#254 James Kemp - The One-Person Business That Makes $250K/Month

Join Voics Incubator for as little as $250 per week: http://voics.co/incubator


Business owners love to complicate things.

Leading to:

• Bloated team
• 34 step Zapier flows
• Complex sales processes
• Razor thin profit margins (if any)

What if I told you there was a simpler way to make more profit and run a calmer business.

No more 2AM ‘emergencies’ from clients. Oh, and you don’t need any employees to do it. 

Yes, James Kemp generates $250K/month with zero employees.

He’s not paid by:

• Hours chained to the desk
• Hours billed to a client
• Any done-for-you
• Delivery services
• Sitting on Zoom

Instead, he’s paid for his wisdom and insights.

This is our second podcast focused on the one-person business anyone can start. With a focus on the ins and outs of his $3M/year solo business.

We put together a step-by-step process for you to get there, tune in now!


Connect with James Kemp
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejameskemp/

My Socials:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/darrenlee.ks
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-lee1


(00:00) Preview and Intro
(02:19) The Foundations of a $10k Strategy
(05:04) The Power of Selective Partnerships
(10:49) Constraints as Catalysts for Creativity
(13:17) How to Buid a Sustainable Business Model
(18:23) Understanding Power Laws in Business
(23:10) Creating Content That Drives Results
(28:08) Aligning Expectations with Results
(33:21) Pricing Models
(37:36) The Reality of High Performers
(42:20) Finding Your Own Self-Care Strategy
(49:24) Energy, Feelings, and the Power of Anger
(52:40) Overcoming the Paralysis of Indecision
(55:08) Defining and Optimizing Your Goals
(59:22) Strategies for Scaling Without Burnout
(01:03:54) Building a Business Beyond Yourself
(01:15:55) Sovereignty: Building a World You Control
(01:18:12) Navigating Complex Financial and Legal Systems
(01:23:09) Relationship Dynamics
(01:24:34) The Value of Effective Communication 

Chapters

• 0:00 Qualifying Clients for Success and Results
• 7:27 Building a Purposeful Life
• 19:38 Creating Clear, Profitable Offers
• 32:20 Ascending Through Natural Value Levels
• 35:23 Personal Growth and High Performance
• 48:15 Navigating Energy and Decision Making
• 52:19 Aligning Head and Heart for Success
• 56:16 Navigating Growth vs. Scale in Business
• 1:02:55 Responsibility and Success in Coaching
• 1:13:45 Navigating International Business and Sovereignty
• 1:24:00 The Impact of Communication in Relationships

Transcript

James Kemp: 0:00

For someone to make 10k in a few days. They need an audience, they need a product and have a skillset and a solution that actually solves a problem. You qualify people based on the level of promise you're making and in the context of what they offer. I want to work out the rules of the game for a solo person who doesn't want a business. Right, I don't want a business. I want cash flow and creativity that fuel my life. My observation of high performers is they know they're going to die. High performers have a much more exquisite sense of time and understand that they have a potential in this life that they need to fulfill and they've only got so much time to do it.

Darren Lee: 0:35

Before we start this podcast, I have one little favor to ask you. Can you please hit the subscribe button down below so we can help more people every single week. Thank you, I think I want to start with uh. You always describe in one of these newsletters how it's not your job to close someone yeah, why is that?

James Kemp: 0:54

if you're in the business of helping people, you can only take so much responsibility? And um, in the course of, uh, in the course of buying something, the more responsibility someone takes for their purchase, the more committed they are to it. And the more committed they are to themselves, the more committed they are to the result. And I think in a world that's very much like transactional you know, capitalist and transactional everyone wants the sale and wants the money.

James Kemp: 1:22

A lot of people forget that after the sale, you have to keep selling them. You sale, you have to keep selling them. You know you have to keep selling them on doing something, keep executing, keep you know. Keep focused, keep on the diet, keep you know. Keep making the offers, keep making the podcasts, you know. Keep building the sales team, whatever it is. And the more you have to sell someone on that, the harder it is, because you're pushing them up the mountain. And if you want to be in this game for the longterm, then you've got to get people results. And the people who you get results are the people who want results and they're sold. You know. They're sold on themselves and they're sold that it's worth it.

Darren Lee: 2:00

So if you're, that could be one of the objections to weekly pricing, because people know deep down their product shit. And if people join, because that's the whole thing right, if you believed in your product, you'd be willing to get people to come in easier and get started for $100 a week because you believe that they're going to stick around.

James Kemp: 2:19

Yeah, there might have different consumption mechanisms, but that's why people are like like get the cash now and fuck everything post sale yeah, yeah, but it's also the thing I've noticed over the years is the people who care about making the sale the most don't have enough opportunity. The people who care who, the people who need the sale at that moment, don't have enough leads right. And one of the reasons my business is so effortless and simple and fun to run is because I always have more demand than supply. And if there's more, if I'm just restrict the supply like I only work with 100 clients in the syndicate, or I only run a sale, or, you know, I only discount something for a period of time then there's always going to be more demand than I'm willing to supply and so I never feel scarce. I never feel like, you know, I'm chasing the market. I never feel like I have to hit a target, because it's always there is it always qualified demand that you have?

James Kemp: 3:17

you only qualify demand. If you only qualify somebody, if you're making a promise to them and you, you need them to have certain resources right. If you're making a promise to them and you need them to have certain resources right. If I'm making a promise to someone, I need to know they've got the assets to use to make the offer or create something. Or you know I've got an offer in store Like the promises will make 10K. For someone to make 10K in a few days, they need an audience. They need an audience.

James Kemp: 3:46

For someone to make 10k in a few days, they need a product and and and to and have a skill set and a solution that actually solves a problem. Otherwise that you know that it might come but it will disappear very quickly. So you qualify people based on the level of promise you're making and and um and in the context of what the offer is. But if it's just have this, and you know I've got a black friday offer right now, I don't qualify people on. It's just a here's seven trainings for 100 bucks, there's no qualification needed. It's like the value, the value outweighs the price. So therefore, the, the demand is there but for qualification.

Darren Lee: 4:16

I think it's very interesting, as we did a workshop on red flags versus green flags for clients, and I think that sometimes there's a difficulty to understand what someone's truly like until they take out their credit card. But you can do the optics, you can check their Instagram, you can check their business if it's Fugazi or not, but then it really gets down to when you're in the detail with someone, and I guess for a customer that is going to be different. So how the fuck do you even think about an install offer for someone when you, your success is predicated on their work and that's interesting, right, because you get fucking great results for people. But how come you're always picking the right horse?

James Kemp: 4:55

because I I pick people who've done the already done the thing, because past performance is an indicator of future performance.

Darren Lee: 5:03

So you know, and.

James Kemp: 5:04

And that doesn't mean that they've made money or anything before. It just means that they've gotten the market, you know, and they've got an asset that they're pushing out there, and the asset in most cases just isn't doing the job for them. So I was told by a mentor years ago you know, over your career you're more defined by who you don't work with than who you do, and I think a lot of people treat you know like clients as a scarce resource, and so they become a scarce resource. You know, I, if you're always chasing clients, then you're always chasing clients. You're always thinking there's not enough out in the market. But if you're, if you're always putting out the right ideas and you're always, you know, selling people on the idea, then you'll always generate more demand than you're willing to supply. And then you select the people who have had a track record of actually doing anything at all, Because most people don't.

James Kemp: 5:52

Most people don't publish the post or make the offer or get the client and promise a result. Most people talk about it. Why do you think that is? I think nowadays the social cost of failure is perceived to be really high. People are scared to do things because they're worried that they'll fail rather than excited about giving themselves an opportunity of winning. I think a lot of people think everybody's watching.

Darren Lee: 6:20

But what's the alternative? I always find this really interesting because I've never struggled with action Similar to what you said in a recent video. You've run like a thousand offers equivalent, right? I don't ever struggle with action. I probably struggle with direction more so than anything else. Right, like shooting straight do you get me? Because the opposite to me is what do I do? I go back to when I used to work in finance. I live in a basement in Ireland, like that's. That's not an option for me, so I have to do this. You know, and like as I, as I said to you earlier about you helping me with our program, I have to keep it going and keep the longevity, because I know coaching programs fizzle out and I'm aware of that, so I have to stay on top of it, which is why I work a lot, because I I want to progress. That it's just a weird thing, because I I don't. I can't understand why someone wouldn't do the work, so things like this can't understand it's the same.

James Kemp: 7:11

It's the same reason people don't have kids it's because they don't think they're worth reproducing. That the a lot of the a lot of the market of coaching, consulting and help and agencies and all these things spend a lot of time trying to convince the market that they're the right choice. If you pay any attention to any of my content or any of the things I say or any things I do, I spend a lot more time building up self-worth in people than professing my worth to them, because it's actually the scarcest thing. And the mindset that you've just described, which I also possess, is weird. It's weird, it's unusual because most people don't think it's worth doing.

