How I Made $4,997 in 13 Hours

And how you can too.

My friend and I started our company, Grindstone, last year.

We turn monetized creators into full-time creators.

For example, I started working with Joe when he had 2,900 YouTube subscribers.

Since then, he’s gained 322,000 subscribers, created multiple income streams, and quit his job to become a full-time streamer and YouTuber.

But Grindstone had a shaky start.

We took on our first five clients for free. Then we charged at a huge discount.

It was working. Until I got distracted.

Let me explain.

I stopped focusing on getting paid coaching clients and shifted focus to growing a free community.

I thought it would give us a huge pool of potential clients. My aim was to build an audience of #1 fans.

Instead, it added 20+ hours of work per week and led to zero revenue. People who joined just wanted free stuff.

So last week, I made my biggest investment in myself — a high-level coach scaling program.

It’s awesome.

Four days in, I used what it taught me and made $5,000 in a weekend.

For context, here’s the timeline of Grindstone’s revenue…

Aug 23: $0
Sept 23: $80
Oct 23: $180
Nov 23: $180
Dec 23: $180
Jan 24: $180
Feb 24: $180
Mar 24: $377
Apr 24: $377
May 24: $377
Jun 24: $377
Jul 24: $5,177

So with Grindstone’s birthday coming up, I want to share the biggest mistakes I made and lessons I learned in the last 12 months.

Hopefully you can use some of them to grow your thing better and faster.

1) Give away your thing for free. 😱

Our first Facebook ad.

Worries I hear from new entrepreneurs all the time:

• “I don’t want to devalue myself by working for free.”
• “I want to get paid what I’m worth.”
• “I don’t want to get taken advantage of.”

I made this same mistake. It took me years to actually understand…

Getting paid is a result. It’s an outcome.

But what’s the cause? What leads to the result of getting paid?

Perceived value.

What are the last three things you bought? Here are mine:

1. protein yogurt — $2
2. an Uber — $32
3. a book — $6

I didn’t purchase any of these out of the kindness of my heart. I bought them because I thought they’d bring me value.

yogurt = tasty and nutritious snack
Uber = convenient and fast trip
book = insightful and entertaining break

But when you’re a new business owner, you have no credibility. It’s a risk for someone to give you their money. Your perceived value is low.

(Not your actual value. You’re beautiful and perfect.) 😉

If you say, “Here’s my service, it costs this much,” people will want:

• testimonials from customers similar to them
• referrals from people they trust
• proof of results

(Without this stuff, it’s like a musician trying to sell you his album by saying, “I make high-quality music. Would you like to buy it?” You’d want to hear it first.)

Or better than all of these…

They will want an actual experience of what you offer.

Then they don’t have to risk or trust anything. They just know you’re good.

If you give them your service and blow them away, they will want to continue working with you. Or they’ll write a banger testimonial. Or they’ll tell their friends about you.

If they don’t enjoy your free service, that’s great feedback. You can ask them what would make them want to continue.

Best case: they love it and want to pay you.

Medium case: they kind of like it, write a testimonial, and refer someone else.

Worst case: they don’t like it and tell you why so you can improve it for the next person.

Either way, keeping your mediocre service behind lock and key is the absolute best way to avoid getting any customers.

Final point on this…

Wrong question: How do I start making money? ❌

Right question: How do I get undeniably good? ✅

When you’re undeniably good, it’s impossible not to make money.

Early on, you need reps. You need context and experience.

When I started coaching, I asked all my friends if I could coach them for free. They were doing me a favor by giving me practice and feedback.

I got the better end of the deal.

Eventually, some friends offered to pay because they got value from our work. Others started referring people to me. All were willing to write testimonials.

Now folks just go to my website and see that I’ve done 3,500+ coaching sessions and have 60+ 5-star Google reviews.

No one asks about my credentials because I have undeniable proof that it’s worth their time.

Priority #1: Get really, really good.

Do so by dropping your ego and charging less than “what you’re worth.”

Then just keep raising your prices as you get better and better.

Zoom out three years and you will have a lot of money. 😎​

2) Sell the vacation, not the plane ride. 🏝

Which do you prefer?

a. Earning more money, being a healthier person, and having stronger relationships.

b. Two 1-on-1 Zoom calls per month.

Unless you love video chats, I’m guessing option A sounds more appealing.

Because that’s what you want. Option B is how you get there.

On paper, life coaching is just two Zoom calls a month with yours truly. 🤗

Customers don’t actually care about the how until they decide to buy the what.

If I offered you a trip to Hawaii for $5, you wouldn’t ask me what time the plane leaves. You wouldn’t worry about what food they served on board. You’d probably settle for uncomfortable chairs.

It’s such a crazy deal that you’d accept it and figure out how it works later.

Notice the difference here:

“I offer consulting calls for coffee shops.”​
(Vague commodity)

vs.

“I increase coffee shop owners’ profits by 24% without any additional work on their end.”​
(clear and juicy outcome)

The simplest elevator pitch is:

“I help X people achieve Y result in Z time.”

In Grindstone: We help monetized creators go full-time in 6 months.

If you’re running a business, don’t advertise your services. Tell people what they’re going to get out of working with you instead.

No one cares that Grindstone offers accountability coaching. They don’t care that they get 1-on-1 access to me on Telegram. They don’t care that our program is six months and not eight.

They care that working with us will 10x the speed of their success as a creator. 📈​

3) Percentages are misleading. %

The average close percentage in sales is ~20%.

30% is considered quite good.

My close rate in Grindstone is 83%.

(All hail Dillan, the sales God.) 🙌

To be fair, my sample size is only 5/6.

