Lessons in Building Audience Trust with Zack Zeller

Zack: [00:00:00] for fulfillment, the simplest thing for me to do is go in on an ongoing basis to both consult and course correct on strategy and actually handle the fulfillment of writing and scheduling, these email assets. And so for me, that's been the easiest way. To get to that, 15k per month mark, and it's going to be ugly. It might not be super scalable, but it's going to get you to that point where you have enough cash to start offloading these tasks. And I call it letting go of your Legos. If you've seen that talk or read that article where it's.

Okay, my identity right now is I'm in the driver's seat. I'm writing copy. I'm on all these calls. But once I have a base of these clients, and I'm making whatever six figures, then maybe it turns into me taking a lot of these templates and training other copywriters and not taking on that invisible overhead costs of writing, [00:01:00] scheduling, looking over the data for all these.

Dustin: Welcome back to the seven figure leap. I am honored today to have a friend, a client, someone who I'm a client of, Zach Zeller joining us today. And we were reflecting back. I always like to open these up with like, how does this connection happen? Because it's kind of fascinating, at least for me to look back and see.

And realize like when you plant these different seeds with relationships, all the different ways they sprout in the future. And so Zach and I actually met in someone else's group coaching program, a guy named Sean Anthony, [00:02:00] maybe a future guest here. Sean's a great and, It was really cool about that whole experience.

I think there are exactly, I remember better than me. I think there were like eight or 10 people in this group and we finished this email marketing group coaching and it was great. then like five of those people, including Sean, who is the host of that group ended up in my accelerator program. And then we all got to hang out for the ensuing 90 days and really got to know each other and have really.

I think all of us have bought something from each other and just grown each other's businesses over the past 16 months since we met. So, Zach Zeller, it's an
honor and privilege to have you here. So thanks for being here. Please take a minute and just introduce yourself to the audience.

Zack: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I'm super excited to be here too and be a guest on your podcast. After learning podcast guesting from you kind of meta that way. But what I do is I turn email subscribers into your super fans. That by your high ticket offers, it's a mixture of being [00:03:00] your marketing coach, but also doing the heavy lifting as well.

Because a lot of the businesses that I see, they're doing a lot of hand to hand combat. So selling out their courses or filling their groups is a lot of. Outreach.

It's a lot of follow up. It's a lot of being on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook groups, getting on calls and the marketing systems that I installed for them help add a lot more leverage so they don't have to restart every month or every time they're looking to do a big promo or a big launch. It just creates a lot more of that consistent flow and predictability and revenue of what you're going to make each and every month. helps it compound, too, to continue growing.

Dustin: Yeah. And so do you have credit where it's due? Even as we get started here, I guess I'll endorse your work before we even talk more about your story and all the things you're up to. Zach does that for me.

So he's an important who in my business. so if you guys are on my email list. you're probably [00:04:00] hearing my words and my stories expressed through Zach's fingers and his team, because he's a great translator of big ideas into these, yeah, repeatable, in many cases, automated marketing systems and messages, primarily through email, at least the way that we work together.

So, if you want a taste of Zach's work, make sure you're on my email list if you're not currently, by going to seven figure leak. com and hopping on there. think we've put out some really cool stuff and I get tons of great compliments. On the emails and I'm like, I'll take partial credit for that, you know, but I, I do have some help in making that consistent and coherent and part of a bigger picture. So, we'll start there, but Zach, I'd like to like dig into why people do what they do and what you just expressed is pretty specific and it's really cool.

And it's really powerful, but people don't like stumble into selling high ticket offers, you know, through repeatable email marketing systems. I guess go back as far as you want.

I don't know if you want to go to high school, college, coming to your first entrepreneurial journey, but I'd love to just unpack your story a little bit so that we can kind of lean in and dip into different [00:05:00] parts of it and start to really understand why you are who you are today and doing the cool things that you're doing.

Zack: Yeah, I mean, I fell into this by accident, because I was, at the time, in college, just about to graduate with my engineering degree. looked at my engineering teachers, and they seemed kind of unhappy. their lives were in a sepia tone setting that they didn't really get lit up by the work that they were doing.

And I was also really passionate about fitness and nutrition at the time, getting a minor in that and leading a club. and I wanted to go and do that full time. the accident happened when I became president of a fitness and nutrition club at my college. There was a fumble when I became president, and we didn't have a budget because the last president dropped the ball there.

I was on all these email newsletters since high school, and that was, I guess, the golden age of, newsletters where people would spend, you three, four hours in the morning, like you had, Matt Fury, Jason Capital, Tyler Bramlett, [00:06:00] like a lot of these OGs in the space, or the second generation of OGs in the space. that we're making a lot of money in email marketing.

And I figured, well, why can't I just send a really cool email every morning to this list of people that are interested in the club to get them to come to events, even if I can't afford to bribe them with pizza. I wrote a daily newsletter, like 3 years from that, and decided to become a nutrition coach off of that and continue doing that for money outside of it, it failed completely because I didn't really know the other parts of the business.