Darren Lee: 7:51

Most people don't think it is worth it to go through the pain of having to fail because isn't it all pain, though, isn't it at all true, but like rough roads and smooth, smooth roads and rough, but if that's all, that's.

James Kemp: 8:06

I have a lot of empathy for this. I get you know, and if that's all you've known is if poverty and suffering is all you've known, then poverty and suffering is your world and it's your reality, because reality is created around you, and so most people just don't think they're worth it. And I have a lot of empathy for that, because I know that my mindset is vastly different to most people's and I don't need people to possess my mindset. I just make things that align with people who do possess it or have something inside them that they want to step up to their higher self, and they actually want to step into that because they do have it inside them. They just haven't been acting like that up until now that because they do have it inside them.

Darren Lee: 8:45

They just haven't been acting like that up until now. Were you, did you always have this approach like you're, it seems it's always when you see on the surface you wouldn't think that you think this deeply about things like that. You know, you think that you just focus on, like the offer, that's it. But you focus way more on the psychology side of how it all binds together, like generally from from energy to focus to boundaries. Did you always think like that?

James Kemp: 9:06

Because I had, for most of my life, low self-worth and a chip on my shoulder which is a dangerous but potent combination right what? And so I don't know. I mean, I could blame my mum and dad, but you know they'd be gutted by that, but who knows? I always had something to prove and I never thought I was good enough, and so I think the thing that powered me initially was that I had something to prove, didn't know what it was and, um, a memory came up the other day I don't know if you saw it on facebook of me sharing a video from nine years ago. It was awful, like it's scripted, it's's where I'm fat, I look weird, my haircut's bad, the lighting's bad, it looks like it was filmed on a potato and the audio is awful. And and I sat there and I felt some sympathy for that person which is me nine years ago, and I felt this immense sense of pride because I fucking did it Like I was there, no matter how uncomfortable it was recording a video, because I believed enough to do something, and I built self-worth by doing things and then getting results. And I, I I believe that my role now is to just help people say that I'm not that special, I'm not that smart, I'm not that talented, I just did it and then I stayed in the game and a lot of people want more. You know, people who watch this, people who consume any content, people who invest in themselves, want more, but they're not quite sure what it is. And uh, hopefully, you know people can follow people like me and maybe work some of these things out, that the things that they think are in the way that they think are constraints they think holding them the way that they think are constraints, they think are holding them back actually might be a blessing to them. What are those areas?

James Kemp: 10:49

I think I come across a lot of, especially males, who kind of have some resentment that they've got the constraints they've got, especially children, which is an interesting one.

James Kemp: 11:01

A lot of people feel that their kids hold them back.

James Kemp: 11:05

You know, I've got no time, I've got no energy, I've got these things um, that their children are sacrificed, you know, and they, they were sacrificed to their dreams, whereas for me it's just that's a beautiful constraint that I have, because I want to spend time with my kids, I want to have dinner with them and I want to see them before they leave the house and we've got some basic values in that, but that takes options away from me, which forces me to be more creative and more productive in the time I do have, and so I think a lot of people perceive the constraints that the constraints they have is like catastrophic, is terminal, is unable to move forward, whereas I've always embraced the constraints of not being able to do things to be more creative and directed in the times that I am, like you know, famously say work two days a week, and I work even less than that.

James Kemp: 11:54

Since we last spoke, you know I work even less hours. I've can, I've like, restricted it down to tuesday mornings and thursday morning and what is it you want to do?

James Kemp: 12:03

What do I want to do?

Darren Lee: 12:04

Yeah, Like I want to live, but with that, because I know that you love the game too, though, right Like you're, you're inquisitive, you're like a scientist with this, and I think I I even try to think the same way that you think, or else we have similar thought process in terms of like, we just like it. We like the kind of game. So when you're not doing that, are you tinkering with different ideas? You sitting with your thoughts, like, because that's why you're doing it. Right, you're taking the time off to spend time with your family, but obviously they're in school and whatnot too. So what is it? You kind of?

James Kemp: 12:33

want. I want to. I want to work out the rules of the game for a solo person who doesn't want a business. Right, I don't want a business. I want cash flow and creativity that fuel my life, and I'll measure that by in different ways. I'll measure that by how little I put in in terms of time. I'll measure that by how much energy I get out of it in terms of helping other people and the, and the impact and the joy I get from that. And I'll measure it in terms of money, which is what you know what is the. The money is the scoreboard of, you know, of business. So I've chosen the business metric, which is the scoreboard, which is money. But everything else is me trying to master the game of what is a solo.

James Kemp: 13:17

You know what does a solo endeavor look like? Because I see myself much more as an artist than a business person, because I'm rewarded constantly for creativity and in my you know almost 45 years on earth, I've just observed that 99 of people don't want a business. They want, they want something that feeds their life in terms of cash flow and meaning and and a little bit of identity, but largely they don't want a business. They don't want a big building with their name on it. They don't want, but you know they don't want the responsibility of those things because they've already taken on their other responsibilities, whether it be, um, you know, children or dogs or or anything like that, where, um, it's not that they want a business and all the things to it, they want something that ultimately fuels their life, and, uh, it's hard to define, but part of building the sovereign world for me is life first, and then, you know, an income that feeds that how do you think about the world so that you're building and, um, I always reference that as well.

Darren Lee: 14:14

I've always referenced your work, man. To be honest, whenever I'm speaking with people or whatever, whether I'm even working with people, I always reference specifically your work and I always reference you too. But how do you build that world top down, like boundaries, setting that up because I think people have a good idea of what they want. With that, they're like oh yeah, that makes sense, I put boundaries in place, but then when things come, they don't actually follow through with it. How do you think?

James Kemp: 14:37

about that. So I again, I work from constraints, so what is not negotiable? So in in our household in my life, having dinner with the kids, saying, seeing them off to school in the morning and seeing them home in the evening, it's like the basic things of like the family unit and the integrity. Um, my fiance and I will have date night. We'll go to bed a certain time. Where we have this, you know we will. We have dedicated time and they're the non-negotiables and that then there's the must-dos. I must connect with people every week and download my thoughts and them upload. You know their needs, so I'll. I've had a client call on a tuesday morning for as long as I can remember you know, decade, almost a decade.

James Kemp: 15:24

That's a group, yeah, a group call of some degree. No matter what I've been doing or what I've been running or what I've been building, I've always had something on a Tuesday morning where I connect with people. Then the daily output you know writing every day and 20% of that gets put out. You know out there and make sales and you know generates content and 80% of it is. You know out there and make sales and you know generates content and 80 of it is, you know, kept to myself that I may use another day or as a, as a further expression of my thinking.

James Kemp: 15:51

So for me it, like where it starts, is with my actions. Right, because show me your calendar and I'll show you what you care about. Basically, because the, the things that I do define me, the things that I say I'm going to do, just label me right. And so for me it starts with the actions. So I'm looking at in that unit of time, say a week, what am I doing? Because if I look back on that week, then I then I have basically made a stat, a statement on the world to say these are the things that you know I must do. And then then there's a physical side of that. I see my coach once a week and I have, you know, five or six sessions of movement whether it be weight training or something like that around it, and then I know that those principles stamped on my time define me and if I consistently do those, I become those things.

Darren Lee: 16:48

So it starts with what you do, and it's always it looks like to me that your time is optimized for the business, for making time. It's the maker time, where you're building shit, you're doing stuff. You're not necessarily like doing admin around the corners, like that's the actual designated time and then that feeds into the offers we'll discuss.

James Kemp: 17:04

Of course, but it's like you're optimizing your time for that versus fluff. I'm optimizing my time for the white space. Really, the things that I do are important to me, but only a few things are important to me. My health is important to me, my relationship is important to me, our kids are important to me, my clients are important to me. Outside of that, the world's gonna do its thing right.

James Kemp: 17:27

Um, and then the white space is where the creativity is allowed to happen, because I don't know where when inspiration and things are gonna strike me. I can spend a week reading, I can spend, I can spend a week, I can spend some weeks where I'm not working. But I'm 10 hours in the office because I'm channeling something from somewhere that's come up from my subconscious, that's been brewing for two or three or four months or maybe even years, and I'm creating something new and innovative and novel to me or new ways of looking at things. So you know the things that I do define me, but the white space is me having only a small number of things in. That means that the white space there is where the creativity and the inspiration comes and that's where the leverage is, because you know, we're in a market of new ideas and I have a lot of leverage because I am the origin point of a lot of ideas that then flow out.

Darren Lee: 18:23

So it taught me, true that because I think most people understand that you describe, like the power laws how do you describe power laws versus linear relationships? That you? It's a big part of your ethos, right? How do you explain that to someone?

