#298 Tom Noske - How to Turn Your Passion Into a Profitable Business

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(00:00) Preview
(01:21) How to Turn Passion into Profit
(04:05) Attention vs. Business - Which Comes First?  
(06:23) Building a Personal Brand That Actually Converts  
(09:14) The Anti-Niche Strategy  
(15:42) The Real Reason People Buy  
(19:02) Building a Connection with Your Audience 
(23:51) How Tom Reinvented Himself
(27:56) How Tom Went From Creator to Entrepreneur
(31:59) High Ticket vs. Low Ticket 
(38:03) Building a Long-Term Business Ecosystem  
(41:10) Why Helping Beginners Is Harder
(43:26) Tom’s No-Sales-Call Launch Strategy  
(45:24) The 43-Day Launch Framework 
(51:03) Tom’s Sell By Chat Strategy 
(57:34) The Importance of Finding Your Own Lane  
(01:06:38) The Effects of Your Environment
(01:10:35) What Is Tom Noske Optimizing For?

Chapters

• 0:00 Turning Passion Into Profitable Business
• 6:10 Content Attracts, Funnels Sell
• 15:53 Personal Branding Beyond Niches
• 26:55 The Creator-Entrepreneur Shift
• 37:16 Pricing Strategy for Creator Businesses
• 53:06 Launch Strategy Without Sales Calls
• 1:05:56 Building Success on Your Terms
• 1:16:20 Balancing Impact and Lifestyle

Transcript

Darren Lee: 0:00

Is it truly possible to turn your passion into a profitable business?

Tom Noske: 0:06

Yes, I think so. The word entrepreneur has become conflated with like systems and people talking about like how to run a business and all these different ways of doing things. But at the end of the day, business or being an entrepreneur is just the business that you have, then informs the content you make, which then informs the traffic you build, and so that's a really roundabout way of basically saying if you have a product you want to sell, that then informs the type of content you make in order to drive people to that business.

Darren Lee: 0:34

My biggest mistake I made for most of the first five to six years is trying to Most creators are chasing the wrong game, posting every day, chasing followers, trying to become famous, then wondering whether still broke or burnt out. In this episode, I sat down with Tom Nosky, the creator of Time to Build, who went from burnout to building a multi six figure a month business with no sales calls, no DMs and no burnout. We break down how to build a real business around your personality, your passion and your brand without becoming a slave to the algorithm. If you're serious about monetizing with leverage, this podcast is for you. Let's kick off. Is it truly possible to turn your passion into a profitable business?

Tom Noske: 1:20

Yes, I think so. I think it depends how you define business right. I think a lot of people come into. I think entrepreneur has become such a big word on social media and so it's gotten to the point where people come into this with this expectation of what that word means. But when you think about, could I build an audience on social media who are interested enough in what I do that they'd be willing to buy something that I sell? I think anyone can do that, even if it's not your primary thing, even if you're selling, say, a service, you're a freelance videographer, freelance web designer and you happen to sell digital products or something associated with that skill set. I think anyone can do that, and so I think it depends how you define it. But absolutely, yeah, you could.

Darren Lee: 2:03

Let's double tap on the expectations of the entrepreneur. What do you think people think that that is versus the reality of it, because I have my own opinion on that too.

Tom Noske: 2:11

Yeah, yeah I I think, like I think the word entrepreneur has become conflated with like systems and people talking about like how to run a business and all these different ways of doing things. But at the end of the day, business or being an entrepreneur is just convincing someone to send money from their wallet to your wallet in exchange for something. And so sometimes that's time, sometimes that's a service, sometimes that's a digital product, a physical product, whatever it is. But at the end of the day, that is the core of what being an entrepreneur is is convincing someone to send money from their wallet to your wallet in exchange for some point of value. And I think it's become conflated a little bit where people over complicate it and then that stops people from, I guess, getting started or even calling themselves a business person. A lot of people, especially content creators, will call themselves a content creator before they call themselves an entrepreneur without realizing, like, if you don't have a job and you pay your rent each month, you're an entrepreneur. That's, by definition, what that means.

Darren Lee: 3:16

And it's ironic, right, because I completely agree with you A lot of the things that we're being told are like an overcomplication, right? It's as simple as leads, sales process and a delivery process. That delivery process of a digital product could be nothing you could be selling a $9 ebook. It could be more complex, but I like to really break it down into the very core essence and then it comes into your world, which is what is the attention that we need to drive towards generating those leads, or generating those eyeballs, or generating that traffic. And I think, if you look at your journey, that's like being almost watching what, those biggest mistakes that you made, thinking about what you needed to get attention for your business versus what you did.

Tom Noske: 3:58

I think it's like the biggest mistake I made was the chicken or the egg argument which has to come first the business or the attention?

Tom Noske: 4:05

And I think a lot of my early days was spent thinking if I just built enough attention and I know this is such a cliche it's like you got to try to make money.

Tom Noske: 4:14

To make money, making money in anything, requires effort and trying to actually make money.

Tom Noske: 4:23

But I think I had this idea in my mind that with enough traffic, enough attention, that money would follow, when in reality it is almost the decision you make or the business that you have then informs the content you make, which then informs the traffic you build.

Tom Noske: 4:35

And so that's a really roundabout way of basically saying if you have a product you want to sell, that then informs the type of content you make in order to drive people to that business, and so the best thing you can have in order to maximize this is something that you want to sell in mind before you make the content. Not that every piece of content needs to sell, but you want to have a pretty good idea of what you're trying to sell, because then that makes it a lot easier to speak to the specific kind of people that you want to sell that item to, and I think so. That's my, or I would imagine that's my biggest mistake I made for most of the first five to six years is trying to just make content and hope that that would turn into enough traffic, enough affiliate deals, enough sponsorship revenue, that the number would add up at the end of the month.

Darren Lee: 5:23

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, I'd love to hit this from a few different angles, just staying on that point specifically. Yeah, I completely agree with you. Like I looked at my journey as like a podcaster.

Darren Lee: 5:45

Now, in the beginning I it wasn't there to make money, so it was just my curiosity and just trying to interview like founders, entrepreneurs, like tech people and so on, and then it developed. But the second that I did have what I was offering or what I was servicing. The content was dictated by what I was actually delivering to people. So whether it's tactical, whether it's framework, whether it's trend-based or whether it's even my values and so on, so I could have that one-to-one like relationship which I think can be easier for people to draw out. If you talk to your program or your product, you can almost draw out a scaffolding effectively for your content at that point.

Darren Lee: 6:23

So I think, that's one way to proportion it, to make it simple. But then if I look at your observation or if I look at your approach of you know you are the niche and you don't need the niche out and too much is. This a bit of a challenge sometimes, because some of the content might be, you know, cycling, triathlons, lighting you know that it's dispersed at that point. So how do you think about that?

Tom Noske: 6:46

So my philosophy around personal branding is one it builds on a few foundations, so one. I think that, at its core, content is supposed to attract, not sell. So your job with content is to attract, the job of your sales funnel is to sell, and so all you need to do when you're making content is attract the type of people that you want into your world and then convert them if they happen to be the suitable person for your product. Not saying you should leave it up to chance, but I think there's like this fallacy where and I think a lot of creators shoot themselves in the foot building the amount of impact you could is almost stopped because they're worried about total conversion of followers into customers, where that's literally impossible. A good conversion rate from my email list, from emails collected to customers sold, is like 15%, and that's from an email list. And so in terms of an audience, like total audience size into total customer size, the fact that people even think that they can have total customer to total follower to customer conversion is a waste of time and, I think, stopping them from having the maximum impact that they could have. And so for me, I've always sort of started at the core of your content. The purpose of your content is not to convert, it's to attract. The purpose of your sales funnel is then to convert, and so, with that in mind, the approach is then okay, well, who is the type of person that I'm best positioned to help? And in, that person may be a potential customer. That person may be a few steps behind your potential customer or maybe even a few steps ahead of your potential customer, but if you have a specific person in mind, then you become kind of the perfect content creator for that specific type of person. And the irony of targeting one specific person instead of a niche is it actually increases the breadth of your content, right? And so if I was just targeting Darren Lee with my content, I was like all I want to do is make sure I fucking nail the content for Darren Lee. I want Darren Lee to imagine that I'm reading his mind. I would make like health content, I would make fitness content, I'd make hair routine content, I'd make living in Bali content, I'd make business content, I would attack every area of your life and you'd go holy fuck, this is my perfect person. Without realizing I've dominated a market with you, the specific type of person, but with a massive, wide range of content.