And I didn't understand the hustle involved and other pieces of fulfillment and networking and everything that you really teach, which is helping a lot. But I got really good at the marketing side of it. So I ended up texting all the connections that I made over the past two years doing the fitness stuff and closed a few deals.

Got really excited because I realized I could be a freelance marketer. And [00:07:00] left my parents home to move to Arizona. this is kind of where the journey gets a little bit crazy because I was bouncing all over the world, for the past few years. But in Arizona, that was when I started cutting my teeth on a lot of different copy projects and marketing and figuring out how to get clients, how to network.

I was going to a different mastermind event every single month, which is why I moved to Arizona. Because it's In Arizona close to California close to Vegas close to Phoenix, where a lot of these events were taking place And eventually I got headhunted to work with Jason Capital and scale his business opportunity suite of products. and I ended up moving to California in a weekend.

I didn't have a place to live. I actually met a girl on Bumble that I crashed with for two weeks. So that's a whole other story. But I went from junior copywriter to CRO, and I was even the CEO for a few months. I started an agency with Jason Capital 2 [00:08:00] doing marketing for people like Jay Shetty, Lush Brown, Jordan Belfort.

And we pulled in over, I think it was like 13 point I don't know, 4 million, and the two years of that agency. And a lot of that was based off of sending hand raisers, converting people in chat and sending them Google Docs or Loom VSLs, but

Dustin: I love

Zack: what happened? There was a big shift. Because I ended up moving to Puerto Rico as I was growing this business Instagram, yeah,

Dustin: policy real quick. So, I'm chuckling by more than I could be because, did mention. So. Zach was in my podcast profits, accelerated program. And then he subsequently is joined my seven figure leap mastermind. And I've mentioned on other episodes we met in person, a few months ago in Orlando. And so we had a couple of late nights, fun stuff by the pool, walking, you know, walking Lakeside and. It was kind of like experience that the audience is getting now. I'm like, so hold on a second. So you're in Arizona [00:09:00] and then like, you know, yeah. And then one weekend I moved to California and now I live in Puerto Rico.

but what's really funny is like the parallels between you and me, like, I'm older than you, so like I had like Ryan Lee to admire and like, or, you know, then you had his like disciples, in the copywriting, email marketing world. And I also went to engineering school and I also had that similar sort of, I'm not sure that, I want to stick with this.

Now I did, and I went way more traditional and got married right after, The month after I graduated and worked in 15 years in that career, whereas Zach took the screw it. I'm just going to go like live life and look at opportunity and jump, without a parachute in many cases. And it's really cool though, that you fast forward a decade or whatever it's been. now we're in such close circles and we learn from each other and we, purchase from each other.

So don't know, there's, something there for me. It's like. How cool are these entrepreneurial journeys that in some ways are very similar and in some ways are completely different. So, please continue on from, your Puerto Rico step in the journey here. Yeah,

Zack: not just because it's, crazy how many [00:10:00] times I've went across the country, but a big part of what I was reminded about from you and what I learned from you is committing to the process. It doesn't have to be as intense as moving across the country several times, but in the sand.

There needs to be a certain, this is me taking a step to this new world. And I know that if I take my sweet time dipping a toe into this, On my business pool. I'm never going to get in. But if I just do a cannonball and immerse myself It's gonna It's gonna be a period where it sucks, but you're gonna develop a lot faster And so that brought me to Puerto Rico, not knowing any Spanish And essentially, I've been here for the past six years.

Jason Cabral's business pivoted. So he shut down his personal brand. and there are a lot of stuff that came behind that. The biggest point is just not to have a single point of failure in [00:11:00] your business. Because we were heavily relying on Instagram with a lot of overhead costs for production team, for setters, for tech people, and it just wasn't, it just wasn't a lean business and to pivot would have cost us a lot of money at this point.

And so, We just decided to stop it and pivot. I ended up going through a big change, meeting the love of my life, Sandy in Puerto Rico and adopting what ended up being three dogs, over a period of like the last year and really just not being a bachelor in my twenties that could pick up a move in a weekend, but someone who wants to build a business that fuels my life and not just push myself to build the biggest thing, just because, you know.

I have the energy to, and it's cool to live in big houses and drive fast cars and, you do random stuff like that. that's what [00:12:00] brought me to where I am now. And with email marketing, the big reason behind it is When I was starting my first business, basically started my first business like right around when Click Funnels was coming up in the fall of 2014.

So I didn't know about Click Funnels. I paid like 200, 000 and change to hire a web designer to put up a sales page for my first product, the Black Smoothie Secret.
And it was like all of my Bar Mitzvah money, but Biggest Koolian, who's in that circle with Ryan Lee and Greg Valentine and all those people, recommended this person to me. She does good work. She knows direct response. She can get the job done. And I'm like, oh man, I hope.