James Kemp: 18:36

the power laws in the world of client service services is all as all clients are created equal, and we know this on two fronts. We know this because some clients are a gigantic pain in the ass and perform operational drag on businesses that you know is way in excess of others. Some clients take a lot longer to get results and some clients, who are the other end, get the best results. So the least hassle, the least amount of work, the least amount of work, the least amount of stress and the least amount of demands. So we know that all clients are created equal, but economically, all clients aren't created equal either and those power laws tend to be much more extreme.

James Kemp: 19:17

And if you look at the world, the distribution of wealth is very, very extreme. Right, a fraction of the people have most of the wealth, and exactly the same thing is in this person and people's client bases. So my model is predicated on the fact of that. There's something for everyone there, from a $10 book up to, you know, $100,000. Basically, just build your business because all of those people are present. And you know, of my $3 million in revenue this year, 50% of it came from 24 or from 24 27 people can't remember the exact numbers 24, 27 of how many people I've got 212 active clients in 1900 have bought something how do you, how do you internalize that?

Darren Lee: 19:57

so, if you know that this is how the parallels work, same with us. We have some clients with us for two, three years, paying 200k in total. I try to find more of them, yeah, but they're just difficult to find right because they're the, they're the fucking piece of gold basically at the bottom of, uh, at the bottom of the river. So how do I go about doing that? Like what's your? How do you set yourself up for that? Because it sounds like a lot of times you could be spending time on a stuff that doesn't actually yield a lot of results, or just minimal resort results, where you could be trying to find those gems at the top end of the market. Because if you only did that, the three million could be six million a year, or maybe not, I don't know. It can be um.

James Kemp: 20:38

What happens and I was explaining this to some clients during the week is and especially, especially in the modern world we get, we have audience capture, right. So audience capture is that you put content out or you put ideas out and then you get feedback, right? People respond to your emails, people comment on your videos, they comment on your posts, they send you messages on Instagram. Whatever you've got, you've got channels out, but you've also got channels in. What happens with most people is audience capture is that the, the squeakiest wheels, get the most attention. So people start making content that defaults to the loudest people in the audience, which isn't a, isn't directly a direct relationship with the people who pay money, like those. Two things are completely unrelated, but in people's heads they become related, right. So audience capture is really common, where people start making content for the, the lulls, the likes and the views, because the, the vanity metrics, are really addictive. We want people to watch our staff and we're in it for attention, right, we understand we're in attention economy. So the first step is accepting that there's a power law and then looking at the characteristics of those clients and saying what was their before state, what conditions were they under that caused them to come and seek me out and what was their after state and what was the professed ideal and what was the actual ideal? Right, because lots of people say I want this, but they actually, when they get into it, they're like, oh, we're kind of happy here. So you look at the data, right, which says a lot of people say they want a million dollar business. People tell me that all the time, james, I want to get to a million dollar solo, et cetera, et cetera. In my experience most people stop at about 50 grand a month. It's a real damn comfortable place because they've kind of maxed out their opportunity, they've maxed out their immediate skill set. And then the long road up. They feel it because they feel that there's more tension, there's more work and the opportunity cost of the more work is higher. So they kind of stop there. That's a really common kind of pocket that a lot of people get to. But they said they came, but they're really actually delighted that they're making 50 grand a month of you know of revenue and, under my model, basically profit, um, and and then they stopped there. But when they came in they said they wanted to do a million right, so, um, state of preferences and actual preferences are two different things. Right, you know, and you see this in lots of places, but what conditions were they under? What conditions were they in before they came to see you?

James Kemp: 23:10

Because if you make content, that is proof. The three types of content proof prove that you can solve that problem that your ideal client is currently sitting in right now. Problem ways to solve that problem.

James Kemp: 23:25

I do a lot of content around financial engineering and weekly pricing and some of the things I'm known for, because I know that someone can use that immediately. Someone is charging monthly and they apply weekly pricing right now. They're going to get a bump. Right, they're going to get a bump. They're going to have people buying who weren't buying before because, just because they're putting something new out there, I know that I put content out that solves that problem, that people would make some sales and they come back to me and go that worked. Do you have other things that work? And I go yeah, I do. And the third one philosophy. You know who are you and what's your philosophy about those things, because people have a consistency bias. If you say certain things of what you're like and who you are and they buy into those. They believe you'll be those things in the future and you need that you.

Darren Lee: 24:08

You need to share your philosophy with people for people to buy and trust you, because they want you to be consistent in the future, consistently being that person so they're basically buying into who you are as a person and your values, your systems, because all the other shit, the way that you can solve the problem, going backwards, a lot of people can solve the problem, but you're solving it under this pretense of, like, these are my values. It's made a very good point, right, because you mentioned around like the one big outcome, like what it actually is, like the big outcome you're helping people with. Right, because if you about it, there's a bunch of sub-benefits to every offer. So if you look at our offer, it was from the agency perspective. It's ideally, at the end of the day, saving time at the end of the day. But then, yeah, we're growing the channel and then we can monetize the channel. But it's almost like, depending on who, which character type, you're speaking to, you move it across. So a big b2b company is a safe time, no headache. But to a 10k a month, bro, it's make money. So I kind of got fucking caught in my head a small bit because I had like double benefit how do you think about that? Because there's always going to be a series of benefits for someone's offer, right, and that just leads to confusion. Uh, switch costs and then, as a result, the niggas drop off. They're just not buying for that reason.

Darren Lee: 25:29

Do you want to grow and monetize your podcast, but you don't know where to begin? Have you tried all the tricks and hacks but nothing has worked? Have you been wasting time, money and energy and seeing an analytics chart with no growth? That's where Vox comes in. We've been helping podcasts grow and monetize their shows for many years. We've grown shows to over a hundred million views, done over 10 million downloads, generated, over $2 million in only the last year alone, and we can help you grow and monetize your own podcast. We've had some shows go from absolutely zero. We've had some of the biggest influencers in the world come to us to help and improve their show. So if you want to learn exactly our podcast Grow Flywheel and exactly how we can do this for you and completely replicate success, schedule a call right down below myself and we can go through the exact model for you and grow your podcast this year.

James Kemp: 26:16

It requires editing down right, and a lot of offers. Again, like audience capture, a lot of offers grow and morph in response to the experience of customers. People go I like this, I like that, but often there's no filter on whether it was actually useful for them to have. And so in the course of offers, and the same in the course of development, right, you have this thing called technical debt. In the course of offers, you have often delivery debt because things start to be added and then you start to say those to the market as their benefits to working with you and you convolute the idea of what the core is right. And so offers need to go through a regular editing process to to get to the core of what they actually do for someone over what time period. Because the basic heuristic, you know, the rule of thumb is can they see it right? Can I say, can someone see that me getting on zoom with them for an hour will make them 10k in 12 weeks? Right, it's not difficult for most people to see if they've been paying attention for a little bit, you know, for for more than five minutes to me, um, but the the less clear and specific the offer is, the harder it is for them to see, and the harder it is for someone to see, the harder it is for them to buy. So offers need to go through editing in terms of editing down.

James Kemp: 27:46

But also understand that there's two types of people in the market, or multiple types of people in the market as well. Like some people have a high time preference that they want you know from me, they want the model. They're like I want the model, I want to run solo, I want to build this, I want to build this model. I'm like it takes 12 to 18 months and they're like cool, I'm in, right.

James Kemp: 28:08

But for some people they're like I'm not sold on the model, but I want a result and you know, I don't know whether they don't verbalize this, but they don't know whether the model is right for them, but they want the first result. So the first 12 weeks of me helping somebody look the same, but the commitment that they made before they came in is very different. The first 12 weeks we're going to make 10k together, but other or for someone else, they're like I'm committed to the 12 months, but they're actually starting at the same point. So the delivery is the same. It's highly efficient, because I'm delivering the same thing over and over again, but the the the thing that people opted in for at the beginning is very different.

Darren Lee: 28:48

It's kind of giving people what they want, so you can give them what they need.

James Kemp: 28:50

Yeah, the people who 70% of the people who spend 12 weeks with me, spend 12 months with me right after the experience and 30% of people walk away and go. That was great, well, and 10% of people walk away and go. That didn't work and I've got ways to remediate that. But yeah, it's people start and the expectations are set, and the expectations are how much they both got benefit from the offer and also enjoyed it as well.

Darren Lee: 29:18

What other pushback do you get about the model? So like, running weekly pricing, no sales calls? I've seen your emails and people asking well, if I can't talk to you on a sales call then it's not for me. Like, where did you settle on that being like I'm not going to put up with that shit, basically Because you know that would be the stuff that would draw you back into the boundaries element. Right, you set these boundaries and then you know you can make a hundred K from someone on a call. How did you set those boundaries and do you?

James Kemp: 29:47

If you're talking about a recent piece of content, I wrote an email last week that someone sent me a list of questions that they demanded I answer before they bought, and I wrote an email saying this person is not ready to buy for these reasons. These are the questions they asked me and this is why they're not ready to buy. That wasn't a tactical thing, it was just I'm looking for leverage all the time of communicating exactly how I operate and exactly what my boundaries are. They're not. Well, the unsurprising irony is that that person bought something the next day because my response qualified them in their head to say, no, these things are just internal objections I've got and I'm going to move forward with it.

