8 stories of creators that learned how to sell and → How it completely transformed their lives
What’s funny is I “accidentally” found my niche
You see..
When I first launched the program in July 2023 (which now has 384 members)
I thought my ICP was 40+ year old small biz owners?
→ They were easy to sell into it
→ They always need more leads
→ They had past clients case studies?
→ They were selling high ticket products?
→ They had been in business for 10+ years
→ They usually had? the budget and the time?
They pretty much ticked all the boxes.
The issue I ran into though...
That teaching someone with very little social media and digital networking experience on how to generate leads on LinkedIn?
Was like teaching my 87 year old grandpa how to use Zoom on his IPAD during Covid so he could get on the weekly family calls lol.
It was damn hard...
And I even worked at Zoom at the time!??
And look there are expections of people who grad the bull by the horns
Like Dr. John Cummins (who you should 100% go and follow)
Who embraced the content creation process and loved every minute of it. Took him a while to get there but now he's writing bangers and generating leads in the DM's :)
But it wasn’t until on day at the end of September 2023 that Ryan Musselman randomly DM’d me
Asking if I could jump on a call to chat about me presenting to his low priced community on AI.
We jumped on the Zoom call and chatted for over an hour
We instantly hit it off.
(Side note — Ryan and we are great friends now. He is such an awesome human and I can’t wait till we finally get coffee together someday)
About halfway through the call we got into chatting about sales — and the chat ended up with me giving Ryan some sales coaching.
At the end of the chat he wanted to jump in our program and I scheduled another chat for the following week where I could give him some 1:1 sales coaching.?
Literally only 3-4 days after Ryan DM’d me saying that from my advice on that call, he already closed a $3k deal ???
(This made my whole next week! I was soo happy for him)
Then during the next chat I walked him through
— How he could construct his program to get out of trading his time for money
— How he should reach out and chat to people to sell them into his program?
— How to DM without feeling “salesy” and actually enjoy the process
And what happened next even shocked me
(Take a look at the screenshot of his numbers below)
I know Justin Welsh posted last week how he helped Ryan hit a 6 figure run rate
Think of me as the guy that can take you to a 7 figure run rate ??.
It was after these 2 chats and Ryan closing a $3k deal 3-4 days after we chatted
That I knew Creators were my niche...
And since then I’ve worked with 400+ creators to help explode their sales.
It’s why we are pivoting our brand again (the launch coming at you soon) to work to niche down even harder on Creators
To help them on the 3 main solutions they need → to hit 7 figures (every creators dream)
— How to sell without feeling salesy with a process that’s easy to implement and can scale
— How to setup a program and service delivery system that doesn’t trade time for money and can scale past 7 figures?
— How to build digital funnels to move people through the sales cycle when you sleep, booking meeting on autopilot?
Because once you solve these
You can have the forever business everyone dreams about
Earning 7 figures and living a life of freedom not tied down by client work.
So I promise that after reading the 8 stories below — you’ll have the drive and the motivation to DM like a crazy person and change you life forever
Like every single one of the creators below.
And when your ready to take your creator business to the next level — DM me "Creator System" and let's chat
Because I can probably help ??
—
Before we get into the stories I want to run up through how I define what a “Creator Business” is
A Creator Business to me, is a business that’s primary trust building and lead generation system is driven through the creators personal brand.
So you could be either an
→ Accountant
→ SaaS founder?
→ Agency owner
→ Sell a high ticket course
→ Run a lead gen business
→ Provide coaching services
→ Sell personal branding services
→ Have a mortgage broking business
It literally doesn’t matter
(It doesn’t even really matter what you sell too tbh)
What matters is that you want the primary attention and lead generation of the business to be driven by one persons or multiple peoples personal brands.?
I wanted to clear that up before the stories
Because I don’t want anyone thinking “Wait what? Some of these people are not creators”
In my eyes they all are based on my qualification criteria.
__
Please see the list of Creators below so you can easily navigate
→ Creator 1 - Jeremy Farrugia
→ Creator 2 - Prakriti Sharma
→ Creator 3 - Pranjal Patel ?? ??
