167 - Book | How To Get Paid For What You Know with Graham Cochrane
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Show Notes:
Today, I had the absolute privilege of talking to my friend Graham Cochrane. He is the author of How To Get Paid For What You Know, and we talk all about his book! I've read the whole thing cover to cover and it's so good. If I could describe it in any way, it would be practical and helpful.
You know, sometimes you read business books and you think, “Oh, that's great, but that doesn't really apply to me.” It's not that way with his book. He really makes you feel like you can do this—it's awesome. So, yeah, he's an author. He's also a business coach to over 3,000 premium customers worldwide. He founded the recording revolution, a seven figure online music business in 2009, and now, he hosts over 80,000 monthly followers on his podcast, YouTube, and blog, talking about business mindset, productivity, psychology. He's a believer; he's a brother; he's a friend.
I just really have so much respect for Graham. I’m so grateful for him. And even though he's been featured in things like Business Insider and Yahoo and Huffington post and CNBC, he's so humble and he's so real. And I'm so grateful for his voice in this industry.
I know you're going to enjoy our conversation today and I can't wait for you to listen in!
For the full episode, hit play above, or read through our conversation below.
Nancy Ray: Graham! I am so excited to have you on the Work and Play Podcast. Welcome.
Graham Cochrane: Hey, I'm honored to be here. It's like if my wife got invited, I was lucky to get invited, also.
Nancy: That's right. Yes. I interviewed Shay a few episodes back in the May is for Mamas series that I do! And I so enjoyed talking with her for anyone listening that's episode 158 & 159. I had to split it into two parts because it was just that good. We talked about everything and learned a lot about Graham's family. So if you want to kind of get to know his whole family and Shay a little bit, you can go back and listen to those, but I'm really excited to interview you today for a lot of different reasons.
One, you've been my business coach. You know a little bit about me, my family, my business, my work. I trust you. I really appreciate just your voice and your angle in this business world, because I know you love Jesus. I know you follow God with all your heart. And I feel like there's not a lot of people doing this online business thing who share those same values that are so important to me as well.
And the things you teach and offer are so practical. We're going to be talking all about your book and your podcast is one of the few podcasts I listen to regularly. So yeah, it's just really exciting to give this gift to my listeners of someone who's meant a lot to me in my work and my business, and to just kind of walk through your book and your teaching.
So tell anyone listening just a little bit about you, your work, your story, your family, just in case anyone's not familiar with you.
Graham: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me on and I'm excited. So Shay's my wife of almost 17 years and she, I would say she's the entrepreneurial one of the two of us. She had a business long before I did. I needed a global recession and God to kick me off a cliff to start a business. But I'm so glad he did. So, we both run businesses. So it's kind of a weird home, which is kind of cool. We both get to sort of mastermind together and talk about business and help each other as much as we can. And then we have two little girls, they're not so little anymore. 10 and then 13 year old, probably when this episode drops, Laura will be 13, which is crazy. They're amazing, and we just have a lot of fun. We're really blessed to be able to.
With our businesses, we do the work we want when we want so that it can be oriented around our family, which I really, really appreciate.
I have two businesses. My original one is focused on musicians. It's called the Recording Revolution and it teaches musicians how to record their music, what equipment to buy, how to produce a record at home on their own. And that's what God called me to start in 2009. In the global recession back then, I'd lost two jobs that year. We burned through our savings. We were on food stamps for 18 months, and God was like, you should be blogging about audio recording, which was my background. I had a music background, audio engineering background. And I was like, well, what am I doing? How's this going to work? And the short story is, and I talk about it in the book, that I stumbled across this business model of teaching people for free and then building a monetized product around it, of online courses and membership sites. And it blew up, and it became successful. And I loved it.
And over the years I ended up starting a second business, which is my personal brand, which this whole book is around too, teaching people how to do what I did because I had so many people asking me, “How did you build a really successful business around something as random as music recording? What's the model? Like, how do I do that for teaching a foreign language or fitness or relationship coaching or whatever.” And so the last four or five years I've been doing that more formally, not only with one-on-one clients like with you, Nancy, but then, you know, through podcasts, videos, courses, membership community, things like that. And so I just get to have fun teaching online business pretty much. That's what I do now. These days is talking about business, talking about how it serves your life and not the other way around, and then helping people, both with the practical and then the mindset stuff, which is just as important.
Nancy: Yep. It's so fun to hear you talk about that. And you know, I’ve known you and Shay for a little while, so I've been able to see you go from the Recording Revolution being your main thing to then starting your new business brand and the Graham Cochrane brand, and then that just like taking off. And now you have your new book out and it's been so fun to have like a front row seat and seeing that half, and we're just so pumped for you and your family.
And I will say—you didn't tell me to say this—but I will say your course is incredible. Your coaching was invaluable to me, but your course is one that I reference back to still, like often! And now that I have the book, I'm so excited because now I have that like in written form. I mean, I've already marked all through the book. I already have like marked it up, like crazy. And I hope to just, I know it's going to be one of those that are just going to be like falling apart, but you know, 5-10 years from now. Cause I'm just going to keep coming back to it because that's the, that's the thing about this business model—it doesn't change, the recipe, right? The, the formula that we're going to talk about today, it's the same formula you've been using, you know, 10 years ago in your old business, your new business, you just apply it and it works.
And so I want to jump right in and just talk about it in your book, which let's talk about your book! tell me about How To Get Paid For What You Know. How it came about, and then we can jump into the six steps, but I'd just love to hear about just your passion for writing this book and why you wrote it.
