it, you have to have those calls just for the reason you've said. Because in that 30 minute call you can build the relationship what like a year's worth of content would have done. Because you're talking to them, you're understanding their situation, you're really going through it. Yeah, I think the. Cause they're huge, especially for you as well, if it's more expensive. Like the, I don't know, a four figure offer.
Aaron Reeves [00:21:11]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It makes a ton of sense to do.
Nick Bennett [00:21:15]:
Yeah, we haven't been running the monthly long enough to know about the churn element of it and how long, like how sticky is it really going to be? And people really pressing hard on like time and level unlocks. Like how do you get incentivize people to stay in longer? There's so much nuance to it. But I think at its core I think you're 100% right. Which is slower burn is going to be a more frustrating process because like we all want to just hit that. When are we going to do 10k a month on this thing? When are we going to do 20k a month on this thing? But the compound value is put this way, if you got enough people in there to do 20k a month on day one or month one, I feel like it would have buried you. Like it would have buried me. Yeah, I would. There's so many things that I didn't realize I needed to fix.
Nick Bennett [00:22:02]:
And so the first we have 60 people in there now. It's like the first 60 people who took the chance on us. Like we have been rapidly iterating on the curriculum and all the things, the way that we run the calls, when we show up, how we answer questions. Like there's so much more to it than just create a course and get people to join.
Aaron Reeves [00:22:18]:
Yeah, I changed so much. When I first launched, I literally didn't even have video content. It was just PDFs, it was just docs. Like you read through it. I didn't have any videos, I didn't have any templates as a section. It was just all scattered. There was a million different tabs. What you have to scroll through to find everything in the classroom.
Aaron Reeves [00:22:36]:
And like you're saying, I think those early people, they're so valuable. So even if it's like less for the founding members or whatever, the feedback you get from them to make a much better product is so important because that is what shapes the rest of the course. And then just one thing as well. When you were talking about, like, the churn stuff, this is something that Hormozi said. What, like, really stuck with me is like, the higher the frequency of billing, the higher the potential for them to churn. And I've literally seen this firsthand, right? So in the first month, if you're doing monthly, as an example, month one, they join, they have the onboarding call, they get all these new things. So they're like, on a super high. Let's say they've paid 3, 4, 9 for the first month.
Aaron Reeves [00:23:12]:
In that month, they've built out the systems, they've implemented all this stuff. They may have seen like 2k 5k worth of value in that month, but then month 2 comes along and instead of thinking, what have I got since I originally joined, from month zero to now, they look at the gap from when they last got billed to now and think, in this period, what have I got? What's the value been? And I think that's a big thing. So, again, what I see when I'm billing monthly, people join month one, we have the kickoff call, they get all these templates, they implement it, they'll crush it, book tons of meetings, and then month two is, okay, I'm still booking meetings, but what's new, what's changed? And that's why I've tried to do the live calls and get people involved in them, get people leveling up, so then they feel part of the community. Because if you bill in yearly, even for the exact same price, if they see that initial value in the first few months, they view it as, what value have I got in the last year, not in the last month? So it's a lot easier to have that, like, stickiness and get way lower churn.
Nick Bennett [00:24:05]:
Yeah, that's one huge reason. We were doing monthly group coaching clinics at launch and we realized it was not enough. So we do every other week, and then in between, we have, like, other people come in now and do mini courses and stuff like that. So you're 100% right. This is something that we've struggled with trying to navigate, right? This is this idea that, yes, the pain reoccurs every month, every time they get billed, and they have to consider whether or not they're going to opt in again. But on annual month nine, like, they're probably gone by month nine, they're probably gone by month Six. So how do you keep people engaged? Well, if you pay every month, the odds of you staying engaged are very, very high. If you pay annually, it distributes disproportionately.