James Kemp: 30:32

So there's, I don't tolerate it, but I also don't need anything. Right? People who need people who need things from the marketplace will always break their boundaries. You know, and you earn boundaries too by being valuable, right? They're not just like, yeah, I'm making 2k a month and, um, I'm not getting on a sales call. I'm like, well, that's going to be really hard. Right, because you haven't earned the right to make that statement. And so boundaries are earned by making yourself valuable because, by definition, you are scarce.

Darren Lee: 31:18

In fact, the more value you have to other people, the more scarce you are, so the more you can enforce your boundaries, because if you are scarce you will be in high demand, and that's just raw laws of the jungle, laws of the universe, and that's how it works but it's also the context of time right, because if you are, let's say, running a bigger business and you've done your hard fucking years, well then you don't have time to be hopping on like this call, this call, this call, this call, which is why you'd have like a program to help people you know you have.

Darren Lee: 31:49

Like that's like step one. And then step two then is coming off of the, the basic entry calls, because you've earned the stripes and I guess that's what I've learned from you when we went from 50k to 100k a month was because we had two offers. It was like, if you really do, if you're really all in 60k a year, like we can have that call right, because that's the border we're in. But if you, if you're not at that position yet, you can just come here and get everything you want answered and work through that model. So that's like step one.

James Kemp: 32:20

I guess maybe I've done it done in a different way the other thing that you've done strategically during that time is as reduce the risk for people starting working with you on a coaching basis or anything like that, by using weekly pricing, by not having like long-term commitments and need just statements and proclamations that this is how long it takes and setting clear expectations. So you've also removed, reduced a lot of the risk of working with you because you've used a model which just is like well, if I just get started, what's the worst thing that can happen? Right? So in conjunction of like elevating your value, you've also made it easier to buy some of the other things and get people started. And when you're a good provider, when you're good at what you do, you have good stuff, you have good community, you get good results. Your priority should be making it easy to get people started so you reduce the risk for them. It's completely different asking someone for 50 grand a year than it is for asking them for 500 bucks a week to get started.

Darren Lee: 33:21

The risk profile is just vastly different and like a lead in motion will continue in motion, will continue moving as they get started. So I think that's the biggest objection I hear of people about weekly pricing is because they don't have confidence in the offer, so they don't have the competency number one, so they're like, oh fuck, I don't have the confidence in myself to get started for a hundred dollars. To set that out, what do I do? After four weeks? I've got nothing to say Exactly. But, dude, it's so funny. We can talk about Ascension.

Darren Lee: 33:45

Next, because people have actually joined our program and I've wrote publicly being like, hey, I'm actually here until I'm actually able to afford the guys that you're running the podcast for me. Generally, they've actually said it publicly it was recently too because they they understand it right now. My question for you off that is just, it's almost about ascension because you talk about like non-linear relationships, people picking their own adventure, and what i've've found is that you know, people don't start with a hundred dollars a week and then go straight to 4k and then go to fucking 5k a month, reoccurring Some people come in at different interjections. So how do you think about that? Because the traditional value ladder is that they, they move their way up the ladder. How do you think about that?

James Kemp: 34:27

My model is predicated on people settling at their natural place for a period of time and they ascend themselves. They ascend themselves because they see the value in what the next level offers, which is more access or more things done for them. And I'm not that different to anybody else. The more you pay, the more access you get. The more people pay you, the more stuff you'll do for them, right, basically, the more access you get, the more people pay you, the more stuff you'll do for them, right, basically. So my model is predicated on that. People see value by participation and then they will have it. They will work to their natural level. And, to give you an example, I have people in my community which is only $100 a week, making six figures a month, because they are self-starter, self-director, and they would potentially have a negative impact by getting more access to me, because they might change more stuff so they know themselves right?

Darren Lee: 35:23

I actually feel that sometimes myself, because, like I can, I can afford more trainings and stuff right, I can buy into it. But sometimes I'm like what I have is like working and I like I'm at a point whereby I just need to do more of that thing over a long as in what I mean time horizon wise, and results will just start coming up Like we don't. We haven't gone backwards in general, but it's just like me being a super impatient fuck to not just give it more time, do you get me? It's not like I don't know how to create an email and I know that's not what you're teaching people, but does that make sense? It's like there's a difference there between tinkering and, as you describe it, burning the business down.

James Kemp: 36:09

I think that one of the cracks mindsets I have is I disrespect what people do and because I don't need anybody to pay me a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars or you know, my private coaching is two and a half grand a week I don't judge why or why people are paying me. I just understand what they want, where they are right now, and I make them an offer that they feel they get the most benefit from. And so when, when they sense that and they feel that they, they settle into the place which feels the best for them, and a lot of the ascension models are based on discomfort, right that, and they're withholding ascension is like I'll tell you this much stuff which will get you to here, but the secret source is behind the rope here and you need to give me another two or $3,000 a month to access that. I'm like here's everything. How much access do you want and how much? How useful do you think I am, from a hundred dollars a week and coming to um a couple of workshops a month to flying to Bali and sitting with me in a villa for two days to map everything out, and then you go off and do it Like what do you feel you need. So if I'm prepared to do it and they're prepared to invest in it, I just honor it. Right, and that means that you you naturally find those people who want their optimal route and the again, the interesting thing is that what people decide as results are very different.

James Kemp: 37:36

Right, I've got two one-on-one clients and at a strategic level, I'm not that useful to them. But at a individual, personal level, about how they're thinking about their team making their next decision, how they're thinking about themselves as a mentorship relationship, I'm extremely useful a to talk to, but I'm probably more useful for them knowing that I'm there, because it gives them a sense of a safety net, that if something does happen, that we're on the end of a whatsapp message and it's not like oh yeah, I'm gonna add 100 grand to a week to your business or blah blah. There'll be times when we do do that, but I'm like have you thought about this or this offer, or we're doing this? And I'm like, how about you do it that way and and it can get strategic, but most of the time it's just the reassurance of knowing and I've I've said this to many people about you, specifically when we went for dinner I was.

Darren Lee: 38:31

I said to you I was like, oh, like, so how much fulfillment are you doing? And you were like none. And I said so what do you do? So you said I've made people think and I was like fuck it. Like dropped on me and one of my mentors that's what all happens. Like I ran through, I ran past, uh, an offer by him that I was doing with a client of very technical, uh, commercials, because it's all based on, like, predicated on performance and everything. And I had to run it by him. But what I was running by him was the reassurance that I could do it, even though nothing changed, but it was almost like the confidence that I can do this.

Darren Lee: 39:05

Just someone, it's just someone checking your homework, man, that's the equivalent. And it's so interesting, right, because you could be at the top of your game. But, like, that's what the guys at the very, very top of the game, that's that's what a board room effectively kind of is. Is someone reassuring you? Yeah, exactly the equivalent. You know, why is it? You think that making people think is so important?

James Kemp: 39:27

like, why is that to for these guys who are high performers I think my observation of high performers is they know they're going to die. High performers have a have a much more exquisite sense of time and understand that they have a potential on in this life that they need to fulfill and they've only got so much time to do it. So high performers are generally looking and the impatience and these things are often characteristics of that are generally looking for anything that will compress time right and they'll test it and if it does, they'll continue to use it and if it doesn't, they'll discard it. So high performers are often, in my experience, just have a much more exquisite understanding of time and compression, whereas people who don't think like that think they've got all the time in the world I will do this when I will do this and they, they are not high performance characteristics right, but also high performers have to deal with the internal pressure that creates because they have impatience or they and if you have got, you know certain other certain characteristics and that can spill over and onto other areas of your life where that the manicness of the work you know is all consuming because you need to reach your potential in a certain period of time, you know, before the clock runs in.

James Kemp: 40:51

I think, inherently, I am Like I'm very aware of my own mortality, but I think in recent years especially you know, just to share something, I've become an idea popped into my head a year ago I was like I want to be a grandparent, I want to be a grand, I want to be, and I'm like where the fuck did that come from? And, like you know, coming out, coming out of that idea, and so that caused me to examine how I was parenting and these things to you know, to for that to manifest in in the future. So my goals, of my goals, are interesting, move to more, more towards legacy and some of those ideas than you know, than necessarily I need to do certain things before I, before I die.

Darren Lee: 41:36

It's like I love to see certain things happen that will then continue on past me well, I can see it even in you, because it looks like you've done so much like internal work, like even when we did meditation session together, like I just feel like my observation of you is that you weren't doing that in your 20s, right, and you would have thought that like, oh fuck, like you don't need that, whatnot, and now you've realized that that's part of playing at a very high level. You know from fitness to food, to what goes into your head, to how you reflect on ideas. That is like the top of the game, right. That's why people like see if jobs would be literally off for six months taking psychedelics, or even like Bill Gates would be in a cabin reading for a week, because you literally need those data sets coming into your head.

