the most counterintuitive business advice that actually works

Summary

everyone wants to talk about scale, leverage, and buying back time. nobody talks about the unscalable work that gets you there. when you’re starting, your time is worth zero. your only job is to compound something.

three unscalable activities that actually built my business:

1. work for free, strategically. trade real value (writing, coaching, content) for testimonials, distribution, or relationships. not “free” for the sake of free. free with a hook.
2. learn SEO. even now, with AI. ChatGPT pulls from search-indexed content. your YouTube and your website are digital assets that compound for years. ignore them and you’re starting from zero every month.
3. harvest social engagement. somebody likes your post? thank them. don’t pitch. just show up. relationships, not transactions. ten of those a week for a year and you’ve built a network.

if you’re overwhelmed by scale content but you’re just starting out, you’re in the season of sowing, not harvesting. plant well.

Transcript

why “do things that don’t scale” still works

When I first started as an entrepreneur, I valued my time at zero, which is ultimately what you need to do. And because my time was valued at zero, I ended up doing a lot of things that do not scale. And I still have that mentality today, even though my time is worth a lot more. So let’s talk about the things you can do that don’t scale with your time and actually grow your company faster.

So there is a ton of great content out there from some really high level entrepreneurs, and that is awesome. I really feel like we’re in a very interesting time in history where everyone’s able to shortcut their success by learning from some of the best in the world. But here’s the deal. Sometimes I feel like these people have forgotten what it took at the beginning stages to get where they are now.

And that’s what I want to talk about today. How did I get where I am? What tasks and activities did I need to do to be able to scale my company? Because we can talk about these big ideas like leverage and buying back your time, but I know the reality is that it takes a couple of years to be able to do those things.

It took me a couple of years to be able to build a team big enough to where I could actually buy back my time. And there was no hiring somebody. I had to do a whole lot of different activities that did not scale to be able to get where I am today. And that’s what I want to talk about. So if you are in the beginning stages of entrepreneurship, the first couple of years or revenue, or you don’t have a very big team, really just in the very beginning stages, this video is for you.

strategic free work that led to real momentum

Because what I’m going to talk about are some of the unscalable activities I did that were instrumental to my success, and I hope they can help you as well. Okay, so I’m going to dive into the three things I did early on in entrepreneurship that absolutely helped me scale my business, but they were not scalable.

And I highly believe, I strongly believe that these things are what do scale a business, people just don’t realize it, right? We could talk about ads, we can talk about all these other things that truly are scalable from a leverage standpoint, but at the start, I feel like to really get things rolling and to get a ton of momentum, you have to do things that do not scale.

And the first thing that I did was I worked for free. Now you’ve probably heard this before, but bear with me because it’s not as simple as that. When I started early on, what I did for free was strategically free. So here are a few examples. One, I was very much a writer. I wrote a lot of things early on, I started every, all of this, every bit of online business started as me doing a blog, I was a blogger.

And so I wrote a lot, and a lot of people weren’t very good writers. So what I would do, and I’m not recommending you do this now because of AI and everything else, but what I would do is I would reach out to bigger syndications, bigger websites with these massive followings and say, hey, I’ll do a guest article for you.

I’ll write a well-researched piece on X, Y, or Z. And I would do that. And in exchange, they would give me a link back to my website or a link back to a social media profile. And that was huge, that was just enough for people to start learning who I was through some of my work. But that took a lot of time, effort, and energy to write these articles, make sure they were well-researched and that the company actually wanted to publish them.

And I had to reach out to like 20 just to get one person to say yes. And so it was very challenging. That’s the first thing I did for free, but ultimately it was free for them, but still benefited me somewhat. Another thing I did early on in the fitness world was I trained people for free. And I think almost everyone does that when they first start as a coach or trainer or whatever.

why SEO still matters, and why it’s the future

But I did it in exchange for something right off the bat. I said, hey, I’ll train you for free for the next three months if you can just give me a testimonial at the end. And so here’s the deal. When you offer something for free, people don’t respect it. Hands down, they just don’t. When something is 100% for free, they will not pay attention.

If you don’t pay, you don’t pay attention. And that’s just so true. But if they feel like they are actually paying something and it’s going to be them uncomfortable on a video testimonial saying how good your product or service was, they’re paying something. And you’re giving them something for free, but they are paying for that.

And that’s honestly how I got started with my first program. I think I ended up getting like 10, 15 really solid video testimonials. And that was enough to really get things moving and launched. So work for free with an asterisk. Make sure there is still something in it for you. Because while goodwill is very much a part of marketing and growing a business, you don’t want to rely on just doing a bunch of free stuff and hopefully it generates some business.