Nick Bennett [00:24:48]:
Like the pain is really high in the beginning and then every month it's gone. It's lower and lower to the point where you don't know, month three, four, five, six, whatever, where they might be completely gone. And so it's like, how do you manage that? Where if you have this huge influx of people who join day one, month whatever, day 60 in six months from now, how do you make sure you have a community of people that if you're not constantly putting people in. So it's a tough balance for sure. And I don't know what the answer is. Erica and I go back and forth on this one a lot. It's like, do we want the annual people only, do we want the monthly only? Do we want to really box some people out? There's no right. I don't know if there is a right answer, but it's tough because I mean your price also determines the caliber of person inside your program 100%.
Nick Bennett [00:25:29]:
And you want serious people in there. You don't want people who are just going to opt in to see the stuff, scrape it for all it's worth and then churn out either.
Aaron Reeves [00:25:38]:
Yeah, and this is a big thing that was my biggest because just a little background on myself, like in general, I've been in trying to do online business for years, since 2021. 2022 started off funny enough with like forex, like trading and I was in all these like big communities and groups over there, all the big name community groups. And actually I actually helped one of my friends because he's funded with different certifications and whatever launch done and he was doing really well. I think he got it 30, 40k a month. But the biggest issue I saw in these communities is what you've just said. Month one, you pay, let's say it's like ninety seven hundred dollars. You can just download all the stuff and then leave. And as you've got all this value for this prize.
Aaron Reeves [00:26:17]:
So one thing Lara Acosta did with her launch and what she does with her, I think it's Literally Academy is, she has a setup fee. So it's like a initial one time cost and then the reoccurrence. So the first month is like 300 and then they pay the 99amonth. Obviously there's more friction because it's more expensive upfront. But I assume the psychology behind it is the more invested because they've made this commitment to joining for the one time fee. And if I leave, it's like, I've already paid that fee, so I may as well stick. So, yeah, I think there's loads of stuff you can do in trial, but there's only so much time to trial, all these different things, you know.
Nick Bennett [00:26:50]:
Yeah, okay, so here's an interesting one, which is like the time delays. Like, I've joined cohorts that are like a $10,000 cohort and they release new content. And at first I was, I just want all this stuff. But sometimes life gets busy and I realize I'm already two or three weeks behind and they're releasing stuff every week. So that was an interesting one. But the problem with the cohort model is that it's very aggressive in your marketing cycle. So you have to basically press as hard as you possibly can to get people in to launch a new cohort, to get people to go to, then to support that, while simultaneously trying to build up urgency and the list for the next launch or all the people who, who missed it. So the, the intensity of a cohort model is it was something that we didn't want to do, but I think that there might be.
Nick Bennett [00:27:41]:
And as we're talking about this, this is coming into focus for me, some sort of model that takes the best of both worlds. Because the thing that I think people might find frustrating, and I don't know if you've experienced this in your own community, but when they join, if they don't have access to everything immediately they feel like they got screwed. They're like, what the hell? Like you're delaying all of this material and I'm not sure how to go about it in a way that makes people feel like you're dripping it out in a specific order at a specific cadence. On purpose.
Aaron Reeves [00:28:13]:
Yeah, it's. That is the hardest thing, because I would be pissed to be fully transparent if I joined something and I didn't have access to everything. I'd be annoyed. One thing I've tried to do is like, within my curriculum in the paid, it's set out in like steps, like step one, step two, step three, step four. And then when I'm on the kickoff call with somebody, we set up a game plan and I'm like, focus on these aspects and then message me in a week and we'll touch base and see how it went in terms of what we laid out. So I tried to build that accountability with people to. And I Have little assignments as well at the bottom of each section. So the whole point is, I know it's something you do actually as well with like the homeworks and stuff.
Aaron Reeves [00:28:48]:
So they go through the content, they apply it and then they come back with it. So I think that's another easier way where you can even lock it behind certain assignments. I haven't tried that personally, I just have them there. But yeah, I think it comes down to the expectation, making it clear, look, you could jump around, but if you want results like XYZ person, this is the best way to do it. Are you committed to doing that? And then if they're aware of it and they realize it's in their best interest to do it, then I think you can get away with it. But again, I haven't tried it too much yet.