Once it sites up, it's going to solve all of my problems and it didn't because there's a lot more that goes into getting traffic and driving a business and following up with people. but for me, that hurt me a lot because I had to go back to the drawing board. I shot off a lot of cash and it didn't return and it was another big build up [00:13:00] that didn't pay off and it was more information for me. Okay. But I just realized that there's a lot more people out there that are really good at what they're doing.

They're looking to make money for their families, for themselves. To live whatever their version of that free life is where they don't have to get maybe not abused by a boss, but disrespected, taken for granted, work a tremendous amount of hours for someone else, only to get a really small piece of that pie the crumbs to be able to pay off medical bills or buy their house or just keeping up with inflation and, affording, you know, Eggs and all that stuff that's getting more and more expensive today, but email marketing is the most effective way to do that in my experience, because you're talking to people who are interested in what you do, and you completely own that platform.

And it's usually not a matter of if they'll buy [00:14:00] from you. It's a matter of when, if you're consistent, if you bring the right value, use the right strategies and have the right solutions for what they need.

Dustin: I love that. So some lessons I've picking up from your journey is. The big word was commitment, and with your fitness background, Zach, I know you'll, recognize the tagline from beach body. So beach body lot of people don't even know the brand beach body, but they know like P90X or like insanity, like some of these big workout programs.

I'd say five years ago, 10 years ago, it was really at the peak, but I just love their tagline and it's. Decide, commit, succeed. And you at some point made a decision, like I'm not going to, despite going to engineering school and growing up on the East coast and like having this traditional path, laid out in front of you, right.

Being the president of the nutrition club, you said, I'm not going to do that. I'm deciding to like, I want to go in this world of marketing and entrepreneurship and this way different lifestyle. And I see some of these people leading and deciding is one thing. And it's really important.

But then the hardest part is the [00:15:00] middle part, I think. And that's the commitment is because it's always going to be hard. There's always going to be valleys. There's always going to be. things that go wrong, people that wrong you, relationships that go sour, stuff like that. And you had a deep level of commitment to this, to the point, like, yeah, you moved all over the place.

You took chances. You took, opportunities, took a lot of, punches along the route. But I think what you distilled that back to us in this journey is like the one thing that. Still works and has worked since you started in 2014 and even before that in college, his email marketing. And I would just say a thousand percent agree with that.

There's been times I've lost sight of that. and even in seven figure leap, Zach knows I don't have a very big email list, but it's a very lucrative email list because I think we provide a lot of quality and we attract a very niche audience that's interested in sharing the types of values and the types of, people like Zach who are my world. all that to say, like commitment is like a huge theme here.

And I think this consistency of email marketing and that has always worked. It will hopefully [00:16:00] always work. yeah. Is there anything you want to add to that? I pick up on kind of the nuance of the story there?

Zack: Yeah. No, I love that. And always goes back to that difference between being interested and committed of just, if you have an interest, Then, and you're tinkering around, you're just not going to accidentally find your way to success. going to take a lot of pig headed determination to get there even talking to clients, I was on a consultation call before this, but talking to clients, they're telling me that they're at, six figures, a hundred K for the year and they feel bad about that.

That's awesome. Like in the online business space, going from zero to 100k with coaching and products and whatever you're doing, not a lot of people do that.

And people have this skewed perception, of course, because the people who are doing very high revenue numbers, whether those are inflated or they're just the most vocal, and they're the loudest, but really, if you're in the arena, if you're making your income from [00:17:00] this or covering half your income from this, you're in the game, you're doing it. It's just that commitment to it.

Dustin: and I've experienced and we've discussed, that first hundred K is definitely the hardest. And then you pick up momentum, mostly because you get clarity. And of course you get case studies and you get proof and you get, which builds your own self confidence and belief in you. And then you build your visibility. So, know, this whole flywheel effect. has to start at zero, right? And so getting to a hundred thousand is a huge accomplishment.

And then it's kind of the next stage is 100 to 300 k. I feel like we're kind of the, you know, that's the next stage of the journey. And then from 300 k to a million, and it's Ryan Deis, shared with me the rules of ones and threes or tens and threes. It's like a hundred thousand to 300, 300 to a million, a million to three, 3 million to 10 million. Each of those are like a very different stage of growth that requires a new really identity for the founder and a new.

Vision for kind of what's next. So, uh, yes, I love that you're sharing the respect, to the people who are certainly not at a, seven figure run rate yet, [00:18:00] but they are committed to building that six figure business, which is that critical first stage in any type of business, but especially in this like solopreneur world that many of our listeners find themselves in. you were just consulting someone on this.

Do you have any kind of put you on the spot, but if someone's like eager to get to the first a hundred K or make it consistent, cause like maybe they had a two K month and then they hit a 10 K month and then they had a three K month.

And, but like, they don't have this consistency as a six figure run rate. Are there certain marketing strategies or principles or, must haves that you see will get people that consistent six K, level of.