Graham: Yeah. I mean, I love what you do with like your Book Club, like you love books, books change lives, and I've heard it said that there's only two things that change people's lives: books and people, and books are people, you know? And so I've been influenced by books, and every book on my shelf behind me in my office or at the house, like there are life-changing moments in a non-fiction book. And I thought one day, like years ago, wouldn't it be cool if I could write something as well, that would influence people the way a book has influenced me? And yeah, I make a podcast and videos and courses, but not everyone's going to watch a video or buy a course, but everyone will pick up a book at least for a chapter or two, right?
And I wanted, I envisioned someone sitting on a beach or on vacation, you know, wanting something else in their life and like picking up a book from me and just cracking it open and saying, is this for me? And then getting lost in it. And it being the moment that they went, “Maybe I could do this.” And they referenced back to that book. And I just, I selfishly wanted to contribute to the world of books the way books have blessed me. And so, I had the idea for a while and I kept talking myself out of it because I was scared to write a book. I don't know anything about the publishing world. It's not going to be a moneymaker, and it never seemed like I could justify the time to do it until two years ago. I just felt like it was right when the, the lockdowns were happening, COVID was happening. I was like, I just need to do this. And who do I need to talk to, to figure out how to do this? And praise God, I have some like bestselling authors in my life that I could say, “Hey, how does this work? Should I get published? Should I do self-published?” And just got coached through the whole process of—here's how to do a proposal, get an agent, shop it around to publishers, and writing, it was the easiest part. It was really just the getting over the mental hurdle of, “Can I be an author? Am I an author? What if it's not good? What if nobody, no publisher publisher picks it up?” All those insecurities and doubts and imposter syndrome that I actually wrote about in the book, go figure. But it was a fun journey, and it's just crystallized for me like, this is what I've been teaching for years and doing for 13 years. And now I can put in someone's hand in a $20-$25 book. It's awesome.
Nancy: Yep. I love that. I love that about the book, too, is you're very real. And some of those struggles that you've had along the way, so it's very relatable and believable and your book is called How To Get Paid For What You Know: Turning Your Knowledge, Passion, and Experience Into An Online Income Stream in Your Spare Time.
And my first inclination is, is this real? Do you really believe anyone can actually do this? So, I'd love for you to just speak to that. Cause you have students, you've seen it happen and it work, but I can see people picking it up and saying, but could it work for me?
Graham: Yeah. And that's the right question: Can it work for me? Will this work for me?
That's more important than does this work for somebody in general. I believe, yes. So, the very first, like words of the introduction kind of sum it all up by, I believe that you're sitting on a goldmine. I think everybody has. And I know it's, it's a fact,
there's a, there's a knowledge economy out there. Some people call it knowledge commerce, e-courses, online learning. It's, it's a $300 billion a year industry. It's the packaging up and selling of your knowledge. It's a huge industry and there's a proven model. And what I'm telling people is you can get into that industry if you wanted to, because you know something about something and that is valuable to someone else.
Now, as we'll get into in a minute, like you may not feel like you're an expert. You may not have a degree, but that's irrelevant. What's relevant is that you have knowledge and experience in something that someone else on planet earth that you could be connected to via the internet would find invaluable and would actually pay for, believe it or not. And so what I try to do in the book is show people that it's possible, how the model works early on, and then if they want to do it, there's six steps to actually building it and launching the business.
Yeah, it takes a little bit of work, but it's a business model that actually you can chip away at in your spare time and run it in your spare time that my business takes me five hours a week to run. It's really manageable.
So, it's a beautiful model. And I just think that if you want it, this is the best way to create alternative income for most people in the modern era.
Nancy: So let's jump into the six steps—
Step #1 is find your idea.
And I think this is where people might get stuck. Like what do I have to offer?
So what are some ways we can find our idea, I could find my idea that I could turn into this online business.
Graham: So you've got to find, this is the most important step of the six, right? Because you want to figure out what is the thing that I can talk about, share, I'm excited about passionate about, have experienced with, that also intersects with what real people find valuable and, and there's a market for it. And so that takes a little bit of research. And like the first step is to kind of list out all the things you like, all the things you know, all the things you're interested in and, don't judge the list, you know, just get selfish for a minute and just write them all down.
Like my list would include like, yeah, music and yeah, business, but it would include pizza. It would include football. It include personal finance and investing. It includes Star Wars, a bunch of random things. And actually there's businesses built around every single one of those topics, by the way, there's YouTubers that I follow that, do nothing but talk about Star Wars all day.
There's the guys that get paid to go eat a slice of pizza at every pizza restaurant in the country. Like you can build a business around any of these topics, but it's just, first you write it down and then, you know, you have to then go take that and do the research that nobody wants to do, which is some people get excited like, oh, I'm going to build a business around whatever idea they have, but they haven't tested to see if there's a market for it.
And a couple of resources I mentioned in the book are one, you know, are there any YouTube channels or Facebook groups around this topic or niche? That's usually a good idea. But one that I love to share is get on Amazon and look at books.
Are there books being published about this topic? If there are, that's already a big indicator that a publisher, if it's a published book, thinks that there's money to be made in this because they've invested money in the author of the book, the distribution, and then you can look at the, the top selling books in that category or niche. And just look at the reviews and read the 2, 3, 4 star reviews, you know, ignore the fan boys and the haters, ignore the five and the one stars. But look at the 2, 3, 4 star reviews and see what people say about these books. What do they like about it? Why did they read it? What were they hoping to get out of it? You can learn a lot about people's pains or people's desires based off of these reviews and get a sense of, is there energy or passion around the subject that they bought a book because they wanted some kind of life change—that might indicate that there's a market for it.
And the final thing I'll say about it is don't run away from really crowded markets run into really crowded markets, because they're already proven markets. There's unlimited money to be made in the weight loss fitness space.
