#289 Lara Acosta - This One-Person Business Made $1.5M with NO Sales Calls

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I saw Lara Acosta make $140k in 5 days last week.

She told me exactly how (I recorded it).

In this episode, she broke down...

The behind the scenes of building a $1.5M business.
The exact systems to launch and sell out without calls. 
How to build a personal brand and monetise it online.

And so much more.

This is one of the most tactical breakdowns I’ve recorded.

If you're using content to grow a real business, this is for you.

(00:00) Stop Overcomplicating Your Business
(04:11) Why Simplicity, Focus, and Execution Win
(08:52) Sales Psychology 101
(13:34) Creating Offers That Actually Convert 
(16:49) How to Choose the Right Platform
(21:55) How to Scale Smart
(26:09) Why You Should Stop Copying Top Creators? 
(30:43) Building High-Ticket Programs
(36:50) How to Fix Broken Sales Systems
(42:47) Creating the Right Type of Content
(46:05) Sales Calls vs Funnels
(49:18) How to Monetize Your Audience 
(56:30) Finding the Right People and Building in the Right Place
(59:51) The Truth About Getting Results
(01:03:21) Becoming the Person Who Deserves the Outcome
(01:07:26) Why Almost Successful Still Isn’t Enough
(01:10:58) Coachability & Emotional Maturity in Entrepreneurship
(01:13:21) How to Diagnose Business Bottlenecks 
(01:15:46) Launching with Clarity (Not Confusion)
(01:18:11) Are Webinars Dead?
(01:22:48) Advanced Funnel Tactics
(01:28:42) How Top Founders Make Decisions
(01:31:35) Personal Branding
(01:37:19) Why Relatability Outperforms Logic
(01:39:11) Learn the Skill You’re Avoiding
(01:42:02) First: Why LinkedIn Is the Easiest Platform to Win On
(01:46:08) Content Strategies That Actually Work

Chapters

• 0:00 The Secret Behind Six-Figure Launches
• 8:19 Weaponized Incompetence: The Bell Curve Effect
• 18:42 Understanding Your Offer and Target Client
• 38:11 One Platform, One Problem, One Solution
• 57:17 Community Building: Harder Than It Looks
• 1:13:13 The Value of Coachability and Self-Awareness
• 1:32:02 Identifying Bottlenecks in Your Business
• 1:41:46 The Psychology of High-Ticket Sales
• 1:53:45 Running Effective Webinars That Convert

Transcript

Darren Lee: 0:00

What is the secret behind a six-figure launch?

Lara Acosta: 0:03

The secret is you need to understand who is the target client that you're talking to specifically so you understand what they're willing to do, so you can get them from A to B. They want to get from pain to solution. The journey to success is filled with self-awareness. I see this all the time with people.

Darren Lee: 0:32

They want the outcome so bad, but they are not willing to become the person that they need to become in order to get to that outcome. And in this episode we break down how she launched products like content code and creator capital, generating six figures in one single week using nothing but LinkedIn, a Stripe link and a simple landing page. We go deep into building high converting content without burning out, creating launch systems without overengineering, using AI to scale content that actually sounds like you, writing emails that sell without sounding like a sleazebag. If you're a creator, consultant or coach tired of bloated funnels and bro marketing, this one will rewire your entire thinking completely. What is the secret behind a six-figure launch?

Lara Acosta: 1:17

The secret is weaponized incompetence. I think I've been thinking about this as I wrote an email this morning about what actually made it succeed the most, and it wasn't the insane imports of deep research, consultancy calls, all these books and all of these YouTube videos that I tend to gravitate towards when something's not working. When something's not working, instead of going to all get to all of this help which does work, the main thing that moves the needle is just doing the thing that I would have done when I started launching things and doing product launches, which was assuming, well, having ignorance, because ignorance is often bliss. So when you're ignorant about what the best strategy for a launch is, or what the best offer style is, or what the best input to get the highest outputs is, you are more likely to do everything that makes absolutely no sense in order to get to your output that you actually desire. Because that's what I did at the start, because I didn't know enough, so I that enough. I had to fill in that gap, and then, over time, when I, when I arrived to Bali and you and I were chatting, I had to go back to the very basics of just throw shit until something sticks.

Lara Acosta: 2:39

And then that is what weaponized incompetence really is is being on both sides of the bell curve, where one side is like fuck it, we ball, fuck it we ball, and the middle is I need to do deep research, I need to have all of these surveys done, I need to have the perfect landing page.

Lara Acosta: 2:56

The website is not loading at 0.1% speed, whatever it is, and then just trying everything when we were talking about when the launch wasn't moving as fast as I wanted it to you and I spoke about, okay, do the DM game, do the emails, do the world document, and there are things that I would have done in the past.

Lara Acosta: 3:12

But because I'm so stuck in this version of like what worked before needs to work again, because by now I have it systematized, then that thing ultimately does fail because you have you try to over optimize for these things that you think are going to work. But underlying all of that, it all came back to the very fundamental basics, which is, throw stuff out of the wall and see what sticks and don't stop until it works, which is what essentially made the last two days or highest revenue like gross revenue days, which is obviously very predictable as, like two days, our highest revenue, like gross revenue days, which is obviously very predictable, as like launches, and we can go about like how FOMO and Curiosity and all of these happen, but ultimately it was making the most weirdest inputs to get the output that I decided.

Darren Lee: 3:59

Would you say, though, that it's been the stuff that you've done from day one, right?

Darren Lee: 4:03

Because, similar to you, I always say in the bell curve, you just have make good content, sell simple stuff at the bottom, and also at the very top and in the middle.

Darren Lee: 4:11

Then there's like GHL, and there's all the automations, and there's ConvertKit and there's Substack, but, like you've done six figures in a week several times, and cohorts is your thing. You're like a cohort queen, and you did that two years ago, and you knew very little bit of online space, but you knew pent up demand and then funneling people into a simple product, and now it sounds like, after going through all the bells and whistles, you went back to the same thing that got you there in the first place, which was just make good content, get people to a webinar, showcase them that you can bridge the gap, and then just give them a product that's going to help them. Just want to take one quick break to ask you one question have you been enjoying these episodes? Because, if you have, I'd really appreciate if you subscribe to the channel so that more people can see these episodes and be influenced to build an online business this year. Thank you.

Lara Acosta: 5:02

So well, I think that is just. That is very basic. Cool, that sounds so simple. It just feels too good to be true. And then, as entrepreneurs and humans, because we are over-optimizers and high achievers, we try to find the most optimal way to get there. And then we start seeing all of these people talking about oh, you need to start introducing curiosity and you need to start doing all these left turns and right turns onto how you position your product. It needs to be mystical, it needs to be all of like elusive and it has to be overly complex. And I try to do that because I enjoy it, because, ultimately, I'm a storyteller and storytelling comes from a lot of fiction. But then, when it didn't work, when that little storytelling line that I really wanted to run, as I wanted to create this new idea of a launch, didn't work, went back to basics create good content, sell good shit.

Darren Lee: 5:55

But I still think, though, that what you've done is you've done a launch, six figures in a launch. You've done one half million over the span of 18 months. I still think that nothing has changed, but maybe expectation, that maybe you felt that it would have came easier or simpler, but the launch strategy still worked. It's just the fact that it's just the time right. For the most part, most sales come in the last 24 hours, as we know, but I've had this with clients whereby they lose their mind and almost want to jump ship the 10 days out. But there is an element of like when you let the thing ride out, you still got the result that you're always going to get. Does that make sense?

Lara Acosta: 6:36

yes, unfortunately, as you probably know, and you probably are as well, patience is a a virtue that I lack, and so, even if you know that, ultimately, the last two days of a launch are going to be the most profitable ones or the ones where you get the most demand, you are trying to sort of predict, via data and validation, how that is going to end up looking, because usually the first day of launch and the second day are good indicators of what the next few days are going to look like. Right, and this time around, the launch lasted 10 days. I usually run them for five days. Right, the actual launch lasted five days, no, 10 days. The pre-launch lasted five days. So overall it's been a 15-day window. Right, 15 days in the long. Like a grand scheme is nothing.

Lara Acosta: 7:29

But to someone that's living and breathing this in the trenches, having little to no sleep, trying to over-optimize everything and predict what's going to happen with the outputs, it feels like two years, like my eyebags have become twice as large because I haven't slept, because I was trying to overly analyze what the ultimate result is going to be. And back to your point. Yes, at this point, what worked before worked again, but my expectation of myself to be able to systematize it and do it better and easier, now that I've built a team or have more people helping or have more idea of what the predictability could look like, based on my audience and behaviors and patterns and based on past launches that we've done. It's just like you still hope that you can systematize the unsystematizable, which unfortunately, you cannot. Systematize human behavior. You cannot overly predict something. You can try and get some data, but ultimately it is down to human psychology and how they react.

Lara Acosta: 8:32

And I really really tried to ignore this because I'm like, at what point can we stop with the I guess, fomo marketing and the curiosity bias and all of these things and trying the limited supply type of marketing, but unfortunately it always works like a charm.

Lara Acosta: 8:52

However, it does feel and we were talking about this, sean James Cameron was saying this you do end up giving a piece of your soul away when you're trying to do all of this curiosity marketing or like scarcity marketing, because at the end of the day, you do know that you maybe end up launching this again in that maybe in a few years, like last time I did. This was a year and a half ago, so it was very true that I didn't know when I was going to do it again this time. I also don't know, but in the back of my head I'm like, potentially I I will. So it is also learning how to be comfortable with that unknown of how you're suggesting this to the market, which, if I need to be completely honest about it, because most of the time and I remember when I was a baby marketer and I was very fearful of using these type of tactics, but they work From our mastermind- with James Kemp.

Darren Lee: 9:45

The way he put it was that every single time and I was very fearful of using these type of tactics, but they work From our mastermind with James Kemp. The way he put it was that every single time you run the scarcity marketing and you don't fulfill the promise that you're delivering, which is, yeah, we're pulling this off the table, we're changing the price, there's only so many spots available, it's not going to be available again. You are lying to yourself and you have to live with that continuously and it's like, okay, there's a front where you're relying on yourself, but then, secondly, your confidence as an entrepreneur and as a marketer will also decrease and the time that you actually do it again and again, because I think your prospects and your customers and your followers they don't forget that shit, especially when you rub them the wrong way. So what I want to do is understand how you do this in the right way, because you're still getting huge results, and one thing that I would say is that something that really stood out for me was when you talked about after you finish these launches and after you sell and after you sell out, you go back to being a girl and you go back to putting out that content and you just you're everyone's best friend, right?

Darren Lee: 10:49

That's a unique way to do it. It's a unique way to do it Now. The contrast is for us, we're, like, always open. People can always come in, they can always book calls, they can always get started. So there needs to be this delicate balance between marketing and sales. And sales isn't evil, it's just a fact that we need to understand the paradigm shifts. So I guess my question for you is how do you plan out that launch for someone who wants to launch a product, monetize their audience, monetize their personal brand? And then how do you do it in a way that doesn't burn the reputation and goodwill of your audience?

Lara Acosta: 11:22

So first you need to start with an offer. Most people think that an offer has to have all these crazy promises and bloated, over-delivering things. You don't need to have this undeniable, crazy promise where you're promising people the world, like you know, be able to live in Dubai or make your first $10,000 in three days, Like it is not possible. You and I know that that is not possible, especially when you're a beginner, Even if you're like an intermediate. You cannot promise these type of results unless you're actually doing a done for you service where you're taking care of the entire process from A to B, but when it comes to a program, you do not have full control of what someone does with the information that you're giving them, no matter how much support you're able to give them. So, bearing that in mind, when you're building an offer, you need to understand who is the target client that you're talking to specifically, so you understand what they're willing to do, so you can get them from A to B. The real result and the reason why people buy it isn't just because of the promise. It is because of the transformation they want to get from pain to solution right. And so if you're able to bridge that simple gap, with as little words as possible and with a single, tiny promise that you're able to give them, such as I'm going to give you the tools and playbooks behind my $1.5 million LinkedIn personal branding game, then they know I'm going to give it all to them, but it is on them to execute on this thing. It is not on me. I am going to give them everything they need to know, I'm going to give them all the support they need, but at the end it lands on them to do the work.

