# Conclusions

**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj5gZq159lM
**Title:** If I Wanted to Make My First $100K/Month, I'd Do This
**Duration:** 22:54
**Speaker:** Dan Martell (built and sold 3 multi-million-dollar companies; coaches business owners)

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## Core thesis

Going from $0 to $100K/month is not a grinding problem — it is a **sequence** problem. Follow a five-step blueprint: (1) do the money math to pick a price, (2) design a productized service, (3) build a three-tier offer, (4) generate demand with inbound + outbound in parallel, (5) close by chat or call. Do the marketing **before** you build the thing.

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## Step 1 — The money map: pick your price × customer count

Five ways to reach $100K/month. Only the middle option is sane:

| Model | Customers | Price | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whale | 1 | $100,000 | Concentration risk, requires elite skills |
| **Enterprise-lite** | **10** | **$10,000** | Dan personally dislikes it — still heavy per-deal |
| **Sweet spot** | **~100** | **~$1,000/mo** | **Recommended starting point** |
| Prosumer | 1,000 | $100 | Too many conversations to close |
| Mass-market | 10,000 | $10 | Impossibly wide reach for a new founder |

**Rule of thumb:** minimum offer size = **$1,000/month**, staying **below $10K/month**. Every conversation should be worth having.

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## Step 2 — What to sell: the three buyer motivations + Ikigai

People pay for exactly three things:

1. **Time** — buy back my hours → unlimited capital available
2. **Money** — the easiest thing to sell (that's why sales training is easy: pay money → get more money)
3. **Status** — luxury brands, front-row seats, cars, watches, associations — routinely ignored, hugely underpriced

**Pro tip:** at $1K+/month, sell to **business owners** (especially small business owners) — all three motivations matter to them and they decide fast.

**Ikigai filter** for what you offer:

- What do you **love**? (if you don't, you'll quit)
- What are you **good at**? — reframe as "what do people tell me I'm good at" (we discount our own skills)
- What does the **world need**? — look at search trends, what's discussed online
- What will they **pay for**? — nice-to-haves die; must-haves get bought

Sweet spot = all four overlap.

**Service vs. product — the productized-service play:**

| Format | Problem | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Custom services | Selling hours, no leverage | Avoid |
| Products (apps, SaaS, courses) | Expensive, slow, risky to build | Avoid at start |
| **Productized service** | Fixed package, repeatable steps 1-2-3, price like a product | **Start here — customer-cash funds the eventual product** |

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## Step 3 — Build the offer

**Sell the outcome, not the work.** Don't say "I do marketing for $1K/month" — say "I'll get you 10 new clients a month." Features tell; outcomes sell.

**Three-tier pricing (decoy structure):**

| Tier | Price (relative to core) | Delivery | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low — DIY | ½× ($500/mo) | Give them the playbooks, they execute | Anchors low end |
| **Core** | **1× ($1,000/mo)** | **Productized service — you do it** | **Sell this one — 100× per month = $100K** |
| High — Done-for-you | 10× ($10,000/mo) | Everything managed, includes training their team | Decoy; makes core look like a steal |

Both flanking tiers are **decoys** — they exist so the middle tier prints.

**Every offer must contain:**

- **Outcome** — the business improvement they get
- **Deliverable** — what shows up weekly/monthly
- **Investment** — the price (called "investment", not "cost")
- **Risk reversal** — a specific guarantee ("10 leads/month", "save 10 hours/week")
- **Urgency** — "only 5 slots this month, 20 calls this week, lock it in with a $1K deposit"

**AI prompt to draft it:** feed your Ikigai answers + time/money/status + the target buyer, then ask AI to write "the offer with all elements above, plus a premium and entry-level tier that make my core offer look like an absolute steal, output as an offer doc I can send as a link **and** a pitch deck for sales calls. Then ask me any question you need to get total clarity." — that last line is "reverse prompting."

**Offer doc vs. pitch deck:**

| Artifact | Job |
|---|---|
| Offer doc | Copywritten — sells on its own via reading |
| Pitch deck | High-level bullets — you speak the words during the call |

**Do NOT email the pitch deck** to a prospect for "team review." They will forward it to their friend Bob and hire Bob with your plan.

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## Step 4 — Create demand (inbound + outbound in parallel)

Nobody is waiting for you. Two engines, run both.

### Inbound (long-term)

Give away everything. Take every deliverable in your offer doc, feed each to AI with this prompt:

> "Give me 10 **nuanced and observable** problems your customer [HVAC owners / SMBs / etc.] has around each of these pains."

That yields an infinite content backlog. Create hook-first content that solves those specific, observable problems. **"If I can describe my customer's pain better than they can, I'm the expert."**

What do you still get paid for if you give everything away? — The **sequence of implementation**. Step 1 (audit) → Step 100 (fully automated). In content, you *scramble* the steps (A1, B2, C1…); the ordered checklist is what customers pay to have executed.