Zack: Yeah, so the easiest thing, the

Dustin: I mean,

Zack: well, so the front end of the business has three marks you need to check off. You need to reach out to people so they know who you are. Which is the marketing side, you need to convert them into clients, which is the sales side, and then you need to get them results, which is the fulfillment side and. There's no right or wrong [00:19:00] answers across any of those boxes, but you want to play to your strengths here, because if you're just starting out, I call it the, like.

Christianity has original sin, there's like this original debt you have in business, where you either need to hire talent to help get you out or build a team, or you're doing it yourself, and most people in the solopreneur space are doing it themselves, if that's the case, make it easy on yourself.

And what that looks like is if you're really good at writing, then I would, post on LinkedIn, I would market yourself using writing. So for me, I'm really good at writing. I post on LinkedIn, I build an email list, I'm not trying to do too much in terms of starting a blog and going on Twitter and doing a million things to spread myself out, but I'm just checking that box off.

I'm also really good when it comes to sales, again, at copy, being on these calls where I can actually help people and get [00:20:00] feedback instead of trying to come up with marketing ideas in my head to imagine my friends and get those results. so, um, On sales calls, and then for fulfillment, the simplest thing for me to do is go in on an ongoing basis to both consult and course correct on strategy and actually handle the fulfillment of writing and scheduling, these email assets.

And so for me, that's been the easiest way. To get to that, 15k per month mark, and it's going to be ugly. It might not be super scalable, but it's going to get you to that point where you have enough cash to start offloading these tasks. And I call it letting go of your Legos. If you've seen that talk or read that article where it's.

Okay, my identity right now is I'm in the driver's seat. I'm writing copy. I'm on all these calls. But once I have a base of these clients, and I'm making whatever six figures, then [00:21:00] maybe it turns into me taking a lot of these templates and training other copywriters and not taking on that invisible overhead costs of writing, scheduling, looking over the data for all these.

Client's emails, but actually giving the system to other copywriters to help them stay competitive in light of AI and all this stuff. So taking it a step back from being super specific, if you're looking to get to your first six figures, your biggest problem is Getting a demand for what you actually sell.

And the way to solve that problem is creating a sort of minimum viable product, which isn't just about what the market wants and needs. It's about where you have a unique advantage in that the work is more enjoyable to you. you have a skill with this work or you have some sort of personal connection to the market or to what, you provide as a solution.

And so when you focus on that and you can handle the [00:22:00] fulfillment, then you'll reach a natural bottleneck of capacity. And that's when you could look at maybe instead of working one to one, you do one to many. Maybe you do, instead of one on one sales calls, you do webinars. Maybe you have courses instead of consulting with people.

And you could add different models depending on, again, not just what your constraint is, but what you want your outcome to be.

Dustin: I love that. Yeah. something we talk about in the mastermind pretty frequently when people are in a hot seat session and many times I've, I'm, number one, most guilty of this sometimes, but like trying to solve problems that don't exist yet. And so. I love the simplicity of like your business is three pieces.

And like, at first you're probably doing all three, unless you've just got some money, you hire some of that stuff out it's marketing, sales and fulfillment. And what I loved about what you shared is like, you have some unique ability. You may need to get coached. You may need to be in a mastermind or something to kind of daylight it for yourself.

Cause it's hard to sometimes see it for yourself, but once you know what that is, [00:23:00] layer as much of your unique ability into all three phases as you can. So Zach. Just a master at writing. So it makes sense that his marketing is oriented towards writing many, much of his sales conversion happens through writing and when necessary conversation. and then, you his fulfillment is writing.

And so I love talking. And so, you know, like podcasts, guesting and podcast hosting are like, it's a great medium for me. Like, this is totally fun for me to do. All right. And so, and in the early days, it was like one on one coaching, showing people how to do podcast guesting.

And then. It was small groups. And then I figured out that I could actually marry that with all the digital marketing nerdiness experience I had. And I can create a mastermind and or an accelerator was initially. And then, from there, the mastermind. And so, even in my journey and in Zach's journey, you can really hear the zero to six figure and in the six figure plus versions of these two very different businesses, but both, you in the marketing, space.

So, Zach, you've got so much cool experience. I know you're like building your own business up to very sustainable and [00:24:00] scalable levels as you just Walked us through your process for that, but you've also been in some larger, organizations and people in hyper growth, sometimes maybe two hyper growth where they got, you know, two devoted to one channel, as you mentioned earlier, and it wheels fell off, but what would you say?

In the lessons you've learned from that, like going from six to seven figures, what are the kind of the critical components there? Maybe the things like, don't do this because I saw it like ruin several businesses that we're trying to make that scale that leap in their scale.

Zack: Yeah. So, This is what I'm really good at and over the past two years, I wanted to challenge myself to essentially go through the phase of starting my business because I'm really good at taking a business from 1 to 5 million and taking it to like 50 to 100 million. but that's not the most appealing thing to me to go back into the corporate world and kind of do all that stuff.