Lara Acosta: 13:07

So you start there. Then, after you start planning, who is this person I'm trying to sell to? And this is a problem that I had because my audience is so broad like 250,000 followers, Like that is a lot of people in, I guess. Guess, not to the people that have a million followers or whatever, but to me it's a lot and there's like a lot of buckets of people that may want the same outcome but they may not be able to take the same type of execution.

Lara Acosta: 13:34

So that's why the cohort is priced at such a higher price rather than my courses, because the higher price then leads you to higher ticket clients which are more likely to be more high agency. You know they will take the action without me even having to imply it, and that's why I ended up loving the cohort model, because I ended up attracting these high ticket people with high ticket problems rather than low ticket problems, which is like how do I optimize my banner? Oh my God, how do I comment 30 times a day like I don't have time? You make time. You hire someone. Simple. They already know that. I don't even need to rephrase that. They know this because they either have built businesses they've hired before they understand how to problem solve immediately, instead of the people that have never solved a problem, which is why cohorts are not for the people that are going from zero to one.

Darren Lee: 14:29

They're the people trying to go from one to ten I think a nice way to look at that too is. So what's the painful problem that you solve for a specific user? That's easy to find online. That's the one element right. So we help business owners make more money with content. The modality depends on how we do the execution, based on proximity and speed. So that can be one-to-one, that can be one-to-one coaching, that can be a done-for-you, which we have. It can be a group model or it can be like info only, and where they are on that sliding scale is based on the speed and it's based on the price.

Darren Lee: 15:04

And again, as you said right in your audience, everyone wants to grow a brand on LinkedIn, everyone wants to have that, everyone wants to be a Justin Welsh or a Lara Costa, but they can't afford it or they can't find themselves on that spectrum. Therefore, they bring the bullshit problems. But I think that's why it's so interesting, because we have the same philosophy but from a different angle, which is it's not about like the avatar, it's not like I help consultants or I help agency owners, it's just that it's just problem being solved. Okay, that's problem. What's the mechanism right?

Darren Lee: 15:38

Because this is the interesting, because you've done a 99 info products. You done $15,000 products at coaching services, but it's the same thing that you're doing. So this is a big thing for me, which is like the offer is not based on who, it's just based on what you solve and then you'll attract that right person right. That's the way our like products and your products have people from different industries, 24 seven. I feel like people just really screw that up, though and they don't understand. Like it doesn't matter what content you have, it doesn't matter what sales process you have or funky funnels, if you don't want to have that offer correct in the beginning. And I feel like the products that you have, obviously for linkedin, just hit so well as well it is like you said.

Lara Acosta: 16:19

It is about how, like it's about the proximity of a client within you, like the 15k product or service. It is one-to-one calls with me every single week and I literally edit your content. The 99 product is me teaching you how to do content in 10 videos right, and some templates. Then the cool hood is you get me for six weeks specifically and then you never see me again, um, and then, if you want to renew, you go for the 15k offer. But yes, it is the same. Build a personal brand on linkedin. Um.

Lara Acosta: 16:49

I think we've reached a point with the over saturation of information, the a hundred thousand dollar leads or whatever alex or office, where we believe that we need to have multiple offers for multiple things and multiple ICPs, and then it becomes this overly complicated funnel and then it's like you're in the middle of that Belcov meme. We're like, oh my god, I have so many offers and I don't know what to do. This one is specific for this one and I coach clients, solve this very specific problem and I also ask them for it's just not it. That is just not going to scale you, especially if you're trying to, like me, run a one person business ish type where your goal is to scale fast with high profit margins, which is something I benefit from the matter for at the literal maximum level. Where my profit is, I don't know 90%, 95%. When I first started it was 99% because I was literally doing it all by myself, but it came from not having all of these overcomplicated offers that often are the death of entrepreneurs, because the entrepreneurs listening to you, all of these offer complication systems are the ones that shouldn't be taking this advice, because that is high level advice that people with teams, with staff, with different, multiple clients, with a lot of experience in the industry, can do, but someone that's starting shouldn't do. They should stick to one offer, one problem, one solution, one platform, very important. And I said this out of your mastermind, like someone asked me oh, why did you go on LinkedIn? I, I'm like because I just felt like the right platform, like blue ocean opportunity. No one was there, okay. So the next question what do you think is the next best, best, best platform to come like? Is it twitter? Is it like this new red red? But whatever, this is like the new platform. So I'm like the best platform is the one where you're consistent at, not the one where the market is telling you to go.

Lara Acosta: 18:48

This is the problem and this is what I saw with TikTok. Everybody was flooding TikTok and, yes, some people benefited massively, but other people made the big mistake where they had such a thing, such a good thing, going and they try to overcomplicate the system because oftentimes people don't need more platforms. They need to get better at one platform and then diversify diversify onto the next five platforms. I only was able to grow my YouTube from zero to 30,000 followers in record time for my niche, not because it was the next big platform and it was the platform that I was taking the most advantage on. It was the next best logical platform for me to go into because I had already validated the content, the offer and the tonality in my ability to deliver something very well and execute it extremely well and then use multi-platforms to then, kind of like, create that content elsewhere right, but then people do it. They see it and they try and copy it.

Lara Acosta: 19:57

There's a problem with people trying to copy Iman Ghazi all the time. Oh, iman has a blog channel, has a business channel, has his main channel and I need to have all these channels. I'm like, no, no, iman was only blog channel, has a business channel, has his main channel and I need to have all these channels. I'm like, no, no, iman was only able to do all of these things until he dominated the SMMA market, which is something that people do not like. Sort of like, they don't take the time to go back and see where it started taking out and then, guess what, he was able to then build a content team specifically so they could repurpose his content everywhere else.

Lara Acosta: 20:27

But I have clients that come to me. They were trying to build a personal brand. They asked me what do I do? Focus on one platform, one problem, one solution. What do they do? They focus on 20 platforms, 20 different problems, 20 different solutions. Six months later they come back to me that, oh, why is this not working? Because you're not email, engaging, you don't have a full team and he did it that way.

Darren Lee: 20:48

That's the funny thing is that he did it going super, super dialed in. If you think about it, he had six years of creating content before he looked to create a second raw channel for his fucking glasses and a business channel for its high ticket program. That I'm in, right, so it's almost like you don't even need it. Again, it goes back to like, what type of pre-workout do I need when I want to have a gym workout? Right? Do I need creatine? Exactly right. It's like you're completely missing the point.

Darren Lee: 21:15

Or even with your diet right, at the end of the day, I just eat chicken and rice and oats and protein and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. But what about all the iron deficiency? And it's like it doesn't fucking matter, bro, for the most part, most people are stuck in that bracket. Does that make sense? Even if you look at the offer side? Because the offer complements the content. And one thing that I found is that now that we have multiple offers, we have a front-end offer and a back-end offer. Yes, you need to keep the consistency in the messaging and the clarity, so a follower will always see that consistent message. So, so let me give an example I'm obviously a fraction of the size of you on LinkedIn, quite literally like 1%, but at the same point I just focus on LinkedIn for so many years with my podcast, because podcasts you need a channel into a platform.

Lara Acosta: 21:55

Yeah, you were on LinkedIn before me, I think.

Darren Lee: 21:57

For like three years, okay, and then it was only until we opened up. Ig was because we had a B2C offer. Now, to make this a little bit more simple, at the end of the day, there still is one front end and then there's a back end okay, which is just a good way to increase LTV. It's just a reoccurring model, okay. But at the same time, with your offer, you should only have one thing that you need right now to be able to see can you grow it? So, whether that's one-to-one or an agency style offer, it's like, can you grow that as much as possible? Only up to up until the point that it's becoming too much of a stressor for you that you can look to systematize it and group it out. So I'm gonna give an example.

Darren Lee: 22:37

We've had the agency for like four years. We got the agency to over 100k a month and then at that point we couldn't push it up any further. It was like it was always like one client and one client out, one client and one client out. And then the logical path became to systematize it, group it out and have coaching. But we only got to that point after four fucking years of having the agency and having linkedin. And then we looked at instagram. But to many people, a 1.2 million year business is perfectly fine. It's just me, the fucking. The mindset is like oh, always be growing, always be improving, and that's the only reason why I did it. But it's like even at that point, I didn't even need to do it.

Lara Acosta: 23:17

So you wanted to.

Darren Lee: 23:18

I wanted to because I was at that point and I had done it for so long and we had reached this kind of stagnation period for six months and I was, okay, let's, let's just do it. But the irony is that a lot of it is just complete bs, right, and if anything, you can just go back to having a second post come out on linkedin. You know, like that it's. That's ironic, right? It's like you get so good at one platform that you can just get better content and maybe put a little bit more on that platform. You forget it. You also forget like Justin Welch puts out two posts a day and most people then put out one post every two months and say, hey, why isn't this growing?

Lara Acosta: 23:52

I don't know. I wonder why.

Darren Lee: 23:54

It's just funny, because the connection between your content and how much your business is growing is super, super tight, but people always look to the problem.

Darren Lee: 24:06

they look to the symptom versus looking at the underlying cause so we have clients that are too afraid to turn on their camera to record, but they'll say they don't get leads. So I always look at symptomatic problems versus root cause problems, and this is when you can become like a little mad scientist not over engineering, but you can become a bit of a mad scientist, which not over engineering, but you can become a bit of a mad scientist which is like, okay, if we have lead, sales and delivery, if the delivery is pretty good coaching, consulting, agency, whatever you generally just have a lead problem, which is you need better content or more content, and then you'll get to the point whereby, okay, the sales is fucked, we need to fix the sales process. How we need to fix the sales process, how do you think about that in the context of like, when you're observing some of your clients or even people that you've seen at the mastermind? Before we go any further, I have one question for you. Do you want to generate more leads for your business?

Darren Lee: 24:55

Well, I've put together an entire system how anyone can use a podcast to generate more leads for their business, and the best part is you don't even need a podcast to get started. I've created an entire guide and framework for you to be able to get more guests, more clients, more customers, more people in your pipeline and generate more revenue. This exact system is available right in the description down below and you'll be able to leverage a podcast to generate more leads for your business and be able to increase your exposure, increase your authority and increase your influence in your industry. So check that out right down below.

Lara Acosta: 25:24

Well, firstly, it is important to note to anyone that people try and copy what their grades are doing right now instead of what they're teaching you to do, which is the main issue that I have with social media information. There's so many kids out there and not kids like, even people my age or 30, 40, they're like, oh, but this person is doing this and they have the overly complex funnel, so I should copy them, because they're obviously telling us what worked before and it's like, no, we're telling you what worked for your stage in your career, because if you're watching us for advice, then it means that you're not at this level yet where you either have the following the offer or the gross profit.

Lara Acosta: 26:09

Like even, or like the market, sophistication, level of understanding or anything else that you don't understand, these type of nuances that allows us to run these type of businesses with content, with me having now five different offers at this point, like they'll be, like I have this all the time. They're like people will join my programs and I'll tell them okay, what's your next offer? Oh, I don't know. I want to build a community. Community, by the way, and I need to say by the way, communities are the hardest business models to run by far. Why? Because you need a consistent stream of people coming in, staying in, preventing churn, and then you have to consistently market it. But then it's been sold.

Lara Acosta: 26:55

Us school has grown, us whoop, whoop, whoop has come and it's like oh, you need to build a community. It's so easy. You just get 100 people in and then you make you know um, mr and an arr and it's like it's easy, it's easy, it's easy. You just need to get people in. It's like low ticket, 29 a month. You get people in, you just have to partner with an influencer and it makes magic internet money.

Lara Acosta: 27:24

No, it does not make magic internet money if you don't have any sophistication and awareness for how business works and how to retain a client, by the way. So they'll ask me because they see I'm running a community, they see that I'm making six figures, seven figures from it, and then they think, oh, it must be that easy. No, it's not, even at a 250,000 following rate a 30K on YouTube, 40k on newsletter. It is not simple because you have to play the retention game. It is almost back to playing the agency game, where you have to one client and one client, not one client. You need to re-convince these people to sign up to the thing or repay again. However, with communities, because they're so low ticket, you have to be fixing the low ticket problems and the low ticket people because there's so many problems to solve, right, they need to decide where their money needs to be allocated, because they do not have the budget to invest in all of these things right.

