#318 Alfie Robertson - Copy This Content Strategy, It'll Blow Up Your Business

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Guest: Alfie Robertson
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Alfiegetshard
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alfiegetshard


00:00 – Preview & Intro
02:25 – From Creator to Entrepreneur
05:03 – The Real Buying Journey
08:13 – Brand Consistency and Relatability
12:54 – Expanding a Personal Brand Without Losing Trust
15:47 – Content, Storytelling, and Leverage
18:39 – Perception, Authority, and Audience Maturity
24:36 – MVPs, Product-Market Fit, and Shipping Fast
29:11 – Why Creators Struggle With Consistency
33:30 – Systems, Habits, and Accountability
39:16 – Offers, Proximity, and Scaling Coaching
50:26 – Scaling Revenue and Playing the Long Game

Chapters

• 0:00 From Creator To Entrepreneur
• 2:25 Student Versus Master Positioning
• 5:50 SMART Goals And Documenting
• 9:05 Relatability, Authority And Monetisation
• 12:38 Building Fitness To Business Credibility
• 16:05 Brand Evolution Without Losing Story
• 20:40 Spinning Up Niche Channels
• 23:20 Master One Channel Before Many
• 26:20 Content As Highest Leverage Work
• 29:40 Perception, Shirtless Era And B2B
• 33:05 Handling Criticism And Audience Shift
• 36:30 Selling Scars Not Wounds
• 40:15 MVP Mindset And Product Market Fit
• 44:10 Templates To Software: Birth Of Role
• 48:35 Removing First Mile Friction In Content
• 52:20 Operating System For Creators
• 56:05 Offers, Value Equation And Proximity
• 1:00:10 DM Funnels, LTOs And Scaling
• 1:04:00 Hiring Sales, Letting Go Of Margin
• 1:07:35 Software, ARR And Distribution
• 1:11:05 Retreats, Community And Market Research
• 1:14:30 One‑Of‑One Brand And Conviction
• 1:18:05 Offline Proof Before Online Voice

Transcript

Darren: 0:00

How did you go from just being a creator to being a serious, serious entrepreneur?

Alfie: 0:05

Well, I came from a corporate background and had always excelled in what really energized me was business. But if I was to jump into the space as an authority and try and monetize business knowledge off the rep without having built a following, built a fitness coaching business, built all of those things, I just wouldn't have the credibility or the authority.

Darren: 0:21

Playing the student or the master. The reason why everyone loves Chris Williamson is because he's a student. He doesn't try to pretend to be an expert. And the reason why people love Andrew Huberman is because he is the expert. Two things that are both valuable but for different use cases.

Alfie: 0:35

And when I go back to that lens of documentation versus authority, I documented my journal, September 2023, documented that 75-day transformation, and then turned into the authority that allowed me to monetize 90 days later.

Darren: 0:48

So when you see the Alfie online and you see you like shreddicated running around Bondi, like doing pull-ups and shit, you wouldn't immediately think about the businesses you've built in the background, making over 8 million online, building these huge programs, building a software company. How did you go from just being a creator to being like a serious, serious entrepreneur?

Alfie: 1:12

Yeah, I've had many versions, I think, online, which has been interesting to say the least. And sometimes it is you have to project potentially build a brand around something that you're passionate about to start off with. So when I came online September 2023, I had to identify one thing that I really loved. And the only thing that had stayed consistent outside of my entire life up until that point had been fitness. So I knew it was going to be something around fitness. And obviously that comes into playing into okay, training with top off, running around Bondi, all of those components. And that amassed a huge brand very, very quickly. And I was happy to play that part. Obviously, it built into a very successful fitness coaching business. And 12 months later, I was at a bit of a crossroad where I was like, okay, I know this probably isn't what I want to do forever in terms of fitness coaching. Never really had a desire to be a fitness coach long, long term. Just because for me, I've loved business. Studied finance and marketing before, came from a corporate background and had always excelled in what really energized me was business. But if I was to jump into the space as an authority and try and monetize business knowledge off the rip without having built a following, built the fitness coaching business, built all of those things, I just wouldn't have the credibility or the authority. So I needed something to edge in with.

Darren: 2:25

Something I love in your content that I was going very deep on the past couple of days was the authority lens versus the documenting lens. Dude, I've been talking about that from a different angle for years, which is about playing the student or the master. So the reason why everyone loves Chris Williamson apart from his fucking jawline is because he's a student. He doesn't try to pretend to be an expert. And the reason why people love Andrew Huberman is because he is the expert and he can say, mm-hmm, this is how much he should be sleeping a day or whatever. Two things that are both valuable but for different use cases. So it was very interesting to see you kind of come on from that lens. So how would you nearly advise people to approach that, the documenting versus the authority lens?

Alfie: 3:04

Yeah, it comes back to first principles of why someone is followed. And by definition, to be followed means that you have direction. And that's either you've arrived at a desirable destination or you're heading to a desirable destination. So for me, that really splits between authority, you've arrived at a desirable destination, or documentation. You may not be there today, but you can have this agreed upon destination of where you're heading. And that's why I really like and the way I coach for a lot of people coming into content. I'm like, okay, set a smart goal, something that's specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. I was having this conversation just today. It's crazy how many people don't set any goals in their life. And the years go by and they look back and go, Oh, I'm not where I want to be. And it's like, well, did you set any goals? No. And maybe the only time they set goals, they set some like loose, non-specific, non-measurable. Maybe it's attainable, but it's non-relevant. It's not time-bound during New Year's. And we're like coming up to the end of the year, right? Coming up to finish 2025. And I'm sure loads of people will write down goals. Anyone who's writing down a goal should make sure it's specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. I say attainable and ambitious. But for that, not only that, but it gives you it gives you some direction for your content. So if you're going into it and going, okay, I'm not, I'm not as fit as I'd like to be. I don't have a decade of experience. I'm not an authority. I haven't arrived at the desirable destination of being in this amazing shape, but I do have a goal to get there. It's like great, tell me the goal. And it needs to be in that smart goal framework. And then document the journey of accumulating that and working towards that. Because people will live vicariously through you. And people are looking for that all the time. And there's a scale of when you start and you're not an authority, you're highly relatable. So the more relatable you are at the beginning, the less authority you have. So you have no authority to sell anything, but you can get a lot of people to live vicariously through you. And if they can see the pain they experienced today in your past, which you're going to literally show them in real time as you transform and change, they'll buy from you.

Darren: 5:03

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Alfie: 6:09

I've been fortunate because I've documented everything from the beginning. So if you think like because now I help people build personal brands, get paid for who they are, people have watched me do that in real time. So they've seen, okay, he started in September 2023. He started with zero followers. I saw the new account, Alfie Gets Hard. He started that from his private. Where did that name come from, Matt? Well, it was from a 75-day hard challenge. So Andy Frisselle, I gave any questions. I was actually at uh University of Texas giving a lecture, which was insane, like a couple days ago. And yeah, I opened the lecture, I got introduced as Alfie Gets Hard. I was like, just to clarify, this name came about because XY and Z.

Darren: 6:46

I think it's time for you to buy the Alphi username. Potentially, I don't know.

Alfie: 6:50

I sort of like it. But what's interesting, coming back to that, is we for everyone who comes into Amphi, anyone who runs an offer should do this. We have an onboarding form, right? And it's like, what piece of content did you see? How long you've been following the account, because that's data that Meta doesn't give us. I wish on organic, if there was one ad I could give to Meta, it would be on Instagram. Imagine if from when someone first engaged in a piece of content, you could track a heat map of what posts they select on your page, whether they comment you, how many times they like, how long they follow the page for, and then when they come into the funnel. That would be like the most insane data. So we try and patch that up by an onboarding form. Obviously, the data's not perfect. But what's super interesting is people coming in, buying content, learning how to build offers, learning how to scale their offer, fitness coaching business. The reason they pick Amplify over other, like coaching, you know, there's so many coaches out there, right? Yes, there's like the technology, the trust, there's all these boxes that they tick, but one of the biggest ones is 75 day hard. Comes up consistently, unprompted as well. And it's not like you have you been repeating that or just No, it's just very ingrained in the brand. Yeah. Because people have seen that journey. And when I go back to that lens of documentation versus authority, I documented my journey in September 2023, documented that 75-day transformation, and then turned into the authority that allowed me to monetize, you know, 90 days later.

Darren: 8:13

I think a point that you almost like very very very rarely touched on, but it's the buying journey. And I've actually seen that consistently in terms of when someone comes into your world, they're getting interested, 75 hertz, they go off, they live their own life, they come back, they sign up to a webinar, sign up to a lead magnet, and then they come back. That journey has often been for us six months, 12 months, 18 months, and you can you can actually find a good kind of path with that, and it just proves that if you're someone who is consistently aligning to like your highest value of your vision, your mission, these people will convert invariably. It's not exactly direct or away, but that just proves like the value of building that brand because it's not for like immediate, and that's why you're not doing it.