But what happens is once you go from zero to six figures. that you have a solution [00:25:00] for certain people. The problem is you're doing only so much volume of it. So if you're one person, maybe you're sending three emails a week and you're posting on LinkedIn once a day and you're handling sales calls two days during the week.

Well, what happens if at that six figure point, you hire a salesperson who could take sales, three sales calls a day, just from increasing from, two days of sales calls to five days of sales calls, you're adding almost double, the possibility of converting and getting more clients and that person who's taking those sales calls, not only does that open more time, but it also But they're a hundred percent focused on that.

They don't have to test switch. They don't have any other tabs open in their head. they're just getting really, really good at one thing. the answer is twofold that it's about doing more volume and recognizing it's not about you doing [00:26:00] more volume. It's about the tools and systems and people that can help you do that.

Dustin: And at that point, you've got. Presumably the cashflow to support that, or you can do it, responsibly and, obviously ramp up and scale up, an appropriate pace. But yeah, really liked that. I think again, if people are knocking on six figures or they're, their first six figures and they're like, yeah, I really want to get to seven.

Well, first of all, you should pause and appreciate the fact that you found product market fit, like no one earned six figures consistently without having like you said, something service product that someone really wants. Cause like that doesn't happen by chance. It's actually quite an accomplishment.

So don't throw that away. I've seen that mistake. A lot of people, they get six figures and they're like, well, I really want a seven figure business. So then they're like, I'm just going to go do something completely different. You I've done that. I've had numerous online businesses were like, Hey, this is pretty successful.

Why don't I just go do something completely different? in our final 10 minutes or so coming up here towards the end of our interview, you're going to talk about the mindset and the strategy [00:27:00] around like Ascension and you'll kind of unpack we didn't really like intend this theme, but we really. Tapped into a really important conversation here and a great theme about even if you're starting a business or like thinking about it,

Zack: Yeah.

Dustin: certain building blocks and minimum viable systems that Zach's really done a great job outlining, but as entrepreneurs. Many of us have diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD, right? Like it's very tempting sometimes like, Hey, I've solved this problem. this is working. I'm going to go do something else. to protect yourself against that.

I think it's important to have this like longer term vision and this Ascension model that Zach will unpack for us, but before we do that, Zach, would you mind maybe giving us just a quick snapshot, you don't have to talk about revenue, but just what do you, Focused on right now with your business.

And then I want to look at your like three to five year vision of where you're wanting to scale this to, because you kind of mentioned, you're not really looking to do a hundred million dollar big corporation. so yeah, what do you, what are you up to now? And where do you hope this go in the next three to five years is you and Sandy, [00:28:00] build your life together in Puerto Rico.

Zack: Yeah, so I part of it is I had this vision, so Alex Moey talks about he's done like, I don't know, 400,000 sales calls or something like that over his career selling personal training. And I thought it would be cool if I took a challenge to do 400,000 pieces of copy. And just get really good at that. And so for me, my focus up until this point has been seeing what a really good offer for email copy looks like, getting clients for that, and going right into this high ticket core offer.

Now what I'm looking to do in the next 6 months to a year is take fewer one on one clients. But focus on that marketing conveyor belt and kind of taking my own medicine of just I have My cost of living I have profit in my business. That's exciting.

That's good Now what leverage can I build by? licensing my system or [00:29:00] adding consulting or coaching on top of it, where it has a lower cost of fulfillment in terms of time and effort and can help people on a deeper level and at a higher price point, at a lower price point, but really building out. More of that Ascension model or that marketing conveyor belt that way.

Dustin: Love it. And so do you have, this is always a really difficult question for people to answer, but you can take a shot if you want, like, do you have sort of an ultimate vision? I mean, you looking to build a 10 million business, a 1 million business. Do you want to be a solopreneur? Do you see yourself having a team in the next three to five years?

Zack: Yeah, I really like having a team because I like being able to nurture and coach people and do it without having like a ton of people. So having three to six people that I can see grow professionally and get it and they're excited they're also helping me constrain my focus while also helping me move faster in the business.

So always loved that part of being CEO and creating these [00:30:00] environments for the right people to thrive. and the three to five year vision is getting to 3 million. And so for me, that feels like a really successful cashflow in business. I like the idea my head when I started this two years ago, the idea was to be like the rock of digital marketing, where it's having a really strong brand and making direct response copy cool and appealing. and also coming in with a strong, execution arm of the business to, to do it for people.

So it's not. Just all coaching where I hand people strategies and wish them the best of luck or tell them, I'll keep coaching you if it doesn't work out or all of that stuff. I'd rather just it for them or help them grow their team or themselves to get the skills to do it themselves because then they're, I don't know if I'm allowed to curse you, but they're recession proof. They're durable, nothing that goes on in the [00:31:00] world can really meaningfully disrupt your business because you have the skills to market and sell in spite of another pandemic or, anything else that comes your way. very much.