Lara Acosta: 28:19

So then the community model is often worthless to someone that does not solve the high ticket problem. That can like double, triple the ROI. Same like with a personal branding community. Yes, we can teach you how to write, how to grow, how to monetize your personal brand, but if you don't have the knowledge of an offer, if you have not done the work like getting your first client and getting that social proof first then the community will be obsolete. If you don't do the work and this is like the if and but and the nuance of why things work is this will work if you do X, y and Z.

Lara Acosta: 28:55

And oftentimes people in communities, they don't do the work. Why? It is not because the community doesn't work, it is because the people are not paying enough of a high price to then link it to the high output. And that's why our best clients are the ones that are paying the highest ticket. That's when I am the best client as well, right, and you are the best client. We both invest heavily on our nutrition coaching business, right? And so we commit to paying five figures, six figures, seven figures, even on the program or something. And then, because of that level of commitment, it hurts, it hurts to give away, so you have to and then. So it's back to human psychology. If it hurts, then we must make it work.

Darren Lee: 29:38

I love that. I completely agree, and I think the problem with some communities is that they sit in this kind of middle ground whereby it's a bit cushy, they're learning but they're not actioning. You know, and full transparency. We had a bit of an issue with that about our program. So, just for context, we run our program off this model of content growth and monetization. Okay, and it didn't. And it had some cracks. Because the problem is that, right, people follow it to the rule book so they naturally break it. Does that make sense? If I run it, I have a bit of intuition, but if someone follows the rule book, it breaks. So they were creating content that wasn't aligned to their offer. Okay, so then we change it to offer content sales. But what happened was everyone was hyper fixated, mental masturbation on their offer and they're like is it Google Doc? Is it Notion? Which color should my landing page be? So they had these amazing offers that were just not being bought by anyone because they weren't in the market. So then we had to change it to, instead of offer optimization, it was offers, but running it. So you had to run it.

Darren Lee: 30:43

So the second we made adjustment yeah, you help founders with ghostwriting that are based in Silicon Valley Great Run a list on TechCrunch and message 150 people and I had to literally track people's inputs. So here's how much leads you hit a day. Here's how many posts you put out a day. Here's how you contact them, because otherwise I always say the best offers that are in the dark, they're worth nothing. How many startups never hit product market fit? That's why the book lean startup was created. Are you familiar with that book? Yeah, the whole idea was you have a hypothesis, get into the market, get your hands dirty and test it and fail, like the whole point is failing. You miss tom's talk at the mastermind this. This is so, so good. I'm going to release this video publicly.

Darren Lee: 31:28

So Tom, head of client success, head of coaching in our business. He was a teacher and he taught underprivileged kids in Wales. He was also head of education at a company called Synthub. It's a really big, famous DJ's education business and the whole logic is you have this thing called a season teaser coaching. So the first stage of coaching is you introduce a concept, right? So here is why you would need to grow a personal brand on LinkedIn.

Darren Lee: 31:54

You link the concept to a problem. The problem is most people don't grow on LinkedIn because they put out AI content or whatnot. Once you establish that with Lara, and I explained to you that here's a concept and here's a problem we need to link it with a plan. So you co-create a plan, so me and you put together a seven day action plan and this is the most important part Then I leave, you go off into the wind and fail, and I want you to get reps in and actually chew glass and bang your head off the concrete so that you feel pain.

Darren Lee: 32:27

And then you come back and you're like I have this issue, this issue, but that worked, something in there worked. And then you fine, tune, tune, tune, tune, tune, tune. And that's how you release. That's how you introduce a concept, and all a program is is just that a thousand times over here's hooks, here's posts, here's common thing. You're always introduced in that concept over and over again, and I think it's really beautiful, because the problem I see is that people buy things, develop a codependency with that founder and then don't do anything and then slap them on the wrist and say it didn't work.

Lara Acosta: 33:04

It reminds me of the book atomic habits, when they set up two people, two different types of groups, to take photos. Right, one group had to take one photo and you have to be the best. And then the other group. They had to take 30 photos for like 30 days, I think, and the best quality of photos came from the people that were doing the 30 days of photos, because they had more practice and they were able to identify what type of angle created a better photo. So that is literally the same, because we're trying to build a habit of not rapid execution or like rapid results, it's more like execute, understand, test, iterate, win how do you find, how do you find a differentiating between the products that you have now, especially for new prospects that come in?

Lara Acosta: 33:48

So back to the community model. What makes the community a six figure community, almost like seven figures at this point? It is understanding what the single problem that these people are looking to fix and how I can bridge the gap by giving them a roadmap right. So we have the roadmap with the courses. They come to the course I fix the problems. The most successful people and the ones that have stayed the most because they get the most results or they get the most out of it, aren't the ones that are following the playbook, they're the ones that are breaking it. They're the ones that are breaking it in their own way, understanding that my advice is nuanced and I only know as far as I know about this thing. But they know their offer best for their own niche, right. We've got real estate people, we've got doctors, we've got accountants, right, so interesting. So then they are able to understand the nuance between what I'm teaching and then their real life understanding of what is happening in their own market. And this is key, because instructions in the world of business are meant to be broken or they're meant to be going around and like step one works, step two, three, four didn't. Step five does work. I'm going to take what works for me and then I'm going to implement accordingly as I see fit to me. So we have amazing people like there's this guy called Alan. He's a real estate mortgaging person and then he's been able to grow his account not massively, but enough to get a lot of leads every single week to his LinkedIn. But he isn't focused on being famous, he's focused about getting the input so he can get the outputs. He's doing the 80-20. He comes to the calls, asks our questions, he's excited about things and then he implements. That's what makes this work very well.

Lara Acosta: 35:41

What makes it fail for people is that they sign up, they don't come to anything. They take the course, they don't implement. We check consistently who is taking action and who's not. And the people that aren't taking action, they haven't posted because they are scared. So they're having a mindset issue. They have a content issue because, again, they have imposter syndrome, or because they don't have an offer yet, because they're too scared of launching an offer or releasing it.

Lara Acosta: 36:09

Or they're the ones that are too stuck in their heads at this point because they're beginners, because they don't know where to go, because there's too many things going on at the same time. So they get in their heads and they cannot implement. Come to the course. They come to course with a question, but then they'll end up overthinking this question because they think that it's either shouldn't be that simple or it feels really hard, like there's no in between. So I think for this specific model to work and why I love it so much and why we've made it work so well it is we identify the problem. We give them the roadmap. People take it, implement and if they can't implement, they come to a course, ask their questions, they leave, implement again, come back right.

Darren Lee: 36:50

I want to ask you about duration of programs. So this is something that I always think about, and a lot of clients are always asking about how long is enough to get the result and how short is not enough to put them under pressure.

Lara Acosta: 37:04

It depends again on the proximity that we're having. So if it's a one-to-one coaching program, like I had with my clients, which was three months, if they're not getting results by week six, then there's definitely something not going on. Because usually, like in the agency we both run agencies we know that the average time for us to actually see where something's failing is weeks four or even week eight. Actually see where something's failing is weeks four or even week eight, like either one month or two months around that, because you can. Then you had enough time to test, validate and iterate the main issues that we are. We know, either offer, content, monetization, whatever is, whatever we specify or specialize in. But then if something's not working, based on everything that we know, then we know there's something either on the backend very important, because people don't look.

Lara Acosta: 37:45

I didn't look at the backend before and so is the offer actually optimal? If they're creating the content, they're following our playbook, they're doing the sales on the backend and it's not working, okay, we have to go back and actually ask the tough questions what are you doing to monetize your audience? Oh, yeah, I'm sending some DMs every single week. Oh, but we agreed that you were going to do 20 outbound messages. Oh yeah, I just didn't do them because I thought X, y and Z, I didn't have time.

Darren Lee: 38:17

It's always a bottleneck, so it's always a constrained conversation basically. So it's always a constrained conversation basically Because I often hear this and I'll have clients that come to me as well with this which is like we're not making money. So problem symptom we don't have money and then it goes into our model is the offer sales delivery, or specifically, leads sales delivery. Where does this shit fit into the bucket? So whether you're running a podcast or you're running LinkedIn, you do need everything right. But if you're in like grow your audience mode, that's fine, we just focus on the content up in the leads bucket, that's fine. That's completely. There's nothing wrong with that.

Darren Lee: 38:58

I had a coaching call with someone yesterday, super overwhelmed. It was just like bro, just put out the two podcasts a month, don't worry about it, just don't worry about it, don't worry about all the other shit. But if you're not making sales, there's a bunch of other shit. Because I think the so again, for my mastermind, james Kemp, stood up and he said back in the day you could run an ad and book a call for $5 a call which is apparently very cheap. Okay, back in the day you could create content and that content could hit a landing page and it would buy a nine dollar ebook. You'd spend that money on a matcha in bali. But these days are those days are just over right. So the whole like content to a vsl, to a book call super tough. Content to a landing page, to a buy button super tough. There's like other shit going on so you could have the best content in the world. It Content to a landing page, to a buy button super tough. There's like other shit going on so you can have the best content in the world. You can hit a landing page. Landing page might not be optimized. It could be like a VSL is fucked, the headline could be fucked and you've just trashed all the leads.

Darren Lee: 39:54

I'll give you a personal story. We run a big sales team, like, if you want to make more money, you got to make, you got to have a good sales team. Straight up, right, you're going to make more money with a good sales team. But we have a scenario whereby we run traffic. We get a shit ton of leads. We get over 50 to 100 leads a day and then we burn half of them because we said something stupid.

Darren Lee: 40:14

Someone will look at that and think it's a content problem. Someone will think of that thing as an offer problem. But the crazy sound is we look at it and think it was actually a dm problem. Which is fine, no emotion, go in and fix it. But I think that's why the layers to the game like we run a three million year business right, three to four million year business. It's a lot different than a fucking 10k a month chop shop. You know. So this is where client relationships is often tough, because they will say symptomatic problem. But they're not even aware of the fucking 15 steps to get to the symptom to arise well it comes back to the journey to success is filled with self-awareness.

Lara Acosta: 41:02

How able are you to identify that the problem isn't external, it's truly internal, because you lacked the insights to understand that you did something wrong, something broke in your process, not because of someone else's fault, but all because of your own, because, ultimately, we have to take ruthless accountability for our own actions. No matter how big or small the team is, it ultimately all falls on you. So whoever then plays the blame game and I, I'm so guilty. That's why I can talk about it for uh with such candidness, because I am often one to blame everyone else but myself. Yet I have to come back to base and be like where did I fuck up? Oh well, we were sat um three days ago, four days ago, and I was like literally having 20 million mental breakdowns because everything was broken, and so I was like who do I blame? Like this person, this person, this person? You're like lara, like let's just sit down and like look at what what's going on. We're like okay, and I was like oh my god, it's a landing page issue. Like I don't know my email, like whatever my email. I was looking at my email deliverability issue. Like the speed of the landing page, the vsl, like yes, ultimately, yes, they do add up.

Lara Acosta: 42:12

But the problem wasn't the offer, the landing page, the content, it was simply our ability to get people from point a to point b, which was sending the offer, like you said. Well, like you have a Google Doc with the offer Clear, clear as day, that sort of fixed it. But it also fixed it for myself to understand how then I can position the product better. And this is something I said to people in the mastermind you don't have a content problem, you have a positioning problem. You're overcomplicating the whole system by using all of these tools and resources, yet you're not focusing on the thing the 80-20.

Lara Acosta: 42:47

The content problem isn't the thing, it's the positioning problem. How is this product positioned differently to all of my other products that are lower ticket? And that was one of the main issues that I think I ran into. But it wasn't until I sort of sat down with myself and I sat down with you and started talking about different things and solutions. Then I realized it's not a content problem, it is a positioning problem.