Tom Noske: 9:14

There's this quote from the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. It's that the apparent target of your marketing is not the people that will eventually buy your product. I've butchered the quote, but it's essentially that the people that will buy your product are not the actual people that you're targeting in your marketing. And so, the same way that a good example of this is like Apple, for example, like Apple's target market when they sit in their boardrooms, is creative professionals. Like right, creative professionals are probably the target of their marketing, but everyone buys Apple products, and so Apple have done such a good job targeting that tiny demographic of creative professionals that everyone wants to be a creative professional, and so your job with your content, if you want to really have maximum impact, is to target one very specific human being in every aspect of their lives, and so, for me, all I'm trying to do at the end of the day, is help my former self become who I am today, and so that means that anything that falls within the bracket of that person's interests is completely fair game in my content, and, ironically, one of the stories that I always kind of call upon to prove this point is I've had about 1,000 customers go through Time to Build in the last two years.

Tom Noske: 10:30

Probably 940, I would say accurately 940 customers have at least and I'm not exaggerating like a dozen to two dozen of the 80 students who have either done an Ironman plan on doing Ironman or are actively training and weeks out from an Ironman. No way 0.04% of the population have ever done an Ironman and 20% of my customer base have done Ironmans. And so the kicker is that people who have done Ironmans and are interested in content creation and business I'm the only person that exists. No one else exists that those people are going to go to. And so for you, ironically, you making hair routine videos might actually be the single best thing for converting followers into diehard fans. And this is like the impact versus business argument or impact versus entrepreneurship argument, because I do think and we're kind of speaking about this before we hit record I think for maximum impact, you can't go for maximum business with your content.

Darren Lee: 11:41

A hundred percent and dude. There's so many points I want to unlock. One of the biggest things comes up for me is I saw a clip from you months ago was saying that if you wanted to maximize the money you'd make, you would make content just very similar to Ravi Ravi Avula just like very systematic, just very like flow, charity stuff, and, yeah, we'd get a ton of leads, but you would run out and get bored with it. Instead, you want to be more like a Rogan, a Ferris, where you're just constantly going at this continuously and the way that I see this play out, or just to try to conceptualize it, is hitting the health, wealth and relationship bracket right. So if you ever see some of my content, yes, it can be very, very like specific, lucid charts, which is like actually showing someone some systems we use. But then I'll have some like dog content from my dogs, because one of my highest values are my dogs, like I, literally like love my dogs.

Darren Lee: 12:30

I have four of them and I got them all from the street in bali, but then I'm also married, okay and I share a lot of. I share a lot of my values through being married okay, and then on top of that is my health Okay. So I was a bodybuilder when I was younger and I still like train every single day, even despite how busy I am busy. The reason why I'm sharing this is because your customers are a reflection of you.

Darren Lee: 12:55

And a lot of the people that come into my world just world in general are married, are into fitness, they were in like the bodybuilding space and they have businesses, businesses or they were in finance and tech and all this kind of stuff beforehand. So it's ironic because when we speak to people they always say I feel like I was you at like a certain point in time. And it's a very, very interesting observation because if your free content does hit all those different parameters, that should be enough to solve their painful problem, that this specific problem that they have in time right now for free, and that will start that kind of almost like marketing flywheel that yes, they may not buy from you, but but do you need everyone to buy from you? I am, I had my mastermind last week and james kemp spoke at it. So james kemp, uh, used to work with tacky more. I actually have a podcast tacky tomorrow. Um, and james said that over 60. So out of his revenue, which is a 200k a month, 60 of that revenue come from 10 of clients.

Darren Lee: 13:53

It's just going to be always going to be like the 80 20 rule. So knowing that and knowing how this pans out statistically, yeah this seems like a fucking great idea to have more hair content, right, it's just, it's literally all going to check out yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tom Noske: 14:08

Literally, I think there's a, there is this, there is this push. But even if you, I think the best kind of explanation for doing this is if you don't, if you don't include your origin story and your own unique things and everything that makes you into your content, your audience, we're human beings, we're emotional spenders, and so people are going to do that anyway. People are going to make assumptions about you anyway. They're going to draw up a picture of what you are like in your own life anyway, and so you can either control the narrative and show people the iceberg that is beneath the surface, or you can leave it up to chance and hope they do it. But either way, they're going to do it and their buying decision is going to be based emotionally, because we're emotional people, we're emotional spenders. I have endless examples of situations where I've spent way too much money because I got emotional about something, and so there's, I think, this undeniable reality where you can either do this, and it'll probably work a bit better for you, or you can avoid it, and people are going to do it for you anyway. They're going to draw their own conclusions, and you're right. It's the Russell Brunson example as well of. He had a miscarriage and then spoke about it on stage and at the end for his call to action, the back of the stage or the back of the room was filled with wives who had just had miscarriages. And so it happens over and over and over again where that one point of connection is the thing that gets them over the line for people, and it's down to this point.

Tom Noske: 15:42

I think this is like a good segue, like I've realized recently that I think trust is built on taste, like I think there's a big thing in content, especially where the trust that you have for a mentor, for the creators you follow, for the people you buy from, is taste. It's the taste that that person has. It's the vibe they create. It's the environment they that person has. It's the vibe they create. It's the environment they create in their content. This is why creators who are well-dressed tend to do so much better, because they have amazing taste.

Tom Noske: 16:14

Or the creators that have amazing setups or amazing lighting or have an interesting character. Maybe it's the way they look or the way they dye their hair, or they've got long, beautiful locks, something about that is the thing that people attach themselves to, because it's taste. It's the, the taste they create, it's the welcoming environment, it's the vibe, it's the aesthetic, and I know it's kind of a null point because it's you can't teach cool, like you can't teach people to be cool. But I think the the biggest unfair advantage in terms of making content that converts is including the things that make you you. And I know that's such a fucking fluffy esoteric, you know woo-woo point, but it's true, man, like, over and over again I'm reminded that you have to be you, that you have to be you. The best content you can make is the stuff only you can make, which is your story, your origin story, the, your struggles, your setbacks, your childhood, all the things that made you you. Is the stuff that people uh, it's memorable for people and makes them connect with you 100 man.

Darren Lee: 17:19

I um, I'm thinking of dakota roberts, and I know dakota spoke in your, in your court. He's a he's a very close friend of mine. We spent a lot of time together and if you look at his.

Darren Lee: 17:28

If you look at his content, he deliberately says like, yep, this isn't for you. If you're X, y, z, he'll say just outlandish shit. His landing pages, testimonials by himself and he spoke in our program and I've met him and I've had many podcasts with him and I said that he has like a stand-up comic character, like he should actually do stand-up. He's actually hilarious To the point that that would probably push some people away but it pulls in people into like his cult right. So that's the taste. People that are, yes, they want to build a business but they're a little bit more chill about it. And he he balances that very, very, very well and even the aesthetic around it.

Darren Lee: 18:07

What I wanted to ask you about specifically is um relatability versus authority. So I know you've mentioned things like this and uh, it's funny, man, because indirectly I've also spoken about this how I feel that the guys that are really putting themselves on the pedestal, the guys that really want to be seen, as you know, god-like status, yeah, I don't, I don't, I'm not relatable to it, I don't feel connected to it, and I find that that actually deters people. However, keeping down to earth or just having that sense of normality effectively pulls more people into the interior ecosystem. Now let me give you an example of that person that said that they felt the pain that I was in. That individual, that woman literally said I feel like I'm in that position of pain that you were once in, and I responded saying yes, I know how it feels. It feels terrible, let's fix it.

Tom Noske: 18:58

Yeah, yeah, there's yeah.

Tom Noske: 19:02

I love this point. There's uh, there's like point. There's power in juxtaposition, and so having both ends of the spectrum makes either end more impactful. And so if you just get on social media and complain all the time, no one's going to care, whereas if you just get on social media and you talk about systems and how good you are and how you never slip up and you have these perfect days, no one's going to care. But if you get on camera and you're like I've got this system for running my business, it really helps me and, by the way, I have ADHD, and so you've got this contrast between these two things, you're like, oh well, clearly I should listen to this person because they're effective with ADHD.

