Building a Lifestyle Business: Lessons from James Schramko

Introduction and Simplifying a Lifestyle Business
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Allan: James, welcome to the podcast. Such a treat to have you on. I was just thinking before we got on, how to introduce you. And I mean, the best I could come up with I think of you as the Zen monk of entrepreneurship. So your advice is always simple but real you you have purpose behind your business, you drive your business doesn't drive you.

And I've often been on the receiving end of your advice and your advice is always Hey, simplify your business, reduce your product range down and things like that. And often it felt like stupidly simple. It's like, you know, this is, that's it. Right. so I don't know, how did I do it? Did I introduce you? Okay. And how would you introduce yourself?

James: Yeah, I think that's fine. I do have an emphasis on lifestyle. I didn't want to wait till I was 65 until I retire. And I do like having good solid recurring cashflow. So setting up the right business model was important to fund that lifestyle. [00:01:00] And a lot of lessons learned along the way, but you're right about simplicity. I have become good at finding leverage in things and working out what's important and discarding most of the rest. And sometimes that's counterintuitive.

Allan: Yeah. the things that always struck me about you, which was very different to almost every other mentor I ever had was kind of, it felt like you had enough. Like, you weren't always striving for more, the next level, the next thing out there. And that's something I battle with all the time.

Like, I'm at a comfortable level. I have an amazing lifestyle and all that, but also I'm field driven and I want to get to the next level and I want the next book and I want the next thing to, to be an amazing success and I want to get to the next profit milestone or whatever it is. How did you get to the stage where you're like, look, this is, and I won't mention the number.

I remember in private, you would tell me what the, what your number was that you was kind of a minimum standard for you and that was enough and you funded your lifestyle and all of that. So, how did [00:02:00] you, I guess, tame that beast that just wants more and more status, more money, more fame, more all of that?

Finding Fulfillment Beyond Success
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James: Well, I think we're talking about the difference between success and fulfillment.

I came from a very success fueled background working with a product like Mercedes Benz. I did see a lot of very unhappy multi millionaires and occasionally billionaires. You see them still now in like the tabloid, you see a picture of a billionaire, an Australian billionaire I sold cars to, and he's very overweight.

Usually unhappy or on to his third wife or whatever. And you think, well, it can't just be money. Granted

Allan: Yeah.

James: you can have a miserable life without money, right? That's why I have a minimum number. Like we'll throw a number out there. Like I'm pretty happy if I can make a million dollars a year. And.

When I say that number, for some people that would be like an outrageously incomprehensible number to even think about. And for others, the people who are very [00:03:00] driven to achieve or whatever, maybe people who want to prove something to someone else or have a deeply embedded emotional or traumatic event as a child, perhaps with a parent or a bully, they might think, well, that's not enough.

I wouldn't have proven anything. I'm playing too small. So I, I actually have, sometimes people say to me, why do you play so small? And I would say, well, why do you want to play so big? Like what? What can you have with a 100 million revenue that you can't have with a 3 million revenue in terms of life?

And what sacrifice or price will you have to pay? And ultimately to answer your question directly, where did it come from? I guess just observing my own behaviour. After I got my Rolex and my fancy cars and the best suits and the nice house and everything else, and had children and all the rest of it, it's like, well, what next?

Could it actually ever be filled? Could it ever get to a point of satisfaction [00:04:00] and until you change the reason why you're doing stuff, probably you can't. It wouldn't matter. Like that saying, you know, there's always someone with a bigger boat. You have the biggest boat in the harbor and someone will come in with a bigger boat.

So I look more inside. I remember being in Thailand at a Buddhist temple and they were talking about enlightenment being when you, like when you have nothing, there's And then I started reading books like Tao Te Ching, and they were really interesting ideas that were different to what I'd been reading, like the typical capitalist western culture of more.

But I guess I had to experience having a lot of stuff to then not need it, if that makes sense. For people who've never had it, I can understand why a 20 year old kid wants a Ferrari. I totally get it. But now I understand the compromises that will come with that. Where you'll be scraping speed bumps on the way up driveways, where people are going to sit on it when you park at the shops, where it's going to cost 10, 000 to [00:05:00] service.

And then I think maybe I could just be happy with my Toyota Landcruiser.

Allan: I'm with you. I'm with you. And you know, it's a, it's definitely about like I'm reading a book at the moment called The Second Mountain. So the first mountain is about achievement, about personal success, about all of that. The second mountain, you get to the top of that second, that first mountain and you feel, you don't feel the sense of accomplishment that you thought you would.

And so then you inevitably start climbing the second mountain, which is all of that. Community, Connection, Contribution, Spirituality and I can say I've been at the top of the first mountain, but I've certainly been up it, and it's right, I mean, in the moment, it feels great to achieve a goal, to hit a milestone or whatever, but it's pretty short lived usually.

James: Without a doubt, you'd be in the top single percentile of the population in terms of health and wealth and resource and all the rest of it. We're very fortunate. There are other popular books

fortunate Die With Nothing is another concept of enjoying life while you're [00:06:00] having it.

And I guess I've anytime you lose a friend or someone through a sickness it's like, well, we might as well live while we live and enjoy your wealth. And will you have regrets if you make an extra few million, but you missed out on that relationship or you didn't take up a fun hobby or something?

The Power of Surfing and Simplification
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James: So that's why I think for me, surfing really changed my life as well from about 10 years ago.

Allan: Well, I remember you saying that, and I hope I'm remembering it right, but you said basically, look, my purpose is surfing, you know, and my business is there to fund my surfing and that's what I'm here to do. And I thought, you know, at the time I thought, wow, is that it? Like the dude just wants to surf, but I mean, obviously something That's deeply important for you, creates, I mean, it's good physical activity, but it's obviously a lot more to you, isn't it?

James: Well, if you ever watch Point Break, you'll hear that surf shop guy telling Keanu Reeves, surfing's the source. It'll change your life. It's not something you do, it's [00:07:00] who you become. It's that hard to explain unless you experience or become that. But it really changed my life.

Requirements in terms of what's important because like when I go out into the ocean and I'm just catching the energy of a natural wave, it's really quite an unusual experience. But you realize that the wave doesn't care about politics. The wave couldn't give a crap about all the pandemics and stuff.

It's really the most. Earthing type activity. And so it made me cut away a lot of stuff, but, you know, bringing it back to business and marketing, the lessons I've learned are that it requires so few things to be done to still sustain a lifestyle like that, that the lesson can be applied to anyone, even if they want to work a lot.