Lara Acosta: 43:08

The product was positioned wrong from the very start because we lacked the insight and the foresight I personally did, to understand that I needed to go above and beyond to differentiate this product from all of the other products in my ecosystem.

Lara Acosta: 43:23

Right, and it was very easy to do at the start. And this is also important to highlight, because I was based basing my success upon the success I had previously when I had one offer. Right now I have five, you know different products at different, different prices. So then people are forced to not choose me and my single offer. They're forced to choose me, choose that they have a problem and then choose which one of the prices are they willing and able to pay and what commitment level they're able to commit to me, right? So not only do I have to convince them that they have a problem that I had, that I can fix it now that I am the best person to fix it for them, but now I have to convince them that this is the best offer for them that burns so much mental calories, as I've often heard.

Darren Lee: 44:20

The way that I describe this is just the mental calories, right. They come in, they hit a landing page, they think, they think, they think, they think, they think all these calories are being burned, yeah, and all they're looking to then is just to jump off. That's the biggest problem, right?

Lara Acosta: 44:32

it's like you need to remove friction from everything, like having a frictionless approach is what it's like make an offer bye, like there's. I think we were talking in the mastermind like all of these people have these overly complicated funnels where it's like oh my God, how does Lead Magnet connect to this? Lead Magnet sign up no sign up page. Lead Magnet bye. Sign up page. Lead Magnet first email offer you know what it's like.

Darren Lee: 44:57

It's like if I go out for dinner with my wife we are, we're living in bali thousand amazing restaurants. I have to be like we're going to this restaurant she's like all right, cool.

Lara Acosta: 45:07

But if I was like you want to eat, what do you want to eat? Sorry, what, like, what do you want to eat?

Darren Lee: 45:10

and you're like exactly are you going to go to italian or greek or mediterranean or maybe middle eastern? She's like there's so much mental calories and she's like I don't want to do any of them. But if I'm like we're going to last night, like literally last night driving, we're going to go to a steakhouse, it's going to be good, perfect, and we need to consume. We need to restrict the amount of consumption, consumption of calories people are doing in their brain which is tough for you because you don't have sales calls, which I want to talk about. You don't have like a sales process, right. So let me give an example the I think and model.

Darren Lee: 45:42

The easiest way to do this is you have all content that just says I do X, and then they come in. So they come from content LinkedIn, ig, youtube, hit a page. From the page, they see the problem that's being solved and the next action from there is, let's say, a book, a call, because in the book, a call, we have different ways that we can help someone, depending on where they're in a journey.

Darren Lee: 46:05

I'm getting started. I'm into media and beginning. I'm making 1k a month, 10k a month, 100k a month, and then from there then consult of selling is on the call. It's like hey, lara, I've reviewed your application, you're giving what consultative selling is solution orientated and that allows us to have a 45 minute conversation on a call to be like, look, you're better suited here, I'll get you better results here. The problem or the challenge that you have is the fact that you don't have that and you also don't even manage your fucking DMs in terms of like you get so much inbound because you're just famous.

Lara Acosta: 46:51

That. How can you separate that out in content only? It's very, very, very, very complicated. Well, I think that is where the art of the launch comes in, where we're only marketing certain products for certain time periods and then we are increasing awareness that this product is coming months prior, so 30 days prior, or whatever. Then we're turning the market awareness from all of these different product suites to just the one thing, and that one thing is the thing that's going to solve their one problem. So we're like slowly indoctrinating them throughout a 30-day, 20-day, 15-day period at minimum, and then over time, then we're convincing them that that is the only offer.

Lara Acosta: 47:26

And so that is how I'm able to get out of sales calls often, although I was really close to wanting to run them this time because we ran into bottlenecks, but the way it worked is naturally due to the size of my audience.

Lara Acosta: 47:42

I am now granted the ability to not have to have sales calls because I am not running a full bish up where, like, there's different tiers in systems, although we're getting there and we might be there by the next time. We have our podcast, probably tomorrow at this point, but ultimately I like the no sales call approach because I don't like sales calls and I don't like having to pay a sales setter or whatever because I like high profit margins. But therefore and so forth, I then experience these different types of bottlenecks that you would be able to fix. So it is on me to understand which problems I'm okay having. Okay, because someone that has a team. Then you may be having the issue that now you have to spend money on ads to then drive the leads on demand right, because you don't have the volume of following that I have. So you were able to then be like you're okay with that problem and I'm okay with the no sales call problem. That means that I may not benefit from more revenue generated immediately.

Darren Lee: 48:50

Right, and that's okay so so you need to understand the constraints of what you're playing with, right so if you're exactly so. If you're going to go for this like solo solopreneurship approach, you obviously can't take sales calls. You have a quarter of a million followers and you're a solopreneur. You can't take sales calls. It just doesn't actually make sense because you're gonna book 50 calls a week.

Lara Acosta: 49:11

You have to deliver your product so when am I gonna work on the product? Exactly right, so it's mathematically not correct.

Darren Lee: 49:18

There's a but then like. The hybrid approach is like if you're small and you, you need to make a couple of sales a month, but if you sell a 5k product, you can get the, you can get the 30k a month with a tiny audience, because I fucking did it right, so you can do it with a very small audience, but it's like you need to understand the laws of leverage.

Darren Lee: 49:33

it's like as they, as your audience grows up, you have the opportunity to do that. There's obviously and I thought about this a lot of this, like this morning as well, because it just depends on what you fundamentally want, right, because Alex Ramosi has 4 million followers, whatever he has, and he still runs sales calls. The reason why is because he's trying to get to a billion dollars in valuation, which is like 400 million a year in revenue. Right, but if you don't want to do that, that's fine. I do think that the like like well, it just depends on the product, right. It's like if you have the so let's take a step back if you have crazy velocity of traffic, crazy velocity, iman, sell velocity or use of velocity, you can scale that 1500 product to a lot, to a lot, a big number, and then if you can get more in, you just it's, it's a, it's a, it's a traffic problem. You need more traffic in the door to sell that product and conversion on the landing page move from 1% to maybe 2%, okay, and like that's the game in the battle you play. Now E-Mansel has a book, a call, at the bottom of $500 product. That's the game you play and in theory, yes, it's infinitely scalable. Okay, but you will always be pushing more people in the front door to make more money, right? If you want to get like a million a month or two million a month, it's a volume on the back and a front end To flip that. The converse is, like us smaller audience, we need more book calls and we need to fill that problem to have the other back end of selling a $5,000 to $60,000 product. So it's like again, it goes back to the tier of constraints. What constraint do we have?

Darren Lee: 51:12

The majority of my guests run content businesses. They've used content as the main element of their business to drive more revenue and build their influence online. We've been doing this through a podcast for many years. We have many guests, clients and even customers use a podcast as their main source of driving more revenue for their business and building their influence online, and we're offering a handful of spots to book in a call with our team to learn how you yes, you can leverage a podcast to generate more revenue for your business and drive your influence online. Many of our clients and customers start from nothing, but each one of them are action takers and they want to learn more about how to build a podcast and a brand right around their business. So if you want to learn more and you're really interested in building a podcast, check out the link down below and book in a free call with our customer success manager and he will guide you into how you can build and generate more revenue from your podcast this year it's also.

Lara Acosta: 52:08

You mentioned the one percent and then to add an additional, the two percent, to some people the stress that that additional one percent to get from one to two percent is just too much yeah, that's what it means, what you want in your life it's.

Lara Acosta: 52:23

And then I've been forced to think about this very critically over the last year. Like, what business game am I playing? Am I playing the build and sell game? Am I playing the lifestyle game or am I playing the? I don't know yet. I'm trying to be a high performance game, whereas, like when you're you're playing the lifestyle business game, it's like you're okay, making 10k a month, yeah, the build and sell game of that's infinite. You're trying to get to a million validation, two million, three million, eight figures, whatever. And then the high performance, like I want to get to 100k and then retire. So it is.

Lara Acosta: 52:56

What problems are you gonna be okay with dealing with? That may just allow you to make that like small increment. It's not going to be massive, it's going to be small, it's going to be tedious, you're going to hate yourself, you're going to be stuck in the dungeon doing marbles at 2 am in the morning for that small increment. That then, overall, like over time, does it does compound and it will lead you to a large evaluation. But in that moment in time, what type of person are you? Are you the person that just doesn't want to do it and rather go to the beach and have fun with friends with the money that you're making? Or are you going to take the time and fix this problem so you can have that incremental gain and then compound it until 10 years?

Lara Acosta: 53:38

Right, you and I are playing the infinite game. We want to grow as fast as we can, as we possibly can, with the most fun as we can, with the right people. Right, but some people that's just not good enough, like they just rather not. And I think people should really stop and question what game they're playing, because often we are misled by following the people that we think they're playing the lifestyle game, but they're playing the build and sell game, and so and and also the the reverse you think you want to build and sell, but in reality you actually just want to play the lifestyle game. And it is important to to think about yeah, it's a.

Darren Lee: 54:18

It's a extremely good point and I think I've seen that a lot with entrepreneurs, even in bali, like a lot of guys like and it's so, so cliche. But you don't judge someone based on what they say, you're just based on their actions. Right, and I think I've just come from a tech background. I've always been comfortable having a team. It makes sense to always like kind of just scale, because that's what I know, like I've come from these companies, so to do that feels very natural to me, versus if I was just walking around a beach making 5k a month like I'd be fucking anxious as fuck, dude, like literally super, super anxious, and you build rules and parameters around that. So the biggest things for me are like my health and my relationships and I think we're both very value aligned in terms of what we're doing. But we're also in that phase of our life and I don't think for me it's like a phase, but I mean we're in that stage where it's like what else would you be doing, dude? We're gonna go for food after we go to the gym, we're gonna sauna. There's like nothing else to do, you know. So it's understanding that, but then coming in with the goal that you actually want to achieve. Right, you think that that's easier? Then right, that's. The big thing for us is like we get on calls with people and for the most part, I just say a simple question which is like how much you're making 20k a month where do you want to get to? One at the 200k month? Okay, is it biz op or is a program or as an agency? And then we we make the formulations as a result.

Darren Lee: 55:34

So I'll give an example with andrew that you've met. Like sat down with andrew quite recently and we wanted to go into like a coaching model with him. It's easier to scale. And he was like no, I don't want to do coaching, I want to scale the agency. And I was like all right, you're at the right place, I've scaled an agency so I can help you scale an agency. Here's all the things that's going to happen. We're going to need at least 11 people fully drawn out. We'll have an issue with churn. We'll have an issue with this. We need this issue, we need to fix this issue. And he was like all right, I'm 20 years old, making 25 25k a month I'm prepared.

Darren Lee: 56:11

I'm like, all right, buckle up because it's fucking complicated and that's it. So now we've made those decisions to get to six figures a month. As someone who is 20 years old, that's so cool, but you need to understand the laws of the game right andrew what a legend. Okay, I want to walk through. Maybe some of the let's have a. I want to try and marry we know you were saying something.

Lara Acosta: 56:30

Uh, before that, can I go back? Yeah you were saying how many people in valley. We're in valley, by the way. I don't think we said that. We made it to podcast four in valley this is our four podcasts on my show.

Darren Lee: 56:44

Yeah, but then it's like our fifth podcast overall.

Lara Acosta: 56:47

Yeah, our fifth podcast together. So it started off as a joke and now it's a reality. That's cool, but more so. What I wanted to say was you and I are aligned in our values, and I think that's why we get along so well and why we click so fast, and it is important for entrepreneurs to find that person or find that group of people that are able to I know you're gonna say understand them to the very value-based level where you and I I've actually extended my stay in bali, which is something that I wouldn't have done in like a million years.

Lara Acosta: 57:19

I've been traveling to dubai, miami, la, trying to see if I like abroad, and I realized now that it wasn't that I didn't like being abroad. It was more so I was around the wrong people that weren't in the same game as I was, which is go gym in the morning, lock in for like five hours, say hello for a few hours a day, go back somewhere else, shoot the shit or whatever, and then go back to the thing like it's all, like we're both prioritizing health, wealth and relationships in our own very basic, similar way, and I think meeting people that are that aligned with you will make life easier and scalability is easier. So I had a problem. We both sat down for one hour, fixed it. It Back in London.

