DEEP DIVE
How I built a $252,000+ ARR Business In 72 Hours
If you've got an email list and a few hours a week of free time, you're sitting on much more cash than you realize.
Here’s a simple playbook I used to add $21k MRR ($252k per year) in 3 days:
The backstory
Over the past few years, 100+ founders have reached out to me about 1on1 advising. My answer was always no. I didn't want to sell my time
I've been too busy working on New Media Summit, our live cohorts, leading GrowLetter’s agency team, and creating content.
But last month, I realized there's value in working with a small group of clients 1on1.
They get incredible results. I have fun working closely with talented entrepreneurs.
Plus, the questions, problems, and projects we work on give me great ideas for content and new products I could launch.
So in July, I decided to launch a 1on1 advising service limited to 6 clients.
The offer
Here's the offer I put together:
I'll work with you 1on1 to build and monetize an audience you own with newsletters, email, and SMS marketing. Pay monthly. Cancel anytime.
Clients get:
Two 45-minute 1on1 advising calls with me per month
Private Slack channel with me and my team for Q&A and asynchronous support
Talent recruiting support - Intros, job postings in our newsletter, LinkedIn amplification
ALL of my courses, AI tools, swipe files, and templates
Write, Grow, Sell
Craft Your Cohort
Event recordings
And more
My goal was to keep it simple and not overpromise. I only want 6 clients. I'm going to be working with all of them closely. I don't want them to have the wrong expectations.
For an offer like this, under-promising and over-delivering is best.
And if you're wondering — why take on only 6 clients?
That’s the number of clients that would make me excited about the money…
But still…
Allow me the bandwidth to support each client closely.
Not overwhelm me and make me feel like delivering the service is a burden.
Make it easier to sell. Less spots, more scarcity. That helps me close clients without sales calls, live webinars, or fancy marketing.
6 clients = 12 calls per month, 3 calls per week.
And I deliberately made this a monthly subscription with no long-term commitment. So if I don't have time to work with 6, I can let clients go.
I don't plan to, but flexibility is important to me.
The marketing asset
I want to be able to hit my 6-client cap without:
A live webinar or VSL
Sales calls (or a sales person)
Or any time-consuming or complicated marketing campaign
I found the best way to do this is an old-fashioned Google Doc sales letter.
I wrote the letter (you can read it here), and built my marketing campaign entirely around this asset.
This is key.
To sell something high ticket, you need to address every concern, objection, and show how buying will provide an outcome.
Then back up your promises with proof.
A sales letter is the best way I can do that, fast. Putting together the sales letter only took a few hours (minus all the time I spent procrastinating before writing it).
Sales calls, webinars, or other types of marketing would take longer.
Sales and marketing strategy
Here's what I did:
Write a sales letter.
Direct all my promotion to it.
Send 4 targeted emails to my list.
After I hit my client cap, send another email to notify my list so they know the scarcity was real, and I get more leads I can sell to later when spots open up.
The sales letter had a link inside to a checkout page to buy the advising service for $3,500 per month. No application. No call. No friction.
My goal was to get 6 clients as fast as possible.
The sales letter copy and the price is the filter. If someone purchases who is not a good fit, I can refund them and open that spot up to someone else.
Still, everyone who bought was a great fit. That's because I clearly described who this was for in the letter:
“Businesses with $1M-$50M in annual revenue. Newsletter/email list of at least 10k-100k+ people. And a strong team, big or small.”
Plus, the price point was high enough so only founders like that could sign up.
And yes, this is not designed to be accessible for everyone. It's my time 1on1. I have other accessible offers at lower price points (like Write, Grow, Sell).
Email marketing
Here are the emails I sent:
The best way to see how the email strategy works is to read the emails I've linked above (they’re all short). But here's an overview:
Email #1
Introduction and pitch for the advising service
Call to action is to reply "yes" so I can send them the sales letter
Sent to my most engaged subscribers who have been on my list for 6+ months. Filtered down to my best ~1,000 subscribers.
Email #2
24 hours later
2 sentence CTA prompts a reply to learn more about advising
“Would you be interested in working with me 1on1?
If so, reply “yes” to this email and I'll send you a document that breaks down exactly who this is for, what you get, and the investment.”
Sent to a larger segment of engaged subscribers with high clicks who have engaged with other offers. ~5,000 subscribers.
Email #3
6 hours later
Notified subscribers who opened one of the previous emails that there are just 4 spots left.
Sent to subscribers who opened at least 1 of the previous 2 emails
Email #4
24 hours later
Notifies anyone who opened previous emails that all advising spots have sold out, enrollment ended, and prompts them to apply to be notified when spots open up in the future.
This drove 100+ applications I can sell to later
Sent to subscribers who opened at least 1 of the previous 3 emails
The first two emails have a call to action to reply “yes”.
It's a hand raiser.
They reply. I send them the sales letter manually via email.
I don't know exactly why, but I believe this to be more effective than just throwing a link in the email itself.
It's a bigger commitment for the prospect. It improves my email deliverability. and I can follow up with them one-on-one and address their questions via email.
Yes, it takes more time. I probably spent two hours replying to 300+ emails, but in the future I could have a virtual assistant do this.
The second two emails were only sent to people who opened the first. At that point, I felt like if they were going to reply, they would have already done it. So I just linked to the sales letter directly in the email to remove friction.
Other nuances
There are a few key factors that made this work:
Scarcity. There are only 6 spots. That’s 6 real. Every time a spot was sold, I updated the sales letter with that information to show the scarcity in real time.
Google doc sales letters also helps showcase that scarcity. If there's 100+ people viewing the Google Doc, other people can see that too.
And of course: To sell advising at this price point, you need to have an audience that trusts you and real experience.
After writing a newsletter for many years, working with well-known clients, and collecting testimonials from them…
Selling an advising service like this comes easier to me than to the average person. I know that. But still, there's a version of this you can implement in your business too.
You want to work with clients 1on1 or sell a high touch offer, give this a shot.
You got the sales letter, the marketing emails, and the step-by-step strategy.
Good luck.