Tom Noske: 19:40

And I think the point you made where the lady felt like they were in your position, I've drawn the equivalent to. It's like a ladder right. And so if you're all the way up here and you've achieved amazing heights, you've been making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, you've got this big podcast, it's incredible. You're all the way up here, your customers are down here, and if they don't see a few steps in between that you've gone through personally, they can't bridge the gap. It's too far. And so if you're up here making, let's, $100,000, $150,000 a month and your customers are down here, but then you tell the story of starting your business, you were like you know what? I started my business, I quit my job and I did this. I went out on my own. It was really scary. They can go fuck, darren was here. Well, I could definitely get to there, and if he was there then I can definitely have a crack at getting there. I don't know how I'm going to do it. And so it almost throws them a life raft or a ladder in order to get to where you are, whereas if you're just this person who's holier than thou, you're in your high horse for everything you do, everyone's going to look at what you're doing and go. I don't feel like that at all, and so it's probably not realistic.

Tom Noske: 20:42

I think it's also the point of I don't know if you ever get this emotion. It's probably the Australian in me, but I always look at people, and if I don't feel like I can see the chink in their armor, I don't believe anything they say. If I look at someone and I'm like, this person never shows any faults, any flaws. They act like every day is perfect. Meanwhile, yeah, I'll get up at five o'clock some days, but then other days I'll wake up at 8.30 because I slept through my alarm and I start my day at nine o'clock and I don't train and I feel like shit and I eat a burger for lunch and I drink on the weekends and all these sort of things.

Tom Noske: 21:21

It's like not being able to see the chink in the armor makes me not believe the things that you say. And so if you just show me some reality, some small slip up, or even if it's nothing crazy, even if it's like hey guys, I talk about systems and I talk about routine, but some days I don't do that and it's okay, that would immediately make me believe your routine more, whereas when I see these guys post on their stories, they're like here's my daily routine. I get up at 3.30 and then I've got meditation and then I do this from 4.30 till 5.00. I'm like bullshit. You did this today and you've never done it again.

Tom Noske: 21:58

Or you never did it in the first place, and so I think having it all comes back to this idea the juxtaposition is what makes either end impactful, and so having contrast between your best and your worst is what makes your best desirable and what makes your worst relatable. And so I've always told this story the best one that I've got, and I'll rip this out for the podcast. But I always use this example in my lessons, where I was bullied in high school for being stupid so I'm dyslexic and I have ADD. So I'm dyslexic and I have ADD, so I don't have the hyperactivity one. And so I was in high school. We were at similar age, and so I was in high school fuck 15 years ago now, or 10 years ago. I finished high school. So I was in high school fuck 15 years ago now, or 10 years ago.

Tom Noske: 22:45

I finished high school, so I was entering high school 15 years ago, and so I was always kind of uh, treated differently. Like my closest brother is ADHD. He's mega hyperactive, and so he was always put in like the special classes. He was given extra support. He was given like instead of having to read books, they always gave him audio books. They always let him use a laptop in the test because he couldn't do paper. Blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile I was, like, sat at the back of the classroom, quiet, and so no one cared.

Tom Noske: 23:13

And so I was bullied in high school for being dumb, to the point where it was like I would slip up on my words, I would misuse a word because of my dyslexia, and so I would use something that's completely wrong in a sentence, and so people would bully me for it. And I remember it got to the point where I was bullied so bad that I would go to school each day and go. If I just shut the fuck up, there's nothing for them to me, nothing for them to bully me for. And so I use this comparison where I'm like I was bullied into silence in high school and now I make a living speaking on the internet, and so you only care because of the contrast.

Tom Noske: 23:51

If I'm just telling that story, you know well, it doesn't matter, but you're listening to me speak to camera and make a living speaking on the internet, and you hear that story and you're like, fuck, I could do that. Like if tom can do that, I can do that. And so it's this, it's this contrast that you have to have. If you're just this holier-than-thou character, no one cares, man, it's not relatable dude.

Darren Lee: 24:15

This is. This has firing me in a thousand different ways, like I'm thinking about so much different concepts of why things have worked, and maybe me just not doubling down on them, or maybe not realizing things right. So let me give you, let me have some context. So I gave up alcohol a thousand days ago, over a thousand days ago. Oh, wow congratulations. Thank you, my man. I gave up, though, because I was working a nine to five and I had no time to work in my business because I used to spend all the time yeah, like irish and australians, right.

Darren Lee: 24:42

What do we do? Just party okay so I used to tell that story and, from the perspective, I just gave up because I was working my business and then eventually got away from it and, yes, like it was all true, whatever it was fine was fine. But then actually, funnily enough, the more time I'd spend away from alcohol, the more time I realized that I actually had an issue with alcohol.

Tom Noske: 25:01

So when I was young, twenties.

Darren Lee: 25:02

Like you, based in Melbourne.

Tom Noske: 25:04

Yeah.

Darren Lee: 25:05

Yeah, yeah. So Melbourne, like the house and techno scene there's huge at the club scenes. They're huge. So was in Ireland. So was in the UK and I actually had realized that I actually had an issue right the whole. So was in the UK and I actually had realized that I actually had an issue right, the whole idea of like going down every weekend and getting absolutely smashed and obliterated and going to these like sessions, like that's not good, right.

Darren Lee: 25:20

but as longer I spent away from it, the more I had realized that, the more I drew my awareness to it. And I was just telling this, I was telling this in my stories. I was getting to 500 days, a thousand days, and I was like, look, dude, where people like I'm actually realizing that I've had issues with alcohol. And the second, I kind of change our frame. So many people are coming forward and saying I was exact same. I'm in Ireland. I didn't realize this. Now I'm beginning to see it. What can I do about it?

Tom Noske: 25:46

And just completely.

Darren Lee: 25:47

Just in my DMs I'm like, yeah, like I would put together a plan. I do 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and the question I always say to myself is like, instead of when it's, why would I drink again? This is my own case. Everyone's case is different, but I find it very interesting because, as you said, that has nothing to do with my business, but it pulls people in in an actual, real, authentic way, because I would literally was so naive to think that I didn't have an issue with alcohol. That's actually how naive I was and if I look at it objectively, I can see that. So another quick reminder. And then when you see the contrast, the juxtaposition, it has a huge impact overall huge.

Tom Noske: 26:24

yeah, it's, it's probably one of the most power. I mean it's storytelling right before and after contrast, like it's storytelling. It's the reason why, uh, malfoy in harry potter is like from a wealthy, a wealthy family, and Harry Potter is an orphan. There's contrast between the two characters and so it's always the same. It's the classic trope and so not to say you should use that intentionally, but I think so many people are so scared to do this, and so there's like this reframe in your mind where I think the content you're most scared to make is the content that's most important to make.

Tom Noske: 27:03

I was told by a mentor recently Lewis Mocker, fantastic Australian creator and info product. He's hardly even a creator anymore. His business is doing so well that he doesn't even make content anymore. But he's fantastic and he talks about how, if you're doing content well, it should feel like you're naked in the street and it's like this idea of like, if you're doing it well, it should feel extremely vulnerable and very exposing, and so, like telling stories like that, I've told that story. I've never told that story. Story on content. I've told that story behind a paywall in time to build as a, as a use case for this situation, but it's like it should feel uncomfortable, and so the content that's the scariest to make is the content you need to make most of the time when did you make the shift really from being just a creator to an entrepreneur?

Darren Lee: 27:56

because now your cohorts are so streamlined, your launch strategy is so streamlined we'll get into launch strategy too but there was almost like this shift right for you. Yeah, that turned you more in, more into an entrepreneur not saying you weren't, but the fact that you built out systems and processes like what was that underlying shift?

Tom Noske: 28:17

I think, the initial shift. I was just sick of being broke, to be honest. I think I'd just gotten to the point where I was like fuck this shit, I'm done. I've done being broke. And so I think there was this big shift for me in like, because I I've been an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur since 2016. So I quit my job at the end of sorry end of 2016, beginning of 2017. No, it would have been end of 2017. My bad End of 2017, I quit my job, and so I've been an entrepreneur a long time. And from 2017, all the way through till like 2022 or 2021, I just it was freelance jobs, $60,000 Australian dollars a year, whatever.