Lara Acosta: 58:02

I think I would have identified the problem, stared at a wall for five hours, wouldn't have fixed it. Have a mental breakdown, call you eventually you would have fixed it right. And I think there is so much value in proximity to the right people with the right answers and even if you didn't have the right answer. You would have been able to have a conversation with me to get to that right answer, based on what my thoughts, beliefs and operations were and it's so interesting, right?

Darren Lee: 58:29

because, again, people blame the, the external thing. So bali's so fucking interesting to observe because even last night I'll show you the guide it was some young kid, whatever, and he had a video before that was like oh, like, fuck germany, I'm living in bali because it's cheaper and I can like have an amazing life. Same kid puts up a video saying oh, bali, life is too simple, I need to go grind somewhere, so I'm gonna leave bali so I can go grind. This guy's like 21 years old, right, he's like I'm gonna go back to germany to lock in. Okay ways is real, this is real. And then a guy that I know, a very, a very famous influencer, commented going yeah bro, same man, I had to leave bali because it was too relaxed and me, as an entrepreneur, I need to be in like a very hustle city. Both of those guys are fucking broke.

Darren Lee: 59:15

I know many people here that are like millionaires making multiple six figures a month. Dude, they get up and they work on the thing they need to do, and when they're work on the thing they need to do and when they're finished with that thing, they go to the gym, they hang out with their kids and so on. It is not the place that's restricting you. Yes, the environment is important and who you're around and work together and we're grinding together, but it is the underlying characteristic trait that makes people stand out. People will say, oh, I can't succeed in Bali. They're just, they're just using as an excuse because they're just looking at girls in the gym and they're just not actually working on things.

Darren Lee: 59:51

So, for us, because we're value aligned, you know we work together in like dubai, we'll grind it out. We'll work together here. We'll grind it out because we are just values aligned and the energy that we emit to one another, it rises up right and this is why I always say to everyone if I said it during a mastermind, there is no one that's like you. Me and you are exceptionally close in terms of how we go about things and, like during my mastermind, you had spoke, you're working all day.

Darren Lee: 1:00:16

And then I came back from dinner and you were recording a webinar and there's like lights on in your face at 12 o'clock at night and I'm looking at him like Jesus Christ. I go up to bed at two o'clock in the morning. You're like want to get food and you're still up working and I'm like no, I'm asleep and I think, like that energy is the oh, this is how I got lucky, this is how I got lucky right. And you often, I'll often put up on Instagram being like you know, it's just luck, or this is how I got lucky and you're a perfect example of that, thank you.

Darren Lee: 1:00:48

Whereas, like, we're rewriting vsls like 11 o'clock at night like 1 am, 2 am nicotine because the whole thing with this is that there is a point whereby there is no alternative, right, and this is the whole thing where it's like, well, I could do x, y and z. It's like, no, no, no, if that, if that launch doesn't work for you, you are fucked. You can't relaunch it. You have this next 60 day period where? But you haven't made money because you can't necessarily push another offer. You're fucked. You've used 10 days to get it right and you're screwed. That's it same with me.

Darren Lee: 1:01:19

If we start not booking enough calls, we are fucked. We're not making new money, right, and yeah, we have clients and retainer clients and stuff, but we need new people coming through the door every single month. I think we calculated to get to like, uh, we want to do 300 calls a month. That'll get us to a million a month, and to do that, that's 10 calls a day. And then some days we book seven. Sometimes you book five, but it's not 10, right, and I think there has to be that element of like rootlessness and this isn't like a bro potting, it's like a lot of people are pussies at the end of the day when it comes to what they want to do and when you look at the numbers, you look at the data how much traffic you need and how much calls you need, how much sales you need.

Lara Acosta: 1:02:06

Most people hide from the numbers because they're too afraid that it shows the gap of where they are and where they actually want to get to and how they'll never get there I see this all the time, with people that they want the outcome so bad, but they are not willing to become the person that they need to become in order to get to that outcome, so they're not willing to. You and I and every single high successful entrepreneur, the millionaires, the billionaires I've met they optimize not just their business but their entire lifestyles to become that person 100%. And the journey to success is filled with all of these realizations that perhaps you're not who you thought you were 100%. You get your first win as an entrepreneur, you make your first $10,000 and you think, oh, I'm the shit. Then you have to go back and do it again, and then you have to go and do it again, and again, and again. And then you realize, oh, maybe I't just get lucky. But how do I then manufacture that luck? Then you manufacture it by staying up at night, by understanding the data, by looking at the myroboards. Darren and I will literally send each other ridiculously complicated myroboards for no reason, just in order to maybe fix some problem or maybe be aware that there is a problem to fix in the future.

Lara Acosta: 1:03:21

And I remember this breaking point where I had where I thought I was a shit. I was like, yeah, I'm a big boss, I have 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. I made my first $10,000 a month and then I thought I had it all figured out, but then it took me to a breaking point where I had to then look at myself in the mirror and be like you need to optimize all the things in your life not just business, but also your health. Like you're not sleeping enough and that's why you can't think straight. You're not doing enough of the internal work, like understanding how to communicate to then be able to sell high ticket. Because you and I have also invested very heavily in speaking, because we understand their power of being eloquent when you speak right, because that positions you very differently to some bro in bali that says yes, like, but and um every single time. Because that is a different type of positioning. You don't have a content problem, you have a positioning problem and that's why it sounds so cliche.

Darren Lee: 1:04:13

But like you have to understand investing so people invest in you, right? Like I've spent multiple five figures on public speaking coaching so that the words that come out of my mouth are better, and then I've sold 40k on stage in an hour, so it's like I need to be the person to invest in stuff and I need to be what me and Tom call a green flag client. So we have green flags and red flags. Red flags are like neediness, dependency, codependency. Saying something's a scam, throwing your hands up in the air, blaming everyone, and then a green flag client. That's who you want to attract and I always say the person that you are is the person you tracked right. Your clients are a reflection of you be the client that you want to have 100 right.

Darren Lee: 1:04:58

So everyone knows your business reflection of you. But your clients are also a reflection of you. So that's why you've seen me even at my mastermind. Like the people there, like we, we vibe off each other. Now there's not like, uh, we don't play. But I would say that we respect there's a lot.

Darren Lee: 1:05:13

It was a high level of respect they're great people and even with my public speaking coach, michael, that you've met, he was like oh, we'll make one of me once a me once a week and we'll chat once a week. And I was like, no, no, no, dude, I'm like super, super busy. I sent him a YouTube video. I'm like, when you get a chance the next four days, just send me back a voice note. He'll send back an 11 minute voice note, I'll listen to it and then my assistant will put it through chat, gpt and we'll summarize his notes autistic video. I'll read the doc once and that's it. Like that's literally as far as it. And he's like did you make those changes? And I was like, yeah, I did. And he's like all right, fine, I'm not like where is my or or?

Lara Acosta: 1:05:49

I like it's just when are we gonna have our next call?

Darren Lee: 1:05:53

yeah, or like when, as you say. Uh, I remember I'll never forget this when we had our first podcast. We were in the taxi coming back afterwards going to go for food and you said you have a lot of clients that are like messaging you, being like when am I going to go viral? Like dude? It's not.

Darren Lee: 1:06:07

The reason why the goal is desirable is because it's difficult. So just because you pay an agency or you buy a coaching program doesn't mean you get goal. You have to become the person to get the goal. And then, when you become the person to get the goal, when you get the goal it comes. You become the person, get the goal. When you get the goal, it comes naturally.

Darren Lee: 1:06:24

It's like this, it's it's almost like there's an element of arrogance because it's like I knew I was that person to get to that point. So anyone that knows me personally knows that my only goal is to get a million dollars a month. It's the only goal that I have in my life. I'm married, I have my kids, my dogs, I I have my home. My only goal is to get to a million dollars a month and everyone's like is it possible? And I'm like I am becoming the person to get that goal and if I don't get it and if I make $985,000 in a month, I'm certainly pretty happy, but you need to have thatmark. It's a benchmark because there's many people with half the intelligence of me, with more balls than me, that have got there and that's the irony of the bell curve. We go back to the beginning. As you said, I'm in AFL and I'm in all these big programs and I've invested very heavily in a lot of these big programs.

Lara Acosta: 1:07:19

A lot of guys are bro-scaler cowboys they don't actually have a system or a strategy or whatnot.

Darren Lee: 1:07:26

They know how to build a crm yeah, like they just they just got to that stage, which is two things one, it's kind of funny and then two, it's also very liberating. You know, and you often hear me say that, like a lot, of, a lot of times you're one degree off. So I think that largely everyone is one degree off their goal okay, for the most part. But that is liberating and also debilitating, because the problem is that if you're one degree off, you will never get there and you'll think, ah, it's just gonna come, it's gonna click right. But there's a famous story with this, which is a a plane left New Zealand to go to Antarctica. You go in the Southern Hemisphere and they do tours, so they go in and they go in low and then you can see all the glaciers and the dial on the airplane was two degrees off. And because it was two degrees off, it went straight into a mountain and it just goes boom, because the dial was off two degrees. So one degree is off. Yeah, you're warm and cozy, making six and a half k a month. Oh, it's fine, I'm gonna get there.

Darren Lee: 1:08:30

Two degrees off means an absolute catastrophe, and I just think that a lot of this is very close to home for me, because I've been in this game for quite some time and I built businesses when I was a kid and they went to zero. So it's's like I've felt genuine pain of making no money, that now that I'm semi on the way of actually making money, I'm like you don't drop this opportunity just because you think you know something. So, david Dreary he was Sam Ovens' head of sales at consultantcom and he released a video recently which was like you should know that you're actually shit at what you do, because I don't care how good you are, if you think that you're great at what you are, you're going to basically fall down eventually. So you might be the best person at making offers or content or or whatnot, but having that attitude that you're the best is actually going to kill you long enough. And it's uh, you know, these guys are making four million dollars a month, right.

Lara Acosta: 1:09:33

So I think they got a few things right it goes back down to the level of self-awareness you have, like. Are you self-aware enough of knowing what you are good at and also what you're bad at? Because then you are more likely to, more likely and willing to learn something new, despite your ego. 100 ego isn't bad. It's most likely how we use it.

Lara Acosta: 1:09:55

Ego is actually really good to have.

Lara Acosta: 1:09:56

Like you know your strengths, you can utilize them and you can actually use them as an amplifier.

Lara Acosta: 1:10:01

However, if you use it wrong, then it could be the end of you, but if you use it right, it would be the most like the best thing that we could have, right?

Lara Acosta: 1:10:08

I have an ego, but then I am very humble when it comes to talking to you about offers, when it comes to you to talk about podcasts, and you so as well with me when it comes to linkedin content, because you know what you're not the best at, what you're willing to learn, and so am I, and I think that type of attitude is what makes the best high performers not just entrepreneurs, but overall employees like I've seen your team, your team they're good at what they do, but they're also very much willing to learn from you and they do not think of themselves as better than you, they think of themselves as good for their role, and then you're better than them at them, than them at leading, at doing the scaling thing, at all of these things, and most people get lost in, like I am good at one thing and therefore I am good at all these other things no, it's coachability, what like 101.

Darren Lee: 1:10:58

I think if you're listening to this and you're an entrepreneur, you want to get into space. The number one thing you need to ask yourself is am I coachable? Am I someone that's willing to take positive and negative and just neutral feedback? As James Kemp says, nothing is neither positive or negative. It's how we interpret it. So if you're wanting to learn LinkedIn or wanting to learn podcasts, you want to build a business. You need to be coached, because you will be coached by the market.

Darren Lee: 1:11:26

So Balaji famously says everyone's boss is a CEO and a CEO's boss is the market, because that will cut you up. It's like being thrown into a grinder, basically. So it's a very interesting observation because if I look back in my journey, right, there's two things I didn't have. It's interesting uh, so I built a startup when I was 21, I built one several times 23 and, uh, both things I didn't have was one I didn't have traffic and trust, and then the other thing I didn't have was any sort of what I had was a high ego. So, so I wasn't able to take feedback. So I'd look at something, I'd make sales or I'd get feedback from people that like it was a good product or whatnot, and I would over index on that versus how much money was it costing us to acquire a client? How much was this costing us? How much is this costing us? I didn't give a shit about the downside stuff or the risk stuff.