It doesn't matter how many people are in it. It's proof that there's more room because there's just an unending need for that. Relationships, business, managing your money. But then even all these hobbyist niches, like for me, recording music. I've had students say like, well, you're already the recording music guy, no one else can make a business around that. And I challenged all of them to go do that. As so many of my students went out and built a business that's a direct competitor of mine in the same space. And then they're making money just like I'm making money because it's not a fixed pie. There's unlimited income in the world if you just go out and serve people. So you've got to find that intersection with what you know, something about what you've had experience in, and what people find valuable. And then you're off to the races.
Nancy: I love that advice because all I hear, I feel like in a lot of my friends, or even in my own head, it's like, well, there's already someone doing that, but there's already plenty of resources. Why reinvent the wheel? Why I do this thing? But one thing you say in your book is yeah, but nobody's doing it with your voice and your perspective. And you talk about like the intersection of, I think there's like a cartoonist or something that you talked about, how he's like, I'm not the best artist. I'm not the best comedian. I'm not the best writer, but the three of those things together are things that I like that I can bring to the table.
Graham: Scott Adams, who wrote the Dilbert Dilbert cartoon.
Nancy: Yes! You talk about that, and that resonated with me. I was like, nobody has that unique combination to bring to the table. So I think that brings some people freedom.
I want to talk about the value circle, I think is one of my favorite things that you teach because the heart of it is giving and generosity and as believers, that is like a core thing that we want to live by. But to build a business around that is counterintuitive. I think a lot of people go into building business, just wanting to get and wanting to make money. But if you start a business with the principle of giving, it really is biblical because it says the person who's generous gets more, right? And so tell us about the value circle, which is one of my favorite concepts in your book.
Graham: Yeah. So this was, this is kind of how I ended up building my business in the dark without realizing it. And I really believe everything I did that worked out when I didn't have a clue, it was just the holy spirit leading me without me realizing it. I found out later that there is a beautiful book called The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. It's a little parable. It's an easy to read book. I read it one, one year. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is my business model. Like this sums up what I've been doing all along and fell in love with the book. I recommend it all the time. And in that book, Bob Burg talks about the old English word, the word we get cell from in English comes from an old English word called salon. That was the word. And that word in old English means to give.
It was like to give value in the marketplace. That's all it is, is so selling is just giving by definition. It's like, I give you something you want and you give me something I want, like, it's just an exchange of what we're giving each other. It's not a taking verb. It's a giving verb. So I found that like, man, when you view giving as the cornerstone of everything you do, and this is what the value circle is all about is it changes the way you interact with people. It takes the pressure off and it makes you more successful, to your point. So the circle is really simple. Imagine there's like this four steps in, in the business model, the top of the circle is you give something for free. You give your value for free. So for the business model, it's content, it might be your podcast. Nancy, like you have, it might be a YouTube channel, it might be a blog post. It could be social media content, but as maybe we'll get into later, that's not really exactly what's going to drive the business, but you're giving away your best stuff first.
I teach people for free every single week and never have to buy anything. And they could take that content and they could go build a business off of it. And I have people that do that. I have a workshop that's free and I have a guy that went and took that. He watched it 10 times, built a business and did his first product launch, and made $40,000 off of a free workshop and emailed me back and said, I feel so guilty. I haven't bought anything from you. And I'm like, that is my goal is to make you feel so guilty ‘cause you got so much value on my free stuff. But that builds the trust and credibility where people say, “Oh, I'm going to buy her stuff, because if that's what she gives away for free, I already know I'm going to get value.” So then you can buy, people will buy something from you. That's when you sell. That's the second thing in the value circle. And you have to sell valuable products. You have to give so much, that's so valuable. Then they buy it like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. It's exactly what I wanted. And then the third step is beyond that. You have to, over-deliver give them more than they bought. I like to surprise people inside of a course or a product by having like a bonus module or a downloadable or a video that they weren't expecting. That I didn't promise in the sales page that teaches them something or it gives them something, that just surprises and delights. A lot of companies do this, right? They include little goodies in the box when you get it at the door. And it was just all a little something extra. So you over-deliver, and so you're continuing to create this giving culture.
And then the fourth part of the value circle is that you actually get to receive. It's the only part of it where you actually receive. And that's, you're receiving income from the sale. You're receiving testimonials from the people that are so excited and getting success out of your products. And you receive the satisfaction of knowing that you've helped people. And then, all the income, the testimonials in that motivation goes back to the top of the circle, which gives you that energy to go start serving people for free again.
And it becomes this beautiful flywheel that spins and spins and spins, but it starts with you going out and giving first, not asking for the sale first. And then you're going to deliver value. You have to give value in this crowded marketplace especially, you've got to let people test drive your materials.
So give them the goods first and then they'll see how amazing you are. And they're gonna want to do business with you.
Nancy: Yeah, that's the perfect segue into step two. And you mentioned that, which is offering stuff for free through content, content marketing, growing your audience is step number two, to grow your audience. And you recommend doing that through more evergreen type content, so like podcasts, blog, YouTube. Why not social media? This is one of my favorite things about you and kind of your stance. You, you encourage people like be a little controversial, take a stand for some things. And this is one of the things that you're pretty passionate about in how to grow your audience. Not that social media is bad or you can't do social media, but why is it that you lean so much more on YouTube blog, posts, podcasts—those evergreen type content pieces.