And that's really where I come up against. Friction sometimes with my own book, which is titled Work Less, Make More. Some people say, I don't want to work less. And I say, well, that's fine. But at least if you're going to work, at least make more, right? [00:08:00] Leverage it. Do the few things that really matter.

Because if I can sustain a good lifestyle off a 10 or 15 hour work week, and you want to work, 70 or 100 hours, you'll probably get a bigger output, but at least take the same leverage points and apply them. And I know you do that in your lean marketing applications as well.

Allan: Very much. And you've been a tremendous influence on me in terms of looking for those simple leverage points that make it the biggest difference because it is easy to. kind of feel like you're on the right track when you've got 10 moving parts and a lot of complexity and all of that sort of stuff.

But as you often find as you scale you'll get complexity by default. Like, so just keeping it simple in the beginning and just focusing on the two or three biggest things that make the biggest difference. And obviously that's a key theme of my book and your book is excellent as well.

I I love what you've done with the book and the message of the book. So yeah I 100 percent [00:09:00] agree and it's harder to simplify, you know, it feels, like, not even advice or whatever to simplify, but it's actually the most profound advice. Kind of like if I had more time, I'd write a shorter letter, and really felt that in writing this book.

I mean, I had. My manuscript, when I had finished it, was almost 200, 000 words. I had to cut 8 125, 000 words. It is in my cut document, the stuff that I didn't include. And that was the most time intensive part. When I was done writing, I was about 40 percent through, right? But most of the time I spent on editing and cutting, on removing the fluff and crap and stuff like that.

So, I totally get it.

James: It's like that saying, perfection is when there's nothing left to take away.

I had a few other influences from other cultures from the German side. Dieter Rams has a fantastic book and his whole philosophy is less, but better. And he's a German designer. And on the Russian side, I used to have a Russian [00:10:00] client.

He was, a bit edgy because he had a black S600. And he taught me some basic Russian principles. And he said, the thing with Russian stuff versus the American stuff is. It'll just work. It'll be simple, but it'll work. He said, you can put a Russian gun underwater, then take it out and then fire it.

they won the space race by essentially putting a very basic little ball and a probe and sent it up there called Sputnik, but they beat the complex American initiatives just by going with the minimum possible tech and getting it happening quicker. And so I think. Simple is hard to do, but it's such a worthwhile pursuit and also very liberating when you can get the hang of it.

Allan: Yeah, totally. you go with I guess the word for it might be either envy or competitive spirit or whatever, you know, There's peers of yours and mine and, you know, people in our industry who are [00:11:00] like hitting big milestones, who are doing massive things on social media, who are doing all of these sorts of things.

Do you feel it and just but you tame it and you're like, no, look, this is my figure, this is my path, this is my lifestyle, or is it just not an issue for you anymore? I don't know.

James: It's not an issue because there's very few places, well there's actually no one that I would trade places with. Like I wouldn't trade places with a Buffett or an Elon Musk, for example, or a Bill Gates for that matter, for all various reasons, right? Buffett's very old, so you probably wouldn't have much time left.

Musk is very complex human and completely overwhelmed. And Bill Gates, I think he's much despised by many people, I think. And so for every positive, there's a negative, it all balances out. So if you see someone going well on social, you see someone having a great win somewhere, there's probably some other aspect of their life that is lacking or missing out or a compromise or a sacrifice they've had to pay for that.[00:12:00]

The other thing is I also like to collaborate. or celebrate their wins or even assist. So for example, I'd spoke to one of my clients yesterday. I'd say he's the most successful client in monetary terms that I've ever had. He's in his thirties and he sold his business for 550 million. And so rather than be jealous, and I knew this guy when he was working in a event crew on probably 65, 000 a year and was worried about if he'd qualify to join my program because he didn't meet the minimum criteria, right?

When he sent off the application, he was thinking he'd be rejected. But I followed him and studied him through his growth and he built a big software company and he's done really well, but I just, when I'm talking to him, I don't think, Oh gosh, that should have been me. Or how come I'm. coaching him and he's got all the money.

Not at all. It's more like, I'm so happy that he got this result and I'm just thrilled to have been a part of that journey. And in some way. [00:13:00] That's not monetarily. I'm definitely, I got paid along the way, but it's kind of, I can share in that success. And I was part of that. And I love seeing the people that I've worked with succeeding across the board, because that really is the only measure of the work fulfillment that I can achieve is how well does someone go.

in terms of that exchange and the fact that they still talk to me is such a privilege.

Allan: Yeah. It is absolutely one of the most satisfying things. Seeing one of your clients go on to massive success. So I noticed that over time you transitioned from um, business brand, you used to be Superfast Business and that was quite a good, strong brand and well known and you ran conferences and all that sort of thing.

And you transition to just your own personal brand. Everything's now in your own domain, everything's James Schramko. was that just a conscious decision to take on You know, kind of [00:14:00] consolidating everything and moving everything just to a lifestyle business. And, you know, lifestyle business these days is almost used as a derogatory thing.

It's like, Oh, you're not really running a real business. You're just running a lifestyle business, right? But I mean, my view is every business is a lifestyle business. It's just whether it's a good lifestyle or a shitty lifestyle. So, but what was your thinking around personal brand and where it stands now?

Yeah.

James: Probably the most significant one is that eight years ago I started doing royalty deals where I was getting a piece of other people's businesses and building out a portfolio. And over time, that portfolio has become very powerful and I can still actually enjoy the a sale event. So if one of my partners sells their business, I will get paid a payout that's a multiple that would be equivalent to as if I was a partner. So it's a quasi partnership setup. So in short, I didn't need to sell Superfast [00:15:00] Business or Silver Circle to get a payout event. And it was probably more powerful for me from a branding perspective to just lean into my personal attributes because I obviously as a strong moat, I'm the only.

me out there. So if people like what I do or they want to learn from me, then that's a really good thing. Strong, defensible position. And I can still experience the payout through those partnerships and through two other businesses that I still own. I own my surf brand and I own a recruitment business with my wife.

So I still like to operate businesses where I'm completely invisible and unknown, and I suspect for, My eight partners, most of their clients wouldn't know I exist and I'm okay with that. And for my personal brand, it just gives me a good platform to get deal flow and to create opportunities for my partners.