Darren Lee: 1:12:24

I think that's why one of the reasons why I'm so big on data like you could look, you could ask me any question, any area of my business or even our client's business, and we get so focused on getting in the track stuff, because then we can look at it objectively and then I can say change the ads, change that hook, fire that person, let's put in that rep, let's change that structure just super. That person, let's put in that rep, let's change that structure just super quickly. And I actually have an example right now of this woman who's an amazing entrepreneur, but she gave like 10% to like a partner and that's really screwed up the sales process, because now she doesn't lose 20% in a sale, she actually leaves 30% in the sale. So it's like, objectively, based on the data that we have, we need to do things. Here's what we can do, here's what I prioritize, here's my preference in a scenario. I think that's what a CEO is, though, you know, and most people are just cowboys.

Lara Acosta: 1:13:16

Well, you're able to identify the problem without any emotion, but just logic. Without any emotion, but just logic.

Darren Lee: 1:13:21

Just look at the theory of constraints, because the whole and this is really important for clients client work is like yes, there is symptom, but under the theory of constraints there's one constraint that's blocking everything else from happening. But all of business is just solving a series of constraints. So if we can solve the one constraint, that will move into the next process. So, to make this logical, if you do not get leads, you need to create content. Okay, without the content being created, we can't get leads. So it doesn't matter if you have a closer from fucking Eman Gazi's program or not. It doesn't matter, because if he doesn't have calls in the calendar, take a step back. If you don't have a setter to be at the book calls, you can't even have that issue. So this is the irony of scenarios that you can really really break it down and the issue that we have is like we just need more calls. Ads aren't efficient, fuck. Okay, what do we change? Okay, we need more content. Well, I can only post twice a day on LinkedIn. I can't post 80 times a day on LinkedIn. So how much money do we have in reserve? Could we put that into ads?

Darren Lee: 1:14:24

That is the mental model when you're in content with ads, is that you max out your audience, your time on organic. You say, logically, are we truly and I mean truly putting out max volume of content? And then are we putting out max, let's say, quality of content? That can always get better, obviously, but if we have a winner, can we put it on steroids, which is what effectively advertising is, because we have maxed out the front end, okay. And then, conversely, then if you're running an agency, none of that shit matters, bro, because you only have you have a fulfillment constraint. So that's why, for me, when we had the agency, it didn't matter if I got 20 likes on a post, because I knew that all I needed to do was close to two clients a month, because we could only take on four clients a month, right.

Darren Lee: 1:15:09

So, again, self-awareness, understanding the bottleneck, understanding the constraints, understanding for you it was like it was probably just a. It was a positioning problem which was affecting the landing page hits, which was affecting probably the VSL, and it was burning so much calories in their brain. They were like, ah, I'm out. That's all people think. They're like, ah, I'm out. And we got to get people to stop doing that effectively as they go through the buying sequence. Okay, let's chat about the webinars. So we've been long overdue talking about this for many podcasts.

Darren Lee: 1:15:46

We were on top of this in our last podcast not the last one, that was a bullshit podcast the one before that it wasn't bullshit no, it was a uh talking shit podcast we were do one sorry we were do one yeah, we were do one, and there is a lot of value for them. It's just that it's always going to be uh, I think we can do more of them, but what I would say this is what I also do in gym too is that I prefer these conversations yeah, of course yeah, I'm more serious, it was just more impromptu.

Lara Acosta: 1:16:16

I was so tired, yeah, and so were you. It was like 9 pm at night. My ex-boyfriend was in the corner so I was like, okay, I don't want to talk business right now, but it was nice. Most of my clients have seen that podcast and I think that's why they really like me, that's why they've stayed on Retainer, because they got to see this version of me that is not polished and talking about VSLs and webinars, which I think. That is why the element of storytelling and having interesting things to talk about beyond what you do for work is important for client retention and also overall connection building with potential clients and overall the large audience that you have, Because oftentimes and this is why again back to Iman Khaji because we're both clearly well, I'm a fan, I'm a fan.

Lara Acosta: 1:17:05

Girlie pop fans is people often enjoy Iman's blogs a lot more than his business content at this point.

Darren Lee: 1:17:13

His blogs.

Lara Acosta: 1:17:14

Yeah, his blogs. Or vlogs His blogs Because it just shows this other side to him that people often crave to see, because people often, often they want to see what the behind the scenes of being a successful person is, and it's not just via sales offers. Uh, smma, content is life. Friends, what do you do for fun? And often, yes, it's just work, but there's little smidges of. Or you have this religious story, or you come from a buddhist family, but you wear a cross on your neck. That's very interesting, why?

Darren Lee: 1:17:45

and then it makes them connect with my values even more, which makes them even more aligned exact same for me, like why I incorporate, like the dogs and all my content yeah, like my wife and stuff. It just adds that next dimension that I'm not just I'm not just a bro scaler, I, I'm a bro scaler with dogs.

Lara Acosta: 1:18:04

Yeah, five Four.

Darren Lee: 1:18:06

Five, four dogs, two cats.

Lara Acosta: 1:18:09

Two cats. More to come.

Darren Lee: 1:18:11

More to come, but I do want to talk about how you run webinars, because the market awareness or the market you know, you always talk about the shifts in market. People say I don't agree with with this, but that webinars are like outdated who says that? People say that they say that people say that yeah who said that cancelled.

Darren Lee: 1:18:34

I think webinars print money yeah, they do and but I want to walk through. How do you create demand for them without creating noise, especially when you're running a launch right, just like ah, we got this launch, ah, we have a webinar? I feel like there can be more confusion. I'm always worried with the confusion part. And then, when you run the webinar, how do you run the structure of it and how do you sell elegantly on it?

Lara Acosta: 1:18:55

back to the. What did I call it at the start? I forgot what was it. Oh, weaponized incompetence. So back to weaponizing competence.

Lara Acosta: 1:19:10

By the point, I'm starting to run webinars, I'm starting to ram them in every single day. It doesn't matter how elegant the webinar looks like, it matters that there's a unique value proposition. I will teach you how to write three posts with AI on LinkedIn in the next 30 minutes. The next value proposition I will teach you my seven-figure plasma run in 60 minutes so you can copy me. The next value proposition I will show you my BSL funnel breakdown so you can steal it from me. Those value propositions, for me, outperform the need to over systemize and over schedule and time the webinars right, so the market is aligned, because unfortunately, the market will never be perfect. The market will never be aligned. There is not, not ever. Not everyone would be at the right buying phase at the right time when you want them to do like. If I was to sit down and think, okay, when do I run this launch and is the market sophistication going to be at this point and are all of my audiences going to be ready to buy by this, then I would have actually imploded and exploded and died.

Lara Acosta: 1:20:14

For me, velocity momentum. How am I building momentum as fast as possible? Launch day 5th of May till the 15th of May. We've got 10 days. Everybody knows, okay, everybody knows. More importantly, I know that I have 10 days to go, full send on this thing. And I'm not leaving anything, as I wish I had done this Because, again, I think I said it on your last podcast I rather do the thing and do it wrong than not do it and regret it Right.

Lara Acosta: 1:20:41

It is better to regret doing the thing that do it wrong than not do it and regret it right. It is better to regret doing the thing that didn't work than not doing the thing that that didn't work and not knowing if it could have worked. And I think back to the over complication and the belt the belt curve. We wanna schedule perfect the banner, the link. Is the link in bio correct? Oh, I need to. I need to put the right name in the link. And um, it needs to be at this perfect time because everybody in different time zones is awake. I run webinars at 11 am, at night, pm at night, at 2 am, at 5 pm, 4 pm, it didn't matter. What matters is that I needed to take to turn my attention into traffic, then that traffic into conversion. Whatever method I used webinar, sales, funnels, the website I just did everything to that.

Lara Acosta: 1:21:28

Now, with the webinar process, have a nice title that solves one specific problem. I'm going to teach you how to write 30 posts with AI in the next 10 minutes. Simple, send it to an email list, blast it out. Schedule it two days in advance. Hopefully, if it's me, I'm out. Schedule it two days in advance. Hopefully, if it's me, I'm probably scheduling it full hours in advance at one point, and so schedule it. Get, at least, hopefully, 100 people.

Lara Acosta: 1:21:50

Come into the call. Then explain the thing, solve the problem, leave a gap for understanding that the problem is simple, that we know their pain. I can give them the solution. I've given you the system, but you need me to implement that framework, because you know that without me, you cannot implement it on your own. And this is how you run a successful webinar. It is not about gatekeeping the information and not letting them know what the problem. The solution is is giving them all the information so they know that they need you to implement the thing. So, hey, here's how you run your AI content system. You need chat, gpt, you need this prompt and this thing. However, now to get it to go viral or to get it to generate sales on demand, you need this other thing, and that other thing is my six-week program, where I'm going to explain to you exactly how to take content to monetization. In six weeks, straight Done, sold, five tickets in. Now.

Lara Acosta: 1:22:48

The thing that worked best this time, though, is again back to the point I think we didn't speak about yet the point where my audience because I've launched so many times and my audience is not growing at rocket speed is not duplicating. At the point where I'm hitting the millions. I'm not a million, I'm a 250. I grow by 10,000 followers every single month, which is a lot, but it's not enough to benefit from the volume gain to then be able to launch products, often right. This is why big creators are able to monetize a lot with launches every two months, because they have the benefit of a larger audience, meaning more people are coming into the funnel, more people are going out, more people are coming like. I don't do that because I'm not diversified. That's a problem, but that is a me problem. Like people at 10k followers don't need to focus on this, but that was my problem.

Lara Acosta: 1:23:38

So then I encountered this problem where it was more so. People were already sophisticated enough in my many different offers. They had to choose. So then what I did in the back end and you saw me doing this is, instead of focusing on new client acquisition, I focused on upselling the current clients that we had from our current cohorts. So then I started running mini webinars within my current programs. So then I had to kind of like switch the webinar funnel from new person. I explained the problem. I gave them solution incomplete solution. They need me, these people that already bought from me. The point was getting them to see that this problem that they currently have will then be solved at an accelerated way by joining the six-week program. And so I went in into my community, into my coaching office, into everything being like come to the school. I'm going to address the questions that you have about the program, if you have any, and the questions were okay, how is this different Question answered, sold Within two seconds of I solve that problem. I'm in.

Darren Lee: 1:24:45

I remember I was there, I was actually here and I listened to it. It was a woman that was like oh, like I don't know, can I join the calls? And you're like do X, y, z, how is it different? Abc and it goes back to the bell curve, like I was that's so obvious to me, though, like I don't understand why you weren't doing that. That's like the suit.

Lara Acosta: 1:25:03

It's honestly like so fucking stupid because I was thinking like the person that launched her first program, which was getting you new people in and out. Because by this point I'm operating from a point of experience rather than new knowledge and acquired, you know, gain of like, I am aware that I have this new, this, these people that can be upsold but I think this is like a lack of awareness of like ltv though, and it's not you right, it's like what you take the whole thing.

Darren Lee: 1:25:32

the reason being is because we do sponsorships. We play sponsorships on a ch Williamson's podcast. Let's just use that as an example. I spoke with my sales team this morning and we focus on new leads that come in and we do like 100K a month roughly on new leads, and we have old leads, and I literally sat down today and I was like let's go back to people who bought in 2023 and 2024. Tell them an update on the podcast that we run, tell them the data and ask them can we do you want to go back and do bigger buys? It's just like obvious. So there's like purchases that were closed, and then there's people then who booked calls didn't close, who sit in a CRM, and then there's people then who work adjacent to the clients that we have. So, let's say, agencies that we buy from, we buy sponsorship slots from. It's kind of complicated, but it's like different buckets, but the the answer was like how are we going to get to for this pretty specific product? 300k a month, it was.