Dustin: cool. like a lot of clarity. There's 3 million and that it won't be you doing the fulfillment or at least not all the fulfillment, maybe for your highest level clients, there's still some Zach fulfillment, but it's much more, you want to lead the team, but a very strong dose of done for you services to me that where the market's going, it's all about done for you things and community, because I feel like with AI and with all the other stuff, that's emerging, like. some of the stuff's going to be commoditized, but you can't replace action and community.

And people are always going to want to just say, will you just do this for me? Like, I know there's an AI tool that could do it. I could learn it. I can go to YouTube. I can do all this stuff, but like, I would just pay to have this done for me. And so, yeah, I love that you're doing that. And, and Zach knows in my world, like.
community is a core of what we do. I don't want to do any done for [00:32:00] you services around podcast guesting. I don't want to own an agency. So I'm different than Zach in that respect. But another alternative people are thinking, man, how could I add done for you if I don't want to do it? one way is through certification, right?

Or licensing. so in my case, I'm, Currently working with a small group of people on kind of the seeds of a certification program where they learn my methods, I can mentor them and then they can be the done for you arm of my business on a certification level. And so that's like the story brand model too. That's really what Donald Miller has built. So there's lots of versions of this, but love, we've given numerous examples through our own businesses, of this, this whole idea of alignment and ascension and having a clear vision so that you can build things responsibly in those directions.

But, So thank you, Zach, for sharing so much of your personal story and and being just so transparent about where you're at now and with your offers and where you're going. It's really cool. I love to hear it, even though I knew some of it. I've learned a lot. And I'm sure audiences learned a ton. So I want to turn things over to you and let you just teach a bit here for, Three minutes, five minutes, [00:33:00] whatever. But like we've talked about ascension model and like this idea of alignment. And would love for you to unpack that for our audience as just a smart strategy that they can take away and use.

Zack: so this is, how I create promotional calendars and I'll sit with clients and draw essentially a box on a piece of paper on zoom and that box is going to have these three ripples. and each ripple But i'll try and paint a picture in your imagination of just from the bottom left corner There's you know, a small quarter circle There's a bigger one That extends outward and a larger one that extends outward.

This could go on and on. I like to have two or three of these to keep it simple. And this is your essential model. So the idea like with Dustin, he has his podcast profits accelerator, and that's going to be in his second ripple because it's second offer that you get from him. And for example, he just launched his podcast interview checklist. Which [00:34:00] is going to be his first ripple and then his seven figure lead mastermind is that third ripple now

What this model does for you is each of your offers Intentionally leads to the next so if you're struggling to fill this in I like to think of well What's a little bit of a bigger promise for a little bit of a smaller promise you can use to go up or down? here And what happens is this gives you three different levels of service, three different price points, so that when you're promoting through email, or you're on sales calls, or you know, whatever, maybe not on sales calls, but in a sales conversation, someone comes to you, you have a solution.

That can serve people where they're at based off of not just budget, but current pain or, or their need. and you have a way to lead into all your other offers. So over the course of a month, for example, at the start of the month, [00:35:00] Maybe we're looking to put out a few hand raisers to see if people want to go straight into the seven figure elite mastermind and just say, Hey, it's new quarter. We're looking for one or two more people for this.

It's a very premium, exclusive experience where we do one, two, three, and you need to have certain qualifications to get there. And we can send that out to the list to a certain segment. And that's what we would promote. For that week, Maybe next week. Not everyone's gonna spend or invest that high of an investment, especially if they're just getting to know you, or maybe the timing is not right or whatever it is.

Um, but maybe you can still help them and they're still in the market for what you want, especially if they're following you. If they're on there, if they're on your email list, the closer they get to you, the more likely they are to have a problem you can solve. And if they haven't purchased anything from you, They probably haven't solved it yet. But if we go from, let's say, super high ticket to a [00:36:00] 10 podcast interview checklist, well, that's a super low risk offer.

Sandy knows I could spend 10 day and not even realize it. And there goes 3k a month. But people could spend 10 on a podcast interview checklist, get a lot of value from it. And even if it's junk, that's, you a risk they're willing to take. And for the record, I've seen Dustin's podcast, Interview Checklist. I've gone through it several times. It's very good. and then the thing with that too, is on your email list and with your buyers, it's all about creating and recognizing patterns of behavior.

So if someone buys a 10 interview checklist, much more likely to To give you, you know, 300, 000, 3, 000 of an investment to go into the next thing. It's kind of like, when you get into golf, you don't just buy one golf club typically within a month of getting into golf. You probably spend, you know, 2, 000 to 3, 000 in all this different gear and covers and balls and cases and stuff like [00:37:00] that like I've definitely seen that with hobbies and it's kind of the same thing there.

Dustin: Yeah. Your first experience to use the golf analogy might be like, I'm going to go to the driving range and pay 10 bucks for a bucket of balls and see if I like this. And you're like, Oh, I actually do like this. And then maybe I'll go get a use set. And I'm like, well, actually, now I'm identifying my identity as being like, this is part of who I am.