Nick Bennett [00:29:17]:
Yeah, I've considered a lot of this and I think the reason I haven't acted on it was because I was like, who am I to try and.
Aaron Reeves [00:29:25]:
Tell them how they should learn?
Nick Bennett [00:29:27]:
Tell them and, and how fast they can do it? Like, yeah, I've seen people go through and start making money in the first few days and that's. If I time delayed everything in this way to increase my own retention, I could potentially be preventing someone from being successful in this way. Yeah, and I don't think that I'll ever necessarily come to the perfect conclusion on this one, but I do think that you gotta just keep trying different. It's kind of.
Aaron Reeves [00:29:52]:
Yeah. And one way, like when I'm on the kickoff call with someone at the end, I'm like, here are the steps. How fast do you think you can do it? Some people are like two days, some people like two weeks. And then based off there, we set the expectation right. How I do it is they have access to everything, but we set out a specific plan, they understand why it's important. And then at the end of it, I'm like, how fast can you do this with work with everything that's going on? If they say they want to do it quick, I'm like, cool, let's set up a DM chat in three days so you can send me this stuff. I can review it and you can send it out. If it's going to take you two weeks though, that's fine, but let's set up that chat then.
Aaron Reeves [00:30:26]:
So it's sort of based on their commitment. It's like they've said it will take me this long and then I'm holding them accountable to that because like you've just said for the same reason people can join. Like this guy Rafael joined and he booked five multibillion dollar meetings. And he's like, first week, right? Because he was like, I want to do it in three days. And I'm like, okay, cool. And then we chatted. He did it in three days. And yeah, I think like you said, there's no right time.
Aaron Reeves [00:30:49]:
So you can't ever set that on people, you know, but you just have to get them to decide and hold them accountable to that.
Nick Bennett [00:30:55]:
One of the things that we did that I am really happy with is we baked engagement into the programming. So every module has a training, an exercise. So it's like we teach you with a concept, then there's an exercise inside of the workbook where you go and like, go do the thing. And then there's a practice where you share the thing. And the volume of people sharing their work has far exceeded expectations. And I think that compounds the value of the community over time because you see everyone working out their problems. So one, it's like, okay, I'm not alone in this one. You see the feedback that people are getting and you say, okay, I see the changes that these people made.
Nick Bennett [00:31:36]:
So basically it expands the training and the lesson. And we've only been doing this two months, but the responses that we get today are significantly better than they were on day one. Yeah, just because people can review the things that we guide people on in real scenarios that are not just a training simulation. It's like, here's someone's real example, here's the real feedback, look at how that worked and how that made a difference for them. Go apply it to your own work. And it's made an exponential difference in the experience and just the type of engagement and output that we get. So I've been really, really happy with that one.
Aaron Reeves [00:32:11]:
I do the same where it's like, there's content they go through and then I set them a task where it's like questions based off that, then they go away, apply what they've learned for their situation. One thing I've noticed, and I'm curious if you've seen it. The first one, everyone's doing it, everyone's committed to it. Step eight is like, you know, there's a few people doing it and I think it's like everyone does the initial ones and it sort of tails off as again, people's natural journey, they go real hard in the first month and then sort of lean back. Like, the first one, as an example, has like 67 comments obviously of me Doing some feedback back and forth. And then even step five has like 35.
Nick Bennett [00:32:47]:
I've thought about some of this stuff, but let's see. Let's really see. My hunch is that I set this up so that everything compounds to one main thing, like one bigger goal, one bigger project. So the first practice has 82 comments. The second practice has 95 comments. The only reason that one has more is because I originally had the whole thing in one practice. And then I realized it was way too much. I had to split it up.
Nick Bennett [00:33:14]:
That was a lesson learned pretty quick. I was like, this is too much. I can't get feedback on everything all at once. And then if this top piece is wrong, I was like, I don't know why I thought that was a good idea. Then. Then it's 57 comments, then it's 50 comments, then it's 52 comments. So, yeah, I think what you're saying.