Alfie: 9:01

Yeah, and I think something that's important to remember is you've got to stay true to that as well. It'd be very easy for me to like switch gears, look at other big info players, and be like, oh, okay, now that I'm hitting this like million a month mark, let's sell that and let's sell how to get to a million a month. And yes, you'd be able to make a little bit of cash up front early because there's obviously some operators. And if I started going, hey, I'm gonna help people scale from a hundred K a month to a million a month, but you lose touch with all of that story. And great stories, they need to remain consistent all the way through. Like I think about Shelby Sapp as a really good example. I think she's pushing the limit now because she held on to that I'm the remote sales, or I'm door-to-door knocking sales. Like she held on to that story for so long. And that's why she stayed in the pink Porsche for so long. And I know a lot of people behind the scenes with that as well. That was a real push from the marketing perspective of don't buy the, you know, don't buy the crazy G-Wagon and all the stuff she has now because she's a little bit, and I I worry that this will be the downside, she's now super out of touch and unrelatable. The Porsche, the pink Porsche is relatable. You know, a hundred, whatever it is, a hundred, hundred and fiftyk car, that's relatable to people who are aspiring to do door-to-door, you know, sales. But once you go into that next tier of like 500 a million dollar cars, it's like that's really hard.

Darren: 10:28

It happened with Iman as well, and it almost attracts the wrong people. So when he was going around like the Rolls Royce, uh, it would just bring in a bunch of non-buyers, number one, they're attracted to like the wrong thing. And if you look at like Sam Ovens, for instance, like when he was in New Zealand with the fucking motorbike in the blue suit, everyone was everyone initially was like, ah, but then it went through this transient phase, and now he's like long hair and wearing like oversized jumpers, and people were like, Oh, like it's just him. That's actually him. Does that make sense? You can kind of hang you can zero in on those specific areas. Now, let's actually double tap on that though, because that's quite interesting. Because I'd say your brand is evolving. So I'll give you a personal example. When we really started, it was mainly working with podcasters. So we would work with podcasters, we'd help them build their business, build their brand, and all this kind of stuff. The podcast market was very small of business owners. I think there was like 30,000 people that were in our space. So we expanded the creators and we expanded the business owners, and then they were using content. It was more of like an evolution for us to grow to expand our business because we had kind of nailed it and we had to move out to broader markets. Where do you find the line there between like improving the story and adjusting the story and then diverting elsewhere because people get different interests, right?

Alfie: 11:44

Yeah, so out the gate you can start. So if I take my own journey, it was identifying that one thing that had stayed consistent all the way through. So it had to be true to self. So for me it was fitness. The expansion on that, well, the early stage is okay. I help people, you know, build a fitness coaching business because that was the mechanism that worked for me. And I helped people build content around fitness, which is where it started. The expansion goes, okay, well, I help people find that one thing that they really love. It doesn't have to be fitness, but I can expand on that. You know, we've got plenty of faith base, we've got plenty of entrepreneurs, we've got people that are interested in sales. And then you can expand around that. We have videographers, filmmakers, this larger range outside of just fitness. Because now I've gone, okay, it's about your passion, and then we help you be paid for who you are. So it's about monetizing knowledge that you either have already or you're willing to gain through the documentation. So that's where the expansion comes. And then it goes, okay, well, my neck, my mechanism was high-ticket fitness coaching, because that's where I made the line share of my money. But for these people, it can be high-ticket coaching and it can be broader outside of just fitness. So that you start expanding that way. And as long as you don't fall too far off that mechanism, that's the really important part.

Darren: 12:54

Yeah. Otherwise, you're just chasing different just you know, chase tier rabbits, end up having none, right? Uh, and I've seen this over and over again, man. It's funny because a lot of people will come up with resistance with their business and kind of quit, move on to the next thing, quit. Seeing that often an awful lot these days, man. But for you, you've really stayed true to like that one alignment and built around it. So, where where did that journey go for you in terms of okay, I've gotten really fucking good at the back end stuff, and now I'm able to even branch off from your existing YouTube into your business channel, which I think is a really smart play, man. Like, what was that decision for you to go into multiple channels? Before we move any further, I have one short question to ask you. Have you been enjoying these episodes so far? Because if you have, I would truly appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel to help more business owners grow their online business today.

Alfie: 13:44

Well, I've done that on Instagram as well. So I had my main account, then we created Train Pure Body, Pure Body Eats. And the thinking there was just if we start to talk really specific on a subject, it would be better to pull a smaller group of people from our larger personal brand account that are highly interested in that one topic. So for us, it was nutrition to start. And with Pure Body Eats, Jake and I both looked at each other like, all right, we already run our accounts. What's like the lowest barrier of entry that we could consistently make content? Okay, we eat every day, we can take our top off in good lighting, and we can yell at food every single day. We can hold each other accountable, I'll film you, you film me. And that's our content sorted. And it did super well. Like when that was really going, I still get recognized today for pure what he eats more than anything else. Because I think food is integral to what we do. That's why I'm very big on like if you're a fitness creator and you and you enjoy food. For me, I don't enjoy, like, I'm not crazy about cooking. I like food, I love food, but I'm not crazy about the cooking process. But for people who are passionate about cooking, you will kill it on social media. Because food, I'm like training, not everyone has to train, everyone has to eat. So food's got this amazing Tam. Like the total accessible market is just huge with it. And I think the impact food has in how it makes you feel, even if we thought, oh my god, I can't believe we're doing another video talking about meat, mince eggs, and avocado. But people thought it was so novel every single time. Because if you get on social media, it's if it is successful by definition, it's going to new people, a new audience that potentially has no one else yelling at mince, eggs, and avocado on their feed. Whereas my feed's full of that stuff because that's what I already love. So it's just the realization that we're like unlocking potentially a completely new meal for people and a new sensory experience. And I think that had the biggest and deepest impact. So that's equated into just thinking around okay, when I start to speak on other topics, I sort of want to have a clean brand under my personal brand and then create a deep dive with other brands. So same with the YouTube, with the business channel, it's the same with Alfie the Creator, it's the same with the training videos as well.

Darren: 15:47

Would you recommend having multiple channels and going deep on one?

Alfie: 15:52

Depends where you are in your content journey. Master one channel first. Like when you first start out, build your personal brand. Building you and like yourself first is so important. Because people buy people, if we'd started out the gate with Pure Body, which was our fitness coaching business, we would have had to tell everyone what pure body is, what pure body stands for, and then why we're the people to stand behind it. Whereas Jake and I had the advantage where we'd built the brand under ourselves, and then it was very easy to go, oh, I know what they're about. Pure body, that makes sense. And it was like the connection's so easy. People buy people way faster than people buy brands.

Darren: 16:26

How much time do you put into the storytelling of your content? Like when you're planning it out.

Alfie: 16:31

Not enough. And like content for me, it's one of those things that now, two years in, there's a classic entrepreneur business thing. Like the things that work, we convince ourselves aren't working, and we spend less time on them. And we try and go and fix shiny new exciting things that are actually super low leverage. And the answers are really simple and obvious. It's doing the thing that already worked, doing more of it. Always like every single time. But content's been one of those things. And I've come back pretty refreshed after being in Austin and just being like, okay, you know what? It may not feel like high leverage to my business sitting in Capcart and editing or using Roll, my new app, or spending that time doing it, or creating content, or being away from the laptop because I'm shooting a vlog and I'm making it really interesting and I'm going to the Blue Mountains and going for a hike. That may not feel in my head high leverage because I would see like high leverage tasks as deep work behind my laptop. That actually is the highest leverage thing I could be doing. Because if that means I get double the amount of views on that video, because it's a super viral drone running video in the Blue Mountains that fits into my whole lifestyle piece, like that will pay more dividends than the deep work that I do for the two hours. And that's like a realization for me. And that's creator versus operator. I can hire for people to do the operation side and the operating of my business. I can't hire anyone to be there in the Blue Mountains running. And that's just the that's just the reality of it.

Darren: 17:57

Yeah, so true.

Alfie: 17:58

And it's this weird uh, it's been the Mexican fisherman parable of for me, I've worked so hard, built this amazing business to go back to what I was literally doing when I started, which is running around with an iPhone in Bondi, filming my life and living it. Because that's what I was doing before I had a huge business to run.

Darren: 18:13

Dude, it was exactly in podcasts. Like when I get busy, I slow down recording. So I like I've recorded like a bunch this week, so I don't need to record for a while. But the podcast was the thing that got me in the door, that got me the intros, it got me to meet people, and then I stopped doing it because of whatever fucking reason that I'm busy, and then I'm like, well, why isn't everything else not working? It's because this is the thing. So for you, it's just taking off your top and just running around the beach, you know what I mean? Just double tap on it.