James Kemp: 42:20

I I have found that self-care is a single player game. Right Cause I did. I've done all the wake up at 5am and breathe for 40 minutes and then write in your journal for 10 minutes and have a egg time and all the stuff.

James Kemp: 42:34

Right, I did all that and I tried and it didn't work. I've tried. I was, you know, a christmas tree of electronics and you know, probably you know emf, with a, an aura ring and a whoop and then an apple watch and like tracking everything. But because of an obsessive personality I like I found that the data then skewed my mood because it's like the aura ring said, I only had a 63 sleep but I feel fine. So is it crap or do I feel good? And so self-care has been, is it?

James Kemp: 43:03

I think is a very personal journey and I did a lot of the routine stuff as some kind of like performative thing I was performing for myself. Like I have a morning routine, I do this. So therefore I am, and I didn't pay attention whether it was benefiting me. I just did the morning routine because that's what you did, right, and then it wasn't until I actually said what, what does self care mean to me? And examine these things. Did I, did I find my own way with this stuff and that you have to do a lot of stuff to find what that that way is for people. I know people who tracking everything is, you know, is the major behavior modifier. It keeps them on track. It was the opposite for me, right and I it doesn't as a bad or good, it's just what's useful yeah, that's exactly it.

Darren Lee: 43:45

Like you don't have emotion to the vehicle, um, and you don't have any like attachments to something which is really important, right, that's, the main thing is that we talk about like the hard beliefs people have. They don't. They have these hard beliefs for no fucking reason and then they bring the identity on. So, like, in contrast to you in that regard, I like to weigh myself every day so I know exactly like where I'm at, my training, whatnot. I track my food generally, my sleep, I mainly think, is I generally have like an outline for my day, and that's when I feel just like in flow, cause I know like I'm going to the gym, I'm getting some sort of cardio in, I might be working on my podcast, I'm working on like this new thing that I'm doing, so I just feel like in flow with something.

Darren Lee: 44:27

That's why I asked you, like, what do you do when you're not fucking working? Right, because that becomes the next thing. But if you're someone like us, you get into the rumination stage where your brain's like ruminating ideas. So it's an interesting thing, right, it's like you get back all your freedom and then all the other shit pops up in your life. I know I have a ton of bad voices which I've had to give up, like I quit alcohol, quit smoking, quit drugs. Um, because they were just bad voices. Do you get me? And then work can become a bad voice too. Are they bad though? Well, again, they're bad depending on what you do with that element. So I think I think for most people there's no problem drinking alcohol, but I think for me, drinking alcohol it's a bad idea because that is that.

James Kemp: 45:07

Do you think that's going to be forever?

Darren Lee: 45:08

I've quit for three years. So, like when I was in my early 20s obviously early 20s are we partying anyway but I was like drinking a ton. Uh, I was going out partying, travel festivals, clubs and everything. And when I had started my podcast, I was meeting guys like jk, for instance, guys around my age, but they were just crushing it. And what was the gap? The gap was the leisure activity that these guys were dedicating towards their business in the early stages or their self or whatnot.

Darren Lee: 45:36

So I moved to singapore and singapore was super expensive for alcohol. So I quit alcohol and then, one month in, I'd forgotten about alcohol and I felt so much better. I was working on things, I was building new projects, I was growing my podcast, and then it just became this kind of ongoing thing. And then the question is like, why would I go back to it? Because I know that that like opens up like a fucking portal to go to other direction. Um, so it just, it just helped me a lot. And then what's interesting is that I talk about it quite a lot and other guys are in a very similar position, because you know, irish, uk, australia, new zealand it's all the same right when it comes to alcohol, the culture is similar, right. So being here of course helps for that, because you know, in bali you either have the party scene or the entrepreneur scene, there's kind of two right. So that's helped a lot.

Darren Lee: 46:22

But what I'm trying to say with this is, like the same way that you could fucking work 20 hours a day under your office and super depressed, that can also be actualized in drugs, partying, going out, food, everything, exercise. You know, uh, dr gadstad. He's been on, yeah, I've. I interviewed him and he has his latest book, I don't know what it's called. He has like this uh inverted u, curve inverted n, curve inverted u, so it's an n, and basically you put pleasure or like happiness on one axis and the quantity on the other axis, and the more you do something, this has like diminishing returns, but at the beginning it's always positive. So, like one glass of wine and going to meet your friends you haven't spoken in six months is positive. It's good at social interaction. Same with fitness. You train four or five days a week. It's very beneficial, but you hit that inverse and then everything from there is a rapid downhill and that's kind of what's happening fitness, training, food, everything you.

James Kemp: 47:21

I mean, you drink too much water and it can make you sick, right? Yeah, no, it's interesting what you say about bad, because I, there's this very small collection of things that I define as good and bad, and they're usually structural, societal, social things, um, and then everything else I just define as useful or not. So I didn't drink for four and a half years, almost five years, right, because I decided that alcohol wasn't useful to me at that time and that the opportunity cost was too high, just like you, right, the, the scale. I just see the scales. The scales tip and too much of an extreme and the thing that's on the other side is then, like you know, dangling off the ground and you just have to rebalance it by by removing this thing and the scales tip back and then useful.

James Kemp: 48:10

But I don't think alcohol is bad. I don't think drugs are bad. I think for periods, I have found for periods of time in my life that they're not useful at all and I've also found for periods they are Right. It doesn't make me rush back to them and necessarily abuse them. Doesn't make me rush back to them, and you know, um, and and and necessarily abuse them.

James Kemp: 48:37

But I I found that one of the ways I found peace in so many things is just to judge as little as I can, um, and understand whether something is useful or not for a period of time, because what I've found is that that has given me a greater sense of control, because if I decide what's useful and what's not, then I can remove alcohol for a period of time with no cost, because it's not hard, I'm just deciding it's not useful. I can also drink for a period of time with no guilt, which is, I think, equally as useful as well, because a lot of people undertake habits that they've been told are bad and then they're racked with guilt and that is like just performs mental drag, and so much of what people say is good and bad is mainly social rather than individual, whether someone's made a judgment for themselves what made you think so much about energy and detail?

Darren Lee: 49:24

um?

James Kemp: 49:25

I think, I think, like most males, I spent most of my life kind of dead, from the neck down right. The feelings feelings were something that was that were kind of unwelcome. You know, feeling like I'm being really flippant, but you know, feelings are like, you know, for women or something like that. You know, maybe it's I think it's partly, you know, growing up in culture, but also growing up you know where, in a time when people, a lot of people, are trying to be working out masculinity in these things for a long time, and our generations at least. And so when I started to allow myself feel, and again, you know that feelings were natural and that nothing was good or bad, it was just you know what, what is useful and what isn't.

James Kemp: 50:11

It came, it came to the conclusion that you know what is useful and what isn't. Um, it came. It came to the conclusion that you know many people came to for me that, like everything is energy, like anger, is it bad or is it a useful energy? Sometimes, you know, like the my first boxing session back after, you know, two weeks of travel and two weeks of illness, you know, yesterday and yesterday and I got really angry about how much I sucked Right and that powered me through the last 20 minutes of the session of, like, you know, sweating and you know foam was just energy, right, so I I just developed in a and things like removing alcohol again was, you know, get me more in touch with feelings and understand where they sit and and how useful they are at a particular time, and then understand what energies they create and how they're useful, because energy is a useful thing and how we deploy and where we deploy it and where we receive it is a huge component of our experience of life.

Darren Lee: 51:14

Well, you go much deeper into it in terms of how you show up for your clients, how do you show up for your, your community, because most people kind of think, okay, yeah, I need to use my energy properly and effectively. But you know you had a recent video about what people don't have energy it's because they're putting their life force into something that isn't contributing positively to what they actually want to do, so like. How do you go deeper on that in terms of how do you get the result you want by using your energy in the right way?

James Kemp: 51:40

the primary I observed in myself that the primary thing that depleted my energy was unmade decision such a good point and so the primary thing that depleted my energy as soon as I you know it's like red cars, right, you know, as soon as you see it in yourself, you start to see it everywhere. And I observed that anytime I was not committed to something or not, or half-assing something or not deciding on something, that it would be very much depleting on my energy because I would think about options. I would try to add options all the time. So I was constantly thinking about creating more options because I had fear of committing to the thing that I wanted to do. And when those ideas won't go away, where they come from? Who knows? Do they come from God? Do they come from your soul? Do they come from your heart? Who really knows? They'd probably just come from all of those places, plus experience. When they won't go away, the longer you sit and not do those things or not commit or remove them from the stack, the more energy you drain by swirling and swirling around them. And I just observed this in people for a very long time, and one of the things that I coach people on is aligning these two things right, because a lot of people have this knowing, knowing what they want to do, but they're intellectualizing all the things that can go wrong. What will people think? What if it doesn't work, what if it takes too long? You know what if, what, if, what, if, what, if?