Allan: Yeah. And so your business model, as I understand it, so I think there's two parts to it. There's the profit share [00:16:00] JV or whatever you you might call it where you're kind of a silent partner, you provide a lot of advice and like an advisory board type of role. And then you're, that's a percentage of, And then you've got this, the other part of your business, which is essentially group coaching.

Am I understanding that correctly?

James: pretty simple version of it now. Yes. The partnerships and the mentorship. And there's a lot of overlap with that, except for the partners. They get distribution on my podcast platform and social shares, and I can do email offers and I can connect them up. with things and one key differentiator is I'm pretty focused on creating opportunities for them in terms of affiliates or strategic alliances that would go beyond the scope of a normal mentorship.

Allan: I want to think about it from both sides of the table. What makes a good JV partner uh, you know, someone that you would take on and work with and on the other side for other people who want to do something similar where They like that [00:17:00] idea, and it's become kind of a trendy idea to have a portfolio of companies and have a, have a minority stake or whatever, they call it hold codes and all of that sort of thing, it's kind of, you're once again ahead of the curve, but it's become a, a, a,

James: it. I saw, I saw, um, a digital creator yesterday. He had, I'm building a holding company to 200 million or something. It's definitely a thing. What makes it good, what's a good partner for me is somebody who has an incredible product or service that my clients want to buy or need to have. So typically it's something like software or an agency, a service agency.

and sometimes a information product. So, that would be one of the filters, and it would be one of the test runs I would want to promote as an affiliate first, to see if my clients buy the product or service, and I would have to stand behind it. I'd have to be really comfortable that it's a good product or service.

Allan: Yeah. so mainly you're looking at info kind of products and things like that. So, it's probably not people with like a franchise or [00:18:00] whatever. That's that sort of stuff or physical

James: I tried a few of those earlier on, like products where I don't have the client. An example was an information product marketer who helped people with rheumatoid arthritis.

Allan: Right.

James: And that went well. We went from, I think the number was 85, 000 a year to 480, 000 a year, fairly quickly. However he had a few challenges with something else that was unrelated to me and it stalled the business and it was kind of, Saveable, but he didn't take the steps needed to save it.

But then I realized that there's just so much more synergy when I have the clients for the partner, because on the flip side, what makes it good for them to have me is I could just plug in clients for them. basically, they could just, their entire royalty fee could, would be actually a really cheap marketing budget for them.

They don't even have to market. Some of them are not. marketers or do anything to do with marketing. They're just focused on product alone and fulfillment. And [00:19:00] that's a good yin yang fit for us. But

if they're good marketers, that's a bonus.

Allan: yeah, totally. Yeah. So, you're building you know, last time we spoke and last time I knew you were building your audience mainly through your podcast, which, I mean, I think you crossed a thousand episodes, didn't you?

James: Yeah. I'm up to like, I just recorded 10, 60 or something. It's about 5 million downloads.

Allan: Yeah. Is that your main channel for building an audience?

James: I don't think it is. I've always thought of the podcast being more of a conversion tool. And I think you have to do other things to get people to listen to the podcast. whether that's content marketing. So I've always been active with forums and groups. I feel like that's a high personality medium where you can really move the needle there.

And I think increasingly with the advent of AI, that will be a more important one, that personal marketing done by people, not [00:20:00] robots. So being a guest on podcasts, Speaking on other people's platforms or in their masterminds. Syndicating good quality content to other people to use for their members has been a part of it.

I did, also did very well with SEO. For so long our blog has generated a lot of natural search engine traffic. By repurposing and creating content. Constructing the blog posts in a searchable way and capturing those emails into um, a giveaway, like the resource library of all the transcripts and cheat sheets and notes from the podcast is a really solid way to build leads.

But also, and probably in the last seven years, I've been able to feed my email list quite well with my book by giving it away. And even though I sell it on Amazon and Audible, And I'm getting close to a thousand reviews now organically. And I do a little bit of paid ad top up.

Thanks to learning it from you, Allan which is great, but also on the Facebook and Google side, I drive leads every day to get my book for free as a PDF. [00:21:00] And I still offer them the physical copy or the audio copy as an. upsell, but once they get that book, then they're going to receive the podcast emails and then the conversion piece comes in.

So I would say podcast, I got in early and it's been great for me, but I don't know how many people discover me because of the podcast, but they might find me somewhere else or get onto the podcast. But once they're on the podcast, there's no doubt that causes buyers.

Allan: Mmm. What lead source or medium has kind of surprised you where like, Oh wow, I'm getting lots of people from saying they came from here or there?

James: Probably when I'm a guest on someone else's show and I just hit the note with their audience, I can get whole rivers of clients at once. There's a couple of podcasts I've been on that I could very specifically say I got entire like tens of clients, 20 or 30 clients from just that one appearance.

So it really shows the power of having the good message to market match, you know, being on the right show at the right time. hosts in front [00:22:00] of the right people and they want to hear your message. And of course, a lot of research helps knowing who the audience is and what they're hoping to get from it and what would make a good show the stuff you said about the book, right?

All the hard part it's all the stuff you don't think it's going to be. It's the editing, it's the research. It's not just the actual doing the thing.

Allan: Yeah. Yeah. I've seen you speak at conferences and things several times, and the thing that I was most surprised about is, like, you're not. Kind of this big, massive showman kind of thing. Like there are speakers who are, it's a, like a show, right? You're definitely not that, but in terms of conversions, I think you're probably the most effective speaker I've seen.

Can you talk to that a bit? And like, what makes a speaker attractive, whether it's on a podcast, whether it's on stage, whether it's anywhere else because. I would've guessed that it'd be a dazzling show, a super charismatic speaker or whatever. [00:23:00] And it doesn't feel like that.

That's it.

James: Well, I think if we go back to when I was selling the book. BMW, my very first sales job. I realized that the talkie wah wah type salespeople were not the most effective at selling. It was the analytical people who could figure out this is a structured process and then work the process. So I can speak to your question with some experience because in the sort of 2009 through to maybe 2010, 13 or 14, I did quite a lot of speaking on platforms around the world.

And I was up against some of those hype y, magician type polished presenters. In the UK in particular, there was an event on the first day, there was 550 people.

Allan: Yeah.

James: And the most people, anyone sold was like 24 sales. And then the second day there was less people, 400 and something. And then the third day when I was speaking, there was only 380 people in the room and they'd been sold to for three days straight.