Alfie: 18:39

I think one thing I have learned though is even having multiple channels, I made a very conscious decision to be like, okay, if I want to be trusted and known and revered's probably the wrong word. If I wanted to be essentially, if you want to sell high-ticket business to business in the B2B relationship, there's a dynamic of yes, you can be perceived as that. But I was conscious of the perception of if I continuously have my top off and was still the guy yelling at food. I don't think you can be both. I think it's very, very hard to be both. So you need to decide and pick one long term, which is why I ended up winding down the fitness side. I could have kept it going, but for me, it was just like it doesn't make sense for me on one side to be pushing the fitness and still be known as that. Because I remember this very distinct memory of when I went to London. I was with Jake, we were traveling in London, a Lastoboy, who was my business partner, and his sister was living in London at the time. And this is sort of when we're just blowing up, we're maybe 10 months into creating content. Brands were really big, we're doing a lot of the puberty eat stuff. And she specifically said to me, She's like, Alfie, I wish people could have a conversation with you because clearly you're like super sharp and intelligent and really understand the business side. But when I was at the pub, you know, people just think you and Jake are absolute idiots and just got like lucky. And it was that realization that from the outside lens, we just look like two like. You know, jacked guys, yelling. Bondae boys. Yeah, just Bondi boys, right? Just surfing dudes who like are pretty clueless and are just getting lucky. And I was like, okay, well, if I want to go into the business to business side, I can't be perceived as that because I do need to build some authority behind it. There's a balance there. I think you can do both. My brand will never become the full, super serious, like sit down in a suit because that's just not my brand. I think you do have to stay true to self.

Darren: 20:28

It's percept it's perception at the end of the day, but at least you can almost create that perception too. What I mean by that is as you're getting older or more experienced or more years in the game, you want that to be reflected also in your content. That's like, hey, like I'm not a I'm not a fucking boy any longer. I have been creating content, but I have these businesses, I'm building a software company now. I know my shit. So when you talk, people listen. And uh I actually asked Iman about this on our podcast, and he put it really well. Which I said, like, how do you how do you internalize external criticism or feedback? Like, what's your what's your filter? And he said basically, as long as his businesses are trending up and his access to the top echelon of people continuously is exposed, so he's meeting new people that are like uh admiring his work, then I can do me and I can be me. Whereas if you really fucking care about that person's opinion, um, and it's actually haunt it's actually affecting your business negatively, it's like okay, well then maybe let's have a look at it, let's make a slight adjustment and pivoting here. But you can't please everyone at the same time, right?

Alfie: 21:35

100%. But Iman's done it as well. I remember watching uh I'm trying to think of the name of whose pod it was, but they're sitting on a couch. The scene was in his house.

Darren: 21:45

Dan Henry.

Alfie: 21:45

Yeah, that's it. Dan Henry and Iman had that podcast, and they spoke on that podcast about that transition, and it was like the first time I'd seen this completely new lens of Iman. And I was like, I never would have bought from you, I would buy from you now. And it was that realization of obviously I know he's super successful, but all he ever was talking about was like SMMA and watches, yeah, yeah, watches SMMA he's in cars, and I was just like, okay, he's selling to 18-year-olds, I'm not interested. Whereas the second I saw that podcast, I was like, okay, this is interesting. He was talking about content distribution and the way that he's just like mastered short form and how like all of that side, and he was talking about the numbers behind the business and also just the general, he actually spoke on the positioning of his like over the next couple years, I'm now gonna position myself to 24 to 30 year olds, and you will see a transition of my brand away from the 18 because I've grown up and I no longer want to speak to that audience. And he was like, I was happy to play that role of sort of the the SMMA, you know, like he used to always speak, even when he was making millions, how to make your first 10K, how to make your first 10K. And that takes a lot of discipline because as entrepreneurs, you always want to talk about the things that you are dealing with right now. So even for me now, it's like I want to talk about scaling to like a million plus, building software, like building a hundred million dollar business. Like we're looking at how do we get a 10 to 15x multiple? How do we then go and like incubate this brand and sit behind this and scale all of our data and back, but that's not relevant to the audience that I actually sell to. And that's really important for any founder who's building a personal brand is remember the problems you're solving are completely disconnected to your audience. And if they're the same, you're probably selling too early.

Darren: 23:26

Explain that last point. Very interesting.

Alfie: 23:28

Well, if they're the same, if Imam was talking about how to get to 10k a month and he's trying to get to 10k a month, there's a problem. Yeah, he clearly hasn't done the stuff. Yeah. So you should be quite a few steps ahead. The philosophy of, oh, you should only be one step ahead. I think put a few steps ahead, get some runs on the board.

Darren: 23:46

People are selling their wounds, they're not selling their scares. When you're selling your scares and you have scares on your fucking face, man, from being in the game for so long, getting brutalized. People are like, oh, I'm gonna listen to this guy. Whereas when you're like, I just launched this thing and here's my wounds. It's one, it's inauthentic, one, it's not realistic, and three, it's just it's not relevant to that person because there is someone else ahead of you, which is completely fine. There's people like don't compare your stage one to someone else's stage 10. That's completely fine, which is also important for your for your journey too, whether it's a content on the business side. Tell me more about what was the idea to go into role. So coaching has been going really well. Where did you see the biggest gap for creators from becoming consistent with their content and their business?

Alfie: 24:36

Yeah, well, role started, you know, we've been working on it for about six months with technical co-founder based out of Austin, Calum, who's now coming to Sydney. But prior to that, 12 months earlier, I was noticing a massive amount of saves on my content. And I was just seeing this huge volume of saves with content that wasn't value-driven. There was nothing really to come back to. There wasn't details in the caption. The content was just lifestyle mindset stuff. And I was like, why is this getting so many saves? And it was like 35,000 saves on a video. And I went through and I realized people were treating content similar to how I treat it, whether it's going through Instagram on their Explore, saving content to come back and recreate. So what I wanted to do was shortcut that whole process and I created Cap Cut templates. Whereas I where I curated my top performing templates across training, nutrition, mindset, and lifestyle, put those in a format just in a notion, MVP'd it, and was like, could I sell these to someone if I gave them the Cap Cut templates to create the content by dragging and dropping their clips? That was validated. We have 6,000 users, which was insane.

Darren: 25:36

So crazy, man.

Alfie: 25:37

Yeah, I'm a huge MVP person. And whenever anyone comes to me with an idea, I'm just like, cool, what's the lowest, lowest, lowest barrier to entry? And for me it was Notion, setting up in templates probably took me five hours to put together. And we started at $97, sold them on Kajabi. And we sold, yeah, the first month, I think we sold about 500. And then we swapped to 29, put them on the front end. This is when I started releasing Amplified, put them on the front end, removed from a monthly, and just went one off to get people in the door as an acquisition tool. And yeah, we sold like over 6,000. So we like pumped a lot of templates. Where did you learn this concept? Of MVP.

Darren: 26:18

Yeah, just the whole idea of like shipping fast. It's a lean startup approach. I'm just curious. Your learning process.

Alfie: 26:24

Yeah, I think just break uh the classics like break and fix it. Break, yeah, just fix it. But I definitely learned it the hard way of while I was creating content in September 2023. I was sort of looking for my escape from corporate, which was interesting because I was in a really interesting job. So we were running this climate tech company in Singapore, peak of the climate markets coming out of COVID. We essentially had this piece of software that was completely untested, unvalidated in market. But the proposition was we could measure carbon dioxide flux, which was basically the rate at which it was sequestered into the into the earth. So like absorbed out of the atmosphere. And we went and had this technology and landed on nature-based solution projects, which basically to validate a carbon project, you have you have removals, which are non-natural. So that's where they're actually sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. And they built technology to do that. And then the other side is you have nature-based, which is like planting trees essentially, or it could be seagrass as a whole, a whole range of nature-based solution projects. And our technology would measure the impact that you're actually having from planting those trees. And great concept. Uh, and we went and validated against like high net worth individuals who gave us loads of money, but were very uneducated on the market. And when we took it to market, we didn't have product market fit at all. So realizing that, I became obsessed with product market fit and was just like, how fast can you find product market fit? And a failed startup, we're at same mistake. I didn't go and find product market fit, spent $30,000 on creating the app. There was a marketplace to connect subletters and it was to connect subletters and tenants. So the whole idea is like if you're going away for a couple of weeks as a tenant, you've essentially got like dead rent. And then you could go and rent out your place for two weeks. And that would connect you with a subletter, aka like a backpacker coming in for two weeks who wants a short-term rental. Horrible idea. Like solving four people's problems. Like the donor money, you're like lining up dates. It was a marketplace. Anyone who's run a marketplace, it's chicken and the egg. You get the subletters first or the tenants, you can't get one without the other. Just such a difficult product to go to market with. But spent $30,000 building this like great marketplace, and then realized very quickly that was not the business I wanted to go into. So learning that twice and just being like, okay, well, here's one example where we got investor market fit, but didn't have product market fit, and it sort of flopped and fell and was just bad investor spending. And then here's an example where I've spent my own money and not had product market fit, and this is what happens. So from there on in, I was just like, okay, every time, validate it as much as you can.

Darren: 29:11

Are you an agency owner, coach, or consultant looking to scale your online business? At VOX, we help business owners scale their online business with content. We help them specifically build a high-ticket offer, create content that turns into clients, and also help them with the sales process to make sure every single call that's booked in your calendar turns into a client. If you want to see more about exactly how we do this, hit the first link down below and watch a full free training on how smart entrepreneurs are building a business in 2025. 100%, man. Isn't the thing with software is just that unlike an offer and coaching, it's not as malleable. You can't just randomly fucking change the platform just because you need to make one change, which you can do by more discovery, working close with your clients, having clients, selling it before you do it, with exactly what you did. What kind of problem do you think most creators are running into now, which role solves? For you, it's really the first mile effect, would you say?