James Kemp: 53:07

And one of the things that you know, I believe alignment is just bringing these two things together, bringing the head and the heart together, because then a commitment is made, and a commitment is always made beyond decision. And there's there's also the, the inverse of that, which is some things need to be removed, right? You know pining for, uh, you know the a relationship that never happened, or, um, pining for an idea that you never started, and sitting with regret, and all these things are other ways to burn energy that you don't have. That's precious for today. So I guess it has mastered the removal of indecision, um, and the and and the speed that I can commit to things. I don't need much, I don't need much information, I don't need much data. I have a high level of trust in myself and I also know the map is not the terrain. I know that I will start something and it will look very different to how I think it's going to go, and I'll do it anyway.

Darren Lee: 54:04

That's interesting, right, because that's kind of like the the program you built can morph as you said it. The program you built can morph as you said. It can adjust, but you need to have it to map and the terrain but realign some of it. Right, because the removal is something people don't think about. They think about just ad addition. How can I get more in? Can we open up a new channel? Can we run ads? But how do you think about what to remove, because you've done that elimination really well? I think most people don't. I don't even think I'd probably do that as well as I could.

Darren Lee: 54:30

I look at delegation, but not pure removal. Do you want to know how we book the most amazing guests on our podcast? Like you're seeing today, I've created a full template and guide and every single script that I've ever used to get the best guests in the world and I've put everything together in a simple step-by-step process. If you click the link down below, I'll give you the exact guide to book any guests on your podcast and have a full guest management system for you to manage every single guest. If you want to see the process behind booking guests like Justin Waller, luke Bellmer, sterling Cooper and every guest in the online business space. Click the link down below and you'll get the full guide for free.

James Kemp: 55:08

Thank you. One of the most basic coaching questions I ask is what are you trying to achieve? Because people will present me with all these things. They'll pay lip service to the thing they say they're trying to do at the beginning and they'll present all these options that don't do any of that, and then I'll go what are you trying to achieve, what are you optimizing for? Which is a synthesized version of the same question, and then it gets back to the oh, why are you doing this?

James Kemp: 55:35

And in some cases, the problem that you're trying to solve is much simpler than the solution they're trying to apply. I just want it to be easier. Okay well, let's change the price, let's make it cheaper, so it's easier to sell, so you have less time spending in the DMs and like you don't have to be on the phone. Okay Well, what if I don't get enough sales? Oh well, we'd optimize the price for that point, and then sales will go up, but you've got your time back. What are you optimizing for? And so I've just observed a lot of people try and apply a solution and it's like the square peg in the round hole, without understanding what they're trying to optimize for.

Darren Lee: 56:16

What are you optimizing for is an amazing question that most people don't think about. They're just going to say the business growth right. They're not going to have an actual deep question. Usually and that's the best thing that you've taught me was the first day of the mastermind, which is answering that question, Because most people aren't even thinking about it.

James Kemp: 56:32

My biggest problem with the idea of a business for most people is default growth. The default idea and the default demand of capitalism is growth, right, and it's in entrepreneurship and small business and those things. It's growth at all costs and brackets, because it's the invisible bit, right. So the problem with the mindset of a business is the thing always needs to be growing on some metric usually revenue and usually money and people get away from like why did you start this in the first place? Like, what are you doing? Oh, I started this so I didn't have to commute and spend more time with my family. But here you are chasing, here you are working 60 hours a week and chasing more money than you've ever had before. So what are you optimizing for? What are you coming back to?

Darren Lee: 57:17

So we all you know, get away from ourselves all the time and that's why communities, mentors, coaches, consultants, sometimes you know extremely useful to ask us those questions, because without a lot of practice, we rarely ask them ourselves because if you think about the revenue metric on that like, let's say, if it's something like yourself, those children for something like me, who's like young, the default is like, oh, if I just make more money, then, like, I can like do less downstream, or it helps down stream if I have kids, it can help them, or whatnot.

Darren Lee: 57:50

There's always like a it's the word for it, there's always like a rationale or there's always like a way to make up for the extra bit of work, whereas yourself and I've both just watched with this too, being content with where you're at and then building around. That is what most people never get to, because they feel they're never going to get it again. And I'm even that position right. It's like I have to keep the fucking ship alive just because I've never been here before. So it's a new territory. There is that element too, right and it's fear I'm surrounded.

James Kemp: 58:22

I have wonderful, amazing friends, and I have, I know, people who make more money than me and I'm smarter than them. Right, and I sit there and go. Why is he making so much money? And I'm smart and I go, maybe I should, and this is, like you know, monkey mind, monkey mind. And then nowadays I sit back and go well, very content, doing exactly what I want. I've got more money than I know what to do with more money than I ever need, pouring into investments, doing all the right things. Got lots of time. I'm very happy, don't play someone else's game, and so it is natural. It is really natural, and it's not something that people should feel guilty, because part of drive is looking at options, looking at optionality. Part of drive is questioning like what am I really capable of and do I want that? But part of maturity is knowing what you don't want and knowing what you won't tolerate.

Darren Lee: 59:22

So how would you advise someone to build that stack that you have, like what's the, what's the protocol, you'd go under To build everything.

Darren Lee: 59:28

Yeah, like, do, like what's the protocol you'd go under To build everything. Yeah, like, do you do it in segments? Do you strip it out? Like I remember your advice to me, like we ran the agency for so long all in and you just said to decouple it. Like, is there an element of like having to do the yards to get that offer really dialed in and then to strip it to be able to do it? Like, how do you think about that?

James Kemp: 59:48

Yeah, yeah, so strip it to be able to do it. Like, how do you think about that? Yeah, yeah. So growth is. Growth is a curve like that, in terms of the effort curve right, the when you're, when you're starting and trying to grow something, you are throwing spaghetti at the wall and then you're seeing what sticks Right. And this is the difference between the growth and scale phases.

James Kemp: 1:00:09

That is hard for people identify. When you're, when you're in a growth phase, you're just pushing, you're throwing whatever you need at the wall to see what gets results and what, what you get rewarded with, what comes back, what opportunities come back. Then you reach a stage where it's obvious that more energy and more effort into the thing will generate diminishing returns, because that's what will happen. You'll see that in revenue plateaus, right you? You will work in an agency. You'll get to 60 grand a month and then you'll work harder. You'll send, make more offers, you do more proposals, you'll go more, do more calls, etc. And the calls get more expensive. But people are disappearing out the back door and you're still at 60k Really common. Everybody finds this level. For some people it's 250 and 500,000, but everybody's got a level where diminishing returns sit in.

James Kemp: 1:01:06

At that point you need to grow by elimination, and that is what scale is. Scale is investing strategically in resources that that grow, that enhance the bit that is proven to work. Okay, we're going to reduce down because 80 of our profits come from this product, so we're going to kill the other 20, right? Or if you've got a big audience, you realize that you've got an audience asset there, like you did, and say, hey, we've got, you know, excess assets here, which is consulting, training, all the resources that you built up and we're going to sell that to that audience to to achieve scale, because that we've generated another asset, which is demand through the, through the, in the course of messaging and talking about those things we've in the, in the agency space, it's like there are people who can't afford your services. So therefore, there are people who will buy coaching and consulting below that, right.

James Kemp: 1:02:00

So the growth scale waves, you know, go like that. They all select back and forth and then you will do that. You'll reach the other ceiling, the next ceiling, wherever that may be. It might be higher in revenue. For me it was not higher in revenue, it was just less hours, like since we last sat down and talked, my revenue stayed the same, my profit stayed the same, but the number of hours I work has dropped a lot. So my effective hourly rate has gone up because I've optimized for my own time.

Darren Lee: 1:02:25

And because of maybe, maybe it's the constraints you have, like the extra constraints, but because you have more customers in your series of products and services, do you not have to be like on more, because showing up like, let's say, in the community, or maybe dedicating more time, that the workshops every week are like really dialed in like, do you not have an inherent more stress because there's more people in there? No, how is that designed, though?

James Kemp: 1:02:54

me not in the middle of it.

James Kemp: 1:02:55

I don't understand in in client serving businesses, often you'll have like a key person risk and it's not obvious, right, where everything needs to flow through a certain person, like nothing happens without darren saying so, or the episode don't go out until I've looked at them and those things. After a certain point in scale, the everything flowing through you isn't scale, you are a bottleneck, right, and so both holistically, in terms of a mindset, I don't put. I don't develop codependent relationships with clients. I I coach them to coach themselves as much as they can, because codependence is a great business model but it's a terrible relationship model. Right, I want people to be in my world because they want to be there and they get value from being in that world, but I don't want people to be in my world because they need me, because that is inherently limiting to their growth, right you must see that a lot that people have businesses that they buy.

James Kemp: 1:03:54

I see people perceive that that unless I tell them to do something, that they're going to be a catastrophic failure.