Graham: Yeah, this is, this is fun to talk about. So one, because they work better than social media. So social media is like the tool that gets all the attention because it's sexy. And it's what, especially the younger generations now, they think that's what the internet is. But social media is like this little distraction over here where the internet really is built on search. So what do we do every day when we need something or want to learn something or need to find a store like we don't go on social media as often as we just go to Google and we just start typing into Google: My toilet's broken. How do I fix my toilet? We're not going to Instagram or TikTok to figure out how to fix your toilet. We're going to YouTube to watch a video or Google. And so the idea is, if you just want to be efficient in your business, you need to get discovered. You need leads. You need people to know you exist.
And so that's important for any business and you can either run ads to do that. So you're paying for that. Or you can just show up where everyone's searching for stuff. So I encourage people to create content that shows up in a search result. That's all I'm talking about. So blog posts show up in a Google search, YouTube videos show up in a YouTube search and all YouTube is, is a search engine. It's not a social media platform. It is the world's most powerful search engine. And it's owned by alphabet, which owns Google. It's all the same. You can do a YouTube video and a show up in a Google search. So you show up in two places at once. That's the way you get discovered. That's how people are building businesses is by showing up where people are looking for help on a certain topic and having a helpful piece of content right there, because then you're perfectly like popping your head into the someone's interaction with the internet when they need you the most. And that's the other part problem with social media is if you even running an ad on social media or trying to post on social media, people go to social to be entertained, to be distracted. They're not there necessarily to buy or necessarily to even learn something—it's just like a break in their day.
Whereas if they Google something or look up something on YouTube, they're more actually actively looking for something, more likely. So that's one reason, you're more likely to get discovered. Two, if you do a video or a blog post, it can show up for years down the road with that same search result. I have a video that I shot in 2017 that's bringing me most of my leads every day today on the Recording Revolution.
Because when you type in the subject, it comes up. You can't say that for a TikToK video or Instagram reel or anything. Cause they disappear in the feed and unless they go viral, they're gone. So you put all this beautiful effort into a video that was great until it's gone. Or you could put it into a video that shows up every day and serves you leads every day.
So it's a better use of your time. And then it's the right type of people. And so I want to build a business that doesn't require me to like do a song and dance every day for it and like just give it what it needs all the time. I want to build a business that can functionally run on its own with just a little bit of input from me, and that's why creating a YouTube video or blog posts or podcast based business is going to help you in the long run versus doing all the activity on social and wondering, why am I A, not growing on social and B, why is it not leading to business revenue? Because nobody told you that that's not what drives business. That's maybe a part of interacting with your audience. Maybe it's a way to test ideas and content or stay top of mind, but that's never been intended to draw and drive business. And very few people get their business from social. Some people do, but for the model that I teach, it's just a giant waste of your time and you should only do it if you want to do it. But I tell people that you could literally not do it and still make money. So, it's your choice.
Nancy: Yeah, it's so interesting. Cause you know, step one, find your idea. Step two, grow your audience immediately. My mind goes to how many followers do I have? What is my audience? That's not what you're talking about with your audience. You're talking about putting valuable content out on searchable websites and building your email list.
Like it's a totally different shift in thinking about how to serve your audience. Then I feel like the way most of us think, you know, most of us think audience equals followers and that's not exactly true. And I know a lot of people who, who listened to this podcast were kind of getting tired of social media in some ways. It is fun.
I still do it some, if there are aspects of it that are fun and enjoyable, but in a lot of ways, it's just exhausting and it's kind of turned into something that—it used to be very different than what it is now. I'll put it that way. So I think there's just freedom. And like for me, it's like I've taken a big step back from my social media just because it's become so exhausting while trying to raise four small children and maintain this podcast and you know, I just need to like set some boundaries. And so I try to get it about once a week now, but this is inspiring and helpful and kind of a breath of fresh air, I think, because it just gives me permission to not if I don't want to, if I don't need to today, it's not the determining factor.
And I love that you, you kind of take strong stands. I mean, you took a whole year off social media and you kind of never got back on. Right? Or did you?
Graham: Yeah, so I took a year off cause I was just so done with it. And in that time of not being on it at all. Deleted all the apps. My business grew by 5x that year.
Nancy: 5x??
Graham: 5x that year. Not on social media at all. And then I've only come back on Instagram a little bit. And that was because of the book was coming out and I wanted it to be able to share, my publisher wanted me to share, but here's the thing, right? This is why I'm very passionate about like giving people the truth and helping people take stock of the facts so they can make a decision. Most people are just copying what they see people doing, right? They've never stopped to do the research to find out like what drives business, right? Social media does not drive business. All the studies, all the data show that purchasing decisions largely come from email marketing, not social media marketing.
Yes, there are some purchases that happen on social media, but the stats are overwhelming that people buy through an email newsletter or email message and click on that and buy something than they do on social. And also lead generation is better through a discoverable platform like a YouTube video, a blog post than on social media because followers are these bystanders. They're just watching you. They're just looking at you. They're not really action takers, but people who were searching for something found your piece of content that's related to what they're searching for. And you offer them something valuable to get deeper onto your email list. Those people are more likely to buy anyway.
So all I'm trying to do is show people here are the facts, but if you're just Biddle at you're building your business based off of what you see other people doing, you're, you're missing an opportunity. A: You don't know if that's working for them. We see people even with large followings and not all of them are making money, and we don't know if it's working. B: A lot of them are playing a different game. They're trying to build a massive following because the game they're trying to play is brand deals or sponsored posts, where they get paid for the number of followers they have and that, but they’re still a contractor. They’re beholden to a brand. I'm talking about being a business owner.
And so the facts are like, you will make more money if you build an email list through your content. And if people saw the numbers and saw the facts, they might think twice about why am I spending so much effort to your point being exhausted on social if I don't like it? Now I have a friend in my mastermind who, he understands the business model, he uses it, but he also loves social media. He loves making reels. Like he just loves it. That's totally different. But he understands that it doesn't drive much business for what he's trying to do on the education platform he’s building. For him, it's just fun. And it's like a place for people to interact with him, but I want people to know the facts so they can have the freedom to decide to do it or not.