Lara Acosta: 1:26:31

let's go back to people who've already bought from us but it goes back for me that the answer is so simple to you because you've seen it before. I hadn't seen it prior because my agency days have been gone for so long where I forget about LTD or LTV. And so back to what you were saying on data. It is important to look at the data so you know where the bottleneck is. So then I looked at the data, I saw who.

Lara Acosta: 1:26:57

I went into the data when things weren't working and I looked okay, who are the people buying this thing and the people buying the thing within the pre-launch? The pre-launch did better than the first four days of the actual launch. Why? Because it was geared to the people that were within our programs. But I didn't realize because I wasn't looking at the data. I was focusing on volume of content pushed out, right, that was my main focus. But then I went back and looked at the data and then I was like, okay, so then, based on this thing, we can go from a to b by then retargeting and upselling these people but this is the funny thing, right, is that?

Darren Lee: 1:27:37

because? Is that, because of the fact that you took the time to have data, you were able to make way more money? Right, because otherwise you're just frantically running around the internet being like, oh, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

Lara Acosta: 1:27:46

And I did for like two days.

Darren Lee: 1:27:48

That's what I mean.

Lara Acosta: 1:27:48

Then I had to sit down and I was like what the self-awareness level where it's like you know I could have played the blaming game so hard and I did for two seconds Like I was. You know I'm not going to say a perfect, I am the Belkoff meme, that's what I make fun of.

Lara Acosta: 1:28:03

I was like oh my God, where is it going? Oh my God, I'm going to cry. Please help, oh I need. I was so close to buying this three courses about how to launch a product. I literally was that person, Because you enter this fight or flight mode where you don't know what you don't know and you're scared of not knowing anything.

Lara Acosta: 1:28:23

And then it goes back to like, at least that's how I react to problems. But then and I also I'm a girl, so like it goes back to, I react emotionally, naturally. But then I have to switch it to go very logical, like very broad scale mode. It was like look at the data bro to me like no, look at the emotions. That's how I operate. Unfortunately, that's my advantage and disadvantage as a woman in business.

Lara Acosta: 1:28:42

But then you, I went back into data. Looked at it. Luckily we have it. Luckily I have access to it. Luckily I know where to look. Luckily I know how to operate. We have Klaviyo and look at CTR, open rates, who is clicking, who is buying. Go to Stripe, cross-reference it and look. Okay, this is happening for this. But if I was a beginner I would have had no idea what to look, but that, luckily, that just comes from maturity of me being in the market and then learning as I go, which is the main benefit of being scrappy at the start and not trying to scale too fast, because I learned how to do it all by myself.

Darren Lee: 1:29:22

So then I don't know where to look for problems and solutions yeah, it's so interesting because I take the example when we were at the mastermind. When you, uh, when mark mark asked us, uh, one of the guys with his emails, he's like all my email list is cooked. And then my immediate reaction because you've more experience with email than I do, thanks, love you guys. Check, is that focused. Because you've more experience with email than I do, my initial reaction was Where's my coffee?

Darren Lee: 1:29:55

I didn't think you wanted one, you just had a coffee. It's okay, it's alright. Basically, mark said, oh, like I have a, my email list is cooked. And then I said yeah, is anyone buying from it? And he said no. And I said yeah, it is cooked. And you said no, the headline said yeah, it is cooked.

Lara Acosta: 1:30:17

Then you said no, the headlines are shit and he looked at me with such disgust like I felt like I he hated me for that but it was a but.

Darren Lee: 1:30:25

This is why I said to the guys later, which was like this is the big difference with like you is the fact that you had gone through this problem so many times and over and over again and for years and years and years, that you knew that if people aren't opening emails, it's because, yes, it could, because the email is coked. But is that a? Is that a? That's a symptom, but the underlying issue is this guy. This guy's headlines are shit and it was a very for me, it was a big awakening once again as to a few things one, how direct you are and how you can get amazing results of people because you're so direct. Um, I feel it's kind of different when it's male and male that's sort of nerdy, but because I think, like guys respect you more, because they're like kind of scared of you, um, but it's true. And then, secondly, then it's just like the laws of the game, which is like you understand the underlying thing, right, underlying message.

Lara Acosta: 1:31:15

It's kind of how I look like look at a podcast well, I think, um, yeah, that level of scariness just comes from me being having to become so straightforward after being let down by the market gender rules that I just had to accept it just becomes in a male dominated industry.

Lara Acosta: 1:31:35

When you're a woman in business there needs to be you're either perceived as just a beautiful girl that's just being a girl and figuring things out, or positioned as someone that's scary and is standing on business. You know there is again positioning matters so much. How you position yourself from the start is how people are going to perceive you. First impressions matter the most. That's why our headlines and profile pictures on LinkedIn are optimized to make people perceive us in some sort of way. The way your profile picture on LinkedIn is and the way my profile picture on LinkedIn is. We are perceived as influential rather than friendly. That's why we're not smiling or that's why you don't have a photo with your dogs in that you're just positioning, and that is so important when it comes to real life positioning as well.

Lara Acosta: 1:32:30

So I'm not here to play. I'm not here to give you the fluffy answer. I'm here telling you what you're doing wrong and you're gonna have to pay attention to me. I opened the mastermind being like what did I say?

Darren Lee: 1:32:41

I said something like if you're, if you're here so that I like say good things about you. Like you're in the wrong room.

Lara Acosta: 1:32:47

I was like, get out. Like if you're here to play, like, just get out, like I'm not here to give you the advice you're about to. You wanted to listen for me and that is important because it makes people listen and take me seriously. But if I open with a hey guys, my name is la and I'm a content creator and influencer and I built a business and, like I'm just a girl, do you think that would have landed? Well, no, but it is those small nuances that I had to implement over three years of my experience of seeing how people react to certain approaches to then make my own hit so hard and resonate.

Lara Acosta: 1:33:24

Yes, it may not be fair. Yes, it's not the best. Yes, it is. It is an alter ego that I have to put on, because you and I know that I underlyingly, yes, I am a girl, but I can switch it on where I'm like in business mode, where I'm literally standing on business. I know data, I know logic and I know that I underlyingly, yes, I am a girl, but I can switch it on where I'm like in business mode, where I'm literally standing on business. I know data, I know logic and I know how to react to certain things. Right, but it is what works. It is what works for me and is what's ultimately going to get me to that ultimate outcome that I want to hit, which is 1 million, 2 million, 3 million whatever it is, I'm playing that, yeah, but again, we always try to power dynamics and it's about how you want to position yourself, because for me it's slightly different.

Darren Lee: 1:34:00

Right when I started working with michael, my personal uh, public speaking coach, he said I was too high in competency, or I was high in competence competency like 10 out of 10 competency, whereas I knew my thing, but I was very low and warmed, so, as a result, people weren't warming to my content or to me. So I would speak on stage and I'd be very overly indexed on do this, do this, do this, whereas I had to, like, bring it down a level and be more focused on connecting. So you'll often, if you ever watch I have a couple of speeches coming up and they'll be recording. You're going to be at one of them. I will laugh at all these things that are self-deprecating. I will ask, I will ask all these things that are self-deprecating. I will ask, I will ask questions and I will say jokes deliberately, because it brings down a front that, oh my god, this guy is just trying to bro scale me and, as a result, it warms people up to me. So, again, it depends firstly on who you are and then, secondly, what's the message we're trying to convey to that person? And I've just seen, like lead sales, everything has skyrocket from being more relatable.

Darren Lee: 1:35:00

And then let me give you an example. This is what Hormozy does, but you just don't see it. So he will say he will stand on stage this is a famous video that I send you, uh, which is like his sales training and he'll get on stage and be like all right, this is how you build a hundred million a year, uh, a year, uh, sales team, uh, from someone who's making half a billion a year. And then he would look around and be like who here struggles to book calls and everyone's super awkward because it's from ozzy, and he's like oh, just me, then I'm the only dummy. He's like who here can't close a sale as much as they can't close the door, and no one will look. And then he'll be like oh, it's just me then, and he'll, they'll laugh and it's self-deprecating. And then everyone's like and he does that really well, he smiles because he knows he needs to smile. You can fucking give a shit about smiling, and behind closed doors he probably doesn't care, you know.

Darren Lee: 1:35:54

So, yes, the character. As to your point, is it fair? No, do you need to play into the character?

Lara Acosta: 1:36:00

100% well, at the end of the day, entrepreneurs are also entertainers. 100%. We have to make ourselves likable, um, we have to make ourselves resonate, especially when you are 10 steps ahead of the person that's listening to you. You have to come back to base of like. I am just like you, you're just like me. I did that as well in the mastermind, where I was like I was I. I realized this and I correct myself as well, because I like none of us are perfect.

Lara Acosta: 1:36:28

When we're speaking, it's like maybe I'm going coming across as too blunt, and then I go oh, but I used to have this problem, so that's why I did like. I used to have no sales, my emails used to be like shit, but then I did this one thing that I'm telling you to fix it. And then guess what? Now I'm here, you know, and so you know is being able to like, know how to speak and how to make those self-deprecating jokes, but also understand how to correct yourself in the moment when you're doing it wrong. You know'm over-indexing on the logic and I'm coming across as very scary and I think I'm shouting at people. I'm so sorry.

Darren Lee: 1:37:02

That's such a good point, because the biggest feedback that I get a lot of times when people come into my world is that they feel like they're in the same position that I was in and they feel the pain and I'm like, yeah, dude, it sucks. I'm like, yeah, dude, it sucks. I know what it feels like Relatability, likeness, trust and it's all again pure Charisma.

Darren Lee: 1:37:19

But it's also we can get to that, but it's also just authentic. And I know we always chat about authenticity, but it is authentic where someone's like I feel like I'm in your position, I'm like, yeah, bro, that's shit. I remember exactly how that was. Here's what we're going to do better. And charisma is kind of the, the last piece of that puzzle of a competency warmth. Warmth is charisma, you know. So someone like dakota, he's charismatic and he's like self-deprecating and he's like funny and so on, and he's a high level of charisma and like he spoke at in our program and I was just laughing for most of it I actually asked him has he considered doing stand-up?

Darren Lee: 1:37:58

yes, he does yeah, and I was like you should actually just do stand-up. I say you'd actually just smash it. And I think that those things, they're all skills and you can learn competency you can become more competent. Like confidence is a precursor to competency, right, you have to get one to become the other. Same at Warm, you can inject this, you can learn it. And the last step then is charisma. You can become more charismatic. There's literally charisma coaches on YouTube. It's a thing you can learn.

Lara Acosta: 1:38:30

I love charisma on command.

Darren Lee: 1:38:32

And you can pull that into your content written or in person, dating, everything. Everything is based on those parameters and it's ironic because you see a lot of the biggest guys on linkedin. A lot of them aren't very warm in person that's why they don't do video exactly and it's okay because they know what their strengths are.

Darren Lee: 1:38:53

A lot of the written people in general in life they're introverts yeah, they're not going to be good at speaking, and the irony was that I was a speaker and I had to write a lot as a result, and I think, to be honest, right, stop being a fucking princess, like learn it. Like don't we just learn it? You know what I mean?

Lara Acosta: 1:39:10

what writing?

Darren Lee: 1:39:11

vice versa. Right, I was super dyslexic, to the point that I couldn't read or write in school, that I was told to not read or write. And then I launched my podcast and I was like I need to promote this on LinkedIn. I need to learn how to write. So, yes, I didn't want to do it, yes, I felt awkward, but I just fucking did it. And then vice versa, as you know, brian Chow and June Chow those two guys are Korean they got into video and they didn't feel comfortable with it, so they learned public speaking. Was it awkward for them? Extremely, I imagine they probably did acting classes, public speaking coaching. They weren't princesses about it and that's why they are successful entrepreneurs.

Darren Lee: 1:39:50

Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you should just avoid it completely, right, especially if it's standing in the way of you getting the goal. If you don't like, if you, if you want to record youtube videos, but you feel awkward doing it, you don't not do it, you just get better. And this is so like raw advice, but like there is an element of like part of the me uh bell curve which is like just get better at the thing. I mean it's funny because you looked at a few of my clients videos and and you said, yeah, yeah, like you know, editing is good and stuff.

Lara Acosta: 1:40:18

It's a great script, but they don't know how to read a title from.