Darren Lee: 1:04:00

But I disabuse them of that fact very, very, very quickly but I mean, like you must see, businesses that are very predicated, based on the fact that people buy into because of the founder. Most coaching businesses are like that.

James Kemp: 1:04:09

Most modern coaching businesses, the, the coach, is the center of the, the universe and everything flows through them, and they can't work out why they're not scaling. And they're not scaling because they don't want it to, because that means more responsibility that needs to flow through them and even and even less time and energy. So for me, the, the, the central point of the business is not me, it's that I'm available in these times, but you can get different access to my ideas without me. Thousands of people have bought $100 to $1,000 courses from me that I've built as assets, in some cases years ago, and I wasn't there. And I'm not there because I build assets and I'm not in the middle of them.

James Kemp: 1:04:52

Many of those people then say I want you to help me customize this and customize that and do that, just what you've demonstrated here. And I say, well, this is how it works and this is what, how you get access to me. But again, I'm, I'm, I'm arming them with an asset that they go and then yield and understand then, but in the process, I've showed them how I've generated that and created that. I got on with a guy yesterday and he's got a big audience and and uh, in a digital product space, and he's got a passion project right and I'm like this is how I create the offer, this is how we think about it, this is how we do it, etc. In an hour I've given him the asset, but I've more, more valuably, given him the insight on how to reproduce that essay and recreate it not just in this passion project, but also in his business.

Darren Lee: 1:05:41

So the roi on that is is unlimited so it's basically teaching, it's coaching people to think. At the end of the day, that's the biggest, biggest take home here is that you're you're able to take that information with permission.

James Kemp: 1:05:52

So one thing I do um, you never come to calls, but um, one thing I do on calls is um is when I see someone stuck or when I see someone really trapped in there in the spinning or in in a group environment, especially in a coaching environment.

James Kemp: 1:06:08

Um, they, especially in a coaching environment, um, they, there's a social thing as well. They don't want to look silly, and if I see someone kind of trapped in that I'll go. Can I consult you? And that's in my world code word for can I tell you what to do? Right, because if I, if I ask permission to do that, then it shares some of the responsibility of the decision they make and the outcome that ultimately comes from it. If I don't ask permission to that and tell them to do something, then the outcome of that is much more my fault and the upside of it is also my fault as well. So they will, they will give me too much credit for it and then the lesson will be missed. But if I just simply ask for permission to consult to someone, then the outcome is shared. The ownership of the outcome is shared, but the lesson is actually continued that they can, they have permission to make that decision for themselves.

Darren Lee: 1:06:58

Language is important right.

James Kemp: 1:07:03

Expectations are crafted by that language as well, so the expectation of who owns something and who takes responsibility for it is, um it's, very delicate and relating okay, so you think people would buy, often buy into coaching and then pass the expectation or responsibility on the coach, or they would pass their there I mean most people want to offload most responsibility for almost everything exactly that's what I mean.

Darren Lee: 1:07:29

But you know, in in a coaching setting, it's like because they're done for you setting, it's all that right, it's all that do you get me. It's on the service provider to get the result and to do everything and people will be an asshole to you because you're a service provider, so you're like an employee yeah, I own, you do what I tell you exactly, and I and I'll pay this retainer until I cancel on stripe.

Darren Lee: 1:07:51

However, sounds like some better experience, however, in a coaching setting though you're passing that responsibility, you're putting they have the belief in them. You're putting the belief in them that they can go get the result.

James Kemp: 1:08:08

Coach coaching is showing somebody that they already have it inside them to do it.

Darren Lee: 1:08:14

Consulting is telling them what to do mentorship mentorship is showing them how you would do it yeah, and I think I'm just early in my journey in that coaching element, which is like I just want everyone to fucking get really good results. So I'm very close to it not like very close, but you know, like a message wouldn't come in and I wouldn't and it's not that I'd miss it, put it that way and I get back to people straight away. Does that make sense? Because I want to see people succeed and sometimes I feel like I don't have the control because we're not physically doing it. That's the best thing about an agency, right. It's like you want that result, result. We'll just fucking do what we need to to get there, and that's that's the beauty of it. Right, because we have a system that goes with doing it. Who are coaching people miss the steps. They can miss the steps why do you?

James Kemp: 1:08:57

why do you want people to succeed?

Darren Lee: 1:08:59

because they put their trust in me, you know so, like they think that I'm the person I can get them. The result and we have the biggest thing for me is the fact that we've made it so repeatable for so many people that in like a done for you setting, that it's like I want to show people that it actually is so repeatable. You know, again, as you said, people have different results over different time horizons. We have some b2b podcasts that are very quiet and small, but but they are small because they're going to be small. So it's like this model works in different industries, different niches, and it's like you can also just do it yourself. Do you get me? So that's why, for me, I kind of have that like a little bit of kind of fear or like lack of control If I see someone not doing the steps they need to do.

Darren Lee: 1:09:44

They jump to step seven and it's common. It's common because they're looking at the thing they're trying to solve, but they need to do. They jump to step seven and it's common. It's common because they're looking at the thing they're trying to solve, but they have to go all the way back, and that's why sometimes we've we've an unsexy offer, because we always say that the first part is strategy, and strategy is like everyone, fuck me, it's a good business plan, it's not. But it's the fact that if it's a house on carrots, if it's not fucking done, all the rest of the shit doesn't matter. Uh, about people who jump into the end zone? So who defines success? Who defines success? Um, it's a good point. What do you mean? Who defines success? Because, like, I would define it in the beginning, I guess. But are you saying like who would come to the end point and be like no, we've hit the success mode?

James Kemp: 1:10:28

I've noticed the danger in coaching is that the coach defines success for other people because they they define that unless you meet this criteria often in business coaching, which is revenue, profit or something like that, not actually, it's usually revenue, not profit.

James Kemp: 1:10:47

No one talks about profit, um, apart from me, um, the that the coach defines success, which is unless you make 100k a month. This hasn't worked right and in my life, in my experience, everybody defines success differently and in the in the course of coaching. For many, the act of allowing them to invest in themselves is success. For some people, the act of being part of a group is success the fact that they can be part of the group and also say they're part of the group. For some people, the act of clearing out half a day of their calendar is to find success because of what they can do with that time, because they can go and visit their grandma in hospital, right. And so the danger for coaches happens when they have a limited definition of success and they put that on people, which produces failure. And they put that on people, which produces failure because it it's. It essentially creates people feeling unsuccessful because they're not allowed to define their own one. They're not, are not defined there.

Darren Lee: 1:12:04

Like if the promise, if you're giving someone a promise, you're holding them to that promise and that's why that's why I said I was like, oh, I'm not too sure, am I putting that on? Because everyone, everyone is different. Like some guys are just getting started, some guys are 100 episodes in, some guys just want to build a business in the back end. So success is different for everyone and they've picked their own journey right, because some guys have hit their first 10 000 views on a single video, which is a success to them, and then other people are super stuck and they just want to get on stock and some guys want to get monetized could be publishing an episode.

James Kemp: 1:12:34

For some people, publishing one episode of a podcast is math, is more generates more feelings of success in that person than someone who's published a hundred thousand and, you know, publishes 100,000 or more, right? So all I've observed is that people, if given the space and the tools and the care and the access and consideration, will define their own success. Like I, have a number of people who are in my world who just love learning, right, and they would be judged as financially unsuccessful by and by the coaching and consulting space. Right, they do, they have a living and they do okay, and they've been like that for a long period of time and but they are very, very happy with where they are and they are very, very happy with where they are and they are very happy by getting new insight and learning and my way of thinking and me going. What did you take of this? What do you care about? Like the learning is success for them.

Darren Lee: 1:13:43

And.

James Kemp: 1:13:43

I don't judge that. And then I've got, you know, some of them. I've got absolute killers who are like where's the next 100k a month coming from? Because until I'm there it's just like it's all, it's all dark and you know it's not worth it, right? And again it's like, okay, let's go, because I've I've got both in the toolkit. I'll teach you as long as you want to be taught. You know and you're, and you give me energy back because you give me insight and ideas and feedback on those things and also, you know, push you up to the top of the mountain if you, if you really, really want to go there. You know, and I've got people with massive goals and it's like I believe in that goal more than they do. Yeah, you can get to five million a year, like they're.

James Kemp: 1:14:25

Like I think I want to and I'm like you can borrow my belief in that. I'll show you how.

Darren Lee: 1:14:31

Do you think a solo business is possible to 10 million a year? I think.

James Kemp: 1:14:34

I'm I'm clear on the path to six right.

James Kemp: 1:14:38

It's just more of the same.

James Kemp: 1:14:41

I think the next, the next steps up, the next steps, the next steps up for that at either end of the spectrum of the marketplace.