Personal example: Dan's second company **Flowtown** got 350K unique visitors → 50K customers off blog content. His first company (Maritime Vacation) failed because he built product first, marketed later. → **Crickets.**

### Outbound (short-term)

Order of operations:

1. **Mine your phone** — count contacts; usually 100-200, sometimes 20K
2. **Ask past the person** — "Do you know anyone with this problem?" → often answers "yeah, me"; otherwise gets you warm intros
3. **Use referral names** — "Bob suggested I reach out — I do X for people like you, is that a problem?"
4. **AI backfill** — "Build me a list of 100 people who need my service, with phone + email"
5. **Tools** — SocialSweep (mentioned) auto-extracts contacts from email history

**Build a funnel:** outbound → follow-up → ask → close. Track it in a spreadsheet.

---

## Step 5 — Close the deal

Two channels only: **sell by chat** or **cold call**. Sell by chat is easier to start.

### Sell by chat (Dan has done 8-figures this way)

The DM flow:

1. Every new follower gets a message: *"Are you here for [content] or [help growing your business]?"*
2. End with the second option — that primes the yes
3. Ask **pain-awareness questions**
4. Present the solution
5. Send the **offer doc link**
6. If interested → send **Stripe payment link**

### Cold call

Real transcript from the video (paraphrased):

> "Hi, David — quick question. Have you looked into using AI to answer your calls so you can book appointments while working on jobs? I've got nothing to sell, just curious."
> "Not yet — been busy."
> "Most folks in your space aren't answering calls anymore because AI does it for them and makes more money. If I could show you how, would that interest you?"
> "Yeah, 15 minutes."
> "Tomorrow at [time]? I'll send a Zoom link and demo the software live."

**Rule:** the cold call's job is **not** to sell. It is to qualify + book a meeting from a meeting.

### Objections vs. obstacles

- **Obstacles** = concerns raised **before** you present the offer
- **Objections** = concerns raised **after**

Rule: **surface objections up-front so they become obstacles.** ("Do you have a budget to solve this?") If they surface after the offer, you're playing defense.

### Volume + persistence rules

- **First 5 calls are throwaways** — don't judge yourself on them
- **If they don't answer, call right back within 30 seconds** — most phones ring through on the second call because "urgent"
- **Feed transcripts to AI** — it will show you where you're stumbling
- **Goal: 100 no's per day** — this level of rejection buys the yes
- **Do not spend money** (equipment, software, tools) until customers have paid. Offer starts 2 weeks out; use that gap to prep delivery.

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## Step 6 — Only *then* build the thing

You've done marketing → chats/calls → paying customers. Now build.

**Pre-sell + waitlist mechanic** (Dan's playbook for every product launch):

1. Ship a landing page with a waitlist — before writing a line of code
2. Market the waitlist; take signups
3. Offer a **$50 "top of the waitlist" spot** — a paid signal that they actually want it solved your way
4. If money doesn't come in → no proof of demand → don't build
5. If it does → you have both **validated demand** and **build capital**

AI now makes the landing page + waitlist + payment collection buildable with no coding.

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## Cross-cutting principles

- **Sequence, not effort.** Every failure Dan describes is doing the right steps in the wrong order (build before marketing, custom before productized, calls before scripts).
- **Sell outcomes; deliver services; monetize the sequence.** The value is in *knowing the order*, not the individual steps.
- **Productize > custom.** Same three steps every time = leverage.
- **Give the information, sell the implementation.** Content is not what you're paid for — it's what earns the right to be paid.
- **Marketing before manufacturing.** Waitlist + pre-sell every time.
- **Decoys sell the core.** Never launch with only one price.
- **Volume beats polish early.** 100 no's/day > perfect script.
- **Two engines, always in parallel.** Inbound (long tail) + outbound (this week's cash).

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## Actionable checklist

- [ ] Set a price at **$1,000/month** (or higher, below $10K) and target **100 customers**
- [ ] Fill in the four Ikigai quadrants; find the intersection
- [ ] Identify which of **time / money / status** you're selling and to which buyer
- [ ] Package your service into a **repeatable 3-step productized offer**
- [ ] Draft the **offer doc + pitch deck** with AI, using the "outcome / deliverable / investment / risk reversal / urgency" template
- [ ] Add **$500 DIY** and **$10K done-for-you** decoy tiers
- [ ] For each deliverable, generate **10 observable customer pains** via AI → convert each to hook-driven content
- [ ] Mine your phone contacts, run **"ask past the person"**, AI-build a fallback list of 100 prospects
- [ ] Set up a simple **spreadsheet funnel** (outreach → follow-up → ask → close)
- [ ] Write your **DM flow** for sell-by-chat + your **15-second cold-call opener**
- [ ] Surface likely objections up-front; script them as pre-emptive questions
- [ ] Commit to **100 no's/day**; first 5 calls are throwaways; call back within 30 seconds
- [ ] Collect payment via **Stripe** link at close; **don't spend a dollar until customers have paid**
- [ ] For any product build: launch a **paid waitlist** first ($50 = proof); build only after validation

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## Who this is for

- Aspiring founders at $0 who want a concrete playbook rather than motivation
- Existing service providers stuck on hourly/custom work who want to productize
- SMB-focused agencies, AI-automation builders, consultants, coaches — the offered example (AI voice agent for local businesses) fits this profile
- Anyone who already has some revenue and wants a repeatable process to scale to $100K/month or beyond