[00:24:00] So I'm up against these speaker trainers. They literally, three of the speakers were speaker trainers and persuasion experts and NLP, et cetera. And they were pretty impressive, but I got up there and I ended up selling 90 99? I think it was 99 sales at a thousand pounds each to a room of 380 and it was literally four times more than anyone else had sold.

And I think the reason why it worked were, I put a lot of time into thinking about who's going to be sitting in that room, what kind of problems or challenges are they having, and what would be the perfect solution for them and then how could I step them through that process of discovering it for themselves, create the environment where they became aware of it, where they're not being pushed or forced, but they're leading themselves through this natural conclusion that my product was going to be the best possible way to get themselves out of this situation.

And [00:25:00] I delivered a really good presentation, but I did something very special in that presentation and that was to take people from the audience and then to help them on the spot and for them to become instant testimonials and I'd never met these people before so it really, it basically is the power of demonstration if you want to put it onto a marketing tactic and it was very conclusive and very believable because it was happening right there in real time and I made my offer very low risk for them. As I stacked the offer, which is a technique of sort of including things at the end, I brought the price down, which I find a bit cheesy and I don't like that, but it does actually psychologically create more desire. And then I increased the risk reversal elements. Like by the end of it, it had gone down in price to a low amount.

And then I, and the deal at the time was, this is about 2000 2010. So we're talking about 13, 14 years ago [00:26:00] was that they were going to learn how to, build their own website and sell affiliate products. And at the end I said, look, if you're concerned that, you know, you may not be able to go through the training or to actually build the website if you have concerns about that, then here's what I'm prepared to do.

I'm prepared to choose your market for you and I will build your website for you. So I turned it from a do it yourself into a done for you. And they ran to the back of the room at that point because I just removed the last possible problem they could have. It was all going to be done for them. And so there's really no way they could possibly lose.

And I supported that offer with really cool stuff that was not done at the time. And that was giving people a physical magalog when they signed up. So like an eight page of what they'd purchased and how they get support and what the curriculum will be. So it's very tangible to reduce the chance of a refund and it all went really well.

But I [00:27:00] think to answer your question, how I was selling very well from stage was putting a lot of thought into Who's in the room and how do I need to structure things to make the outcome the biggest win for them, to help them be better off?

Allan: how much of it do you think is risk reversal? Cause I don't think that's the bulk of it. Like, I mean, that's, that definitely might push the last few uh, over the line or whatever, but I don't think that's the core of it. So do you think it's the demonstration part that was the thing that really got, gets most people or like, well, what is it that's so

James: context is required. The audience I was speaking to were personal development type people, so they'd done a lot of NLP and personal development stuff. And I think in a environment where you go to those conferences where people pay money to get sort of inspired and to find solutions, the risk reversal might be more important than when you have a [00:28:00] strong pre sale funnel.

in an online campaign or multiple campaigns, by the time people come to the sales page, these are going to be pre sold and they're not finicky buyers. I actually deliberately do not use intensive risk reversal on my mentorship. I don't offer 30 day refund no matter what, even if your dog ate your homework type refunds, I feel like that attracts,

unresourceful buyers.

You can get the worst buyers if you use the most risk reversal. So I don't lean on those techniques in the usual course of business. I would say the demonstration was immensely powerful because I did something that is not normally done at events. I asked the promoter if I could have a break.

Between the first part and the second part of my presentation. And they're like, Oh no, don't ruin the flow or whatever. I'm not, no. So let's have lunch. And just before lunch, I said, I'm going to take six people to lunch and I'm going to help you fix your business [00:29:00] or give you a business to work on. And they all clamored to come to lunch.

And I took six of them to lunch and I gave them 10 minutes each. And then after lunch, we got back up on stage. I gave them all a branded hoodie. So they'd been indoctrinated into my club and I just handed them the mic. I said, you just had 10 minutes, just 10 minutes with me. What did you? And they said, Well, you told me why what I've been doing hasn't been working.

You showed me what to fix and now I know exactly what I need to do. And so, like six in a row positive testimonials that I just generated on the fly. And that, I think, that, at that point people started to go and buy whatever it is that I was selling without knowing what it actually was or how much it cost.

And that, I think, is how I could definitively say the demonstration was more important than the risk reversal.

Allan: Yeah, so I guess results in advance is I think that's a Dean Jackson phrase or, someone else, but yeah, results in advance. I really got from you was kind of permission [00:30:00] to be just myself in terms of, you know, Who I am on podcasts, who I am on stage and all of that.

I always felt like I was, because I'm a quieter, I'm a reserved personality. I definitely consider myself an introvert and you know, I guess my peers or other people in my industry are like Gary Vee, who's yelling all the time or Alex Hormozi is jumping out of his skin and doing all this sort of stuff on social media and seeing you be effective, just being positive.

Yeah, I mean, I think my personality and yours are probably pretty, pretty similar in terms of we're not out there jumping charismatic So it really gave me permission to yeah, just embrace who you are Just deliver the stuff the way you normally would and it's been incredibly effective for me

James: when I was a manager, they did a lot of those profiling, and that's where I first learned about the mask that people put on at work, where they're naturally a normal sort of personality, and then they go to work and they become someone they're not, and it creates stress and tension, [00:31:00] and it's just not an easy way to live.

I think a lot of people you've referenced are just naturally that way, and it's easy for them to be that, and it's pretty hard for someone to. Be someone they're not. I mean, it's like when you're hiring people, you know, after two weeks, if they were putting it on at the interview, because you find the real person, they can't hold it for more than a couple of weeks normally. But it's too stressful and too difficult to try and be someone you're not. So I'd say work your strengths. And the world is almost the reserve of nerds now. I mean, look at guys like Zuckerberg. He's a very reserved, codey type of person who has been able to dominate the social platforms by letting his product do the talking.

How to find Success in Podcasting
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Allan: Yeah totally I want to ask you a few, a bit of advice and questions around podcasting because I mean, I've done pretty well with books. I'm almost at a million sold, which is, you

James: Congratulations mate.

Allan: oh, thanks. Thanks very much. yeah, a big milestone. I mean, I'm not there yet, but I think I will be there this [00:32:00] year.

But so now I'm kind of turning my attention to other media podcast in particular, which I'm very late to the game and, you know, this is. Essentially season one. So you're a thousand episodes down now.

Uh, I want to selfishly use the time that we've got here to say what advice you have for someone to have a long lived, successful podcast like you have had.