→ Creator 4 - Beatrice Vladut
→ Creator 5 - Gian Seehra
→ Creator 6 - Sean McHugh
→ Creator 7 - Bjion Henry
→ Creator 8 - Ryan Musselman
Creator 1 - Jeremy Farrugia
How Jeremy went from a video agency owner with a dried up lead source to exploding his LinkedIn to 900,000+ impressions and closing multiple five figure deals using content and sell by chat.
Goals
Obstacles
Results
How it went down...
I remember the first time I chatted to Jeremy over the phone (this was back when I used to take calls) and we instantly hit it off.
He was another sales dude from Sydney, and a previous top performer at his company like myself.
This was one of those calls where we got along like a house on fire (which is rare in sales)
We had already chatted via WhatsApp but we went through some of his main struggles
— He’d had to turn off his email lead gen because of some grey areas in Australia
— He was great at sales and converting customers but didn’t know how to kinda do it on LinkedIn?
— He had tons of energy and just needed to be be given direction
He was really just trying to find how he could scale his video agency as he had the team and the co founder who could deliver — he just needed meetings.?
We chatted for a while and I remember walking back and forth on my balcony while we were chatting thinking “this dude is going to kill it if he joins”
And after our chat Jeremy decided to take the leap and jump in.
He then put in the reps (which is what you need to do to win in our program)
He joined all the weekly calls — even from his car sometimes while parked
He did the Conversations module twice and immediately started implementing?
He asked me tons of questions along the way
And he crushed it.
I remember getting his texts along the way
First telling me he booked some meetings
→ Then that he closed his first 5 figure deal
→ Then that that same deals nearly tripled to an ongoing retainer
→ Then that his post went viral with over 3,000 likes which was actually a repost that previously got only 20 likes but he made changes based on one of our coaches advice
Jeremy was so stoked he took me out next week for coffee and while chatting he kept say “I honestly just can’t believe it”?
He let me know that truthfully when coming in he thought he already knew what to do based on his previous sales experience — but he admitted he was dead wrong.
Now Jeremy has a consistent lead generation system in his business that drove so much work they couldn’t take on anymore for 3 weeks and now he’s hiring like crazy to scale.
Creator 2 - Prakriti Sharma
How Prakriti went from nearly broke and ZERO clients on LinkedIn (even though she got over 200 likes per post) to closing 4 clients in 2 months and hitting her goal of $5k per month working with international clients
Goals
Obstacles
Results
How it went down...
When Prakriti and I first started chatting she was running out of savings fast.
She’d already built a big following in another social platform and recently came to LinkedIn — and she knew that it was a better place to get clients (people earn on average 3x on LinkedIn compared to other social platforms)?
But the mistake she was making was following the advice of her feed to get clients
— She was creating epic content that got 200+ likes per post
— She optimised her profile and put a calendar link in it
— She spent all day engaging on other creators
And she waited to the I bounds to come
But all she got were unqualified people booking in time with her that only wanted free advice or didn’t have the budget.
She was getting really worried as she still didn’t have a client.
I remember taking a look at her profile when we first started DMing and seeing her content — and I thought straight away “She has a magnetic brand. All we need to do is plug in DMs and a sales process to get this going”
It took a while to get her over the line
She was tossing up between my program?
And another program of a much bigger creator?
But luckily I was able to get her over the line — otherwise it would have been a very different story
(Not because the other creators program isn’t good but because it wasn’t what she needs at the time. You don’t solve sales problems with more content lol)
And when she joined her first group call she asked me plain and simple “How do I reach out and get my first client?”
So on the call I front of the 15 other people I created her a step by step process including
— Who she should target and how to find them
— What to say in the first reach out message
— What she should offer first as value to build trust?
— How she should get them in a call and sell to them
This whole thing was recorded so she went back and reviewed it multiple times as she implemented.
Then 2 weeks later I got a DM
“Hey Matt, wanted to let you know I closed my first Ghostwriting client on Linkedin!”
Then another week passed
“I got my second client!”
Another two weeks
“My third client!”
Another week
“My fourth client! And I actually had to to DMing because I don’t have anymore capacity”
Prakriti went from nearly running out of savings to now having multiple international clients paying her 4 figures each per month.
