The market got harder. Trust is lower, competition is higher, and every founder on Instagram is promising done for you results with a money back guarantee. It’s a red ocean.
So I stopped leading with big promises. I sold one simple thing: a $997 private call with me. No ads. No funnel. No team.
That one offer brought in close to $1.9M in profit and fed people straight into my $48k and $98k programs. Here’s exactly how it worked and why you should steal it.
Why I charged for the call instead of giving it away
The most valuable thing I have is my time. The problem is I can’t scale giving it to everyone.
A free call attracts people with zero commitment. They show up late, they don’t have a real business, and they waste both of our time.
Putting a $997 price tag on it filtered the room instantly. The people who paid were serious owners who almost certainly had a real business, real numbers and real problems worth solving.
The format was simple:
- 45 minutes on Zoom
- Or 2 hours in person for buyers who wanted to sit down with me
How I sold it with zero ad spend
Everything was organic. I didn’t run a single ad to this offer.
- Promotion. Social posts, emails to my list, a lot of Instagram stories and posts inside my group.
- Sales page. It was originally built as an upsell page. I kept using it because by the time people landed there they were already ready to buy. A short video explained the Zoom and in person options.
- Payment, then booking. After they paid, they got a booking link.
- Intake form. Before the call they gave me their name, email and phone, plus their client count, revenue goals, social accounts, team costs, sales reps, call tracking and ad spend.
That intake form is the part most people skip. In 45 minutes there is no time for a long discovery. I wanted to walk in already knowing the numbers.
Business is a numbers game, and numbers are my strength. I used to be a petroleum engineer. Today I run a business doing over $2M a month. When I can see your numbers before the call, I can spend the whole call on the fix.
The goal of every call: blow their mind
I went into every call with one job. Give so much value, so fast, that the person walks away trusting me completely.
I didn’t hold back the good stuff for a paid program. I gave it on the call.
Some of the in person sessions I filmed and posted on YouTube. Those include:
- A fitness company scaled toward seven figures in two hours
- A fitness trainer aiming for $50k a month
- A pressure washing business working on scale
- An online coach targeting $20k a month
- An agency making $3k a day
One caller, Devin, went from zero to $200k in 60 days and kept growing well past that.
Those recordings became content, and that content built even more trust with people who never got on a call. Remember the point of content is not views. It’s who is going to pay you money.
How a $997 call turned into $48k and $98k clients
Here is where the real money came from. I never hard pitched on the call.
Usually a few weeks later, the client would DM me. They had used what I gave them, they got a result, and now they wanted more help.
There were two paths:
- Next Level, run by my account manager Mac
- The Inner Circle, run by me personally
Clients got access to a Base Camp dashboard with texting support, documents, ad metrics, sales metrics, tech support and support for their setters and closers.
21 buyers upgraded into year long deals at $48k and $98k.
Next Level clients also got three months of free ad management. About 80% of them signed a retainer after that, because they had already seen the results.
Why this beats leading with guarantees
When trust is low, most people try to fix it with bigger promises. Done for you. Results or your money back.
That attracts the wrong clients. In my experience lower level clients tend to have less skill, fewer advantages, less money, less mental strength and more problems. They are hard to help and hard to keep.
Higher level clients are the ones you want on retainers. The way you get them is not a louder promise. It’s a small, cheap enough entry point that a serious owner will happily pay for, and then you overdeliver.
Offer something cheap enough that high level clients will buy it, then build trust through it.
How to build your own version
You don’t need my exact numbers to copy this. You need the structure.
- Pick the single most valuable thing you can deliver in under an hour.
- Put a real price on it so only serious buyers show up.
- Sell it organically to the audience and list you already have.
- Collect the numbers in an intake form before the call.
- Overdeliver on the call and don’t pitch.
- Have a clear next step ready for when they come back asking for more.
The takeaway
Trust is the bottleneck in a red ocean. A low priced, high value call earns that trust faster than any guarantee.
My $997 call was never about the $997. It was the front door to my biggest programs, and it paid for itself many times over.
Want to know what’s capping your business right now? Take my free 90 Day Ceiling Plan. Answer 18 questions and get a written plan, built on your own numbers, that names the one thing holding you back and what to fix first.