James: Well firstly I'd say choose a style that fits naturally for you that you could do over and over again. So that sort of leans into that last point. If it's something too far from your normal You'll probably stop doing it. So for me, especially in the early days, it was really easy just to fire up the microphone and talk.

I love talking and we didn't have cameras back then. And certainly I still think most of my audience listened to my podcast as an audio in the car or walking the dog. So I would put a heavy emphasis on audio. format So even if you do video, make sure that it works as an audio. [00:33:00] That means if you're holding stuff up or using diagrams, or do you have to describe it? If you look at the top 10 podcasts in the world apart from Joe Rogan and one other, I think the other eight are like audio formats. So I would put a heavy focus on the audio listener. I would rather have a really good podcast than a lot of podcasts. I've played with frequency. I've done dailies. I've done two a week, one a week.

Sometimes I'd go weeks without any, or months at one point where I just kind of got burnt on it for a while. And then it's absolutely critical that you put in the research and the effort in making a good show and respecting the listener and delivering on a good payoff.

And if you can go from good payoff to good payoff, that will create you a good audience who will buy from you. and follow your stuff. So I hear a lot of myths about podcasts. Like you have to have 10 episodes before you launch. Not true. Did one episode of one and got to the top of the charts,

Allan: Yeah.

James: Which was [00:34:00] crazy.

So it kind of disproved that theory. I also don't think it matters if you're consistent or not. It's more important that you create really a really minimum standard quality and stick to that instead of letting anything out the gate that's going to lower the brand. Cause if that's someone's first episode, they're not going to listen to the second one.

The Power of YouTube and Video Podcast Content
---

Allan: most of your streams still audio or are you seeing more with the rise of video on YouTube, and so on?

James: a lot of our podcasts we put on YouTube, but again, even if you look at some of the biggest podcasts in the world especially the audio ones, but even the ones that video unless they're in a studio setup, if it's just Zooms or Riversides or whatever, generally they're not going to get much viewership on the video platform.

It'll be far more dominant in Spotify and Apple. They are the two big platforms. I mean, it's funny because I've been podcasting for quite some time.

There were whole platforms disappeared, you know, like Stitcher and stuff. But these days it's about Spotify. [00:35:00] and Apple. So I still get the vast majority of my listens on Apple when I logged into Spotify, I was actually shocked that there was quite a big audience in there because I didn't even know they were there because it wasn't pulling in the feed from where I was distributing my podcast.

I had to go and check it separately. When we publish to YouTube, we don't get anywhere near the same number of views. However, even if it's 300 or 500 people viewing that video on YouTube and that's where some people like to consume, I think we might be picking up search traffic on YouTube because it's a little more keyword driven.

It is a search engine

Allan: yeah. Yup.

James: these days, I think attacking the traditional search engine optimization market. So if you're going to do video, at least you can use the snippets to promote your podcast. I'd say that's the fundamental benefit of having video. recently, just as a test, I published a series of audio only [00:36:00] podcasts.

So I took my book. And I read it in two podcasts. I did half the book in the first podcast, half the book in the second. I did an audio version of my podcast on royalty deals because I want it to be reading my notes and looking at it and really concentrating on it.

And I must admit, I just enjoyed making that audio and putting all the effort into the voice. So I think that shouldn't be underestimated.

Allan: Yeah. My theory is that it's like, my behaviour changed with how I consume podcasts because I subscribe to YouTube premium where you can have the app closed and it'll listen and so you essentially get the, um Video is a bonus, so extra if you want to watch the video or whatever, but I think YouTube could take over the whole podcast game if they just enabled that for free for everybody to be able to listen to a new YouTube video.

I think that's the, probably the thing that's preventing that from happening. Yeah.

James: YouTube now. The whole time, I mean, I first became aware of it from Ed Dale, [00:37:00] before I quit my job, like in the very early days. And One of the reasons I like YouTube is that your content lasts a long time versus the social media platforms. The other reason I like it is it's owned by Google and they have a lot of smart people and good data.

And as they're, As SEO is getting a bit interrupted, YouTube is a solid bet and I do love the process of creating content, especially for my surf channel. I've been really experimenting there and for example, I had a channel with 70 subscribers and I was able to produce some videos that had 11, 000 views.

So I was actually having YouTube promoting that video for me because it was definitely not my subscribers, you know, it had some virality to it and dialing in that formula to get 10, and then 000 views for each video, learning a lot about how it works. And I did tick that podcasting tab and I heard as recently as a week [00:38:00] ago that they're separating the analytics between podcasts and the regular videos, because now they can't blend them all and mess up the channel.

It was getting a bit messy before, but now if they separate the analytics and they treat podcasts as podcasts, I feel like you could be onto something there. I'm most definitely publishing to YouTube. And one big change is when we email our podcast out, we don't send them to our site anymore. We send them to the YouTube video.

the second big change is that YouTube video is going to have a link underneath it, pointing to a version of a video sales letter on our YouTube channel, which is where YouTube wants to send traffic to another YouTube video. And that will send people to our sales page.

Allan: That's cool. Why don't you, why don't you in your email newsletter send people to like your page for that podcast with the YouTube embedded and then all the other links

James: We used to do that

Allan: Apple?

James: because [00:39:00] I'd rather they get on to, I mean, I think the YouTube is going to show in the email, potentially if we link to the YouTube video.

Allan: Yeah.

James: So it's pretty convenient. But also I want to amplify that YouTube the watch time and get YouTube promoting my stuff for me.

Allan: Okay. for your solo episodes, because I mean you do a mix, you do a lot of interviews and you do solo episodes How do you prepare for the solo? Do you do a lot of preparation, or is it just off the cuff? Or you've got a few talking points, like what sort of preparation do you do and then how does it go?

James: I will do zero podcasts off the cuff. Firstly, that's a huge lesson. It's easy to do guest interviews because they'll like, they'll have a book you could read or they'll have bios or notes, or they'll give you suggested questions and they do a lot of the talking. Ideally, if you're a good host, you know, you ask the questions and let them talk.

The solo episodes. harder because you do need more prep, but I will generally open up a text document and just populate it [00:40:00] with the talking points that I want to cover. I'll think about what's the show outline? What things are important to cover? What call to action do I want to happen?