Alfie: 30:08

Yeah, so creation of role came from the templates. It was then okay, if we can create the templates, the issue we still have is like finding that content in your cam role, trolling through loads and loads of clips. So is how can we go from cam roll to real as fast as possible? So the first proposition was can we present templated content that's already performed well? So we remove the ideation for someone because most people come on the platform, they go, I don't know what's post. So we go, okay, well, in your niche, here's all your top performers. So very surface level solution of, well, if you don't know what's post, why don't you look out what's already working in market? And we start there. So that's like your training wheels are on. Next question is, well, I don't know what to film and I don't know what to edit. So I go, okay, well, what if we did the editing for you? What if you just dragged and dropped your clips and it's already cut up frame by frame, the music's already synced, the text is already overlaid, all you need to do is add your content. And it's like, okay, well, what if we could suggest which content to add? Because we can analyze your entire camera roll when you're onboarded onto the app and we just categorize all your content for you. And then the running clip goes into the running spot, the sunrise clip goes into sunrise. So essentially we're just like, okay, it's a done for you editor, and all that's left is how do you film? So that's what we were talking about before, where we have recommendations based on sections of your camera roll that you're under-indexing it. So you don't have enough running clips, or you don't have enough sunrise clips. That's sort of the first solution. And then it becomes, okay, well, how do I, how do I like, how do I post? And then it's like, okay, well, we'll build a custom GPT, we'll build a custom GPT inside. That will create the caption for you because we understand who you are, who you create for, and who you post for. And then we'll schedule that content out as well for you. Creating a knowledge graph, which is a fancy word for saying, based on the analytics of how that content performs, we can then determine what posts you should post in the future. And that's sort of v1 of what we want to release in market, and that's what we will release come January 1st. V2, V3, V4, as we get more advanced, is gonna go, okay, well, what if we could change those templates? And now we're changing the copy on the templates because why should we take verbatim what someone else is posting if we know that your offer is more about carnivore style eating and we know that about you? Like we're not gonna serve you up a vegan template. We may use the vegan template, but we change all of it for a carnivore.

Darren: 32:34

Dude, over the years, when you're coaching people, have you found that they've just literally do not get started with this shit? Because it was funny because when I was working directly with creators before working with like actual more like entrepreneurs, I used to think it was only creators that were struggling with this stuff, but it's actually everyone, like it really is everyone, like even like a self-starter doesn't know where to start when it comes to content because it's so variable, right?

Alfie: 32:59

So variable, you see little to no results, which is very demotivating.

Darren: 33:05

It's actually I always say it's easier to grow a business than it is to grow a social media account.

Alfie: 33:10

I'd tackle that because I I would I literally would I refuse to run Amplify and I refuse to run my business if I didn't truly believe to my core that everyone can be successful online or something.

Darren: 33:21

Of course, of course they can.

Alfie: 33:22

I'm a huge believer. Of course they can.

Darren: 33:23

And that's what that positioning is if they do it, which like we're using the growth, you know what I mean? If it's done continuously.

Alfie: 33:30

Well, what so where Amplify is going as a little bit under apps at the moment is we're building a full operating system. So our goal is to become an operating system for creators. So my belief after doing fitness coaching, business coaching, content coaching is exactly what you just said. How do you help people get out of their own way? How do you help them be consistent, show up? And I go, okay, well, who's written on this really well? James Claire, atomic habits. Don't realize your goals, you fall to your systems. What if we could make people become great creators? And there's like, okay, what helps someone become a great creator? Well, they post a story every day and they post every day and they engage in the comments and the DMs. So then I go, okay, well, how does someone post every day? Well, they have something to post. Well, how do they have something to post? Well, they put aside 45 minutes to edit and that's scheduled in the calendar. Okay, well, how did they know what to edit? Well, they had ideas because they had a good knowledge bank of what they were creating on. Well, how did they get that? They read books, consumed podcasts, consumed content relevant to their area of focus. And I go all the way back to this like first principles approach of how do I make people put the time in to become that person? How do I make sure that the tripod is in their gym back every time they go to the gym? And almost bring it all the way back to that. And I'm like, okay, how could I build that into an operating system that when someone signs up for Amplify, we sync with their Instagram, sync with their Stripe, we build them data and analytics. And we've built this in our back end now where we scrape every single client of ours, we see when they're not posting consistently, and we build workflows off the back of it. What? And then it's okay, how do we build that dashboard for someone? So when they come in, they're getting these prompts. And then how do we gamify the experience? So-and-so hasn't posted in a while. Check out their posts. This person, the community has come through here. So our big pillars are education, technology, and community. Really, we want to move to technology and community. So it's the intersection between how do we build a tech product that helps someone become their best self through that atomic habits idea of you've got to own the identity of a great creator. And how do you like build that into someone's schedule and make it so easy for them to show up and post consistently and really lower that barrier to entry and increase the barrier to exit that it's like it's hard for them to fail. It's like near impossible for them to fail. So that's how I think about coaching now. And it's the same with fitness coaching. Like, people don't fall off on fitness coaching because they have McDonald's and a steak side by side and they pick the McDonald's. It's that they don't have steak in the fridge, they don't have butter, they don't have a hot pan, they don't have the time to cook it. And McDonald's was on the drive home from work. That is why people fall off. So it's like, how do you build habits, change the environment, and build a system around that person? So when they're hungry, the steak's always in the fridge, or the steak's already ready, or they've got meal prep, ready to go. And it's the same way that I approach business and content coaching is how can we build a system and an environment where it's near impossible for them to fail?

Darren: 36:26

What else is in that mix as well as their content that you're working with, specifically let's say they're on their business side, on their offer, on the coaching. How do you how do you go about doing that?

Alfie: 36:38

Yeah, so for me, the the offer side, there's a lot of interesting stuff you can do. I think best offer model is just value equation. Like you go, okay, what's the desired outcome? And you're never selling a six-pack, you're never selling 10k a month. It's confidence, attraction, status. It's always that like highest tier. Perceived likelihood of achievement. All right, what's social proof? Like, what have you done? How are you gonna increase the perceived likelihood of achievement? If you don't have social proof and you're starting out and you're day zero, compete on personability, compete on saying, well, you could go down the lane, you know, you could go down and work with Iman who's worked with hundreds of thousands of people, but you're gonna be my like first or my second or third response. And that's how you're gonna come out.

Darren: 37:20

100%. Dude, I I've seen like many people, like even where you're at right now, because you're you're so big, they'll go with someone who just got started just because they know that person's in their back pocket. Yeah. Like you can sell proximity and speed, just proximity to you. The difference is like, you have me on WhatsApp. If you have me on WhatsApp, it's like, okay, well, you may not be an alfie, but at least I can just contact you on WhatsApp. So I think that's the biggest fucking advantage. It's like if you don't have all the clients in the world, sell your time.

Alfie: 37:47

Yeah, and then as you scale, sell your systems and frameworks.

Darren: 37:50

Of course, you know what I mean. But it's for a certain type of person, yeah. Certain type of people want certain specific things. I'm thinking like maybe people that are a little bit older. I know that from experience because for our program, we bolted on just pure one-to-one with our team. And it was for people that do not thrive in group. And it was perfectly fine. It's a personality thing. You can do two things you can stick a square peg to a circle hole and say, fuck it, just get on with it. Or you can build for that type of that personality type who needs a bit more privacy, uh, attention and care. Some people don't fucking need it. And uh yeah, it's solving the problem in the front of you versus solving the problem you think is there, basically.

Alfie: 38:29

Yeah, people are funny, people will pay for proximity, and I think that's one thing that I try to tell coaches, particularly as they scale. I'm like, you're not, you you're selling the transformation, not the product. The product includes proximity, and that's really important to remember because a lot of people think, oh, the only way I can scale high ticket is just by selling more and more of my time. And that's not true. Oh, interesting. Proximity is a lever you can pull to increase the perceived likelihood of achievement and decrease effort and sacrifice on their behalf. But it is not, that's part of the product. It is not the transformation itself. And there's lots of ways. If you have an amazing framework, and if you build great automations where you catch people when they fall, that is what you can sell. And that can be in itself far superior to proximity.

Darren: 39:16

Dude, the way I always think about it is like the result is a non-negotiable, whether it's one-to-one group, done for you, done with you, the result is a result. You like you should be getting the result no matter what. How you get the result, some clients literally don't give a shit as long as they got the result. They may not want to have a one-to-one with you, they could be very happy going through some insane systems and content. Some people, for us, they show up to like we do masterminds three or four times a year. They show up to a mastermind, and that's it. Just three days in the Ritz Carlton, fuck yeah. They don't want to do anything else. So yeah, it goes back to getting the result first, right?

