The Step-By-Step Guide to Starting a Highly Profitable Mastermind from Scratch ($101k in 24 hours)

I made $101k in 24 hours when I launched my mini-mastermind on Skool. Just over a year later, I've collected $1,056,000 & counting. Margins are 73% while I'm sipping pina coladas in Bora Bora...

Just kidding, I don't drink, but the margins are still 73% without me having to spend more than a few hours per week in Skool, and it does allow me massive time freedom while seeing student results flood in like Noah's Ark on Niagara Falls. The goal of this post is to show you some simple shifts that you can implement right now, based on where you are in your journey, to help you have similar success.

Let's start with where I was before the launch (April 2022):

I'm Troy Ericson. I have an email marketing agency called Email Paramedic. We are widely considered the best Email List Management & Email Deliverability agency, period. This is my bread & butter that makes most of my money.

HOWEVER, that's a totally different market. They want done-for-you, not coaching. At the time, I'd generated over $50MM for my done-for-you clients, and had worked with big names like Traffic & Funnels, V-Shred, Rich Schefren, RAZE Energy, Joel Erway, Zipify, SmartMarketer, 10X Advisor Network, David Meltzer, Stefan Georgi, Jason Capital, Joel Marion, SamCart, etc, etc etc... But it didn't matter.

I was only making $50-100 per coaching student per month, and spending at least an hour per day inside of it. And this freaking BOTHERED me because I wanted to teach others like my mentors had taught me... But without burning myself out for pennies.

Why do I tell you this? Because most of you think that you need to 'wait a few years' to have massive success & huge credentials before you start coaching anyone. That's not true. And it's something that you're telling yourself in order to procrastinate (I say that in the most helpful way possible).

Of course, I'm no fan of inexperienced coaches who coach coaches on how to coach coaches... But the truth is, if you're 1-2 steps ahead of your audience, you NEED TO START COACHING SOMEONE NOW. Even if it's just 1 person.

It not only serves them by speeding up their time 'til success... But you'll be shocked at how much YOU learn. As they say, if you can't explain what you do to someone, do you really know what you're doing?

Coaching people also makes you way smarter. The number of crazy awesome ideas I've implemented in my business after talking to my students is insane... And I wish I started coaching even sooner.

So get over those mental blocks that were placed in your head by your parents, or the bully at school, or the internet marketing boomers on Facebook who peaked in 2002 & try to hold you back from making more money than them.

Here's the good news: If you follow this strategy & only have 10% as much success as my launch, that's still a $10k day, which is life-changing for most people.

Okay, so... Here's the step-by-step part, from SCRATCH. I don't know what step you're on right now, but this is what worked for ME, laid out step-by-step for YOU:

✅ Step 1: First and foremost, you have to attract your first few 'fans'. 'Fan' seems like a weird word to say if you're not a professional athlete or actor... But it's 100% true. Every person has a personal brand & a platform these days. If you get good at something, people will notice... IF you actually share it. No one can see what you don't post.

For me, I got really really good at email marketing from 2019 - 2021. I could've stuck with JUST B2B (and I'm sure I'd still be doing fine), but I always wanted to impact thousands of lives (just like how my mentors impacted me), so I put my impostor syndrome aside, and shared a handful of Facebook posts about HOW I was getting results for clients. And how I 10x'd my income from year 1 to year 2.

As a result, people started following me because they wanted to achieve similar results. Oh, and btw, share your personal life too. You're going to bore the sh*t out of people if all you post are nitty gritty, fine details about your business. People can't relate to that sort of stuff like they can with your thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and occasional dog/baby pics. If you think this isn't true, ask yourself why you stalk your favorite celebrities.

✅ Step 2: Put all your 'fans' in one place. Like I said, I started posting on Facebook & sending emails to my newly made email list. Eventually, I'd built up thousands of friends/followers/subscribers (AKA fans). But I wanted a more intimate way to connect with them.

So I started a paid Facebook group called 'Email Secrets' where people asked me questions, and I answered them, usually via Loom video. This was the $50-100/mo group I mentioned earlier. But, naturally, it had some problems because it was my first 'prototype' of a coaching program. Obviously, I would've done things differently had I read a post like this, so keep reading:

✅ Step 3 (where most coaches/consultants/course creators are stuck): Most coaches quickly realize there are some massive problems they didn't see coming. The problems for me were:

A. There was no structure to the group. It was a nice hub to ask questions, but there was no clear path for members to follow. Which led to a lot of churn... As well as unnecessary logistical confusion & questions that didn't have to do with my zone of genius. And I'd have to remake a lot of videos I'd already made. It eventually became a free-for-all, which doesn't work too well. People need step-by-step instructions in order to succeed (notice how this post is structured lol).

B. Facebook started killing the reach. Facebook is a crowded place. Most people get dozens of notifications per day. And your Facebook group is getting thrown under the bus of all the other notifications... And people miss important update & live calls... Which means they cancel. And the 'Guides Tab' sucked.

C. I knew I could make WAY more money from the high-level coaching I was giving people. A lot of people got great results, and I was undercharging. I just had to have the confidence to charge more (I kid you not, most of you could double your prices & see the same conversion rate). But I also wanted a premium platform, not 'just another' Facebook Group.

D. I needed to STOP charging monthly, and start charging yearly. Truth is, if you charge monthly... Your average customer will leave after about 4 months. This is true in almost every industry. If you make them commit to a yearly program, they'll take it more seriously, get better results, and stay for a year. Win-win scenario.

✅ Step 4: Run a beta launch. Don't build the whole dang course before you sell it. That doesn't mean half-ass it. Build a damn-good outline with a CLEAR OUTCOME for your members. Maybe record the first module. The rest can be recorded live as a bonus for your beta members. You can always use AI to cut out any parts that you end up not liking.

✅ Step 5: Stop using the word 'course'. A course should just be 1 component of your program. My program is a 'Certification Program' where I train people with my Email List Management course, and then certify them & put them on my website. I also present them job opportunities, for example. Oh, and guess what? Courses aren't recurring. Programs are. You're welcome (;

This is just 1 example of how to think outside the box. Stop selling the same sh*t as everyone else. This shift also allowed me to start selling to businesses who wanted to train their teams. So I did end up being able to double-dip audiences a bit.

The results?

On April 21, 2022, I re-launched my revamped coaching program using Skool. All I did was make 1 post in the old Facebook Group and made $138,886 in the first 2 days, $101k of which came in the first 24 hours.

But the coolest part?

No ads. No new audience. The same 400 'fans' from my original Facebook Group. I just shifted from Facebook to Skool. And from a 'coaching group/course' to a Certification Program.

Of course, we've opened it up to way more people since then, and we crush it with email marketing as you can probably guess, lol... Which we're also using to ascend people into our super-secret not-so-mini mastermind.

As far as not spending much time on it... To help me handle the influx of questions, my B2B team are the coaches inside the program. I spend the majority of my time in Skool thinking of new ways to make the program better & getting feedback from members... AKA the stuff I enjoy most.

Lastly, I'm STOKED to report that we are getting WAY MORE SUCCESS STORIES & LIVES CHANGED inside the Email List Management Certification Program (the name of my Skool group).

Thanks for reading. Hope this helps. Included a video I made for Skool as well. I'm down to answer questions about this or email marketing in general. Just drop a comment.

Cheers,

Troy

ps If you're a freelancer, why not use this strategy for a client & take a cut?

42 comments