Tom Noske: 28:57

Anyone would say yes to nothing to really write home about, but I was just really proud of the fact that I didn't have to have a job. To be honest, that was kind of my perspective back then and where my ceiling was in my mind, I did have big goals, but not really like the goals that I have now are insane compared to what I was thinking in my mind back then, and so I kind of just floated by. And then, in 2022, I think I just had this moment where I was like fuck like, if I want to do something, I'm gonna have to fucking do something. And so I started reading. I found like money Twitter or like make money online Twitter and that sort of got me in like 2021, I think, because I was in the NFT space and the NFT space was kind of like pretty toxic. And so I started following, like JK Molina and Dan Coe and Dakota as well, and started watching their content. I was like, oh fuck, these all these guys are all doing kind of similar things to what I was already doing as a digital artist and photographer and filmmaker, but they're making way more money out of it. What am I doing wrong? And so I started following down that route and I realized that there was kind of this. There was this non-existent market of truly creative creators making stuff for those kind of people, but from the perspective of I'm actually doing this to make money, it just didn't exist. Everyone was kind of scared to admit that they were doing this to make money.

Tom Noske: 30:29

I have this story from early days on Instagram where I asked a big creator who still exists. I asked this big creator still exists. I asked this big creator. I was like, how are you making money? Because I really want to do this full time. And they got angry at me. They were like that's such a disgusting question to ask. You shouldn't ask that kind of thing. What are you doing? All I'd asked was, like how are you doing this full time? How is this your full time job? And they got angry at like that was the kind of energy in the creative space. And then suddenly I'm on like make money, twitter and everyone's like this is how much I made this month. This is exactly how I did it. This is what you should do. Take these lessons. I was like this is amazing, the fact that people are so open and talking about money.

Tom Noske: 31:10

And so I sort of threw myself in the deep end of like selling digital products on Gumroad, trying to do that whole thing. I completely shifted my content away from basically trying to make content to grow an audience to okay, I'm trying to make content to now sell digital products. And so I experimented with using my skills to make ads and trying to drive traffic to these pages and almost immediately, it was my biggest month. Selling a $29 product was a $50,000 month in january of 2023, and so I hit massive volume selling a $29 product. I had my first $100,000 month in june of 2023, selling. My most expensive product was $299.

Darren Lee: 31:53

Crazy man that's so wild because? And what size was your audience at that point?

Tom Noske: 31:59

Like 250,000, like a hundred, and probably between 180 and maybe 250,000.

Darren Lee: 32:06

Okay, I would love to get your thoughts on this. How do you see about the? I call it like, almost like a it's like a seesaw, if you imagine like a spectrum of the pricing of what you sell in relation to the audience that you have.

Darren Lee: 32:21

So, just for, context we have a small audience. I had a small audience on LinkedIn. That's where I initially got started. People say LinkedIn is for losers but it's good for getting leads. So we had an agency service specifically on LinkedIn and it worked really well.

Darren Lee: 32:34

But because leads are few and far between, right the boy, the way around that was to sell high ticket. Okay, so it was like 5k, 6k, 7k, six months, 12 months and so on. And we still have that agency. Right, we still have the agency business, the media business. It's a lot bigger now but in essence that's it. And then on Instagram, still a relatively small audience but super engaged. So I would say that like a very active audience, but again, it's still very, very high ticket. Right, we have programs that are from ak to 20k to 60k. Um, 60k is more for the agency. The reason I'm saying that is because that influences the decisions I make with how we drive traffic to that product and also the money that we've made and the decisions that we make Right. So, like, just for context, like right now we're probably doing we're coming up to nearly 4 million a year, but there's a big infrastructure.

Darren Lee: 33:26

There's a big infrastructure right. So, there's an education, there's a media business, there's a lot of infrastructure. I want to get kind of get your download on that. I that's a lot, but yeah so the question really is about. If you look at the, if you look at the spectrum of pricing to audience size, how do we balance that?

Tom Noske: 33:44

so it's. It's really tricky. Let me first add the nuance high ticket is better for making money across the board. Hands down, hands down always will be.

Tom Noske: 33:55

I don't believe anyone who's like nah, low ticket all the way.

Tom Noske: 33:58

Where I kind of disagree with a lot of high ticket people is I think that the skills you build and the long-term kind of positioning of low ticket is so much better for almost 90% of people on social media. I think the issue with high ticket is like we said before it rips you out of what your best position to do early days, which is make more content. The best thing you could possibly do for your brand and your business long-term is put the dollars aside, the dollars and cents aside, sacrifice a little bit of it, make more content and then try to sell lower ticket. So you've got higher volume, less work, more profit and so, in my opinion, I think there's no kind of special, there's no kind of system for if you've got this many followers, you should sell this priced product. I think the math needs to math. Like, if you've got 10,000 followers and you're trying to sell a $10 product, it's not going to math up, and so you've got to think about what you want to do in that regard.

Tom Noske: 35:03

But I think there's enormous value in selling low ticket, at least initially for most people, because one it forces you to learn how to write better content.

Tom Noske: 35:12

It forces you to learn how to write better headlines, better copy, make better VSLs. It forces you to learn how to drive traffic, which, at the end of the day, if you don't know how to drive traffic, it doesn't matter how high ticket your product is. You're not going to sell anything and, yeah, you're not going to learn sales. You're probably not going to learn how to do sales calls or book calls or run a bit of a filtered funnel, if you will where? Maybe it's an application funnel or something like that. But I think the skills that you'll learn and then the time and the freedom and flexibility that provides you back to then focus more on content, I think it's just such a incredible thing. Now, the nuance here is, I think, from my own experience and from everyone, I think low ticket is basically twenty dollars to three hundred dollars, and then I think three hundred dollars to a thousand dollars is is info products, no man's land. You don't want to be in three hundred to a thousand dollars, and so I think you either play. You either play really small high or you get the fuck away from that middling $300,000 to $1,000 and you go high ticket. Because that kind of period $300,000 to $1,000 from my experience you tend to attract a lot of Hail Mary clients. They're the kind of people where they're spending $300, but they're acting like they've spent $30,000. And so you end up in this situation where it's just the nature of that much money, where the kind of client who's willing to invest a couple thousand dollars into a program probably already believes in themselves and has the confidence, maybe has the resume or the repertoire knowing that they're going to make that money back, whereas someone who's investing 400 into a program it's a Hail Mary. It's like I have no idea if this is going to work. I have no idea what this person is doing, but I'm going to throw this money at this and hope it changes my life and that's not the type of clients you want.

Tom Noske: 37:09

And so low ticket is amazing, because a $99 course like as long as it's good it's literally no effort. There's nothing you have to do except for maybe handle a few customer service emails every month and so that for a business especially someone like you, I think if you had something available, even if it only added an extra $10,000 or $20,000 a month to your bottom line, that would be $10,000 to $20,000 a month of just pure profit coming from that product, and so that might take your margins from. Let's say, you're making a hundred flat. I'm just going to assume I know you're making a lot more than that, but for easy math it's like if you make a hundred flat and you're you're at 60 margins, you add 20 grand and you've upped that to like 75 percent margins, which could make a considerable difference to your life and even think about this right.

Darren Lee: 38:03

Another aspect is the big thing that we talk about is the ecosystem, right. It's not about yeah, it's not about like, one purchase. It's not about just quickly getting someone's cash and running away with it to bali. Yeah, we want to keep people in the, whether they're free users on the email list or in YouTube. We don't need to take your data right. You can just be in the ecosystem or you can start the journey, like if someone has buying intent for $19, it's buying intent or a book, right? Uh, funnily enough, I actually was in the process of planning out a book and then I was like, look, we're just not at the time yet. I want to get to the point whereby I've done a lot of cool shit and then we'll introduce a book, which is a low ticket, beginning the journey with a user and I think, that's where you know.

Darren Lee: 38:45

I know you've mentioned a lot about, like client acquisition costs going down with content, using content to drive down costs, and I completely agree completely agree and I see that over and over again. It's just for me. What I think we can add more to this is keep more people in your world, bring more people in your world, get more amazing results for them. And it's funny because the buying intent of someone for $99 knows you're not going to change your entire life for $99. As in, that's not the expectation.