Aaron Reeves [00:33:28]:
Is adding up, but it's still maintaining the baseline, which is good, right? Even though it drops a little, it still maintains. And again, I think it's like Hormozi's value equation. You know, it's like effort. And then the time part, like, how long is this thing going to take me? And the more steps you have to do, the more things they do, it just drops. It's like a bell curve. It's just high at the start and starts to slide off towards the end. So, yeah, I don't know. It's something I've seen.
Aaron Reeves [00:33:50]:
So I've been thinking of different ways to try to do it. But yeah, I think like you said, it's hard to force people how they learn if can't make someone do it, you know?
Nick Bennett [00:33:59]:
Yeah, I've tried to set it up. So it's like when this skill that I'm talking about is specific to helping people build their offer. And so in reality, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Six steps. Right? Not a lot of steps, but if you need feedback on the thing, then you'll share it. But on the other side of it, it's like, how many things do I need to do to get this done? And part of it's hard work and it requires time and energy and effort and attention because if it was easy, you wouldn't be here. It's a tough nut to crack, but I like it. This has been significantly more challenging in the best ways, like building a business like this compared to B2B, like a B2B private coaching and consulting service, which I greatly enjoy.
Nick Bennett [00:34:45]:
I love that part of my business. But this has been challenging in a whole different way.
Aaron Reeves [00:34:50]:
Yeah. And I think it depends on your goals as well, like what you want. Again, I could do B2B a lot more. I could do trainings for teams and all this sort of stuff. But it's just so much effort to be completely honest as well. Like setting up all the agendas and doing the slides and doing all. I'm not going to lie, I don't enjoy it that much. Like for me, what I've built is a lifestyle business, if you will, where I don't have to work that much.
Aaron Reeves [00:35:13]:
Like I'm moving to Thailand on the 3rd of Feb, so in less than two weeks now. So I just want to enjoy the sun, do my work, help people get them value and just go from there. And that's why I think the slow burner method, especially for B2C, it's like yeah, I've grown a decent amount. Like I'm at what, 30, 36,800 followers now pacing. Realistically I should hit 100k, even if I just maintain my growth without going any faster. And then from there when I'm at 100k, it's just much easier to reach more people, to sell more courses and more value because more people see me then when I'm at 200k, 300k, 500k. So it's just a compounding game of time for me at this point as well.
Nick Bennett [00:35:53]:
Yeah, that's awesome. What's the motivation to go to Thailand? Just warmer?
Aaron Reeves [00:35:58]:
Yeah, tax as well. But yeah, just the weather and everything. And my partners wanted to travel for a while and I was always very against it because I, I love working. I always said I'd never quit my job and just travel off savings. Like I can't think of anything worse. Like I needed recurring reven you. So maybe that's part of the subconscious as to why I wanted to do community and all that good stuff instead. But yeah, I think it's good to try new things and the UK doesn't have anything that's keeping me here so may as well go, hey, I feel.
Nick Bennett [00:36:22]:
You on that one. Like I love working and not quitting my job or not doing anything and going to travel.
Aaron Reeves [00:36:29]:
It stresses me out when I'm sitting on the beach, it just stresses me. Like I think about work. Like I'll be sitting there on a sunbed and I'm just like, I can't do it for long, I can do it for a bit and then it bores me. So when I'm there. I'm going to be doing like Thai boxing and swimming and all these, like, different activities. What I can't do here to keep you busy instead of just lounging about, getting bored.
Nick Bennett [00:36:48]:
But you'll be working. I mean, you're moving there. It's not like you're going on vacation.
Aaron Reeves [00:36:52]:
100%. Exactly. Still working.
Nick Bennett [00:36:54]:
All right, cool, man. So I love this conversation. We could, I could dig into like every nook and cranny of this. So looking back on all of this, is there something you would have done differently?