So for example, when I was reading my book, I opened up my book, and as I found a good chapter title or a illustration or whatever, I'd write a note in my notes. And I ended up doing, I think about five chapters in one episode and then the rest of the book in the other episode.

And it was just my talking points. So I'll just have the talking points and then I'll just expand on them in a natural, organic way. I'm not a teleprompter guy, but for a lot of people they probably should be. especially if it was audio only, there'd be no harm in reading it if you could make it sound like you're not reading it. But for some people, if they don't have it well scripted, it's going to be kind of dribbly and fluffy and as, as I, I'm kind of lucky because I did a lot of presenting and a lot of acting training and I have over time been able to get my dialogue better. pretty concise and [00:41:00] I don't generally fluff about with my words.

So it comes naturally, but I do like having a structure and a framework and talking points to make sure that it's on point. And these days you can get a little bit of a boost with AI. You could say, I want to do a podcast episode, this is my topic, here are my talking points. Help me come up with a structure.

You can even say, use this framework or make it in the style of such and such, and you can actually get a printout. And that's what's, that's really been helping me with my YouTube videos. You can ask it sort of, counterintuitive things like, what am I missing? What's missing from this, or what else should I cover?

Or and you get some really useful outputs, but it's always worth hand polishing at the end.

Allan: If we're talking like ratio or number or whatever, let's say you're doing a 30 minute solo episode, would you spend 30 minutes preparing or would you spend three hours preparing? Like what, what does that look like?

James: Probably, because I'm a subject matter expert, I might spend 10 or 15 minutes preparing.

[00:42:00] right. Okay.

It's just that would make the difference though. It's like when I cook one of my favorite meals, it probably only takes me five minutes to put all the ingredients out. and to turn the oven on, to preheat it and stuff like that it's going to make a big difference to the outcome versus trying to do it on the fly.

Allan: Yeah.

Effective Membership and Mentorship Strategies
---

Allan: How do you select the stuff that's going to go like for free on your podcast and your YouTube channel and everything like that versus what's gated in your membership community and for. for your paid subscribers. So paid content versus free.

James: I would give just about anything away for free. I don't think of it that way. In fact this will be really interesting for you, Allan. In my newest iteration of my mentorship, there are the least elements that I've ever had in my membership. So along with the rebrand and the change of platform I was able to discard 250, 000 posts and old content and my new method was to take my old one hour trainings, because I did about [00:43:00] 70 or 80 in a row,

Allan: Yeah.

James: and to condense them into a 10 or 15 point checklist and I call it a playbook. So I, I transmuted all of my trainings into playbooks. That's the only stuff people get. They don't get my event recordings. They don't get my old trainings unless I need it for something. I'll find it for them, but it's really just a playbook. And then the only other two elements of the weekly group call, which is live and the back and forth one to one async chat slash video or audio, you know, like Voxer style if they want, that's it.

There's only three things. It's the simplest it's ever been. It's the most effective and most powerful it's ever been. I had a tool built where I can stick a post it note that floats above our conversation with the one thing they're supposed to be doing right now as a reminder. And that's how I get results for people by taking away everything that they don't need.

And so to answer your question, I'll share anything on the podcast. The big difference between the podcast and my [00:44:00] mentorship is podcast is a general. one way communication. The mentorship is a highly customized two way communication. And so it's the proximity to me. It's the access to my experience and knowledge of how things that I know are going to help their specific situation is the real value in it.

So it's kind of like that give away the information but sell the implementation or give away the information but sell the support,

etc.

Allan: And so the playbooks are like an SOP, how to do whatever, like how to

James: Exactly. It'd be like how to sell a high price thing over the phone. And I'll still make a podcast episode about that.

Allan: So the membership is really essentially, Group calls with you and then one on one asynchronous advice. Hey, James, I'm struggling with this. What do you think I should do or

James: Yeah. And I get a lot of the same things over and over again. You know, [00:45:00] my business partner wants to leave the business. He's not happy. And he wants to set up in competition with me and take all my clients and all my staff. What should I do? usual stuff. So it's really helpful to have someone to chat to.

I call that products the sounding board because that's my role. I'm the sounding board for these people. That's how I helped my 550 million exit client. we just chat. And uh, we talk about, he just tells me what things are going on, and what challenges he's having, or what scenarios are cropping up, and he might ask me my thoughts, and I'll tell him about things that he hasn't thought to ask, or doesn't even know are a challenge yet, and then he'll be really grateful about that, and one of the great Things that I have that most people don't have is I'm connected to all of these different networks.

So I have a huge amount of working knowledge of what is effective out there. And I can cross pollinate that. And I really probably took that core principle from Jay Abraham, but it still takes effort to do. And even with the advent of AI, where people [00:46:00] are trying to use these tools to coach themselves, You get the output, but you don't know if it's good or bad, or you don't know what's missing.

And I test it sometimes. I test my answer with what AI would produce, and it might hit 85 percent of it, but it says something that's silly or rubbish or doesn't apply or just, it's just generic. So that's where I think the real value comes. not so much the ideas or the information. And that's why I'm happy to give away my book.

I'm happy to share how revenue share deals work. But if someone wants to put together a revenue share deal, they're going to want someone in their corner because it's going to get really serious really quickly.

Allan: So how do you think about pricing of membership these days? Like I know in the past you had a very low sort of entry version and then one's like, that essentially got you access just to the community and then you had ones where they had access to you and then the ones where they had one on one access to you.

So is that still kind of current in your thinking or what do you think is best practice in terms of [00:47:00] pricing memberships? Yeah.

James: low tier market. There has been like some of the bigger marketers like Hormosy and Ovens have paired up and they've created a flood of people especially new to the market doing this low ticket recurring subscriptions all of a sudden, so it's just, there's gazillions of them.

It's so many. And if you think about when I started my membership in 2009, there weren't that many 97 memberships. But right now I suspect there's probably thousands of them. the software and the low tier market saturation is something I've observed.

The other factors are I've sort of grown to a point where.

I'm really only dealing with people who are at least making 300, 000 a year. That's my starting point where it makes sense to work with someone because that excites me more and I can really get them a result. I can take someone from 300, 000 to a million fast. And from the one to three zone, I'm very comfortable with.

And of course I've had clients go [00:48:00] beyond that and well beyond that. but that market is less well served than the sort of start from scratch or the beginner market. And I've coached people like Pat Flynn setting up SPI membership at dealing with those sort of members. They're not my members. So over time, my own lower tier program it's kind of obsoleted.