Darren Lee: 39:13

I guess, to your point about the no man's land, I completely agree. I think that you run into a ton of issues because if you're selling something, even up to 1500 dude there is going to be dms. There's going to be a lot of dms in terms of is it going to work for me, xyz?

Darren Lee: 39:28

you can't really run calls because you're just going to spend all your fucking time on calls for a shit, for a low ticket product you can't put in a sales team because no one's going to work for it and the margin is going to be shit, so it's basically not beneficial. It doesn't check out Again, the math doesn't matter, right?

Tom Noske: 39:44

No, no, no, I agree with you. I think. Yeah, I think, if you can avoid, if you can either play and this is the same across. You know, this is almost like the rule of thermodynamics you don't want to operate in the middle, you want to be ultra-premium or ultra-cheap, you don't want to be this middling, competing on price, commodity kind of business, and so I think it's the same across the board. But, yeah, I agree with you. I think high ticket is definitely the play. High Ticket is definitely the play, but I think, in terms of, I think we overestimate the amount of.

Tom Noske: 40:21

I think there's a huge proportion of the people on social media where the prospect of them selling High Ticket is like, like, what, Like, what am I supposed to sell for $2,000? Like it's almost, like it's too big a gap, whereas if they can, you know, put together a really useful A to B, maybe it's one system they learned on using this one thing. And you know, stephen Mellor is an amazing example of this on social media. He put together a program where he sells a low-ticket course and then high-ticket consulting where it's teaching many chat and it's just many chat. He just teaches you dm automation on instagram and nothing else and so putting together like a really incredible a to b program, I think, is it's such an easy step for people and so, like I, I think I, I gain a lot of satisfaction.

Tom Noske: 41:10

Like, obviously it would be amazing one day to help people grow from like 100 to 200 000 a month. But for me, right now, I, I love, I love when someone messaged me being like dude, I just made my first thousand dollars on social media. This is amazing. Or I just made my first 10. It's like you know, it's amazing.

Darren Lee: 41:27

I put my hand up to you because that's way harder, because you have to get over all their limiting like you have to help them solve their limiting beliefs. Yeah, it's those.

Darren Lee: 41:34

Very, very early infant clients are so much harder to get results for like genuinely being fully transparent, like the people that we have in our very high ticket programs. I'm like all right, like let's look at the sales calls, let's review the sales calls. Don't say that that's dumb, say this, this, and then they go back and just instantly yeah, they'll just get. Yeah, because it's so, it's so topical. But that's why. Let me just take a step back. The reason why I'm saying like what you're doing is 10 times harder to get someone to make a thousand dollars is because of the fact that there's there's so much things they need to get right they need to start making content, start building an offer, get the confidence, have a.

Darren Lee: 42:10

For me, when we look at a business, I always talk about it. It's lead, sales or delivery. For the most part, I'm like it's a sales problem, it's a leads problem and I'm like, oh, let's look at this. Oh, you're running an ad, okay, let's see Does that work? I'd shit, turn it off, fix it, turn this on. It's just easier, you know. And even even for the sake of like, even like in our business, um, everything is tracked, right, everything is tracked and it's like all right, we have a problem with lead flow. What can we do objectively to fix this problem?

Tom Noske: 42:43

So that's why I think the position that you're in is amazing.

Darren Lee: 42:45

You know it's an awesome position. Now what I'd love to ask you on that specifically is like so for your launches, I'd love to go through like your launch strategy. I just had Lara Acosta on the podcast. She'd be great for you to connect to it. She's an awesome person, dude. She's really, really awesome person. She literally lives next to me and she just did her launch and I was with her for a launch entire week as well. And launches are tough, man. Launches are very, very tough. Um, how do you do these launches without, like, sales calls, without dm uh scripts, without without all that stuff? Like, how do you do it? How do you price it? How do you position it? It's a very unique position that you you've crafted in this area yeah to.

Tom Noske: 43:26

To be honest, like I'm not one of these people that's like, oh, you don't, I'm never going to be like uh, bastioning like not having sales calls or not not having DM closing, on all these sort of things. I think I would make more money if I had a team of setters and closers. It's kind of undeniable. I'm just I'm very protective of my peace and my lifestyle. I'm like I don't want success at the expense of those things, and I think that you can. Sometimes there's an important thing to come back to. It's like the urgency you feel most of the time is just impatience, and so over a long enough time period, I'm pretty fucking confident that I'm going to get to tens of millions of dollars a year and hundreds of millions of dollars in net worth. It's just probably going to take 25, 35 years, and so I think I have the confidence to know I'm going to do that and I'm on the right path and I'm doing the right things. And so I'm happy to operate a little bit slower in terms of like effort, in terms of growth, in terms of top line revenue, and so I often have these conversations. I have them with my own. He's kind of my coach consultant all the time, where he'll come to me with ideas and I'm like, but will it make my life better or worse? And sometimes it's going to make my life worse, and so it's not actually a choice of. This is a better system. Let me add the nuance first, but it is possible. For those of you who are like, fuck, I really don't want to do sales calls and I don't want to give 25% of my business to a setter and a closer, what do I do? It's like well, it is possible. It's just a little bit more difficult, and so everything we've already spoken about is crucially important.

Tom Noske: 45:17

You have to win people over. You have to win people over before they end up on your email list and before they end up at the checkout page. That has to be done. They have to be pre-sold and that's going to happen in your content. You have to win them over with everything that we've spoken about.

Tom Noske: 45:24

But in terms of the launch strategy, it's essentially a numbers game. We go into it about at 30 days out. We operate on like a 43-day calendar for the launches. We have 30 days where we basically try to build the biggest waitlist we possibly can and we sort of split that waitlist into multiple different waitlists depending on how we've generated them. So we have ads running into a cold audience for a lead funnel and so my lead funnel is like a 33-day email sequence. Those people convert pretty nicely into a waitlist but they tend to be pretty cold waitlist leads and so we'll have that list. Then we have, like my audience waitlist and then we have my email list who have then re-opted, re-opted into the wait list, uh, and so that is basically a numbers game. I know, within a margin of you know, the wait list for this one was, I think, like 980 on the core list and we ended up with 80, and so I know, pretty reasonably, we're going to operate between you know, an 8 and 15 percent in terms of sales from that core list into uh customers, and so that's how we run things, and then yeah, it's a number, it's a math, honestly I

Tom Noske: 46:40

try to tell my clients whenever I work with them. I'm like try to envision. I think something I do differently to a lot of people is I try to basically get to launch day and know exactly how many sales we're going to make within like five or six sales. Like I knew, going into this, we're going to hit 80. Like, I knew exactly how many we were going to hit. And it's because those 30 days leading in my mind is on, okay, for every 10 people I get in, that's usually one sale. And so if I just focus on adding 10 every day, I've got another sale. Or adding 20 every day, I've got two more sales. And then if I just focus on adding 10 every day, I've got another sale. Or adding 20 every day, I've got two more sales. And then it's just becomes a numbers game.

Tom Noske: 47:17

If I don't have the wait list, I need to put out more ads, put out more emails, put out more content. And then, in terms of the actual 10 day launch period, I think I do two things. Think I I send way more emails than most people. So I send, uh, between three and four emails a day to my entire list for the 10 days, and so all those emails are pre-written before the launch, uh, and then we post between three and five dedicated pieces of content, uh, for the launch period, and usually that content is is based on previous like successful, successful content from previous launches, uh, and so it's actually less complicated than you might think. I think the thing that we've gotten it down to is, I guess, the is just making sure people are pre-sold before they end up there pre-sold before they end up there, and so it's going to require you know, I wrote a 33-day email sequence of daily emails and that's how someone gets welcomed into my email list. So if you join my email list, you get sent daily emails for a month, and then for content, it's always winning them over.

Tom Noske: 48:25

For my YouTube channel, it's always trying to win people over in terms of being relatable and building authority and showing that I can do this and so, and then you need you need proof. I think, like winning people over, there has to be proof, and so a lot of what grew the business initially was amazing testimonials. People were like this is legit, and then what's won people over now is just like an undeniable stack of like. We have a, we have a, a spreadsheet that tracks every single student win that comes in our way through, like the wins tracker in the community, and this is not like assumed earnings or like total revenue, it's just if they send, hey tom, I made a thousand dollars this month, that number gets added to the tally and it's at like 2.4 million, and so it's just gotten to the point where it's undeniable. And so I think there's a that a lot of what makes those launches successful is not actually what happens in the 10 days.