Aaron Reeves [00:37:05]:
Yeah, a lot of things that have done differently. I think the biggest thing is I invested a lot in like coaching and mentorship, but I would have done more for sure to just figure out how to do it right the first time instead of guessing, you know, because it worked out in the end. Sure. But I think I could have got there quicker and avoided a lot more mistakes if I work with better people. Like, I've only just started working with a team who's helped me with the launch of my new products and done the landing pages and done all the emails and they've worked with literally everyone in my niche and they're incredible. But like, my landing pages before I look back and they make me sick. They're so bad, so bad. And it's like I have all this traffic, but I just wasn't monetizing it in the best way.
Aaron Reeves [00:37:43]:
And I think that's where a lot of people go wrong, is they start to get traffic, but they just don't monetize it at all. So, yeah, I would have started my newsletter earlier. I would have pushed more content on LinkedIn in terms of not just bottom funnel, more top of funnels to get more engagement, and then worked on my sort of funnels as well.
Nick Bennett [00:38:00]:
It's like a chicken egg situation though, because back then you probably wanted to work with people, but it's like, well, I don't have the revenue yet, so I gotta just hack it together, get to a certain milestone, be able to make that money, reinvest it.
Aaron Reeves [00:38:12]:
Exactly. It's hindsight, right? Like, it's easy to sit here now and be like, oh, I should have done this, I wish I would have done this.
Nick Bennett [00:38:18]:
But yeah, yeah, I agree with you though. The number one thing in my mind as I go through all of this is who, who's done this? Who's been through a lot of this stuff before? Who can we talk to? Who can we like, hire to help us clear some of these hurdles? Like, I know what I Know, that's my zone. Like, I think the longer I've been in this business or in business for myself, the more I'm like ruthless with my scope. I don't really want to go outside of that because it's just not going to be as effective. And now we have the means to bring in people who are good at that other thing. And I don't have to try so hard to do that. I mean, I recognize that's a good position to be in. I mean, you don't outsource everything because I think, for example, like this podcast, like I edited the first 10 or 20 episodes of this show myself and it took me like five hours to edit one hour of show.
Nick Bennett [00:39:11]:
And if I hadn't done that, I would not have learned how horrible I sound on a microphone and how bad the questions I ask ours and then respected the hell out of the person and the team that I hired to edit this show after that. So sometimes you kind of, you gotta get beat up a little bit doing the thing to realize how important and how difficult or how valuable that thing is.
Aaron Reeves [00:39:32]:
Literally me with like design, even on LinkedIn, right? Like I got to 10k or 15k through just text based posts. Like just pure text. That's all I ever did. And then I try to do like my banner or do design for carousels and I'd sit there for three hours with just like a blue square with Comic Sans on and be like, yes, this is great. And I was so bad at it that I had to focus on making like content really good because I just couldn't do visuals. So now I have my designer. Incredible, where I literally just send him an idea and he wraps it into this like pretty thing that gets tons of views and it just makes my life easier. So, yeah, I think it's like outsourcing the things where you don't have the leverage. You know, it's like you said, anyone as a solopreneur, you have your thing where if you do it, you get way more out of it than if you outsourced it.
Aaron Reeves [00:40:17]:
But like, for me, like you were saying, with the lead magnets, when they go viral, I gain nothing from spending six hours replying to a thousand comments. Again, nothing when I could have a va do the exact same thing if it's the same comment to a thousand people, you know, So I think it's like picking and choosing which task makes sense to outsource. And again, like with the design, with the funnels, I've tried, I suck people Are better have to pay it because it makes me more money in the long term. So. Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:40:43]:
Thank you. Thank you for being real about this. I think a lot of people are leveraging outside help for a lot of these little things and no one's really saying it.
Aaron Reeves [00:40:54]:
Yeah, no one's. I don't know why they try to. Oh, yeah. Jack of all trades. I do the market.