You want to be strategic about it. Okay, the second thing that you want to do or that I did specifically was SEO. Search engine optimization. People are still sleeping on this, and I think it’s crazy. Everyone is putting all their time, effort, and energy into trying to do things on social media, trying to go viral on social media, whatever, and they’re not focusing on search engine optimization.

I think this is a huge mistake. Because yes, we have AI, but where do you think AI is pulling all that stuff these days? It’s pulling it from websites. In fact, most recently we do attributions to customers, and we just saw our first customer come from ChatGPT, and so that we can source where customers come from, and this person was specifically referred from ChatGPT.

So I don’t know what this person was searching, what they were doing, but they were looking for a product or service that met their needs. ChatGPT recommended us, and they became a customer. Think about how crazy that is. That is the future. So how did ChatGPT know about us? Search engine optimization.

So you should be doing this with your time, is optimizing your website for search engine optimization. And this skill set will serve you well. I do eventually think you could hire this out, or you should hire it out, but if you can’t yet, just learn it. It’s really not that complicated. You could learn the very basics of SEO in a day, and it’s gonna serve you for the rest of your life.

the power of YouTube, website, and search-optimized content

Like, for instance, another place that you can do a lot of search engine optimization is YouTube. A lot of people don’t know this, but the world’s largest search engine is Google. The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube. Search engine YouTube plays by the same rules as Google. So you can optimize your titles, you can optimize your tags, you can optimize the description.

So again, you’re playing search engine optimization, but you’re playing it in, like, the YouTube format. So search engine optimization is huge. You can do this for podcasting as well. I don’t think it makes as much sense for, like, TikTok and Instagram. That really is more short-form, short-lived content.

But YouTube, videos are around forever. They can even pick up steam over time. Your website is around. ChatGPT is picking things up like that. So search engine optimization is absolutely worth your time. Again, it doesn’t scale, but it’s a skill set that will really serve you for a long time if you’re willing to put in the time, effort, and energy to learn it.

All right, the last thing I have done in the past I call harvesting. And I think a lot of people are doing some version of this today. But when we are on social media, whether you’re on Facebook or Instagram, wherever it is, and you post something, and you’re like, you know, maybe you’re just getting started, and you’re like, ah, only seven people liked that.

social harvesting: build community before selling

That’s seven humans who liked it enough to actually double-tap and say that they liked it. And who knows, maybe 10 times the amount of people actually saw it, maybe 100 times actually saw it, but they just never double-tapped to actually like it. So the people who are actually showing you signals that they liked your content or they commented, whatever, you want to reach out to these people to start building a community, but you don’t want to try and DM them and get their business right away.

That’s a bad strategy. That’s what a lot of people are teaching out there today. And no one’s playing the long game. How about we just develop a relationship? So an example of this, and what I did back in the day is, if I posted something on Facebook, which I did a lot more on Facebook back in the day, this would probably be more applicable on Instagram, someone liked it, I would reach out to them, I’d either try and become a friend with them or shoot them a message, and I would just thank them for like, hey, thanks for liking my content, I’m new, if you are new, like I’m new to all this, I really appreciate you showing me that positive affirmation, I just really appreciate it, if there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.

That’s it. That’s it. This is not going for the kill, this is not, oh, we’ll download this thing, or hey, do you want to hop on a call? It’s none of those things. All of those have a purpose, right? You can do those things. But if you’re just trying to build a community, these things will come back to you over time.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that if you provide enough goodwill, it will come back to you. Now, especially if you implement other strategies like advertising and you’re making calls to action on your newsletter and all these kind of things, you have to still be a marketer, you still have to advertise, you still have to pitch.

But in the beginning, just try and reach out to as many people as possible. Let them know what you’re doing, let them know what it’s about, and just try and provide some value. If they need something from you, respond to them, give them help, help them out, and you will be surprised how this will come back to you tenfold over time.

playing the long game as a beginner entrepreneur

So these are the three things I did early on to really get my start. I offered things strategically for free, I really, really went, I nerded out on learning search engine optimization, and I did a lot of like and comment harvesting to try and build relationships with people without spamming them or even asking for money right away.

So if you can do those three things, getting started, and you really want to start building some momentum before you get into the bigger ideas of leverage and scale and everything else, this is a great place for people to start. But to do any of this, you’re going to have to try harder.