Darren Lee: 49:21

It's everything that happens before it's a trust that you've built over all the years. It's the first video that you took 10 years ago. That's yeah, that's the first seed that was planted.

Darren Lee: 49:30

Yeah, yeah and if you think about the way that you track your numbers for the emails and opt-ins. I always think about a true lens of fitness. So when you were doing your triathlon, you tracked everything down to the degree, especially even, maybe even your food, because you were training so much you were losing maybe weight and so on. You needed to do that to get to a good level of just performance in general. Yeah, and I think people don't track their shit because they're scared of what it might reveal.

Darren Lee: 49:57

Okay, so the typical example I I see in the sales world is people don't track their clothes right because they're afraid that it's going to reflect that they're badly at it. And the same equivalent is someone who's overweight, who won't get on the scales like dude. I shit you not. I've weighed myself on the scales every day since I was like 17. Every single day I've trained, I've tracked my workouts, my food. Now I know that seems a little bit kind of crazy, but it's just intuitive, right.

Darren Lee: 50:20

I wake up I just go to the bathroom, I hop on the scales yeah, not fat today, great, let's go. And I think having that approach allows me to predict I'm not going to be fat tomorrow. Just for the most, yeah, at a high level. And I think bringing that into our business and I learned this from dickie, would you believe allowed us to just get way more conscientious with it. So, yes, you don't run sales calls, but you know your numbers, man. You're not just, yeah, put your finger up in the fucking air and you're saying, yeah, yeah, that's fine, dude, all good, all good. Now my question for you on this is so we pre-sold them. We have the indoctrination emails that are coming out slamming them and so on. What happens if someone wants to buy but they just have a few more questions like did it go into your dms? What? How do you manage that? Is there anything?

Tom Noske: 51:03

there you would advise on so we have I, I have my wonderful, uh, daniel marodoy, who's my 2IC of Time to Build. He's basically my CTO of the program and so he basically handles everything in regards to inbound questions that we get about the program and he's a weapon in regards to that, and so a lot of those questions get answered by him. And then, yeah, I'll be kind of like jumping into DMs here and there in the days leading into the launch. But it's not like I've got no CRM tracking conversations, I've got no follow-up set, I've got no person doing that for me. It's just like, hey, dude, I'm thinking of joining, is this suitable for me? And I'll just send them through a couple of examples of students that have won from their particular industry or whatever. And so, yeah, we kind of have a little bit of a loose process for that. But to be honest, I think I've always kind of I tried sales calls, one launch, I think like a year ago now, and all I could think the whole time I booked my calendar for like six days straight from 8am to 1pm and then from like 3 pm to 8 pm, because of the Australian time zone, like all of the US and UK clients are all like 6 am to 9 am my time, and then from 4 pm to 10 pm my time, and so it was just fucked. And I got to like day three. I had like three people in a row just not show up and I'm like, why am I not just making more content or writing more emails right now? What am I doing? Why am I here? Why wouldn't I just be doing that? And I know there's the idea of and I have thought about this. To be honest, I have thought about bringing on a team and having them do it for me, but I don't know. I think there's immense value in and I might just be this might just be my limiting belief, this might just be me trying to explain my processes away, but I don't know. I like the prospect of like. By the time someone swipes their credit card, they're fucking fired up. They're like I'm in, I'm all the way in, and I also have this experience.

Tom Noske: 53:06

I remember when I was a bit younger and a lot more naive I think I was like 22 at the time or something and I had tried to sell an online course. It was like a Photoshop for content creators online course, and this was back in. I think it was 2020 actually and so I failed to sell this course. I like sold barely any, and so someone found me on LinkedIn and reached out and they were like oh, dude, I can help you do this. It's going to be like $2,000 a month for six months and immensely, but it was.

Tom Noske: 53:40

The whole reason I bought is because it was a sales call where it was either swipe my credit card on the call or I'm not getting off this call, and because I was like 23 and impressionable and a bit desperate, I did it and I really regret it. And so it's like this situation where and the program was dog, shit, the fucking. It was basically the person who was on the call with me was the lead, but then I never spoke to them again. It was like this horror, shitty fucking program got scammed out of what is that? Two thousand by six, twelve thousand us dollars at the time, which is a lot of money for an australian kid who's like 23, and so I um and there's a long time, this is 2020 and like $12,000 program. Back then it was a lot, and so I just got and it was a lock-in contract like by the third month, I was trying to get out of the payments. But I felt too bad to like try and just not pay and all this sort of shit, and so it was not good.

Tom Noske: 54:49

But essentially, from that moment, I feel a bit gross about sales calls. And so even when I'm on the sales call, like I was on a call with a friend of mine who I hadn't spoken to for ages, and they were like can we get on a call? I'm interested in joining cohort 10. And I was like all right, I want to catch up with you. And the end of the call they're like trying to coax me into selling them. They're like so what do you think? Do you reckon it'll be a good program? I'm like I think it could help, but it's up to you, man. What do you want to do? And they're like oh well, I think it's a good timing. I'm like it's up to you, man.

Tom Noske: 55:20

If you want to join, we're starting next week. If you don't, no hard you at a vulnerable time. I'm just not going to pressure you. If you want to join, it's on you. I want you to be excited when you swipe your credit card, and so I think there's a lot of value in. You know, I have all my clients join and our onboarding process is basically just a big fucking rev up. We have all these activities that get people excited, and so it's just this energy we have in week one where everyone's excited, everyone's fucking pumped, no one has any buyer's remorse. It's always like I'm so glad I did this. This is awesome. I'm so excited for the next six weeks and I think that just I don't want to, I don't want to sour that because some closer who's thinking about his 25 commission is, you know, pressuring some 21 year old to join time to build when they really shouldn't be joining like I've given refunds to people in the past where I had a kid join.

Tom Noske: 56:20

This was like two years ago now, but he was like 18 and he joined the first call and he was asking this question. I was like how did you get? How did how did you get here? How did you end up here? But clearly he's like got a bit of money, bit of pocket change, decided to buy the program, and so I ended up giving him a refund and letting him keep it, because I was like I actually think this is too like. You just need to make content. All my advice to you in this program is just going to be make more content, and so I don't want you, you know.

Darren Lee: 56:52

I don, you know, I don't want you, uh, wasting your money. Completely agree, man, like it has to be aligned to you, right, it has to be aligned to what you want to do and the way that you've created your ecosystem is a unique scenario. So you need to capitalize on that and that's why I asked around the the spectrum, the price to follow our spectrum. It's like where you're at the years you put in, the time you've put in, you get to play chess the way that you want to play it.

Darren Lee: 57:12

It's a very lucky position to be in, which is like, yeah, fuck. Yeah, like, chill, hop on the bike, take a weekend off, chill out with your dog for a bit, because you've done the hard yards right. It's a. It's a very good position to be in and you did the work to get that position Now. I want to ask you about where you kind of learned a lot of this stuff from, like who's been your biggest mentor? Are you like?

Darren Lee: 57:34

in any program, because you have a very well-rounded view on this, which is cool because you know you came from a creative background initially right.

Tom Noske: 57:47

I think I'm just a big fucking nerd, to be honest. I think I'm just like very I just get hyper fixated on things and so I obsess and I, to be honest, I've done way less programs. I always see these people on social. They're like I've spent $200,000 on mentorship. I'm like should I have done that? Maybe I should have done that. But like I've had some good coaches I've worked with, I'm happy to name them. I've worked with Zach Kravitz.

Tom Noske: 58:16

Zach was someone who I really admired and back to the example of people who I think taste is such a huge thing for trust and Zach, not only did I really respect how he was doing his business, so how he was making money, but I really respected the way he was operating his business, and so he was someone who was creating this welcoming environment, creating this amazing vibe. He had this amazing ability to create an aesthetic and a taste and an experience when you operate with his brand, and so I honestly joined. I was like I just kind of want to see how this operates behind the scenes, and so that was a very valuable experience, uh. And then I've like bought. You know I bought uh, probably the one that was the most pivotal for me was jack butcher's uh, build once, sell twice, like again only a cheap course, like 299.