Nick Bennett [00:40:58]:
I'm a solopreneur. I'm like 100% alone.
Aaron Reeves [00:41:01]:
Yeah. It's like, okay, good for you. I'd rather outsource it to people who are better. Me, focus on the one thing I'm good at, which is the content of booking more meetings and then I get way more time back to myself as well. And that's a big thing. Like when I.
Nick Bennett [00:41:14]:
But then you sacrifice margin.
Aaron Reeves [00:41:16]:
Yes. And that's the fine line where it depends on your goals. For me, I think as well, part of it though is you sacrifice margin, but you get a bigger pie. Like you can make 100 or 95 on 10k a month. Cool. I personally would much rather make 70, 65 on 50k a month than 100 on 10, you know?
Nick Bennett [00:41:36]:
Yeah.
Aaron Reeves [00:41:36]:
So I'm okay to give away a bit if I'm going to get more and I still end up better. Like with the team who's launched my product, I could have done it, but my launch would have been like horrific and I would have made like 20p. Right. Probably not that bad. But you get my point. Versus giving them like margin to launch it. So then it's like a win win for both sides. I'm always happy to do that again.
Aaron Reeves [00:41:55]:
It's leverage.
Nick Bennett [00:41:56]:
Right.
Aaron Reeves [00:41:56]:
Give a little bit away to get more back. I'm okay with it.
Nick Bennett [00:42:00]:
Yeah. I think Mark Cuban always says, what would you rather have, like 50% of a watermelon or 100 of a grape?
Aaron Reeves [00:42:05]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a great way to say it, though. And I think especially in solopreneurship, there's all this hustle culture of the. I do everything. I make 95% margins on my, this amount a month. And it's cool. But it depends on your goals.
Aaron Reeves [00:42:18]:
And for me, I'd rather outsource it, have more time to do other things and then actually just focus on scaling by letting the best people do it. And I can sort of learn from osmosis. Right. Like, I look at what they're doing and I sort of take some of it in. It doesn't mean I'm going to do it myself, but it just means I understand what good looks like. So even if for whatever reason I work with someone else, I understand and have an expectation of what I should be doing. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of benefits to working with outside people. Even if it's just consulting, right? Doesn't have to be letting them do it, but just learning from professionals at it.
Aaron Reeves [00:42:48]:
Like Hormozi said, the best thing you ever did was pay someone to learn ads, how to run Facebook ads.
Nick Bennett [00:42:53]:
This just reinforces my approach in the way that I believe in. This is like, there are three essential skills that I think every solopreneur should know. It's like how to create offers, how to create content, and how to sell. Yeah, like, those are three essential skills. You can't really outsource that. And it's a hard skill, soft skill combination. But either way, it's like, however you acquire that skill works, doesn't matter. You need to acquire that some of them.
Nick Bennett [00:43:19]:
Design is one of those skills where it amplifies your ability to do what you're doing. Like you said, you're like having this design style. One, it's a branding element. So it's like people see and they immediately know it's you. But the other side of it is it legitimizes your entire platform a little bit more. Like, there's so many other benefits to it. You know, like, do I need to spend the time to really learn this thing or do I need to value it enough to try and find someone to help it? In my opinion, I think the right move is that's a skill that we can supplement with versus the skills that you need to know to run your business. And that designer needs to have those other three skills.
Nick Bennett [00:43:55]:
That designer still needs to know how to make offers, needs to know how to make content, and needs to know how to sell in order to make their business work.
Aaron Reeves [00:44:00]:
I completely agree. And I think that, like, the biggest part of it, I think is, in my opinion, like, just the content piece. And I say this all the time, but there's people in my niche as an example with way more experience than me. They've been in the game longer, they have more case studies, they have more. But I just mark it better. Like, I've blown. Not in a like, oh, I'm so cool.