And the best thing?
She now has a process that no matter what she can get more clients through a system and a structure that she has in her business.?
The next step in us working together is me helping her make her delivery more scalable so she can take in more clients — and get her to that $10k per month mark and beyond.
Creator 3 - Pranjal Patel ?? ??
How I took Pranjal from his bank account nearly drying up to now booking 4-7 qualified meetings per week and selling $9k in the past 6 days doing comfortably over $10k per month in 2 months
Goals
Obstacles
Results
How it went down...
I remember first going back and forth in the DMs with Pranjal in January of this year.
His business was building landing pages and optimising their CTR for DTC EComm brands — so he had his niche pretty dialed.
When chatting was always so quick to ask questions and wanted to know everything (which I’ve found is the sign of a winner)
He let me know that he’d closed a big deal last year on LinkedIn but then hadn’t closed on in 4 months.
He knew LinkedIn was the place to get clients but he just couldn’t crack it.
— His content wasn’t where he needed it to be
— He didn’t have a DM system setup (and tbh didn’t even know how to start chats)
— He had so much energy and wanted to win but didn’t know how to execute
And it was hard for him
Because he knew doing this business thing wasn’t what his parents had in mind for him
But deep down he wanted to make it work → and I could sense it in him.
He let me know he was down to his last savings and it would be really hard for him to afford the program.
So I cut him a deal.
“I’ll give you this desk if you promise me to come to all the calls, implement everything I tell you and ask me for feedback constantly. You have to do this if I am going to give you this deal”
He agreed. So we started working together
And true to his word
→ He came to all the calls (even at 2am his time)
→ He asked me tons of questions?
→ He implanted everything immediately?
Fast forward 2 months of hard work
And his results speak for themselves.
→ He implemented the exact content strategy we told him to use leveraging less magnets and one post went viral with 1,300 comments (the other he regularly gets 50-200 comments)
→ He ran the DM sell by chat process ai advised which we have iterated many times to now be booking 4-7 qualified meetings per week
→ He has implemented my pre qualification process and 2 step sales process and his close rate has been consistently increasing.
→ He has even knocked back multiple 6 figure job opportunities (which is damn had to reject as a 24 year old)
Now he is on track to break consistent $20k months and we are working together on how he can better scale.
领英推荐
This is what "hard work pays off" looks like.
Creator 4 - Beatrice Vladut
How Bea went from a creator not wanting to be "salesy" to booking and closing 4 deals in 1 week at $7.5k after speaking to me for a couple of hours.
Goals
Obstacles
Results
How it went down...
Bea and I first met when I travelled to Bali in January this year and we caught up and went to dinner.
I remember how the conversation just flowed and we sat there chatting for a few hours.
Tbh it was so refreshing to chat to another creator in person — someone that knew what I was living through.
I remember we got onto the topic of sales and I asked a bit around her sales process.
She mentioned that she’d worked with another big creator and they’d given her DM tactics and how to run a sales meeting — but even then I could tell she wasn’t closing as much revenue as she wanted.
She didn’t know what she was missing. The classic “don’t know what you don’t know”
So I started asking more questions and then started to get it.
There were a few problems
She wasn’t having anywhere near enough conversations?
She didn’t have the right mindset for selling
She didn’t have a structured system she could implement?
After she went through everything I told her something she didn’t expect “You should be booming 10 meetings a week with your profile”
I remember at this point I shattered a few beliefs she had.
I then spent the next hour walking her through exactly what she needed to do — in meticulous detail.
And tbh when she told me the results — how she booked and closed 4 deals at $7.5k the week after we chatted — I wasn’t surprised.?
I knew she was willing to put in the reps (it’s why I love working with creators) but she simply needed the system to execute.
Even though she’d work with another LinkedIn sales trainer and was getting OK results — she needed much more to unlock and build the business she has today.?
Since then Bea has also jumped in as a Content and Copywriting Coach in our program — and my clients have been loving working with her and have been getting some insane results (a few viral posts too)
Next we are working together to both?
And I'm soo pumped to see what she can achieve in the next 12-24 months. It's going to be insane.