James Kemp: 1:14:54

So for me it is a much bigger lower ticket suite of stuff, because I've grown from about 16 grand a month to almost 100 grand a month in low ticket product sales and I'm only really just getting started and working out how to organize those in terms of people buying and traditional funnels, like okay, I bought the 49 thing and now I'm buying the 99 thing, and now I'm buying the 399 thing. And then at the upper end, where I've got a lot of demand for people to become sovereign, they're like I can see how you can live and have a company over here and a residence here and a passport here and a company in the middle of this that charges in different currencies, that live in different places, and the tax benefits of that, the familial benefits of that if you come to places like Asia, et cetera. And they're complicated, complex, multi-year kind of deals of changing people's residency and helping them start companies and those things. So they're very valuable, valuable deals.

Darren Lee: 1:15:55

So that that's my path for me, you want to do something like that, because that seems more hands-on.

James Kemp: 1:15:59

Yeah yeah I mean my book's called the sovereign consultant. You know, and I've started defining what a sovereign man is right and a sovereign sovereignty is building a world. It's not just freedom. Like a business will often give people freedom from something, usually from something that happened before, like a job I can, don't have to work from an office anymore, I don't have to commute, I can work from bali or whatever you might. You get the freedom. But sovereignty is actually building a world, and building a world requires you to understand where the risks come from and the threats come from. And uh, but careful what I say. You know like the black helicopters will come over, but you know, at a certain point your biggest risk is. You know governments and seizure and laws and you know and you need to be pretty clear about where you are, what you're doing, who you're doing it with and because you're. You're kind of skating between the lines, not, not in, not intentionally, it's just the way the world is set up and fragmented and the way it's changed.

Darren Lee: 1:17:00

Man, let me interrupt you. But uh, I went, for I went to like a cigar night with a bunch of guys last week and this guy, elliot, arrived. He was a tax strategist and he's helping like guys like six, seven figures, so like, relocate, whatever. So the big guys like nomad capitalists, they're kind of going after eight, nine, ten figure entrepreneurs. So those guys like, it's actually a little bit easier for them because they have an office in san francisco and a thousand employees.

Darren Lee: 1:17:25

But these guys that are six, seven figures, they're a bit nomadic. So there's all these international laws that we don't even know about that have like domicile rules and like, even like. But these guys that are six, seven figures, they're a bit nomadic. So there's all these like international laws that we don't even know about that have like domiciled rules and like, even like management rules, weird rules. Anyway, he was describing that these guys are just they fall between the cracks, indirectly, like indirect. They don't even realize it. So you think you're as above board as possible until you're not right and I think that's like the that's the reality of this is like similar to me, like I have three entities and like I'm trying to do as much as possible and I have fucking accountants everywhere, deliberately, so that I don't hit any tripwires.

James Kemp: 1:18:01

Yeah, you know, and it's complicated, and it's complicated and that's why he has a job, bro, and it's like the worst thing about you know, the answer to the client is like it depends, right, where are you?

James Kemp: 1:18:12

Are you an American? Okay, that's a different story from an Australian or a Kiwi, et cetera. But for me, sovereignty has always been about building a world that you can control, and I've helped people make a lot of money, right, but it's not until they get that first $400,000 tax bill, or they get that first um, the the kids come home and they're in the mainstream school and they realize that their, their value set and their world view has completely changed and they've, like, got this conflict with the old way, western way of doing things and the way that they've been exposed to through people like me, where they, there's a greater sense of freedom and all of those things. So, yeah, it's a long answer, but, um, as I explore the, the, the pointy ends of the business model, it's helping a smaller number of people more deeply and people asking me to build them houses and all kinds of things, and then helping more people you know less directly by, you know, having a bigger suite of digital products.

Darren Lee: 1:19:09

Super interesting, directly by you know, having a bigger suite of digital products. Super interesting, right, because it comes a point where it's not about how much money you can make, it's about not losing the money that you have. You know it's, but at some point, like you, don't need the 10 million a year and no one likes you talking about those problems.

James Kemp: 1:19:20

But you get it.

Darren Lee: 1:19:21

You could do the but you could do the trim when you're doing forever, versus having to like push for 10, breaking all your values and then having to relocate to fucking uruguay. And that's literally what was advised me at one point. So I need to move to uruguay, to get residency there and a passport there, and I was like jesus christ, I'm not doing this, right so people will, someone might, and someone pays the money, right, so like that's the logic and the values. But yeah, man, we've been recording for an hour and a half. Fucking hell. This is great, always good, always good, man, always good. It's a lot of fun. Anything final that you're working on that you want to share, I think I'm really.

James Kemp: 1:20:00

I'm really gonna be doubling down on the sovereign that, that that concept, right. You know, and honestly it's probably the been been the hardest thing for me, because giving people an identity is the longest it doesn't have an immediate ROI. Someone buys a product of me and takes a Google Doc and makes 10 grand and goes, woohoo, you're a genius and I'm like just write shit on Google Docs. But talking about sovereignty and freedom and family and your own personal sovereignty in terms of building the world and controlling it around you and your relationship and your body and all these things is like you know I'm exploring the edges of that and you know I want to take as many people as I can along there.

James Kemp: 1:20:47

Yeah men really, because I have naturally a lot of people coming to me trying to work out things that they think are very difficult and complex, because they've got family, they've got kids, they've got they want, but they still have the desires and they still have ambition and they still want to, they still develop skills and they're like how do all these things fit together? And like, candidly, I feel like I've worked a lot of stuff out, like through hard graft and doing that myself and experimenting and failing, and you know, I had a, I had a marriage that didn't survive that, and so I feel a deep sense of responsibility, firstly to myself, to, you know, truly be sovereign, but also a deep sense of responsibility to help other people. You know other men do that because understand that there's this can be a joyous, wonderful existence and some of the things that you may be think holding you back, um, just just aren't.

Darren Lee: 1:21:39

Fuck man, before we finish up, what's your advice to me for getting married? I've been married three months now, so, after coming through your divorce, what do you think?

James Kemp: 1:21:52

Um. The longer the relationship, the more um. After coming through your divorce, what do you think? The longer the relationship, the more things need to be renegotiated as you go along. Right. And so my advice to people who are married is don't take for granted, just because you're married, it means this. Just because you're married, it means that you man, she woman and these are the roles, because they morph and change the people change during the course of marriage. What you want to, it means that you man, she woman, and these are the roles because they morph and change the people.

James Kemp: 1:22:17

People change during the course of marriage. What you want to do where you want to be, what she wants to do where she wants to be, who she wants to be, who you want to be, are all dynamic things, especially for different people, right, and so, as you go along, renegotiate those. And that's communication. That is like saying I want to be these things and I want to be in this place and these are my expectations. And doing those and these are my expectations of you in there. Are you prepared to meet those? Right? And some of that's direct communication and others is, you know, especially by miles, is is leadership base, which is like we're going this way and I think we should go here and I'd love for you know, I'd love for us to do this and clearly painting a vision, and so it's. It's a dual thing of, you know, leadership, of deciding what you want and going after it and then but communicating where you're going and and those things along the way and who you expect both people to be, both now and on the other side of it.

James Kemp: 1:23:09

Because during the course of relationships, during the course of marriage, people change and people have different desires. You know, women who have children often come out of the baby phase and the and the and the children phase and go. I want to define myself again, I want an identity. I don't want to just be so-and-so's mom, right, and so they, they have to go through a period of self-discovery and rediscovery of those things and if the, the husband, isn't supportive or has an understanding of those things, that can create conflict because it can look like someone's pulling away when they're really just trying to find themselves and so lean into who people want to be and understand whether you support that and sometimes, sometimes a lot, of, a lot of relationships should end because they're so far apart and the expectations are so misaligned that actually you're incompatible.

Darren Lee: 1:23:57

It's sunk cost at that point, right, the sunk cost fallacy. It's interesting because it always goes back to communication. No matter whoever I speak to, it's always communication. I think specifically Irish and UK people. They don't communicate, like my parents didn't have a marriage at all, basically like they shouldn't have been married. Right, they're just fucking arguing for 25 years. It's like in that instance people can't communicate. And uh, who actually was it? Fuck um, I think it was sahil bloom in his book five. You'd actually really like the books come out in january.

Darren Lee: 1:24:34

I interviewed him in new york last month. It's like the five um ways to live like a great life. It's health, wealth, relationships. It's all broken out. But he specified one of the main reasons for divorce or marriage is ending or relationships ending, and it was the gap between the problem happening and the gap and the solution. So people will, you know, they say, fuck you, I'm gonna go to bed, whatever, and then it drags a day or two. So the longer that gap it is indicates a higher chance of actually getting divorced or breaking up.

James Kemp: 1:25:02

And that's most irish relationships, you know I I joke with my beautiful fiancee that the best thing about being with a Brazilian is that when something goes wrong, it all blows up in the moment and it's all solved in the moment and then we can move on. But I mean, it's the nature of, like you know, two different people who are, you know, not afraid of conflict, mean that we often, you know, it will butt into something and explode into something, but then it's, then it's moved on. So, yeah, the refractory period between something happening and something being solved is um is really crucial.