I don't sell it anymore, by the way, there's still members in there and I look after them. But I don't sell it to the public. It's just diluting the focus for me. I only sell a 1, 500 per month program. I do also have clients who do private mentoring. They pay 3, 000 a month and I do some phone calls with them, but there's only half a dozen of those and.

They've been with me for a long time and they're operating at the sort of tens of millions revenue level. And they really enjoy, it's kind of half chat, half business. And at their level, they just want someone to decompress with and talk to that they can sort of. relate to them. And so that's really fun for me.

And then of [00:49:00] course my partnerships are the other people I tend to have a chat with most of them on a fairly regular basis, but I'm quite, you know, I'm a business partner of theirs. It's beyond just a surface level coaching relationship.

Allan: So essentially the entry level is a reasonable level. You have someone doing 300, 000. They can afford 1, 500 a month. And you know, so yeah, you're working with serious people not people who are kind of the one entrepreneur or hey, I have an idea or something like that, right?

James: Yeah. Cause I find that incredibly frustrating. It's hard for them and it's hard for me. So I was like, it's optional. Why do that? And. it's just simple. It's really simple. I've, I have the least amount of clients that I've ever had. Probably, you know, I'm probably down to less than a hundred people that I'm actively helping in their business.

And I've, for probably from 2009 to about two years ago, I was always working with about five or 600 people. And I like having a [00:50:00] smaller volume, but really good, strong, deep relationships. And yeah, for someone who's doing 300, 000, 1, 500 in their first 30 days with no contract or any further commitment beyond that, they're going to get an ROI if they're a good fit and they have the kind of problems that I can solve.

And so it works out well. And it's also just so simple. I don't need to do long term arrangements. I don't need debt collectors. I don't need payment plans and all this mess. I don't need affiliates. I don't need launches. I just, for me, that's the right path. So ultimately it's like, am I having a good life and am I doing the things that, make it work for me?

And I think I've found my sweet spot and it might take people a while to get to that point. This is a long way down the track for me. I've literally been in this industry for almost 20 years. So, it's a lifetime really in such a fluid marketplace.

Allan: remember in the earlier days of your membership, the community element was a very important part where people would answer each other's questions and [00:51:00] and, you know, weigh in on that. Have you seen that decline in value or because I remember you used to say it's community, it's content, it's coaching, right?

So you've already said that like your content is essentially not a big part of your membership. It's now essentially free. What about community?

James: Community was always big in the lower tier for many years. In the higher tier, even back with Silver Circle from, which I started in 2010, so 14 years ago, you'll recall that community was not very active and people would often talk about Oh my God, you know, how do I get engagement in my community?

I'm like, the last thing a really busy entrepreneur needs is you know, if you were a superhero hero, what would your superhero name mean? You know, take your dog's name and the first street you live, like, We don't need that kind of engagement. The kind of engagement we need is, Hey, my staff member wants to have a 50 percent pay increase.

How do I deal with that? That's the kind of engagement that's useful. [00:52:00] So that's often going to happen privately. So the couple of trends that I've noticed, if you offer any kind of private channel, people will usually take that over putting it in a group. That's just a human privacy factor.

Allan: Yeah.

James: The higher you go with my clients, the more they just want to talk to me, and they don't really care about the other people in the group. So I don't call it a mastermind. There are masterminds and networking things for people who want to go to them, but you will find a lot of the people who go to them they're either not having a one to one relationship with someone like me, So they're craving it or they're there to sell something or to learn something new and which is totally valid reason to be at a group like that.

So those groups exist, but I didn't find that was the kind of group that I like to run. What I've found is there's an amazing camaraderie on the group calls. I really feel like some of the people doing one to one calls are missing out on the available energy and Information exchange they can pick up on a really well run small group call, like talking [00:53:00] five or six people, sharing ideas, like, if each person shares something that's going well, you get five good ideas.

If each person shares a challenge, you get five problems that you may or may not be aware of that are solvable. And then five specific action items that are going to get done over the next week. Thank you. You think maybe I'll pick up one of those after I've done the first one. So I've found that group has been very powerful.

People will move towards one to one if it's available, but it's not always in their best interest. Certainly it is sometimes, and I'm happy to provide it at a higher price, but to be very specific, I don't have a group chat in my mentor program anymore. I put it there like three times and no one uses it.

They don't want it. It's clearly not a valuable feature. And in the lower tier, they get the group, they get the forum. The higher tier don't even get the forum and the lower tier do use the forum, but they don't have one to one access to me. So that's what they have to [00:54:00] use. And eventually that will become obsolete.

Allan: So, you've essentially given away content. You've almost stripped away the community. So it's really just about the coaching now, isn't it?

James: It's that small group mentoring and then the one to one back and forth, the sounding board. So I'd say small group call and sounding board are the two features, but the playbook. I wouldn't underestimate them. A well placed playbook can be a big game changer for someone. Like it's that small hinge that swings a big door.

For example, I took my whole training on you know, emails, advanced emails and stuff. And then I put it into like, if you have a membership, here are the emails that you should be sending. If you want to increase the price, here's a campaign to increase the price on your membership. If you want to do sell things over the phone, here's how to sell over the phone.

So I have put playbooks, and there's quite a few playbooks now, that are just a strange summary of what used to be an in depth training. And my goal ongoing is to take [00:55:00] all my old trainings, all my old videos, put them up against the harsh light of now and say, are they still relevant? Are they any good?

Yes. I'll make a playbook. No, delete. And when I have the playbooks, I'll keep them up to date. So I put last reviewed, last revised dates on them so that if they do become obsoleted, I'll delete them. And so I've actually spent the last two years deleting and removing things rather than adding things, Allan.

It's been the most, cathartic and liberating thing. I deleted a thousand YouTube videos, a thousand and 99 blog posts, old interviews that didn't get views or weren't consistent with what I'm doing now. And it's not something people talk about much. They always talk about creating and adding and selling more, but curating, editing, and deleting old stuff is probably just as important.

If you've been around for so long, your old stuff, you look at it and think, oh, that's not me anymore. It's not what we do. I look at old videos of me. I don't know. fat face, and I'm talking about a news update for an SEO service that I [00:56:00] sold seven years ago. I don't want that on my channel anymore.

Allan: It's been incredible to see your journey. I mean, I remember when I first got into your community and into your sphere, you had multiple websites. You had SEO, a massive web development business. You had different websites for different things and a lot of complexity, a lot of team. And just to see you continually strip away more and just get to the bare essentials.