Tom Noske: 59:07

But for me, that kind of unlocked a lot of the early days back in 2022, like the fact that I even could sell a digital product, um, uh. And then, yeah, it's honestly just been networking and I've had people who have, uh, have been kind enough to help me along the way like I've. I've become quite close with matt gray. Matt's been kind enough to to help me along the way and have a few conversations here and there Nothing crazy. He's not like mentoring me for free, but we just chat every now and again and he's happy to help and and so a lot of it has just been following my curiosity, to be honest with you. Like I have a problem coming up in the business and so I solve it, and so what could have happened a lot faster, I think is just a byproduct of me kind of, which is why I think it's so unique, right, like I kind of. I think there's this problem in our space sometimes, where everything's become this mirror of one another, like it's the selling via the Google Doc, it's the inner circle.

Darren Lee: 1:00:13

It's the inner circle.

Tom Noske: 1:00:15

It's the inner circle, it's the masterminds, it's the same thing, and I think you're never going to be able to. You're never going to hit your. You're just never going to become the person you're capable of becoming. If you're a mirror of someone else and the people that I've seen blow up and be the most prolific, it's always when they make this strange. I don't know what causes it, but this shift into doing something the way they're supposed to do it, uh, someone who I think is blowing up right now for really great reasons is a guy called Tom Youngs. Tom Youngs is someone that I've seen recently, who's just. He's brought out Scale20. Isn't like you look at the behind the scenes from the FounderOS masterminds and it's like the effort his team is going to to put together an experience. I think there's this air of I guess I think laziness has been cool over the last couple of years and I think that's dying quickly. And so back to what we spoke about before we got on this call. It's like I respect effort a lot. I think effort is something that I've always kind of really respected in other people, and so when I see something that's done to a high level, it cuts through, it's like. It's like a knife through butter. It just it breaks through the noise, and so, you know, it's why I'll always put a lot of effort into branding or spend a stupid amount of money on a website when I could be selling via google doc. It's like it's something I'm happy to do because it cuts it. It cuts through, you know, and so I don't know.

Tom Noske: 1:02:05

I I haven't had as many mentors as you might think, but at the same time, I've had a lot. I I love conversations like this, I love speaking to people. I think I I had this weird experience or revelation a few years ago where I used to think I was a bad networker because I would hear the word network and I'd be like what does that even mean? I don't like going to fucking business events, I don't like getting on calls with people for the purpose of networking. But then I realized I have this weird habit or not even a weird habit, but I just have this complete inability to not say what I'm thinking about someone. And so whenever I'm like what I said about Tom Young's or Zach Kravitz, whenever I think something, I usually let them know, and that's created these amazing relationships where I've gotten to connect with people. Um, just on a friendship level that I think have made has made such a tremendous difference to my own business. Um, just because I've built some friendships that are very valuable, dude, I completely agree, dude, I completely agree.

Darren Lee: 1:03:04

And I think that was even the feedback people have with my podcast, where they're like, oh, do you still need to be doing this? And they're like, why are you doing it?

Darren Lee: 1:03:10

And I'm like, because I get to meet people and I get to hang out with people and I think the worst thing you can do is say that everyone is your friend. I do not say that people on my podcast for my friends, but I've developed relationships with some of them and they've become my friends. Like I said to you on email, I was like, dude, I'll fly to australia, I'll figure, I'll figure something out. And I was like I'll figure something out because I was. I was actually going to run my next mastermind in australia with matt lakovich and we decided we're going to do it in bali instead. But I was like, oh, like fuck it, like I'll go fly down, I'm going to fucking london on sund Sunday to meet someone. So I think what's interesting is like you don't need to buy a program to learn it, you can learn almost like true osmosis, or by someone's content, Like dude.

Darren Lee: 1:03:48

When I was fucking super broke, like I was following Justin Welsh, Matt Gray, Lara a bunch of these people and I would just watch, I would read their posts and I would just like literally implement straight away.

Tom Noske: 1:03:58

Or.

Darren Lee: 1:03:59

I'd interview these people and I would implement straight away, away, and I think that's kind of how I've developed relationships with people too, which is like, hey, we had this podcast, I went back to creating more content. Was around xyz, tom, thank you so much for all the help you know and it's. It's like this with or without you energy, you're not actually trying to get something from someone.

Darren Lee: 1:04:17

That's the big thing too right is like I'm just sharing, I'm just being a person, a normal person, and I think people pick up on that man. People really, really do pick up on that right if you, when you don't need something, you want something, does that make sense.

Tom Noske: 1:04:30

It's a big part of 10x easier than 2x, but it's.

Darren Lee: 1:04:33

It's a beautiful thing, man, because, as, as time goes on, that builds your brand, your brand has become so much stronger the people that have been associated with your brand too, or you've associated with other people too. Um, you don't need to jump straight in the deep end, although sometimes it is good to just have compression of time uh, if I wanted to learn xyz.

Darren Lee: 1:04:52

Of course I would chat to someone like, for instance, will brown ran like a one day mastermind in bali and I was like fuck it, I need to figure out. Um, it was actually a mastermind, uh funnel, we were running a funnel. It's not even a funnel it's just a mastermind like campaign.

Darren Lee: 1:05:10

Uh, I had run. My first mastermind of the year worked really well but we had run. We were running a second one but it was much higher production like we've had. Like we had a huge villain. Everything went to this mastermind. I asked him two questions at the start of the morning. It was a one-day mastermind. I had both things solved in around 20 minutes and that was it I was like, all right, thanks, man cheers.

Darren Lee: 1:05:27

And then I was in his house on saturday I was like, oh, that helped, helped a lot works, thank you, that's it yeah that's the best, I think, if you can go in trying to solve a specific person, that specific purpose.

Tom Noske: 1:05:39

And then I think there's also like um, there's a I love comparing online business or just business. Online is a redundant term, but I love comparing business to like age of empires. You know, you start like an mmo and you open the map and you're just like a little character and everything else is black and invisible and you've got to move to then figure out what to do next, like do I have to mine some materials, or do I have to go fight enemies, or do I have to build a building or whatever it's like? Well, the only thing I can do now is just move my character into the darkness, worrying about going into someone's program or whatever it's. Just take a lot of action. Back to this thing of a lot of the urgency you feel, the rush you feel to be where you want to be is just impatience. You'll get there if you take enough action. It just might take a little bit longer than you think it's going to take.

Tom Noske: 1:06:38

I also think there's huge value in. I think a lot of my energy comes from living in Australia. Like I'm a self material person. I love cars, I love watches, I love nice things, I like the finer things in life. But I think the fact that I live in australia still means that I'm not as materialistic as I probably would be if I lived in a dubai a.

Darren Lee: 1:07:01

Austin.

Tom Noske: 1:07:01

Texas or one of these places, or Miami, um, because I just don't, I'm not surrounded by it constantly.

Darren Lee: 1:07:08

Same in Bali man Very similar in Bali as well, I don't have shoes, but I don't, I don't, I don't wear shoes Like I don't actually have shoes and uh, like it's a reminder, right, yeah, you can have fancy villas here and so on, like we've a lot, we've a beautiful home here, but for the most part I'm not. I don't feel that pull in that drive, and that's important for your prospects too. I've had people say that to me too, that they don't buy specific programs from people because they're based in dubai.

Tom Noske: 1:07:32

Genuinely, yeah yeah, yeah, it has become a bit of a trope right, it's like the dubai bro course seller, like it's it. It is like this undeniable thing where you can't your your environment will impact your behavior, and sometimes in a positive or negative, but at the very same vein, like I was in new york a few weeks ago and that place, just I was like fuck, everything I'm doing, I need to become a billionaire. Like what have I got to do to own one of these apartments on fifth avenue? Like I need to live here. And so it's yin and yang, right. Like I think, if I, I think if I moved to somewhere like new york, maybe my results would be a hundred times, ten times what they are. Who knows? But I, I think it's a, yeah, it's a. It's a tricky one, that balancing act well.

Darren Lee: 1:08:22

I think for people like you and I who don't just want to do the business stuff, it's always like an important reminder. So one reason why I love to live in bali and we deliberately set ourselves up here me and my wife long term was because it balanced the health and relationships really well, like the ultimate flex in bali is being in good shape, like 100.