Alfie: 39:51

100%. Yeah, we are looking at some things on the sales side. Uh, I'm very interested in like funnel building and actually sort of some. What you're speaking about before self-diagnostic of funnels of okay, if the show rate drops or if it's a middle of a funnel problem, what's the diagnostic process? How do you automate workflows and automate the fixes on those funnels? I think one thing I've learned is GHL, HubSpot, some of the big platforms out there, they're just something to everyone.

Darren: 40:20

Yeah.

Alfie: 40:21

And it's like it's too much. And the optionality is overwhelming.

Darren: 40:25

Especially for a beginner. So one of the first things we like try to help people with, obviously, is like the sales. But we try to get them to use a CRM. And it's like it's like trying to get someone to like fucking take a drug. They're like, I don't want to go near it. I'm like, no, no, no, it's not us. Yeah, but they're disgustingly laid out. There's so much fear, you know.

Alfie: 40:45

Poor, poor layout. The data which we've spoken on is shocking. I think the gap though is you get people typeform, calendarly, Google Sheets, and then it's like GHL, and there's nothing really in the middle ground. And I'm like a clean CRM that also has smart funnel building. Almost the way I see one of the products I'm working on is how can you create the Shopify of funnels where it's like templated and it's almost you come through and it's just like cool, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But almost Shopify has gone too much optionality. I want to make something where you're just getting a dialed lead magnet page or an LTO page with a back-end ascension strategy to book a call.

Darren: 41:30

Yeah.

Alfie: 41:30

And you don't get the flexibility of when you add the workflows. They are pre-built. The emails are pre-built based on your custom GPT, on the onboarding. Like everything's pre-built because this is optimized based on someone who's actually done the numbers that you want to do in this business.

Darren: 41:45

Basically, the the way forward I see it with AI specifically to do a lot of that coaching and education, it's vertical integration. So we'll use role as an example. With role, you don't need to have Premiere Pro, you don't need to have Google Drive, and you don't need to have let's say Canva for like the images. With something that we're doing on the sales side, it's you integrate the payments, the can only, the analytics, all into one vertical integration. So it's not like you're doing anything revolutionary, which you can do with like AI, you can add in some bells and whistles, but at the end of the day, it's reducing the friction between different things. Because if you're a creator, right, and you have subscription type form, so $50 a month or some shit, can only $20 a month, they all add up. And this actually is feedback we get from clients like, hey, I'm spending like $450, $600 a month just on subscriptions to software. Dude, our company barely spends $2K on subscriptions to software because it's like a sliding scale, right? The more the more you use a platform, the less you pay per user, so it's a massive disadvantage to early stage people having a thousand different fucking shit they're using.

Alfie: 42:52

100%. Yeah, I think there's gonna be an interesting condensing of all of the systems that people operate on because AI is gonna allow for really good integration, but also it's so easy now with like VR or V0 and some of these platforms to let's just put a link and be like, build me, build me a calendar. And the thing will like code everything you need to do, and you just give it to a dev team and you're like, okay, key code the back end for me. Yep. Like the speed at which we can replicate, replicate technology today, where previously it was like bio build, bio build, it's just like build, build, build, which is insane.

Darren: 43:27

Yeah, man, it's a it's a huge unlock. I want to chat to you more on the on the funnel side and stuff. I went through a lot of your videos on this and I thought it was fantastic. My understanding was like you were running basically just DMs only for a very long time.

Alfie: 43:40

Yeah, predominantly a DM funnel.

Darren: 43:41

Fuck man, how did that go initially?

Alfie: 43:44

Good. Just like it was a straight to a call, yeah. DM to book a call. Yeah, you just build so much trust with the personal brand. Like when you have a large audience and people are messaging you directly, the opportunity to chat to those people, build the confidence, understand their struggle, their pain points. Like, why send them to a landing page? I've never really done a VSL. We have like pre-call pages, and I believe in VSLs there, but dropping someone to a VSL, unless it's an amazing VSL, to get someone to book a call off the back of it, you're gonna drop so many people. It's much better that you have a direct way to contact them, which is the DM.

Darren: 44:20

So this is this goes back into the simplicity and the barrier to entry stuff, because I genuinely believe you don't even need a fucking website, bro. If you're if your Instagram is people how to make websites, yeah.

Alfie: 44:32

Your Instagram views at the higher end. Honestly, once you're 50k a month, you can think about a website. Yeah, and that's the problem with coaches, is they procrastinate and they go, okay, I need a website. And the problem is people have told them that they need a website, which is the problem with it.

Darren: 44:45

Some boomer who's like 60, that's like, yeah, yeah, you need a website where you're about section. Yeah, yeah, you've got your domain.

Alfie: 44:50

But it's also like the I I think also there was a long stage of people selling services that was like website setup, we'll set up your website, we'll do your VSL copy for you, we'll do your landing page copy, high converting landing page, we'll set up your calendarly. Like that's a great sell because it's a service and it's done for you. So there's this binary, did it get done, yes or no? And we go back to the biggest issue with info is that if a student is in the back of class, not listening, talking to their mates, not showing up to class, is that a bad teacher or a bad student? For me, it's a bad system. And that's why I'm focusing on an operating system that essentially makes that person listen and like pulls that person to the front of class. It identifies, hey, you're at the back of class, you need to set up the front next lesson and learn. Otherwise, like we're gonna book in a one-on-one session and you're gonna have a parent teacher conversation. And that's what a great system does, and that's why parents pay for private schools because they have more attention and more ability to give maybe proximity, maybe it's better systems, better frameworks, better coaching, better actual teaching. And that's what I'm really like a big believer in.

Darren: 45:55

Can you double tap on the accountability piece? Because a lot of people they struggle to actually systematize this. So actually, a lot of people that I work with as well have like tried to maintain that group, like maintain that group connectedness. Yeah, but like how how how did you design it? Just uh as an example, right?

Alfie: 46:15

Yeah, so your job as a coach is accountability. That's why every coach, fitness coaching, business coaching, all adheres to life coaching because you've got to unlock that level of accountability for that person. And my thing is like, how do you hold someone accountable? And the classic is proximity. Oh, I just continuously knock on this person's door and I check in on them and I do this and this. And that's one way to do it, and that does work, right? Like, if you really wanted someone to build a great business, probably the most secure way of getting them to build a great business would be hey, come and live with me for a long time. 100%, right? That would be like base.

Darren: 46:47

Yeah, 100%.

Alfie: 46:48

But obviously that's not scalable. So then it's like, okay, well, check in with me every single day. And it's like, okay, well, that's not scalable. It's like check in with me every week. Okay, when you get to the numbers, it doesn't get as scalable. So then it's like, how do you build in accountability at every single layer? So for me, even when I think about course curriculum, it's like, cool, you have a quiz and a check-in where you post back into the community and I know how far you are through that. And I have a 30-day sprint where if you have not met that sprint within a certain amount of time, we're checking in on you and saying, hey, you haven't done this. You said you were gonna do this when you signed up. Why haven't you done this? Problem is most people throw them into this product. And the issue with info products is we give 100% of the answers when they only need 5% at a time. The best products out there, think about your iPhone. There is so much capability that you will never need to know about, nor will you ever care about it because the 5% you get served up is amazing. So it's like, how can you focus delivering that 5%? And that's about knowing meticulously where your clients are everything, every single step of the way. I need to know when they've increased one follower. I need to know when they haven't post one post. I need to know how many comments are on there. We even scrape for the sentiment analysis by client on their posts to know what are the ideas and what are the comments and what are people saying on their posts. And we're building that into the operating system of how we can then use that to infer how to create content.

Darren: 48:13

This is fucking sick. And this is so fucking detailed, and it's exactly what people need, right? It's the minimum effective dose to get the result. It's like someone's overweight, right? They don't need to be in the gym seven days a week. You need to be able to fucking walk it, man. You control the ass.

Alfie: 48:27

But the accountability is the big brother. Yeah. And the big brother doesn't have to there's two things that I've noticed. The big brother doesn't have to be meeting with them every single week as long as they know the big brother's there. And that's really important.

Darren: 48:38

Question for you on that is where do you see the line between accountability and a codependency fodder, fucking son relationship being built?

Alfie: 48:49

Well, I go back to why do people burn out? Sam Altman put this very well, and he said, people burn out because they lose momentum on things that they don't enjoy. If you have momentum on things that you enjoy, and normally momentum and enjoyment are tied together. So if you have momentum, it's near impossible to burn out. Like even Elon, right? Like he's like working so, so hard. But if he's making breakthroughs every single time and they're like getting those rockets to Mars and then going up, like he's not gonna burn out because it's you've got momentum. What's really hard is when you don't have momentum. So my thing is my job as a coach is to give someone momentum, and that's what then builds the opportunity for them to build the habit. Because you need to give them the chance to build the habit. If you build a habit, I think it's like 66 days or something like that. That's basically what they've proven. If you consistently do something for 66 days, could be longer, could be less, that's when you start to build a habit. But the problem is if they see no momentum for 30 days, a lot of people drop off, right? It's very unmotivating for an entire month to see zero progress and get to those 66 days. So they don't even get in the realm of giving themselves the chance. So then that is why most coaching engagements, your job is actually most important in those first 30 to 60 days, even first seven days, like we talk about that initial sprint, but it's how do we start to surge momentum? And sometimes we have to find ways where the momentum may just be that they posted consistently. The momentum may just be that they got better or they unlocked a new style. The momentum may just be that they found this thing out, and sometimes you have to create these goalposts that are a lot closer, that are a lot smaller, so at least people feel like they're going through them.