Darren Lee: 1:40:21

Yeah, it's like they just need to get better. And then that kind of like hit me. I was like, fuck, maybe I just need to tell them they need to get better too, right. And it's like of like when you're going to the gym, right, I call one of my team members, like guy's great physique. He's 19 years old, his test couldn't be more true to roof and he's like I won't make enough progress. I'm like, well, you just need to do it for six more years.

Lara Acosta: 1:40:56

He's probably looking at you, shredded you know, but that's the thing, though.

Darren Lee: 1:40:59

It's like you just need to do this for six more years because his food's dialed in, his sleep's dialed in, his training's dialed in. It's like, yes, dude, you are doing everything correct, you'll become great at it. It's ironic, right. An observation I have of you is like I don't think you realize, like, how valuable the stuff that you do has on other platforms. You know, like youtube came easy to you and I know they were all like your best. Like you know linkedin posts effectively about how to grow and xyz and so on. But you started my mastermind being like oh, like, this is how you do content on linkedin. But I had to mastermind being like, oh, like, this is how you do content on linkedin. But I had to interrupt you and I was like this is just content in general, guys. Like there's the attention market, there's the community engagement, there's the not being a potato, right. So I think, like almost like a limiting belief you have is that your content isn't transferable. Your content like thesis isn't transferable to other platforms, when it absolutely is.

Lara Acosta: 1:42:02

Yes, but nuance. So example very interesting. I taught the Slay framework at the Mastermind right Slay framework my framework story lesson, actionable piece of advice. You, that's our writing framework, right. And so I saw people trying to implement it live two days after they're like oh, I'm using the slave framework, I'm using the same framework, right, wrong, because that is a framework specific. How I taught. It is like in the how they've learned. It is as per word by word, instruction by instruction.

Lara Acosta: 1:42:40

So this person wrote the caption with the slave framework, but he didn't have the nuance to use it in the video short, whereas where it should be used, right. So I think, yes, there might be a limiting belief from me, but also it is a limiting belief also in my constraint of teaching. What works well fast on LinkedIn may not work well fast on Instagram, for example. So if you don't have the logic to understand that this written framework can then be used as a script framework instead of just a caption, then it's not going to work. So the person used a clip cut from a podcast, whatever. They didn't understand that this lead framework could have worked well if they used it in their script rather than the caption.

Darren Lee: 1:43:27

Yeah, makes sense.

Lara Acosta: 1:43:28

But my problem, the reason why I say LinkedIn specifically, it is because I know when they use these specific frameworks, the outcome on linkedin would create velocity momentum rather than trying to figure out where it goes where. Because on link on instagram and the reason why I'm opposed to so far so forth is because on instagram you have different moving parts. On linkedin you just have one which is written and photo on. On Instagram you have video, you have the overly compete, like the saturated Instagram feed where it's like real, real, real, real, real, real, real. On LinkedIn you don't have that.

Lara Acosta: 1:44:08

So I am more able to get someone from point A to B as fast as possible with a single framework than then me having to then think oh, is the Instagram story hack, the video scripting hack, the captions, the B-roll that you used the length of the caption, the hashtags that you use the DM giveaway framework, all of these things. So it is not that I am reluctant to use this, because I do know it works. I am more reluctant to teach it for the platforms, because then I am trying to avoid, avoid. How do I say it?

Darren Lee: 1:44:50

It's like the delta and the variance, with all the external variables.

Lara Acosta: 1:44:54

There's too many external variables that I am not comfortable with dealing yet because I don't know. I am not inherently intuitive in that platform, yet I am inherently intuitive in linkedin.

Darren Lee: 1:45:03

So but you did it in youtube. That's the whole point, right? Is that I? I completely agree with you. However, the like slave framework, which is awesome, can be translated into a real script.

Darren Lee: 1:45:14

Yeah, it's just a real, but then it can also be elaborated on with um youtube. So let's give an example. So the lean writing method by dickie and nicholas cole starts with a tweet you know, you're familiar with this right and then it expands, and expands, and expands. It's the same shit as in your mental model, but that is the same thing. So I think that they've had a lot of success with going from linkedin to you, linkedin to instagram, linkedin to x, and then into youtube under one individual platforms, and then into newsletter. You know, and this is how they've built such a fucking big business, right, it's because, like I'm just saying, like the mental model between them it is, but then it does come with the amount of reps that they had on Twitter to then be able to afford to write long-term.

Lara Acosta: 1:46:00

So, when it comes to teaching beginner-level people who are already opposed, this is what I am over-indexing on.

Lara Acosta: 1:46:08

I'm trying to under-optimize their interest in multiple platforms and their already pre-validated fear for posting on LinkedIn. At the very start of the masterclass, I literally separated people into two groups who's posting on LinkedIn and who's not. So I realized that there's so many people that already have all these objections to posting on it on LinkedIn and they already. There's like a very small fraction of people that are posting on LinkedIn that they love it. So I had to over-index on. It's easy just do A and B and it's going to lead you to the highest outcome with the most minimal input right, most minimal, bearing in mind. I did shout at people for 30 minutes telling them that they needed to do like the very non-scalable things, because doing the things that don't scale will lead you to the highest outputs every single time. No matter how much you try and over automate something, if you do the things that don't scale, you will become the best person that you can, because you're not automating personalization and you're not automating everything else, and that is the thing that matters. So when I'm trying to explain it, yes, I am on their indexing on the sophistication and putting them on other platforms because I want to, I want them to win in one platform, so then they're able to be like, okay, this shit works, let me try, and then put in the reps, then put in more reps, then be able to diversify from linkedin posts to then youtube script, because if you're able to create a linkedin post that works, then now you're able to understand that you're able to write concisely, communicate well through written word, and then you're able to now create the scripts that you really, really want to create. But then it's optimizing from this thing called the winning effect, when one single win can lead you to create momentum, because you validate your idea of yourself that you're able to do one thing right, and then it creates this momentum for you to win and win again. That happened to me when I first posted my LinkedIn post. If I didn't benefit from the winning effect, which came from me taking advice from multiple people that I saw on LinkedIn that I had been reverse engineering, taking that in understanding one framework and then going viral that same day. I was able to then benefit from that momentum because I knew I was going to get it right.

Lara Acosta: 1:48:20

So I'm trying to create that momentum for other people when I'm teaching them, rather than having them again ruminate on this oh, I can't do this. Therefore, I can't understand this and I don't know how to write a post, and then I don't know how to write a LinkedIn post. Then I don't know how to write a post, and then I don't know how to write a LinkedIn post, then I don't know how to write a newsletter, then I don't know how to take it into an email, and so on and so forth. That's my problem that I had with Dan Coe, when his usual writing model is oh, I just really write a very long newsletter and then that newsletter becomes a YouTube script and then that YouTube script becomes five tweets and in those five tweets I then repurpose onto LinkedIn.

Lara Acosta: 1:49:01

What people and then I was a person that I wanted to follow that because it just seemed so simple and the problem with oversimplifying things for an audience that isn't sophisticated enough that and that doesn't know what the real work behind the scenes is then you end up making them feel like they're incompetent.

Lara Acosta: 1:49:22

But you're not bad at things, you're just not good at them. Yet, and that is the thing that I'm trying to get people to understand. It is more. It comes with a small rep and then with that consistency, then the reward comes, where you're able to then take one LinkedIn post that went viral and then create a viral video. Because when I tried the Danko approach, where I'm going to write a really long newsletter and then turn it into a YouTube script, well, the newsletter isn't optimized for the first three seconds of a hug on YouTube, right. The same newsletter isn't optimized for the small retention that a LinkedIn post needs to have, right. I'm optimizing for logic and nuance and how sophisticated the person reading this is. And ultimately, when I'm targeting a broad audience, I am aware that this broad audience doesn't understand the other minimal, crucial, overcomplicated, minimal middle of Belkov meme things that come into play, have to have and take part on.

Darren Lee: 1:50:23

So my content got 10 times better. The second. I stopped doing that.

Lara Acosta: 1:50:27

Yeah, everybody's content gets better when you stop following the big creator's advice. Because again, I have this thing and I hate to say it Danko, justin Welch, maybe even Alex, are as much as we like to say that they're equals to us. They benefited from the golden age of LinkedIn, like Justin Welch really really hit it off in 2020 when no one else was posting on LinkedIn. Same with Danco. So they may be really good at it and they are, they're incredible at it, but they also have this benefit of first mover advantage that we often do not see. So when Danco goes, you are the niche, I am like no, you need to niche down until you become the niche. You niche down, then you widen up, then you level up and then you become the niche. Dan niche down, then you widen up, then you level up and then you become the niche.

Lara Acosta: 1:51:18

Danko started by dominating a niche of one in the design industry. Then he started creating content about design. Then he realized, okay, I'm getting all the reps in design and I know how to write. Now I'm going to level up and become a writer overall, because I learned how to talk about design in a very specific way. So then I'm going to take that knowledge and then implement it into a broader market, and then that broader market became YouTube, twitter, newsletter, so on and so forth, and now he has his courses call text and all of these things. But again back to person at the beginning stage is looking at what the people are doing. Oh, I'm not going to copy what they say, I'm going to copy what they do Wrong, because then that's going to lead you into six months of you wasting your time and it hurts me and I'm so passionate about this. I'm literally getting goosebumps about it because I'm getting so angry because I was that person who wasted all of his time trying to overcomplicate and over index on the thing that these people are doing, rather than the one thing that was going to get me to that one output that was going to get me to that social proof, authority, mastery of the subject. In order to be an expert, you have to be do, to be willing to do the things that take you to becoming an expert, rather than pretending to be an expert when you don't know anything. And so that is an issue. That that is an issue that most people have, especially beginners and even advanced people like I.

Lara Acosta: 1:52:31

I speak to so many seven, eight, eight-figure entrepreneurs in the DTC space, e-com space, smma space, everything and they're trying to create this multi-platform approach. That is just not going to work because they've dominated the business space and they are very hyper-logical but, like you said, then they're over-indexing on the hyper-logic and they're under-indexing on the charisma, on the content, on their ability to communicate. But then when they try and over distribute their content onto other platforms, when it's them sitting down in a podcast and they're just like this, they don't have any emotions. They're talking about dtc and mr and like how to scale, almost like some ovens. That's why his content may not resonate with a lot of people. When I watch some ovens I cannot be retained because he's so monotone and then that might work for other people.

Lara Acosta: 1:53:18

But for a broad scale, whereas ideally where the most people that are building a personal brand actually want to get to, which is fame, level status or at least micro niche fame, it is not going to work when you don't have all of these other elements optimized, especially your ability to communicate concisely and have a level of charisma or being able to move your hands so you're interactive or look, or having some sort of distinguished look. When I was taking coaching from Brett, he was able to tell me something that I hadn't really perceived. One of the main reasons why I'm able to stand out in the market is because I have an accent, is because I look a certain way, is because I dress a certain way. You as well. You have the, the hair, you have the, the, the blonde hair, all of these things that make us distinctive. But if you do not understand what makes you distinctive and you look like everyone else and you don't have all of these things optimized, like your ability to communicate, then you're gonna blend in. So I'm going.

Darren Lee: 1:54:14

I'm in the middle of the bell curve right now I completely agree with you, though, because that was a whole theory with my podcast too. Right, which I was known for podcasting, helped me with our podcast, building a podcast, turning it into a business, and then it was like huh, we'd reach a critical mass that we can still help that cohort plus people with youtube content. And then it was youtube plus podcasts, and not just for podcasters but for business owners. So it took five years to get into that threshold, but that's where I run a mastermind and someone's like well, you have an entire ecosystem of products and services and offers. You have an agency and a coaching program. Can I just do that?

Darren Lee: 1:54:49

And it's like no, you need to get your one-to-one fucking bread work course working. We need to get 50 clients in there. We need you to run it so many times that you've you've got rid of all the fat of it, you've broke off all the fat so that, therefore, you are that person that I can do things right, because even like you have lots of uh, small one-liners, so do I. They come from you fucking this up so many times that you're like oh look, I'm gonna say like this, I'm gonna say like that.