You mentioned something also that I've been thinking about a lot is network. So how important would that like, I know people say, you know, your network is your net worth, but, I mean, I've seen people who are incredible networkers, they know every billionaire or whatever and they're not very successful, they're not doing very, I mean, other than them having bragging rights around, I know this person, I can text that person or whatever.

And more and more, I mean, it's obvious to me that your net worth is not your network, your [00:57:00] net worth is your audience, you know, your audience is your net worth. What are your thoughts on that?

James: It was really critical for me. And again, I'll draw back to my experience in the car dealership. And I know you talk about you when you worked at McDonald's in your marketing book.

the big players. I dealt with billionaires, movie stars, politicians, sports stars. I was the guy they would send out to sell to them. So I got to be around them and to experience what it was like. And so when I came into the online world, I got on a plane, I went to America, I went to a conference. I didn't know a single person and I was able to turn that into an amazing network because I won a prize. It was 2008. I still had a job of 500 people there.

I didn't know a single person and I submitted my competition entry. And I, jointly won the first prize, which was access to Maverick Mastermind, which was for million dollar plus revenue online businesses. And all the gurus of the time were in that thing. It was run by [00:58:00] Yannick Silva. And it was, there was people like Joe Polish and Mike Fils Aime and Brad Fallon.

And also met gosh, there was Eben Pagan. There's so many. It's just like, wow. But because I had the experience of dealing with mega famous superstars before, I wasn't like, Oh my God, you know, like quivering in fear or whatever. I'm just there like, Hey, look, I recognize I'm not making a million dollars a year, but I actually went in and thought, how can I help these people?

Like they turned out there often. They were really hopeless with stuff like SEO or building a website. I rebuilt Craig Ballantyne's. Website that was a fitness related site I helped a couple of people with some affiliate programs, I joined a CPA network, started promoting it, running paid traffic, and I came first in the whole thing.

world for selling this particular product and just blew them off the road. And then six weeks after going to my first event, I quit my job. And these people were just in the background for me a [00:59:00] long way down the track. And so back to the network thing, as it turns out over the years, I did get invited to speak at masterminds.

I did get invited onto podcasts. I do have people speaking nicely about me behind my back. And I'm sure you'll pick up something from marketing there. It's probably more important. that they know you then you know them. So your friends who you're talking about who know everybody, maybe the other, maybe the people don't really know them or regard them with much respect, but if you can just quietly give and not take and be in it for the long haul, just keep putting wood on that fire, eventually you'll have quite a combustion.

And I, I feel like I've never really asked any of them for a favor. I haven't milked them for anything. I've never pushed them for stuff or demanded anything. I've just somehow ended up in, in fortuitous positions. Only three times I managed to get myself [01:00:00] speaking on stage at events where I wasn't even a scheduled speaker. You know, I went to Zentrepreneur in Dominican Republic, and I'm there with Vishen Lakiyani, who I met in this group. And asked him if I could speak, and he said, you can have my spot. And so I got up on stage, and there was lots of great people, and it was the guy that there was book authors. There was a lot of people at that event, some cool people, Andre Chaperon, of course.

And through Andre, he referred me to Ryan Levesque, who became a really wonderful client from one to 10 million. So it's network to network referrals, introductions. I'd say still to this day, a vast majority of my clients come through referrals. So I'm going to answer the question you asked me about 40 minutes ago. The surprising place where I get clients is referrals, people sending people my way with very specific instructions and that's how I got my private clients. They came from other clients who are already in and often they'll hear from [01:01:00] two or three of my clients, which is very powerful.

I

Allan: How intentional are you now about building a network? Are you like, hey, there's this amazing event, all these cool people are going to be there, I'm going to go and you know, not necessarily be selfish or whatever, but build my network, or be helpful to them, or, you know, Get in front of them, or is it just sort of haphazard, or how do you think about that now?

James: mean I literally don't do it. Since 2000 when I ran my last event, I didn't really attend any event or speak at any event until just a month or so ago and I did it twice and that was both in Noosa down the road only because it's in Noosa. I didn't have to fly or travel. I didn't have to get accommodation.

I could just drive down there, speak and then drive home. You know, I can stay for lunch, but I don't even stay for the event. Not because I'm special or uber mysterious. It's just that I find it a pretty intensive energy drain. I [01:02:00] definitely don't need to add more connections right now. I've got plenty of good connections that are worth fostering.

Like our friend, Dean Jackson. And the event that I spoke at was with Dean. with Taki, he asked me to speak on lifestyle design and how I'm doing what I'm doing to his clients who are a lot of them really resonated with my message of. Like maybe enough is enough. And the other event was a client of mine who is a good friend and asked me as a favor to attend his event.

And I did, and it was really enjoyable and good, but I'm definitely not seeking him out. I know that happened all the time in Australia. I don't go to them. But I'm, as I mentioned, I'm really fortunate that I get to tour the world from the comfort of my own home. And speak to some amazing people in all the different countries.

Like even on a, on my Tuesday night call, I'm speaking to people in Montenegro and Spain and Ireland and UK and And it's like, it's just fascinating to have these connections without having to [01:03:00] do anything, and it's even better to get paid for it. It's just like, the ultimate prize.

Allan: Well, we've kind of come full circle from where we started. We started with, having enough and, stopping at a certain stage where you feel, Hey, I'm full I don't need to, go any, any further. And we're ending around there as well. James thank you so much.

I really want to be respectful of your time. You've been very generous. Your book is Work Less, Make More, an excellent book. Your website is jameschramko. com, which we'll link as well. Anything else people should know about any other resources that you'd like to people to be aware of?

James: Well, I always refer people to the one page marketing plan. It's an excellent resource. It's like, it's one of the core documents that I often refer back to when I'm mentoring someone

is a,

Allan: James.

James: need to be catered for? Like people like you who can synthesize frameworks [01:04:00] and draw down information into a pure form are so valuable.

And I just want to express my appreciation to what you have done. And also you're helping me with the Amazon efforts and. Because I always learn the most from the people I'm working with, and it's been great to see that and to develop it into the next book, which you'll see there on the shelf for our audio listeners, I've got it on my back shelf there, and it's a prized possession in my library right now, so keep doing what you're doing, Allan.

Allan: Thanks James very kind of you and thanks for being on.

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