Darren: 50:26

Yeah, it's I remember hearing um how to beast, his name's Davis Rales, talk about how you can be consistently shit for seven years if you don't improve. If you're just put putting the same garagle content, you can go through like a long period of time of not making those improvements. So it's nice to have smaller, really actionable goals saying, Hey, I'm gonna try this new format. It gave us a bump of views of 200 or 300, acknowledging that and then thinking, okay, great, how do I replicate that and make a better next step? How do people that you work with really see really really see them scale up? Like I know you work with a lot of guys hitting them 50k a month and above. How do you walk through that process with someone? What's your step-by-step process?

Alfie: 51:13

Yeah, it's it's sort of the type of creator or founder you need to be at that point. When you start, you just need to be brave enough to start. Like just throwing your hat in the ring separates you from the 99% of people that never even start. That's once you start, you need to be blind enough and have enough faith to just be consistent and get to the point where it becomes instilled as a habit and you start to really learn the skills. It's like day 66, cool. Now you're like actually stacking some skill and habits. And as you sort of start to scale up and you start to see success, it's just unlocking and then keeping all of the hats on. Because the second you get good at marketing, suddenly you have to unlock sales. And that's like, cool, okay, now I've got to learn how to sell. Pretty straightforward. Like simple process. I use my favorite framework of all time. I'm not a salesperson at all, but I use past, present, future, cost of inaction, partnership.

Darren: 52:02

Gap selling.

Alfie: 52:03

What's it called?

Darren: 52:04

Gap selling.

Alfie: 52:06

Okay, there you go. Didn't even know the technical side because I just don't personally, I think people will buy from you if they like you. I think I'm a relatively personal person, so I can get people to like me. And then I just run in my head, I'm like, cool, let's talk about them. Tell me about your past. Tell me why it's not working today. Tell me about your future. If we don't get there, what's gonna happen? And then partnership. And I always go through that because it forces me for 80% of the conversation to make it all about them. And I've just got to be going through that framework. Once you teach them sales, you then move to fulfillment. And we need to teach them how to fulfill, how to scale fulfillment. And now they're wearing multiple hats. And people can wear multiple hats and sort of be running around a little bit like a headless chicken to get to 50k a month. I wouldn't recommend it, but people definitely can do it. And I've seen it with spreadsheets. I've done it myself with like spreadsheets, typeform, calendarly, homeworks. And then you get to the step-off point where it's like, okay, I probably want to take this a bit more seriously. And now it's like, let's set up your CRM, let's actually get you a website, let's have proper funnels built out, you know, lead magnets, LTO. I'm a big fan of LTO funnels as well. As much as I love the DM funnel, I think you can build, well, you can build huge businesses off that. LTO funnels are great because once you get to 50k a month, you get to 100k and you start to put on some ads. I love recouping ad spend with an LTO funnel.

Darren: 53:21

Can you explain that for people?

Alfie: 53:23

So low-ticket funnel, low-ticket offer funnel is essentially putting something on the front end of your offer that is a lot more smaller, that is a lot smaller and more palatable. Say it's a $29, a $19 offer, even a $5 offer. Two things that are great about it. One, it's more palatable than potentially just booking a call because people see that as a little bit of a waste of time, maybe if they're not sure about the offer. So it allows a little try before you buy or try and buy at the same time. The other one is it price verts people and you get a more qualified and serious buyer than if it was just free. Because everyone will take free stuff. Less people will pay you $5, $19, $29. The key thing with an LTO, it's got to build gap and intent. So it's got to build gap of where they are today and where they want to get to. So the best part is like first step in a multi-step process. And then intent is don't make your low-ticket offers or your free stuff shit because people will judge you on your free stuff and your low-ticket. I put so much time and effort into my low-ticket offers and into my free stuff because people are gonna judge you on it. If you churn out shitty 100 hook lists and send that out, or it's obviously chat GPT diet and nutrition guide or meal plan that's got no photos, it's not pretty like no effort is there, why would they ever buy a coaching? And that's the intent part as well. But that's to get people in the door and then call them up and bring them into the the actual coaching. But what's really key is having something that is paid on the front end, like the templates for me, they ended up being, I think we brought them all the way down to 19 just to get more lead flow in. But running ads to it, you know, if it cost me $32 or $30 to acquire a customer, whatever it was, I could then take that $19 off. So the difference between that, I'm only losing $11 to book a call, and that's a really cheap book of call.

Darren: 55:08

I love the autistic side of it, man. So how did you scale up to where you are now? Was it a combination of that?

Alfie: 55:15

Yeah, combination. It's just turning on more taps. Once you've got one thing working, you validated the offer as long as your fulfillment solid, as long as your sales team or you're selling yourself and you're getting a good close rate.

Darren: 55:25

Where did you um cap out on the DM funnel?

Alfie: 55:29

I mean, we still run it.

Darren: 55:30

But I mean, where did you find a like an upper limit in terms of the volume?

Alfie: 55:37

Yeah, there wasn't really an upper limit. It was more turning on everything else at once. So like it wasn't, oh, this is slowing down, we need a new funnel, let's change. I just see keeping it. It's like running a bath, but you get to turn on every single tap. And it's like, cool, that's gonna fill the water far faster if we keep every tap on. I think you can. Like, there's no, there's no real limit because some are going more through paid traffic, some go through YouTube traffic, we've got Instagram, and just the more of those that you can turn on. Your biggest job once you're focusing on marketing and scaling an offer should be how do I create lead magnets? More and more lead magnets, whether they're load ticket offers or lead magnets. Like I just finished up a full AI playbook, and I'm always testing new stuff. So I put out this Himose GPT on my story, got like 2,500 downloads, and I was like, okay, people want like a custom GPT course. So then I've just built an AI playbook which takes you through like all the prompts, how to really use custom GPTs for marketing, sales, and fulfillment, and that will be our new front-end offer for like $19, $29. If you want to test whether I put a lot of time and effort into it, you can purchase it.

Darren: 56:45

Sick man. How did you um how did you build out the sales team? Because obviously, if you're running like a low-ticket offer, there's just a lot more complexity than just a call funnel.

Alfie: 56:52

Yeah, so sales team, I was very fortunate. I found a great head of sales and I hired that first, and he's built the entire team. And we're now partnered.

Darren: 56:59

You're lucky.

Alfie: 56:59

I'm very lucky where Adam is an absolute base, uh, Adam McCorge, and he's just a killer. I got very fortunate where he'd come from a lot of shit offers. You know, he was working over 40 offers when I met him.

Darren: 57:13

He was working over 40.

Alfie: 57:14

Yeah, like some, like lots of like very small deals, and then one or two big ones, but they were like 4x trading offers, and they were just, you know, he'd build these up and he'd build them to like 250, 300, 400k a month. And then, you know, the person's like, Christmas party, like ripping bags, and just like and he's a Christian guy. And he I think he really we connected and he helped me with so Pure Body was the first offer he came in on, and he really liked the fitness thing and saw that we're actually trying to deliver some good in people's lives, and he was like, Wow, this is refreshing from all the other offers he's worked on.

Darren: 57:49

Sure, man.

Alfie: 57:49

Uh, and you know, he's worked with like big names, like Ty Lopez, people like that, and he's just seen the underbelly of the info space. Yeah, man. So seeing someone who's coming at it like I have no info background prior to this, never bought an offer myself, like no idea, really anything. I didn't know who Amand was until I got into it. So I had no background in the space, and I think seeing that and being like, oh, you're actually trying to help these people, and we're not just gonna roll a new offer in a couple months like Amand does, you know, like I'm Yeah, man.

Darren: 58:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I spoke to Usman Kiani last week, big sales coach in Dubai, became good friends at Usman recently. He was telling me, dude, some of the wackiest shit ever, like people doing these launches, like doing like two or three million in a launch, and then just 60 days later, over. And I'm like, what do you mean it's over? They're like, Yeah, they just shut it down. And it's like, why? Because it because it did work, it's just um shiny penny syndrome or the guys are just ADHD out of the fucking gills, and they're like, Well, they're great marketers and not great operators, and that's a real delineation between the two. I just have a I just put up a reel about two hours ago about this about the reason why people shut down their business is because they go from being a marketer to a CEO and they realize they don't want to do operations and finance and don't want to I don't have to figure it out. Yeah, whereas like I I know I I said you were lucky, that was the wrong term. It was you took the opportunity because one thing I've observed about you is that you're willing to let go of the fucking 98% profit because you know it there's a bigger uh trade-off uh downstream when you scale more. So you bought in a head of sales, you bought an ads guys, you bought an operators, you brought in VAs at the time. That is one of the contributing factors why you were able to scale because you're not a princess, but the amount of princesses that I've met, man, that stay small because they're like, but I don't want to make 80%. And it's like you do realize it's a hundred percent of zero or fifty percent of 500k a month or whatever, you know?