But what does a 30% close rate actually look like?

Let’s ask the sales God. 👇

You can get five “no’s” in a row and still be crushing it.

The problem is when we get a lot of rejection, it toys with our emotions.

We think we suck. So we change something…usually a few things.

New script. New outreach. New offer.

But then we have no clue how each individual change affected our results.

For example… 🧐

Person A sends 10 messages asking for referrals.

No dice.

Person A concludes: “Welp. I guess asking for referrals doesn’t work.”

Person B sends 10 messages asking for referrals.

No dice.

Person B improves the offer and sends 20 more messages.

Two people refer clients to person B. 🥳

Alex Hormozi (pictured above) teaches a 3-step process for making something work.

1. more
2. better
3. new

In that order.

First do more of the thing. Then make it better.

If that doesn’t change anything, pivot to something new.

I mentored coaches in the past who told me reaching out to friends and family and gifting coaching sessions didn’t work.

“How many people did you reach out to?” I asked.

“Well,” they said. “Like five people.”

Hmm. In year one of my coaching practice, I reached out to 30 people a week.

(All hail Dillan, the marketing God.) 🙌

I started with 10 people every single Monday. Then that got too easy so I went up to 20. Eventually I settled at 30.

More.

I also refined my scripts.

This…

Became this.

Better.

After about a year of reaching out to anyone with a pulse in my contacts, Facebook friends list, and email network…

I tried something new.

I registered my business with Google and collected reviews. My website went live and anyone who Googled “life coach near me” got my lovely face on their screen.

People started emailing and asking me for coaching.

New.

More, better, new. ✅

Right now I need to do way more sales calls to get an accurate read on Grindstone’s offer and my sales skills.

As I record and study these calls, I’ll find the areas to make better.

Once that funnel is mastered, we’ll try new things: paid ads, organic content, begging people on the street to join Grindstone.

Don’t jump straight to new. Do more and better first.​

4) Find your #1 problem and only focus on that. 🔬

(Click here to see the journey of how I made this photo.)

Each time I…

• burnt out
• felt lost
• declined in business

Has come from me trying to build too many things at one time.

This was my ongoing project list between January-June:

1. market Grindstone
2. get good at sales
3. post weekly newsletter
4. grow on LinkedIn
5. record weekly podcasts
6. grow YouTube channel
7. get 10,000 members into our free online community
8. train and lead the team
9. grow on Twitter
10. write book
11. build online course
12. travel from country to country
13. stay in great physical shape
14. be a good friend/boyfriend/family member

To drive this home, a client sent me this short the other day.

Accurate.

We entrepreneurs love new. We love variety. We can’t get enough of it.

Creators join Grindstone and plan on posting to as many platforms as possible.

Sounds logical. More platforms, more eyeballs, right?

Wrong, you silly silly reader.

Because rather than crushing it on one platform with 100% effort, they move slowly on five platforms with 20% effort on each.

I did this with my monster list of 14 projects.

Each thing got 7.14% of my attention. And I wondered why I was so exhausted all the time.

“Burnout doesn’t happen by working a lot. It happens when there’s a huge gap between the effort you’re putting in and the progress you feel like you’re making.”
​ — Steph Smith

I was putting in 50-hour workweeks. And Grindstone didn’t move an inch for five months. 🫠

It wasn’t a work ethic problem. Or a skill problem.

I was just working on the wrong stuff.

Uncle Alex says, “If you work a lot and aren’t making any progress in your business…you’re working on the wrong stuff.” 🧔🏻‍♀️

So I sat down and journaled for two hours. I asked myself five questions:

1. What do I know makes money for Grindstone?
2. What do I think is important but isn’t?
3. Why can’t Grindstone 10x?
4. Which beliefs do I hold that are keeping us stuck?
5. What needs to change so we can grow?

Here are the highlights…

1) What do I know makes money for Grindstone?

• inviting creators to gifted sessions
• doing sales calls with them if they like it
• closing them and asking who else they know

2) What do I think is important but isn’t?

• having a YouTube channel and a podcast
• getting 10,000 creators into a free community
• finishing my book as soon as possible

3) Why can’t Grindstone 10x?

• I haven’t set up a sales call in six months
• I actively choose not to do the things I know make money
• we have no way for anyone to buy anything from Grindstone

4) Which beliefs do I hold that are keeping us stuck?

• asking anyone for money right now = bad
• we have to build an audience first, then try to sell
• a free community will bring us tons of leads

5) What needs to change so we can grow?

• be a full-time salesman and flood my calendar with gifted sessions and sales calls
• stop all efforts in growing my content, book, and social media
• put an offer together that is a no-brainer for potential clients, then go out and try to sell it to them

Voilà. I did just that.

We’re now two weeks into full-time salesman Dill. I’ve done 13 gifted sessions and 2 sales calls.

2/2 closed and signed up for Grindstone.

When you make something people want, tell them about it, and try to sell it to them…you make money.

So if have a new business and you’re not growing, you either:

• don’t have something people want
• aren’t telling people about it
• aren’t good at getting them to buy it

Yet.

All of these can be fixed. But first you need to identify what the main problem is.

Once you know the #1 constraint, the biggest blocker in your business…you can pour 100% of your attention into it.

Let the other fires burn. 🔥

Right now, I’m starting to solve the sales problem.

But my social media doesn’t look great. My book has 46 presale customers wondering where it is. I haven’t touched my YouTube channel or podcast in months.

But none of that matters nearly as much as Grindstone making money.

So that’s where all my energy is going.​

May my mistakes serve you well.

If you want to follow my journey to $50,000/month, get lessons from top 1% creators, and join me as I travel the world with my laptop…

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