But just know that what you're doing on social probably isn't going to drive your business no matter how hard you do it, no matter how good your reels are. It's not the thing that's going to make it work.
Nancy: Yeah. I think there's definitely people who can kind of figure it out, have fun with it. If you like it, go for it. I have friends who are doing amazing jobs and making money on social media. But what we're talking about is just a different approach. Like, I feel like a longterm business model that you don't have to keep up with every single day, but you kind of can set it and not forget it because you still need to do content marketing, but it's, it's way less maintenance I think. And just, I feel like for me, I can be a little bit more removed and mentally healthy because sometimes I can get really sucked into the addiction aspect of social media. So it's just freeing to know that that's not make or break.
Okay, let's get through these last steps because there's so much to talk about with you.
So, Step 1: find your idea. Step 2: Grow your audience, Step 3: Build your website.
So you talk a lot about that, about a lead magnet and kind of the role that that plays in your website and the layout of your website. Could you just briefly go over the importance of having a website and what's the most important way to set it up?
Graham: Yeah. So the simple thing here is to understand, you know, A: What is the point of your website? And everyone lands differently here. I believe that the point of your website is to capture an email address because if you don't, then they're never coming back, you know? If you don't capture their email address, you're hoping that they're going to navigate back to your website and you'd be lucky if they do, they might, but they probably won't because the Internet's very full and their lives are very full.
So, if you're lucky enough for someone to land on your website, you need to quickly at the top of your website, have a big headline that draws them in and gets them interested, like promises them something, some kind of benefit that's about them. And so most people's websites are a giant business card. They're all about the business owner, how great they are, their life story, you should follow them on Instagram and TikTok and all these things. And they're, they're never about the visitor. They should be about the visitor, the person that stumbled on the website. You’ve got to draw them in quickly with a benefit-driven headline that's like, “Hey, I want to give you something or teach you something or here's how to achieve this result.” And that will get their attention. And you deliver that through a free piece of content that they have to sign up for your email list in order to get, it could be a checklist or a cheat sheet. It could be a video, could be an ebook, whatever it is, but they have to give you their email address in exchange for it. And then, of course they can unsubscribe if they want, but this is how you build that list we were talking about earlier. That's where you're going to sell to eventually, that's where you're going to target, because these are people who are very interested. They've already virtually raised their hands and said, I need help in this area. And you're more likely to sell.
So, my websites are very simple. They focus on helping the person achieve a result, it's trying to encourage them to download this thing that's going to help them in an exchange for their email address, and there might be an about page, but even my about page, isn't about me. It's about them, about what they're looking for, the pain points they're having. It's a qualification thing about like, have you struggled with this? Are you looking for this? So they're like, yes, yes, this is me. This is me. Then you're in the right place. Here's where I teach you how to do this.
Oh, by the way, here, my name is Graham. I have a family. Here's what I'm all about. Nobody cares about you and me, Nancy. They care about their own pain. They care about their own desires. So the more we can orient our copy on our sales pages and our websites, even our Instagram bios to be focused on them and not about us and our accolades, the more attractive we will be because that's just the way human nature works. So your website doesn't need to have a lot, but it needs to focus on capturing their email address and showing them that you can help them.
Nancy: Why don't you think we should have like a products page or like a list of your courses or offerings or do you?
Graham: I do. There's a place for that. Yeah, and what I'm teaching the book is assuming they don't have a product yet, and you don't need a products page because you're going to usually sell behind the scenes in your email marketing. But I do have a products page for the few products that are always available. And one of them is a community, so that's actually a waiting list. If you go there right now, unless I opened the doors, but I do have some, but a lot of products that I want to sell behind the scenes. Because again, they convert better when you're opening and closing them at a certain time or just selling them to your email list privately. I want to keep for the most part, my public facing persona to be free and to get them on the email list to kind of go deeper with me.
Nancy: Yeah. Okay. So step three is build your website website.
Step #4: Craft your product.
You recommend a video course first. Why is that? And how do we create an irresistible one?
Graham: Yeah. So video online courses, they're like the easiest way to create lifestyle freedom and passive income because you can build it once, sell it digitally automatically through email marketing and some online tools, and they don't require anything of you really after that. And so I like the idea of building a course that teaches somebody something, gets them a result, gets them some transformation. And once they buy it, it's self-paced. They can take it, run with it. And I don't have to service them as a client.
So then I could sell it to a million people a day if the algorithm blessed me with that, if those search results blessed me with that, and it doesn't affect my workload. And that's how you can create scalable income as your audience grows, as people joining your email list grows, they can all still be offered the same course and buy it at the same time.
And so your income can grow while your workload stays the same, as opposed to let's say a membership site or a community or a group coaching program that has a live aspect. Those are all great products to have down the road, maybe. But I like everyone to have at least one core product that they've launched, like a course that can sell on autopilot.
Nancy: So after we've crafted our product, step five is to launch that product, launch your offer, and you go through how to launch it. Well, how to write an incredible sales page in the book, which I think is worth the cost of the book alone is just that sales page recipe that you have. What is the most important thing you would say about launching that new product well?
Graham: Yeah, so when it comes to launching and we didn't talk about it on the crafting the product, I think they go together in that, if you do this in order, you're going to be creating content like a podcast or YouTube videos regularly, or blog posts. You're going to start to engage with people with your free content. You're gonna start to learn. You're basically doing research while you create free content, learning what people really want help with.
