Piggybacking on my email from yesterday, I wanna share with you another big takeaway from the Sayulita copy retreat.
This one is specifically for copywriters, marketers and agency owners.
Cause it’s all about increasing your income through leverage.
For example…
One of the guys we had at the retreat (Dan Bagniuk) runs a successful email marketing agency.
And when we sat down with Dan, he told us that his goal was to have “10 clients that were making him $100k a month”
So we dug into his business…
And discovered he already had 5 clients paying him a variety of fees.
Some were flat monthly retainers…
Others were paying a retainer + a percentage of sales…
So after asking Dan a bunch of questions, and figuring out which clients he really liked working with (and which ones had the most long term potential)…
We realized that Dan’s plan of bringing in 10 clients at his current prices, wasn’t the right plan.
Why?
Cause it wasn’t gonna get him to $100k a month.
And even if he raised his prices, having 10 clients would be a massive headache.
So we told him that if he wanted to get to $100k a month the way to get there was through fewer clients and more leverage.
So instead of 10 clients paying $10k a month…
We told Dan to focus on 3 BIG clients…
And to get 15% of all the email sales he generated for those clients.
Why?
Cause it’s a leaner business with a lot less work.
With 10 clients he would have a ton of overhead…
He’d have a bunch of copywriters to manage…
And worst of all, he’d have to deal with the problems and egos of 10 different clients.
So to avoid that…
And to give Dan more leverage over his time…
We told him to scrap the idea of 10 clients…
And simply focus on 3 BIG clients.
These clients should be clients that he likes working with…
They should have a smart and competent CEO at the helm…
And they should also have a steady flow of new buyers coming onto the list everyday…
And then instead of charging ’em a flat fee…
We told him to simply take ~15% of the sales he generates for the clients.
This does two things…
1. It allows Dan to scale his income. If he makes someone $500k in sales in a month, then he’s getting $75k of that. This gets him out of the hours for dollars trap.
2. It’s a better deal for his clients cause Dan has real “skin in the game” since he’s getting a %. So he’s gonna be more involved and more motivated to get them the best results possible
That was the whole plan…
And like I said it was all about “leverage”.
It was about Dan focusing on fewer clients…
And instead of locking himself into an “hours for dollars” relationship…
He’s getting a % of the sales he’s creating for his clients.
And my gut says that if Dan executes on this…
He’s going to have an agency that not only makes him the kind of money he wants to make…
But he’ll also enjoy the day-to-day of it…
And it won’t be a massive headache like most agencies are…
So the big takeaway here is focusing on leverage.
And using it to your advantage.
If you’re a copywriter, or marketer, at some point you want to get away from the “hours for dollars” setup…
And use leverage to your advantage.
So keep that in mind…
– Justin
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