So now I should invest more and I can go deeper and I want to be part of a golf community. Like I'm using obviously kind of a weak analogy, but, That's awesome. I love the way you're talking about ascension with this concentric circles. It's different than, you know, the value ladder or a lot of times people like it's a staircase for some reason, there's something about the concentric circles because they're not exclusive of each other. They're like yeah. They overlap each other, meaning the interview checklist in our example fits within the accelerator and the accelerator fits within the seven bigger leap.

They're not jumping from one big level to the next. They actually all have a lot of continuity between them. so if someone's like, Hey, that makes total sense. I want to build these three concentric circles. Which one do you think they should build first?

Zack: Yeah. [00:38:00] So honestly, I feel like there's going to be one that people are just going to be closer to. my answer would be to plan them all out because the problem that this solves is if you're in business, And you're not doing too well. You're probably looking over to see what other people are doing. And then you get really confused that way. Because you're like, Oh, I should write a book. This guy has a book. He's a published author. He's doing great. This person's doing speaking. I should go do that. This person has group coaching, or this person has an agency, or this person is buying businesses, like and you get crazy. And you just look for what type of market fit can I get?

Or if you're already selling an offer, making six figures, you're probably looking at, well, what's the new traffic platform I can get on? Or what's the new trip wire or back end offer? Or what does that look like? And you're gonna drive yourself nuts because There's an infinite amount of possible correct answers.

So what I would do is say, all right, here's the plan. I'm going to use this proven business [00:39:00] model from thinking from first principles where I'm coaching people on business stuff. I'm good at this. I can coach. This is what people ask me for. This is what I like to do. Great.

You can do group coaching in the middle. The high ticket can be the mastermind type of experience for the people that want to continue on with you. Because there's always going to be new evolutions in business, new problems to solve. That can be great. And then the fun end could be, maybe it's media agnostic, because you can, write down in 10 pages, kind of like your step by step blueprint for something.

You could film it. And then it's a course. You can record it. It's an audiobook. you could chunk it into smaller videos. And it's a mini course. there's a lot of different ways you can get around that. Again, playing to your strengths. But once you have that all planned out, I would start with whatever's easiest to start because they're all, the genius of this is they're all based around the same promise, it's just different levels of fulfillment and [00:40:00] cause like, if I want to go to Hawaii, I can get a boat there, I can swim there, I can go coach, I can fly a private jet, it's all going to get me to Hawaii, but the experience and the costs are going to vary. So if I want to learn how to be a podcast duster with Dustin, I could.

Get his 10 interview checklist and take a step towards that I could join his mastermind group at the very high level and build my whole business with this with relationship marketing I could just go for the podcast profits accelerator and have you know, my problem solved that way.

But yeah, like to me, it's less about it's less about what you're doing It's more about what you're saying no to and creating that focus You and understanding that, hey, it takes time to build this out and maybe you start with that high leverage group coaching offer, or maybe you start with the one on one offer and you start selling it and you get that cashflow in and you build that out and then you trickle down the [00:41:00] lessons that you learn into the most useful assets that you can sell as that tripwire or lower ticket thing.

Or you learn from one on one people. What they need, and you turn it into a group experience on a very specific outcome. And that's the other side of business where it's not just about using marketing and sales to solve all your problems. It's about learning what your target market needs and wants from you.

Because again, I've talked to people about this that have next greatest business or fat loss or relationship solution, but it doesn't sell because People don't want it or the opposite problem in the bro marketing space is you sell too much of something and you don't have the capacity or leadership skills to fulfill for everyone.
it's your business.

So you can sell as much of something or as little as something, you don't have to offer a guarantee. You don't have to have fake urgency or scarcity. You don't have to do what the competition does. You [00:42:00] can do your own thing to give people the solution they need in the way they want it. And that's it. This is a way to guardrail yourself from going too crazy with that.

Dustin: Yeah, I love that. it's about you and your market, but it's also about you. It's like, ultimately it's about you. If you're not, especially you're a solopreneur, but you know, if you're listening to this, I'm sure you're a founder and entrepreneur of some sort. You're your own worst enemy in most cases.

So building a designing your business, your offer stack, your fulfillment, all of those things around. Your strengths and protecting, like you said, putting these guardrails up, that's really sage advice. And the other thing I would just add to that real quickly is, start with the one that's most fun.

If you're not sure, you know, if you, if you get this stack built out and on paper and you're like, I don't really know, like, yeah, choose the one that seems easiest, maybe the one you've already experienced the most, And realize that it's all going to change, right? Like you want to have a roadmap that will work, but then you're going to get into it. And you're going to realize.

Oh, I'm really. Sick of doing [00:43:00] one on one but I'm actually really good at leading groups or vice versa. Like I thought I grew coaching was the thing and actually I kind of hate it. And like, I've missed my one on one days. Well then you can do one on one, maybe you want to charge more for it.