If I'm a fitness instructor, I could talk about nutrition. I could talk about, you know, intermittent fasting. I could talk about trends. I could talk about workout routines, but I could probably learn over the course of a few months, which one of my videos or podcast episodes really became really popular.
What questions that people keep coming up with or where are they really getting stuck? And that might tell me what I should make my course on because it's what really people really want. So that way you don't build a product nobody wants, you've been doing the research all along and then launching it as an extension of that. You're just going back to real interactions with your students, using their language, using their their confessed to pain points or desires as part your sales copy, to speak to real people about their real problems about it. So you don't have to think like a marketer where you have all this marketing mumbo-jumbo that comes out. You can use real language, but just help them know that this, if you struggle with this or you want this specific transformation, this is for you and here's what's going to help you do it.
And so maybe one simple framework would be like real quick sales copy would be like: if you could answer these questions for yourself, then you can turn into sales copy. What is the promise of transformation? If they go through this course, who does it help?
Specifically women, men, old, young people that do this, who does it help? And what is, what transformation does it bring them if they were to apply everything? So in one sentence, what, who is helping what's the transformation this course would bring, for example, my course Automatic Income Academy will help—actually, it's not a very good hook because it could help anybody. It can help people create an automated, passive income style business from the ground up, like that's what it’s gonna help you do. And then, then from there bullet out: What are the five biggest challenges people have with this?
Okay. Well, people don't know what, how to find out what their idea is. People are afraid to make content or they think that they can never be discovered. Just what are the five biggest challenges that you think people have?
And then what is like something controversial that you believe about what you teach, that other people don't, that people would disagree with you on something that's spicy, that's controversial.
And you take all that stuff. You could create a very simple, compelling sales page. You're like,
Hey, do you struggle with this? And do you want this result? Then you should check out. My course, have you struggled with this [challenges, challenges, challenges]? Yeah. Aha. Then check out my course, [whatever, whatever, whatever], it's going to help you do [these, these, these, these things]. Here's a preview of the modules. Here's what I believe: most people teach you this, it's bogus. You need this.
And people go, oh, that's interesting. And you have the foundations of a good offer to launch. And at the end of the day, all you're doing is announcing your product, qualifying people along the way, getting them excited about it. Is this for me, is this for me? What is it gonna help me achieve?
And then in the book, we go into depth about like emails and what you should write, and timing and opening and closing and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, if you know that it's what people want and you're using their language to speak to the pain point they have, or the desire they have, it’ll sell.
Nancy: I love how you just kind of snuck in the word controversial, like no big deal. Just, you know, be sure to be sure to make it controversial though. And I'm like, that makes me kind of sweaty, Graham. Like, I don't know if I'm making something like intentionally controversial, but well, I'll let you answer because I'm going through my mind. Like, why do we need to make this controversial?
You speak to that and why did you sneak that word?
Graham: This isn't the fun part. This is the fun part, man. Life's too short to not be controversial. No. Why do you want to be controversial? It's not just for controversy’s sake. It's not because you want to be a punk. It's for two reasons.
1. If you're not controversial, you will sound like everybody else. And then you will disappear into the background. It's hard to build a business when you just sound like everybody else disappeared in the background, which is interestingly enough, what everybody does. They try to sound like everybody else because they're so afraid. I don't know what to write on my website. So they copy. They literally copy their competitors, websites and use the same language. And they're literally like nailing their own coffin, like the nails in their coffin, because they're gonna literally sound like everybody else and disappear. So that's mistake. Number one, you don't want to sound like everybody else. You want to be different.
There's a music producer I'm friends with in the music space and he's a Grammy award winning mixer. But at the end of the day, he has this phrase that I always loved. When it came to music, he was like:
It's better to sound new than to sound good.
And he would talk about that with pop music. And he's like, it doesn't matter how good it sounds on a technical level. Make it sound interesting and new because that's what people want. They want something that's different. That's what they pay attention to is different. So be different.
2. People will pay attention. They'll stop. If you say something controversial, like, you know, everybody says that intermittent fasting really helps you rev up your metabolism and lose weight, but it actually makes you fat. Cause that was a trend forever, that intermittent fasting. If people were like, wait, what? What are you talking about? Like, you're crazy. I've pretty much, it's pretty much guaranteed that it works. But it will get me to pay attention. I want to know why do you say that? Why do you say what you say? I'm curious. And then what that leads is into opportunity in your marketing and sales copy is to educate and the best sales experiences and educational one, whether they buy from you or not, they learn something and they go, huh? That was really interesting. Then it doesn't feel like a pitch.
It feels like a, Hey, this is what I've discovered. And that's language I'll use. I struggled with X. Everyone told me to do this. That didn't work. Then I discovered this. And that little story arc is like irresistible, but you have to say something counterintuitive, something controversial so that they pay attention. And then they want to know, they want to close that loop of like, well, what is the thing? Like, why do you do that weird thing? I want to know? And that's so powerful and it will never, it'll never go away because people are drawn to newness. And if you don't play that game, you will sound like everybody else and fade into the background. You'll be vanilla and people don't want vanilla. They want some spicy.
Nancy: I love that: life is too short to not be controversial. Just you know, that's where the fun’s at. So I love that. I love how you’re controversial, this is kind of a side note, but about Facebook Ads, I feel like that's one of the things you're kind of controversial about. Not that you're against them or say never do them, but you kind of don't do them and you don't really think they're great. And they're all, you know, everybody's like, “Hey, do Facebook Ads. It's like the only way to run an online business.” And here's Graham over here saying, Nope. Why is that?
Graham: Oh man, because they're, I think they're a giant waste of time.
Nancy: I love that. I'm really tired of them. I feel like most people are really tired of them, but I love coming from your perspective. There's just a giant waste of time.