Alfie: 59:49

Yeah, and that comes to zooming out and playing the long game, like the short game is okay, info is a cash business. But then it's like, what is the cash unlock? Well, if I reinvest all that cash into a software that solves the same problem, one I get Really good at solving the problem, but also build a massive moat around what I do that unlocks ARR. ARR unlocks a much bigger multiple of something I could actually exit and sell for a 10 to 15X multiple rather than just taking loads of cash off the table. Luckily, I live incredibly under my means and do not care for any fancy cars or anything like that, but no interest. So because of that, I have a lot of cash flow available to reinvest back into the business. And that's what I'm doing. And I really see everything I'm doing as building a distribution network. So first tier is like from the software perspective, I can test and use market research, which we're doing now with ROL. We release it inside Amplify, we test and go, okay, iterate on this product, give us feedback. And people are like excited to be involved in it. And it's awesome. Like they get to develop a product firsthand, they get to work with my technical co-founder. We have all of these feedback loops. They're giving us iterations, improving the product, patching everything before we go to market. The other side is now I have you know 1,500 creators. We're building Amplify House, which is our global wellness retreat brand, under that as well. We've got events globally. First one's gonna be Gold Coast in February. Then we have since you went in Malibu in April, we've got May will be Bali, and then we'll go like Barcelona, San Diego, Alaska.

Darren: 1:01:22

Alaska. Yeah, we've got some interesting ones.

Alfie: 1:01:24

Noah really wants to go like bobsledding in Alaska, you know, with the dogs and like all that stuff. So I was like, all right, man, do what you want. Um so we This is the most like Australian thing ever.

Darren: 1:01:34

It's like, yeah, yeah, bro, just score for it.

Alfie: 1:01:36

Just whatever you want to do. Well, I think the Nizian element of the brand is we want to give people cool content moments. And my whole thing is I'm never gonna run a mastermind. I'm never gonna run a come hang out with entrepreneurs and models. It's just not me at all. So I think because of those, I'm like, cool. Well, what are the stuff that I should do? Like this year, I like ran a marathon on the Gold Wall of China, I climbed up Kilimanjaro. I've sort of been traveling all over the world for the last six months, and it's normally pretty intrepid travel. Like, I love seeing less traveled parts of the world. I watched um Anthony Bourdain's documentary. If anyone hasn't seen that, I highly recommend it. It's very sad, but it's an amazing documentary. But with that, building Amplify House into a real global retreats brand, and I'm going, okay, well, what are the distribution pathways? So talking to a couple pretty big CPG uh producers about looking at some product suites, like supplements. And again, you can market research. First thing I did when I was talking to them, like got some big investors on the table that have huge established brands that I can't speak on. But the first thing I did was I pulled a survey and was like, cool, what supplements do you consume? How often do you consume them? Uh, would you ever consider this type of supplement, the one that we're considering? If no, why? If yes, why? What do you look for in companies? Da-da-da-da-da-da. Build that. And I go, cool, one spot in the Gold Coast retreat, uh, just fill out the survey into the community. 200 responses in a day. And it's like, great. Now I have market research, take that to them. This is what everyone is saying in the space. These are coming from paid, validated customers that not only will be customers, but also billboards. Because when they onboard on Amplify, what's the welcome pack? The supplements, everything we give them. So then all of a sudden we have reach. Like we have, yeah, we've generated over a billion views since we've started. On your own page? No, no, no. From the community.

Darren: 1:03:26

Yeah, and the beautiful part with that is when they come to the event and they're sharing shit, they're building their own stuff, it is a distribution network underneath there.

Alfie: 1:03:35

Correct. And by definition, if we're successful, they're like bigger and bigger billboards.

Darren: 1:03:39

Yeah, and also you make more money by making people money. So if they build their business, build their brand, it's all interconnected, right?

Alfie: 1:03:46

And that's yeah, and we've been lucky that you know what we have so much social proof because literally all the success stories are now huge on social media. So it's like any of our success stories, just go and ask the people. Like you can go and look at their accounts and you can see the following, and you can just go and ask them. So it's been very easy for us to get new clients, I guess, because we just have this running, like almost referral billboard that's active all the time and we're ever growing that army.

Darren: 1:04:12

Have you considered or thought about clipping in any way?

Alfie: 1:04:16

Yeah, we do a little bit of clipping. Okay, but not a crazy amount.

Darren: 1:04:20

How do you how do you structure it?

Alfie: 1:04:22

Uh just for my own page? Yeah, so taking from YouTube, yeah, just work with a few clippers.

Darren: 1:04:27

And they just fucking run with it.

Alfie: 1:04:28

Yeah, yeah. For me, like social media at that scale, I think to really break through break through, you have to sort of create yourself as like a one-on-one. And I'm building that brand, and I'm bullish on the brand that we'll create. I think the way that I compete on a one-on-one, I was speaking to my creative director about this. My one-of-one ability is to bring people into a room around like lifestyle, travel in a really unique setting and give people amazing experiences. And that's what gives me the most energy. Like seeing great people connect and seeing them experience something really cool. Like we had big events in Bali, Barcelona, we had a thousand people at a run club, brought together like all of these people. We put on a massive house. We're in this like 15th century, Meng Castle is circ. And that's what I want to create for people, is that experience. And I think that will be my format, which does require an in-person piece, but it's building that up. I think you do really need that. What makes you a one-on-one in that category? And that's a hard thing for a lot of people to come and find. And his beliefs are controversial, which helps, but he's at least convicted. And the problem with most people is no one is willing to die on a hill anymore. No one's willing to die on a hill for anything. So the first thing I tell people is like, what are you willing to die on a hill for? Because that's how you're gonna be able to cut through in today's brand. That's not saying what are you willing to stir the pot about or be the most controversial, just die on the hill for something.

Darren: 1:06:11

Yeah, man. If you fucking love knitting, just go all in on knitting. 100%. And dude, you're gonna attract people who don't even like knitting. They're gonna be like, this person's obsessed, love it. Yeah. I always say, like, in a world of mediocrity, people love people who are obsessed.

Alfie: 1:06:22

Yeah, or just doing anything with their life or have direction.

Darren: 1:06:26

Yeah, because a lot of people aren't doing anything with their life, you know. We've all came from corporate, it's so bland, so vanilla, so beige that no one has an opinion on anything.

Alfie: 1:06:36

And that's what I learned during Amplify for the first three to four months. I was like, cool, you know, how you're gonna be successful is you're gonna look out of market, see what's winning, copy their content, put it into your own words, give your own perspective. And I realized, oh, people are like taking this face value, you just verbatim copy other people. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. You need to have your own perspective and opinion, and transforming it into your own words is really important. But what I realized, a lot of the people coming through that hadn't done the work offline, and your personal brand doesn't start when you turn on the camera. You think David Goggins' personal brand started when he turned on the camera? That started way back when he was, you know, sweeping cockroaches and then went to go get his Navy SEALs and did Hell Week. That's when his personal brand started really forming who Goggins was. And that's really important to remember for a lot of these people, particularly because we do such a good job of marketing personal branding and all the freedom and the leverage and all the great things that come from it. People see it as a way out and they go, I want a personal brand. It's like, okay, well, what are you about? What's your person? And they haven't done that work yet. And that's fine. That's when they go into documentation. And that's you can still build an audience doing that, but you have to accept and be very real with yourself. I'm here today, and I'm gonna set this goal and I'm gonna improve at this area and become more competent, and I'm gonna document the journey. And that's a longer road because the people who are already authorities, they've already done that work, so they get to bypass some of that because they just need to talk on their past and their competency of where they are today.

Darren: 1:08:06

I spoke to Dan about this yesterday. He was saying that like a lot of the big guys you see, like a hormose or whatnot, they actually were documenting their stuff in the beginning in the shit phase. Like he was telling me a story about Hermosy was on a was on Facebook Live every single day when he was just a gym owner, just teaching people how to get clients in a gym. And people would just join and he'd listen, he's like, Hey, I'm doing this right now, it's helpful, it's not helpful, and so on. And he's saying that was like you were saying, man, it was like 15 fucking years ago. He was like 21, 22. Probably when he led us off consulting, which we're talking about 24. Um, but yeah, like that was his document. Just him in a shitty gym going live on Facebook.

Alfie: 1:08:45

That's insane. We actually had a podcast recently that we did, we did this future creator podcast, and we're talking about whether everyone should have a personal brand, or specifically should entrepreneurs have a personal brand. And literally the example we gave was like, I wonder if Jim Launch would have been as successful if Homozy was darting off creating content all the time. Again, comes back to creator versus operator. I didn't realize that he went Facebook live. But if I think of a format that would have been most sustainable, no editing, easy to go live. He probably did it while he was working and just explained the stuff he was doing anyway. So I think you can make it work, but again, it's really important to realize that. Like Homozy's got the proof offline, which makes him such a star online, and that is really important. Same with Dan Martell, right?