So there's always going to be iterations and evolutions. That's part of the fun of business is. It changes and the market changes and the economy changes. change is inevitable, but I think setting up something that can be successful from the start and doing it with this Ascension model in mind is super smart and, it's what I've done in some cases on accident, in some cases, by design.

I would, I wasn't as intentional about what's been built here over the past 18 months as Zach outlined, but boy, I sure wish I would have had this expertise and this, wisdom and this foresight, back when I was building the, the, building blocks, because it would have saved a lot of pain and missteps and, wasted money and energy. so I hope everyone listening to this is excited, to learn from Zach's own experience, my own experience and do this right from the start or course. Correct. If you realize now, like.

Oh, man, I, totally have three disparate offers [00:44:00] that don't, serve each other and they don't, have concentric circles that line up. now's the time to start making those changes and redesign your Ascension model so that it does work. So Zach, this has been awesome. I kept you way longer than I told you I needed you, but you've shared like so much.

I don't want to stop. so. With that, I just like turn it back to you and let you direct people to the next best step. So if they're thinking, man, Zach's a cool dude,
Dustin's using his services. How can I learn more? How can I go deeper with Zach Zeller? What's the best way to do that?

Zack: Yeah. So I have my seven day email sales kit that you can get at, we should not be doing this. com, which I do want a shorter URL, I picked it up and I liked it. that's what I have right now. but these are a great, seven days of emails and marketing that you can use to revive an email list, or start selling to your email list without sacrificing goodwill. And it's a good way to use your email list to [00:45:00] build out your three concentric circles, because.

And I don't know, I'll just reveal this on the podcast a little bit, but, one of the things we do is Dustin has been meaning to get around to creating a mini course called cold to sold, and who has the time to just sit and create a course on top of you're going on ruts, you spend time with your family, it's Easter, you're traveling, you have, clients in the mastermind and you're hopping on, you podcasts, all this stuff. But, what we did is we were pre selling it through email, seeing how much of a response we're getting, and then doing the course that way.

So you're able to send emails To offer a course to people, you're not necessarily collecting any money. You can pre sell it and then record it live or do it there too. And that's an amazing way of getting, not just getting paid to create really valuable assets, or, you know, getting people onto a webinar [00:46:00] or a possible sales conversation, but also providing value to people and doing it in a way where you don't have to spend, days, weeks, months, and millions of, dollars or, uh, a lot of, a lot of anxiety sweating over creating, you know, These assets. So that's a, we should not be doing this. com. And I'm also pretty active on

Dustin: doing this. com. love that. So and we'll repeat that again, but yeah, we should not be doing this. com. Basically it's your email shortcut. It's going to give you seven days of the types of useful, effective email copy that Zach, I pay Zach for a, you get, seven day dose of that for free that you can go use.

And one thing you said there, Zach, that I just want to reiterate, I've never sold. Anything in my businesses, and I've had quite a few businesses. I should say, I've never created anything without selling it first. And I think that's a really important mindset for people. Um, so the interview checklist you just mentioned, like I sold it and then fulfilled, like, you know, pre sold it basically the easiest way to say it.

And [00:47:00] like, and a great way to do that, like you said, is live events. So if you're like. Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Would you be interested? Reply back. That'd be the simplest form. Or you could literally have a checkout page and say, it's 50 bucks. I'm doing this thing next Friday. If you want to learn this, buy a ticket.

And then, you know what? If three people buy a ticket and that's not enough, you don't think you've hit the mark, cancel it, refund them and thank them. Maybe give them a free resource for their time. Like it takes a lot of the pressure off because you can prove product market fit before you go spend hours or.

Thousands of dollars, creating stuff that maybe people don't actually want. So I think that was a huge golden nugget. I just wanted to like reiterate it again, but, uh, I do want to leave with your call to action, Zach. So one more time, what do they get and where do they go get it?

Zack: Yes. So if you want the seven day email sales kit to know exactly how to start making sales from your email list in seven days, you can go to, we should not be doing this. com. I'm also active on LinkedIn and I share funny pictures of me and [00:48:00] email and business lessons. And that's. Zach Zeller 22 from my LinkedIn, uh, profile.

Dustin: Awesome, man. Well, this has been great. I spent a lot of time with you, but it's always fun to dig deeper and have this format. And then, you know, of course, let the audience benefit from. All the wisdom that you've acquired and all the ways that you've helped me and all the people in the mastermind.

So Zach, I will see you in the seven figure elite mastermind meetings, but really grateful for you and grateful for your time and expertise that you shared here today.
So thanks for being here.

Zack: Yeah. I appreciate it. I appreciate the chance to drop all this value and I will see you in the meetings.

Dustin: Awesome. And if you guys want to see my emails slash Zach's emails, definitely go to seven figure elite. com. there's an opt in right there on the homepage. You're going to get access to a really cool revenue calculator for, to see what podcast guesting can do for your business. So seven figure leap.com to get on my list and go get on Zach's list and get this free email series.

I will put a link to that as well on our show notes. So see you guys next time. Thank you.