Graham: Every year. I'm only being proven more and more. Right? I have so many friends are, they're like, they're embarrassed to mention that they around me that they run Facebook Ads because they know my stance.
But, funnily enough, people will come to me secretly and be like, Graham, I'm actually thinking I need to ditch the Facebook Ad strategy and like do what you're doing. Like create YouTube content, create organic content. So I have a lot of thoughts on Facebook Ads, but it's just, it's again, based in facts, like what works and what doesn't. And I also don't like my business to be built on someone else's platform where I can't control it.
So, Ads on Facebook or any platform, as we've seen with privacy changes with iOS last year, like they're becoming less and less effective and then they're becoming more expensive and then they can turn the faucet on or off or they can change the rules.
I would much rather build a business around organic content that shows up in a search engine, and granted, search engine rules, those can change too, which is why I try to get people on my email list as soon as possible because I don't trust anybody. I don't even trust YouTube long-term, but much better. I mean, in the book I talk about content marketing versus Ads.
There's a lot of reasons why, but again, one is people don't want to buy from an ad. They just don't. They want to buy from a person. And so I would rather them find me in a search engine, get some of my content for free, learn to know, like, and trust me. And then they're more likely to join my list and buy something as opposed to me interrupting their day on Facebook with an Ad and then have a large gap to cross of like how to convince them who I am, why they should pay attention, don't click away and build a relationship quickly. It's harder to do that. It's not impossible, but it's just, it's a game that you have to play all the time. And again, I want to set up a game for me to win it. And win it with as few hours in the office as possible, so I have the most flexibility and peace as possible, but we could talk about ads all day long just for facts, ‘cause some people don't know.
I've been able to build $2 million a year businesses without running a single Ad. So it's possible. And I I've, I found I'd have to say that because I'm having people ask me like, well how much do you run Ads? And when I tell them I don't, they're like so confused, like, wait, that's an option? Oh yeah. It's the best option.
Nancy: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And thank you for sharing those numbers because it's real, it's the real deal. And a lot of people think it's not possible that you can't scale without Facebook Ads, that you have to run Facebook ads and you know, and it's just not true.
Okay. Let's talk about the final step. Step six. So after you've created the offer, step five is launch the offer. Step six is automate email sequencing. What would happen if you skip this step? Why is this step so important? Can you just kind of walk us through, what does that mean to automate email sequencing?
Graham: Yeah. So the first five steps you've been building a system, right? And it's all the hard work you've done and you could stop it step five and you will have done it. You will have made money online and you will have accomplished goal one, which is to create an income, but you will have you be like three feet short of the goal, right? That's the whole story because the goal is the second thing you really want, which is a lifestyle. So plenty of people can teach you how to make money and they can how to make money online. There's a lot of ways to make money in the world if you're opportunistic and optimistic as a human being, but that's not what people ultimately want because money is a means to an end.
What we ultimately want is a life well-lived and we want freedom and flexibility to enjoy that money with the people we love, to do the things that we want to do. And so we're looking at time. So those are the two currencies. Steps one through five create currency one, which is money. Step six creates currency two, which is time.
And that's more valuable than money arguably, right? Cause it's finite, where money is infinite. You can always create more money. So step six is taking all the things you've done in the first five steps and then putting into an automated system that can run for you and without you.
So for example, next month, after this taping, like we're taking a sabbatical, we're taking the month off for the month of July. And so we'll be out of the country for three of those weeks. I won't be working for the whole month and the only reason why this works is because my business does the work for me, whether I'm in the office or not. And so the only part of the business that requires me, for the most part, I can batch ahead of time, some content and my communities can run without me for a time. And the credit cards are being charged. People are hearing about my products and buying. The whole thing is happening organically as if they're experiencing me for the first time. And I'm virtually there for them all the time, but I don't have to be in the office.
And that that's like next level. That's where, even if my business only did $2-3,000 a month, but it was largely passive, in addition to anything else you're doing—how amazing is that? I mean, I have service-based business owners who have clients and they do the service, but they're like, I need a little bit more flexibility. Could I add a passive income element to what I'm doing?
Photographers who also want to sell some courses or graphic designers who want to have a community that's kind of automated and that can mean I don't have to take as many clients or I can take a month off if I want to. I don't have to work with those types of clients or I can raise my rates. I have flexibility because I have half of my income coming automatic over here.
So to me, that's the fun part is the automated side of it. And that's what's given Shay and I and the girls flexibility and freedom. It's not how much money I've made. It's the way I make the money. And that's the most fun part of the whole process.
Nancy: Yep. So good. Well, thank you for just sharing all of that.
I think really these six steps are simple. They're not easy to walk through and do, but they're simple if you just do it and follow the steps and I see them as kind of like a key to unlock something that everybody has, like you said, starting out this episode, you're sitting on a goldmine. If you'll just take these six steps and try it.
And one of the things you talk about is how fear is a liar and fear can hold you back. And it's better to just start something than to be afraid. So what encouragement do you have for anybody who might want to try this, but is kind of afraid to and feels inadequate?
Graham: Yeah, I mean, I would say welcome to the club. That's how I feel almost every day, still. And I don't know if that feeling goes away. The imposter syndrome, insecurities fears. So maybe the encouragement is don't wait for the fear to ever go away. In the last chapter, I quoted one of my favorite books by John Acuff called Start, which is a really great little read. And he talks about fear being a liar. And he says that, he has this great quote where fear is schizophrenia. It kind of tells you two sides of the same coin in one breath. Fear will tell you in your mind, you can't do this, this isn't going to work for you. And then at the exact same time, your fear will tell you if you're going to do it, you have to do it now and get it all done now, it has to be perfect now. And both of those are crushing and both of those are a lie.