Darren: 1:09:30

Want to ask you, it's funny because everyone I've met this week have had followed us part about online events, offline events. So obviously, you know, you've been doing these run clubs and shit and meetups and stuff. How have you seen that just be so much more helpful for building your brand, connecting with people? Because I I find personally that there's a real shift towards that now. There always was, but in the past couple of months, you've seen live events online really fucking blow up. Um, we've been running a lot of live events, been great, really, really good. And it's also because it's been fantastic just to meet people. I did it in person too. But yeah, what's your opinions on in-person events?

Alfie: 1:10:06

Massive. As the world moves more and more online, we need human connection more than ever before. I think we're in this crazy little period of life where the virtual world hasn't become immersive enough to completely swallow us. It will. I am certain of it. We will live our worlds, we will no longer travel. That is a big part of how we will solve climate change and fossil fuels and planes and space on planes. It won't get cheaper. It's just people will consume virtually. Why go to the Great Wall of China when I can just plug in and feel like I'm there and walk on it? And not only do I get to walk on it, I get to see the Empire, the Ottoman Empire over the or the Mongolians rather, over the hill, and I get to actually see all of the action happen. That is where we are heading, and I think we are in the small window of people that truly appreciate in-person connection, truly appreciate nature, being there in person, that feeling, the the whole atmosphere that that creates. Once we transcend into a full immersive environment where we can recreate every single feeling, and it's so lifelike that we get lost in these worlds, we'll lose that forever. So I think we're in a beautiful window for the next four to five years, maybe it's less. And then I think it's gone forever.

Darren: 1:11:25

Kind of goes back to why we're here today. It's like it's just so fucking sick doing it in person. You know, it's just so good to just be in person when you're building a software company, building a bunch of different shit, and you could consume yourself by your business 20 hours a day, right?

Alfie: 1:11:42

It is, but keep in mind, imagine if we were in a VR world where I'm in a full suit. When I shake your hand, I feel your hand. I'm it it's it is exactly like we would be here today. And that's because we're not there yet, so it is great because if we're doing this on Zoom, it wouldn't be nearly as engaging. Yeah, 100%. But once we and we've started to see this, I don't know if you saw the Zuck and I have to find his name. Um they did a really good podcast and it was highlighting the metaverse. And uh podcaster I think his name.

Darren: 1:12:14

I remember the the podcast.

Alfie: 1:12:16

Um he's a super famous podcaster. I want to find his uh it's worth referencing. So when it was Zach and Lex Freeman's podcast in the metaverse, and it was every sort of five to ten minutes, Lex would go, I just can't believe like this literally feels like I'm here with you. And Zach explains in the podcast, he's like, Yeah, I actually I haven't shaven, but in my avatar, I am like clean shaven, I'm just sitting in my home. And they managed to recreate the set in the metaverse to make it feel like they were there. So we could recreate this entire setting. I think the interesting part is the more we become consumed in that world, because the big question is, oh, can we make it feel as lifelike? And I think easily, like we'll easily be able to do that. That's not gonna be a problem at all. There'll be there'll be suits that make the wheel f wind feel like it's going through your hair, that makes, you know, like the smell of like salt coming off off the ocean, all of these minute details that we will have been able to pick up, we're gonna be able to recreate with ease. The question becomes whether we stay in a human lifelike form or whether in these worlds we accept that the dimensions can change, that maybe we are avatars and we don't have to look at each other as humans. We can look at different parts of that. Maybe this is all in cartoon character, and that's just part of the environment. It's whether we stay in our original dimension.

Darren: 1:14:13

Yeah, man. I think the biggest thing here is also goes back to the quality of the content. Because if like all the environment is correct and we're doing it online and it's perfect, it will literally go back to how fucking good are we actually creating content? What is a story we can tell?

Alfie: 1:14:27

Yeah, and just the mode, like the modes of entertainment are gonna change dramatically. Like right now, we're so used to consuming on screens. That's gonna change. You're gonna watch movies not on a TV. You are gonna be in the movie. Like you are gonna be walking around the movie. It's gonna be like the red wedding of Game of Thrones. You can look up from where the arches are, you could sit behind the king, you could sit by like you're gonna be completely involved in that. A bit like a free game map, you know, like where you can walk around. It's gonna be the same concept for the way that we consume. Content will go down that route as well. Why get a PT online that you meet once a week or you chat to when you could have the PT standing over you while you're doing your bench press, spotting you? Because that's what it's gonna be like.

Darren: 1:15:10

Fuck man. That's a big uh that's a big next five, 10-year roadmap.

Alfie: 1:15:14

Oh, it's gonna be insane.

Darren: 1:15:16

And that's why you should create content now.

Alfie: 1:15:18

If you don't build a brand today, the thing you've got to realize, and you look at VZero. If anyone hasn't looked at V0, it's like a no code, you let you prompt it and it'll build websites. Go into V0, it's free. Go put your favorite website, Nike, whatever it is, whatever website you think is cool, put the link in there and go make this for me. And it will make it like that. So, what you've got to realize is if you do not build a brand today, it's gonna be so easy to create any brand. And the people who have existing faces that are recognizable and brands that are distinguishable, the reason why Nike will continue to win is I could go and recreate the swoosh, you know, the tech. But what like what benefit will that have? I mean, it's just gonna drive attention to Nike because they are known for that. So if you don't have a distinct brand today or in the next couple years, you're gonna lose the ability to compete because we're gonna be empowered, as are all the creators, with tools to unlimitly create ourselves. Like we can create endless content of ourselves, we can clone ourselves, we can generate our voice. Have you played around with any of that stuff?

Darren: 1:16:22

Yeah, man. All the like the the editing software for it, like we were gonna do a lot of our promo videos for Aura on it. So just straight away, because I looked at it from WAP. I know WAP had three guys that did their entire promo video that would have cost them like millions to do, basically. They did it for like fucking $2,000 or some shit. And it gives you it gives you more access, right? Again, it's lowering the barrier to entry, but lowering the barrier to entry also means that the content can be can be shit unless you're someone who's learned the frameworks, the tools, the processes to do it properly.

Alfie: 1:16:56

Well, there's still an element of creativity, which is the beauty of I think where we're heading. It comes back to so I was in a Waymo, right? Like, I don't know if you know where.

Darren: 1:17:05

Yeah, man. I was in Oldness Scottsdale.

Alfie: 1:17:07

Yeah, so uh I was in Waymo, like in Austin, which is a driverless autonomous vehicle, picks me up like Uber. It's amazing. Fucking crazy. Yeah, it's we're in the future. And I saw that and I go, okay, that's interesting. So the manual job that's been removed here is an Uber driver. And I go, okay, benefit for me, Uber driver's not woke, like stayed up the entire night, you know, done a night shift. The risk and the human error there is very high. So this makes complete sense. And I go, okay, well, where does this leave the leave the Uber driver? Okay, maybe he gets another job. But what we're gonna see is this removal of all the manual tasks, all the manual labor. And then it goes, okay, what are humans left to do? And I love Mo Gadwart, Scary Smart. And I built pretty much my whole business around this hypothesis of the campfire and the campfire at the start of Scary Smart. So Mo Gadwart, he headed up Google Ext for 10 years and he wrote a book called Scary Smart on the revolution of AI, how it's going to impact all the industries, all the things that you should be thinking about, where it will go. He starts the book with the campfire. You're sitting around the campfire, and he allows you at the end of the book to decide, are we around the campfire because AI has taken over and it's caused havoc on the world? Or AI is taken over and all that is left is for us to go camping and share the best ideas, lessons, and stories. And I truly believe that in the next five to ten years, jobs will become like gardens. They won't contribute. Gardens don't contribute to world food supply. It's not important, but it's important to the individual person for their purpose. And because they want to, which is amazing. And I think that's where we're heading. No longer will we do jobs that we don't enjoy. Because if you look at job satisfaction, normally it's gonna be the jobs that people least enjoy. Other jobs, probably, that AI is gonna take out first. 100%. Like unless someone's super passionate about driving Uber and there's a level of human connection, maybe. But for most people, that is a job that they do not enjoy and they do out of necessity. Those jobs become removed. Yes, in the short term, maybe that means displacement of work and where are those people gonna go? But eventually we will get to a point where AI will have solved all of our problems world food, hunger, climate change, so many of our issues, interplanetary travel, we will have solved to a point where humanity will return to where it actually started, which is the campfire, which is going camping, which is chasing your own passions, finding what you truly enjoy. And that's why for me, I'm just like, okay, well, I'm we're just a little bit ahead of the curve because we help people get paid for who they are. So it's like we still help you get paid because money's still a constraint in today's society. I think money's gonna go as well.

Darren: 1:19:42

Really?

Alfie: 1:19:43

Yeah. Because if all resources are infinite, as in if all resources are in abundance, because we found ways to mine minerals that we didn't know was possible before, we found efficiency in food supply and food creation we didn't know was possible before. If you have infinite. resources and what's money used to buy resource. So therefore money becomes worthless. Because with an abundance of resource, what are you going to buy?