Darren Lee: 1:08:41

You, dude, you don't have to wear shoes or top, or a top in the gym like that's doesn't give him. No one cares how much money you make, right, it's just are you fit? Yeah, you're healthy, and are you approachable? Just really nice person. So that's one thing. But then, at the same time, I, whenever I go to dubai and I might be in dubai in a couple weeks again I'm usually there on my own and, dude, do I work? Like I will probably be somewhat jet lagged, I'll wake up super early and then I'll just end up working all day, all night, because there's nothing else to do. It's like, fuck all, that's not, it's nothing really to do. You know, I'm not going to be in a club, yeah. And then when I'm in new york, you know those led lights, man, they don't go off, like they literally don't go off, which affect your sleep 24 7.

Darren Lee: 1:09:19

So yeah I'm working and then so on. So 100 agree. It's we kind of I call it like the conqueror characteristic. Like you, it is something that you can run away.

Darren Lee: 1:09:29

You can run away from you if you lean into too much, but you need to have something to pull you back, I think a small bit, so that you stay true to what it is why you're doing it. Another james kemp effect is what? Why are you doing this to begin with? Right, everyone's talking about scaling and growing. I was like, why are you doing this to begin with? Maybe it's because you didn't want to work a nine to five. Maybe, for me, I didn't want to work in finance anymore. Okay, cool, have you achieved that? Great, fantastic. Yeah, we can make some improvements from here, but Okay, so last thing I'll say on this is like I don't know.

Darren Lee: 1:10:00

I think from James Kemp, which is what? What is success? And also what's success for your clients? Because, yes, you have to stripe screenshots and you've made a hundred K and 200 K in a month, but is that success for your clients? Success for your clients could literally just be signing up, being in a community of people that are killers or people that are on the same journey. That could be a success for some people, man, and it opens up their world. Success could be their first post on on instagram. So don't look down on micro wins that start the cascading compound effect for monumental wins within their life as well yeah, no, I love this idea that there's multiple different freedoms.

Tom Noske: 1:10:35

It's like the financial freedom is just one of the freedoms in life. It's like having time freedom, having emotional freedom, having financial freedom. All of them serve different purposes and there's plenty of people who have financial freedom but no time freedom. The only reason they have the financial freedom is because they've built this business that dominates their life. And so there is this constant, honestly, there's a constant battle in my own mind because it is like why did you get started doing this? What's the point of all of this?

Tom Noske: 1:11:05

I think I try to remind myself as much as possible that the marginal utility of money is to live a better life.

Tom Noske: 1:11:11

And so if you're just making money and then just pumping it into more team, trying to make systems better or trying to run your business more, or just having more time to run your business, I don't know if that's necessarily what you got into it for Now, granted, there are times to sprint.

Tom Noske: 1:11:27

I'm in my own period right now where I'm actually pulling back on a lot of the other things in my life, a lot of my training and stuff, to focus on the business, because I think it's a make hay while the sun shines sort of period of time, and so there is moments in time for sprints. But I think you have to remind yourself, like what's the fucking point, man? Like what are you trying to do this for? And so if you're just this endless, if you're just on this endless race for more revenue or more profit or bigger business for the sake of it, it's like I don't know man, like sometimes the best best, my best days are where it's just get up in the morning, go for a walk, have breakfast at some cafe, go back glass of wine in the evening, and if I could do that every day, I'd probably, I'd probably be or do that more days than I do now. I'd probably be marginally or net happier.

Darren Lee: 1:12:20

And so, yeah, it's hard, it's tricky yeah, man, it's so interesting me my wife always say the best moments we've ever had in a relationship are just sitting at the side of the fucking street on like a circle k at a circle k drinking a 30 cent can of diet coke.

Darren Lee: 1:12:36

They're like some of the best moments of my life, you know, and we could buy whatever we want, we could chill whatever we want, but it's never changed your relationship. You know, I'm wearing a fucking seven dollar t-shirt with my logo printed on it and retired it away like I don't it's that we're not doing it for that purpose. Now I would say that the reason why we're doing it is, of course, the impact.

Darren Lee: 1:12:54

But then there's two like there's a pursuit where there's something that you enjoy, that you're good at, and it's kind of. There's an element for me which is like the unmet potential or the unrealized potential or the on, or just the opportunity right it's like okay, you of course want to get the most out of something. It's kind of like dude. If you were to run high rocks, do high rocks, you could probably probably do one in three months time and do maybe like 70 minutes. But you probably work for the next year and do sub 60 but do you want to do that?

Darren Lee: 1:13:22

is there much benefit for you doing it for 10 minutes better. I don't know you're talking.

Tom Noske: 1:13:26

You're talking to someone who fucking almost broke themselves off to race a 935 iron man. So probably I think I'm that obsessive. I think I'm that obsessive that I would do that kind of thing like I don't know. I think I agree with you. It's hard.

Tom Noske: 1:13:39

This is honestly a yin and yang in my life where I sometimes ask myself it's like that Pharrell quote of like he gave up drinking because he had a voice in his head say, do you want 100% or 50%? And he's like well, I want 100%. And so then what the fuck are you doing? Like, if you want 100%, you can't act like you're going to get 50 in terms of his drinking and the habits and partying and stuff. And so I don't know, I agree with you, Like sometimes it's like the period of time I'm in right now is a period of time where I've kind of gone.

Tom Noske: 1:14:09

You know what I want a hundred, If I've got a maximum potential between now and December 31st 2025, I want a hundred percent. And so that means that I'm sacrificing a bit of what we're talking about in order to achieve that. But I don't know. It is like this constant yin and yang for me of like, yeah, what's the point and, honestly, this question is probably the reason why I haven't gotten into building a big sales team or I haven't scaled ads as much, or I haven't scaled the program to be this super high ticket program. I think it's trying to. Again, at the core of it, it's like maintain lifestyle, make sure, at the end of the day, I still have a good life.

Darren Lee: 1:14:52

And dude, there's literally absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's just the only question to ask yourself is what are you optimizing for right?

Darren Lee: 1:14:57

It's a good mental model. In a season of life that you're in, what are you optimizing for? It's a good mental model. In a season of life that you're in, what are you optimizing for? You're building a program now. Fantastic, in three years time or five years time, I don't know, you might have a kid or you might get married or whatever that may be, but it's like, what are you optimizing for in this window of time and I usually actually say that to people that come into our ecosystem because it's like right, you know, to make money online a program for the most part, to keep it fucking simple, yeah, we are optimizing for that. So, like that's what we focus on. If you're in that season of life, yeah, we can help you. If you're not totally fine, like absolutely not sell the google doc, walk around, ballet, chill, um, yeah, and I think you can serve your clients the best then as well, when you realize, like what, what are they optimizing for? Are they in?

Darren Lee: 1:15:39

a circle of life, what they want to get out of their nine to five, and so on, so forth. It's just a nice way to look at things because it's like, okay, cool, we are in this wave and then things come in waves and so on, even full context. Man, like I haven't traveled since january, so now it's coming up to june, so I've been in bali since january, since our last tour. Yeah, and I was so fried from the last podcast tour so I came back, been building, building, building, done a ton of great work. But now I'm going to be traveling for the next two months. I will be, you know, recording, but I'll be traveling. So, in theory, a lot of the actual uh workload I'm doing in the business or on the business actually won't be getting done because I'll be in some studio in like barcelona. And it's okay, because that's the next wave that we're going through, which is front-end marketing for the most part, if you want to put it into a bucket if you want to put it into a bucket.

Darren Lee: 1:16:26

put it into that bucket. But it's beautiful man. Dude, I want to say a big thank you. You're a legend. This is so, so awesome man. I feel we could keep going for hours. Would love to do it in person, man, if you want to come on a vacation, finish your next season of life and come up to Bali for a bit.

Tom Noske: 1:16:43

I would love to. I would love to. Yeah, the only reason honestly, as much as I talk about freedom and time, we have everything mapped out. Even McKeeley and I's holidays have them mapped out for the full next 12 months in advance, just because I think I've tried to do the float kind of thing and it just didn't work for me and so I I need a calendar that's locked in. And so, thank you, mate. This has been, this has been awesome pleasure meeting huge. Thank you, man.