A: anybody can do this, anybody; and
B: it will take time.
So it's not going to happen right away. And that's one reason why maybe my model isn't as attractive as like, “Hey, just follow these steps, run these ads, put money into the system. You can make money really, really quickly.”
I get it. I wish I had a system that was a little faster, but this is more sustainable. And you know, anything worth building, it takes time. If you want to build a house, like we built a house, it was, it seemed really slow. All the stuff I had to learn about what they're doing, why can't we just get this darn house up? Like, well, do you want to blow off or blow over when a hurricane comes? No, you don't. So, you know, if you want it to last and if you want it to be what you need it to be, it takes time, but you can chip away at this thing.
So I would just say who is anybody to do anything? Anybody that you admire in the space that you're in, that you think is crushing it? They're just a human, like you. They're a scaredy cat, like you. They're not any more special or smarter than you, or have any more opportunities that you don't have.
So you deserve to do it. But it might take awhile, so don't be hard on yourself. Be patient put in the work. And that's why I feel like with the book, I try to get the balance of inspirational and motivational. Like you can do this, but also to your point, a book that you can come back to and reference for years and years and years, because the model is there. It's like your textbook. It's your guide book. You need both. You need that little kick in the pants, but you also need the method so that you can actually follow the steps in order.
Nancy: Yep. All right. We're going to end with three kind of fun questions. One, what is a book that you're loving?
Graham: Oh, I just finished one last night. Invitation To Solitude And Silence by Ruth Haley Barton, I think is her name—fantastic. All of us sitting quietly, listening to God, it was really good.
Nancy: I love that. I want to read that, and also I feel like my life will not allow that right now. It's unfortunate, but I'm sure she talks about making space for that. So that's good. I love that topic.
Okay. What's one thing you're loving? It can be a product. It can be maybe anything in your life that you'd recommend. Fill in the blank.
Graham: I'm wearing these amazing joggers from Vuori, the Sunday performance joggers. These pants are so comfortable.
Nancy: How do you spell that?
Graham: V U O R I. They’re a clothing brand, guys and girls, super, super comfy. I'm a big fan right now.
Nancy: I might have to just mark that one down for Father's Day for Will. That's good.
Okay. This is kind of a heavy question. How do you maintain a healthy soul and a fulfilling life?
Graham: Oh man, goals. So, I'm in process. I don't think I have a perfectly healthy soul or perfectly fulfilling life because I'm, unfortunately, my personality is like always seeing like what could be better. So, I'm longing for that. But the things, the practices that Shay and I try to put into place that help are real simple, right? Like get to church, just please get to church no matter what. Like I don't do life outside of community. So there's that.
For me, it's getting back into the habit of—this last year has been really good—waking up super early and spending, spending an hour with the Lord. And you know what, I used to be really hard on myself on the way I would spend time in the word, like, I'll be reading something. I'm not connecting with it, not connecting with it. And somebody said something to me, a mentor a couple of months ago of like, dude, the Holy Spirit will lead you where you're interested in, where you feel excitement. So like, if you're not feeling excitement about a passage, move on, bro, let the Spirit lead you and then land on a verse or a word or a theme that your hearts just like the Spirit’s quickening in your heart. And like feel a freedom to like just dive in there. And for whatever reason, that gave me a lot of peace to spend more time where the Lord's may be directing me and man that's been so fruitful in the mornings.
And then I have really hard, strict boundaries around my time and my work. It's been harder with the book launch. There've been a lot more media and press, but I'm pretty much a stickler for when I'm in the office and when I'm not. And to me, I need that hard separation because I love my work and I could work all the time. Cause there's so many things to do. And I know that about myself. So hard boundaries in my calendar helped me to actually stay outside of the office mentally and physically as best I can and that's, that's clutch.
Nancy: That's awesome. Where can my listeners find you?
Graham: So the only social media I'm on right is, is Instagram at the Graham Cochrane. If you want to kind of stay up to date there, but podcasts, the Graham Cochrane show every week on your favorite podcast app or on the YouTube channel there's content there every week. And then if you want to like watch a video training to talk a little bit about some of the stuff that's in the book, but dive a little deeper. I have a free workshop on passive income that kind of teaches what we just walked through in depth. And it's free. Just go to grahamcochrane.com/gift. You can check it out there.
Nancy: Perfect. Well, Graham, thank you, just from the bottom of my heart, for being here today for taking the time to communicate just the wealth of knowledge and wisdom that you have to offer and that you have written in the pages of your book and in your courses and throughout the content that you give.
I have always been so challenged by you and your heart for generosity and the way that you run your business and the way you and Shay prioritize faith and family and work hard. And so I just wanted to say on my podcast, thank you so much for just doing what you're doing. It's blessed me and my family, and we are grateful to call you guys friends. So grateful for you being here today.
Graham: Thank you. The feeling's mutual. Thanks for having me.
I hope you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did.
I'm definitely going to be adding Graham’s book, How To Get Paid For What You Know, to my Amazon store, head to the Work & Play Cornerstore and you can find his book, and then you can find his favorite joggers he mentioned in the show notes.
Don't forget that Graham's beautiful wife Shay was on my podcast just recently in episodes 158 and 159, all about raising their daughters. And if you go back and listen, you'll quickly realize why Will and I love this couple so much. What a gift their friendship is, I'm so grateful.
I'm going to close with words from Graham Cochrane's podcast intro, which is a little unconventional, but he always opens his podcast and says,
“I'm here to help you work less and live and give more.”
I just wanted to leave you with that because that is the purpose of our work is to live and give more. And I hope you keep that in the forefront of your mind today.
Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time.