Aaron Reeves [00:44:20]:
I've blown past them because I'm still miles behind, but in a genuine way of I just understand how, for example, to do a post on LinkedIn with a different hook that gets more views or more impressions. So then from that it pushes more people to the pages. So, yeah, I think if you really master content, everything else becomes a lot easier because you can sort of like, figure out an offer after. You can sort of figure out the rest. But for me to just have an easy life, like content, yeah, content changed everything for me.
Nick Bennett [00:44:44]:
Hell yeah, man. Being able to generate traffic is a massive advantage. I don't care. Even if you're in the relationship business and you're selling services, generating traffic is never a bad thing. But it's a lot harder for people than I think it sounds like it was for you. Like, you kind of figured out some of those things pretty. I don't know if it was quickly, but however you did it, you figured it out and you can tell, like, you're running the plane now. It's fun to watch.
Nick Bennett [00:45:09]:
So. All right, dude, let's end here. What's next for you? What do you want to build that you haven't built yet?
Aaron Reeves [00:45:13]:
Good question. Well, I mean, to be fair, I think the biggest thing I wanted to do is the playbook, just to give people a different thing to buy into if it's not the sort of monthly thing. So for me now it's just a scaling place. Not necessarily like new stuff. It's more. So how can I amplify what I'm already doing with the team that I'm working with? Going to be building a better flow from when people get my free thing to push into the course to then push them to the community and all this stuff. So that's like the big focus now. And then again, content's the thing I'm good at, so I'm doubling down on that.
Aaron Reeves [00:45:42]:
So when I move to Thailand Feb, YouTube, X, playing around with different things and just really becoming a content machine. You know, podcasts, all this stuff just to get more eyeballs and I'll let the best people convert those eyeballs for me. That's. That's my play.
Nick Bennett [00:45:56]:
Hell yeah, man. I don't doubt you are going to absolutely kill it. I have no doubt at all, man. I'm excited for you. I already love what you're doing and I know it's on its way to being something massive.
Aaron Reeves [00:46:06]:
I appreciate, man. Yeah, we'll see. We're in the game for the long run. Like I said, it's the attrition game, 1% you know?
Nick Bennett [00:46:12]:
It's the infinite game, right? People are going to drop out and as long as the goal of the game is to keep playing.
Aaron Reeves [00:46:18]:
Yeah. So it's literally Hormozi’s little thing that he says about business, right? There's no win, there's no finish line. It's just you keep playing.
Nick Bennett [00:46:24]:
Hell yeah, man. All right, dude. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story, man. I know more people feel seen because of it. It's so good to see you, dude. Good luck in the move and we will talk soon.
Aaron Reeves [00:46:33]:
Sounds good, man. Appreciate it.
Nick Bennett [00:46:39]:
Hey Nick, again, and thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can sign up for the 1000 Routes newsletter where I press process the insights and stories you hear on this show into frameworks and lessons to help you build a new and different future for your own business. You can sign up@1000routes.com or check the link in the show notes.
Nick Bennett [00:47:04]:
If you were to leave planet Earth tonight and move to Mars tomorrow, what would be your last meal here?
Aaron Reeves [00:47:14]:
Oh, that's such a tough question. If it's a one off meal, I'm gonna go fancy on you. I'm gonna say Wagyu Tomahawk. Yeah, we're going big because it's just, it's a one off meal, so we've got to go all in for the sides. I'm thinking some mash, mashed potato, peppercorn sauce for the steak. Just a little bit though, because the wagyu is good. And that's meal. That's the meal.
Aaron Reeves [00:47:35]:
That's all I'm having.
Nick Bennett [00:47:36]:
Ooh. All right. I like it melt in your mouth. Tomahawk.
Aaron Reeves [00:47:41]:
Like a big. You know, because I couldn't eat it consistently, but as a one off, that's what I could go with.
Nick Bennett [00:47:47]:
I. I have no notes. Like, no notes.
Aaron Reeves [00:47:50]:
No, I'm in.
Nick Bennett [00:47:52]:
I'm in. Whenever you're. You're eating that meal, call me. I'm with you, dude. I love it.