Creator 5 - Gian Seehra
How Gian tripled his sales meetings per week from 5 to 15 through our DM system even though his impressions dropped 40% during the time period
Goals
Obstacles
Results
How it went down...
I was actually introduced to Gian by Nick Browne after Nick and I started working together.?
Gian and I got on a Zoom call while he was still in Bali and we hit it off straight away?
And he also let me know he was about to move to Australia for a bit (he lives the laptop lifestyle haha)
We did actually end up catching up when he was here — but funnily enough it wasn’t in Sydney where I live and where he came
Instead we caught up in Melbourne when we were both there for the Australian Open but separately.??
We had a great night out together with myself, Gian, my partner and my brother in law?
I distinctly remember everyone looking at Gian and I like we were from another planet when we chatted about LinkedIn haha.
Ok back to the main story lol.
So Gian and I were on this Zoom call and we chatted through everything.
— He had consistent inbound coming in
— He had nearly 20k followers and a blue badge (actually he got the blue badge a bit later I think)
— He was running a program with a good niche (He helps founders raise usually their Series A or PreSeed from investors and is pretty darn good at it)
But he was missing some crucial things to grow — which he was pretty clear about in all honesty what he needed.?
— A consistent lead gen system
— To understand how to build it out
— And an optimised sale process
Because he didn’t have these elements he knew he wasn’t driving the revenue he wanted and was leaving A LOT of $ on the table.?
There was also another thing we chatted through that kind of surprised him
How to turn his program into more of a group model — but more to come on this at a later date though.
It was pretty clear that I could help
But he was finishing up a cohort and didn’t want to start till the new year (we caught up in November I think)
So I noted it down and then reached back out then and we started working together.
And his results over the next 2 months were next level…
Even though Gian
— Didn’t come to any of the live sessions
— Didn’t have any catch-ups with myself (honestly barely even messaged me at all
— Didn’t do any of the program other than the Conversations Module (DM + sell by chat)
He is still now booking 10-15 qualified meetings per week and he doesn’t even send a single DM?
(He uses scripts he built off our program and has trained someone up to do it)
And is doing consistent £15k-£20k months.
Next we will be working on how he can close deals in the DMs with no sales meetings and also build and scale up his program to deliver even more value to his clients.
Creator 6 - Sean McHugh
How Sean went from a pro in-person networker to also a pro digital networker and closing a $50k deal after implementing our tactics
Goals
Obstacles
Results
What's hilarious is that I actually first met Sean when I cold called him back when I was running this company as an outbound agency around March 2023.
I was cold calling him for one of my digital marketing clients at the time and as he was a previous cold caller himself (back in his sales days) he loved the chat and I booked a meeting for my client.
What's even funnier is that only two days later I went to an in person networking group and I saw this guy sitting there who looked oddly familiar, and he started looking at me too, and all of a sudden it clicked.
He started telling everyone how I cold called him two days before and booked a meeting and it was actually so funny.
Since knowing Sean, he has always been an amazing networker → even starting his own in person networking group growing it from 2 to 25 people in a matter of months.
But as we chatted over months Sean had always expressed to me how he just couldn't crack the LinkedIn thing.
→ He was posting on it consistently
→ He was generating 100+ likes per post
→ He send DM's to people to start conversations
But he didn't know how to pivot these into sales chats about his commercial finance services.
When he joined the program and went through the trainings and after the live calls it all of a sudden clicked for him → he practiced reaching out over a couple of weeks and finally he got the hang of it.
I remember us chatting one day and he explained that before we started working together there was just some sort of a disconnect → like he didn't know how to go from someone engaging and liking his post to him reaching out and starting a chat to offer his services.
Since learning these tactics and strategies Sean has now taken and applied them to the rest of his lead gen efforts in his business including email.
He now has a complete LinkedIn strategy and knows exactly what he needs to do to generate consistent leads on the platform
Plus he generated a few inbounds after learning better copywriting techniques and how to structure BOFU, MOFU and TOFU content.
Creator 7 - Bjion Henry
How Bjion went from nearly giving up on LinkedIn to booking 181 sales calls the following 3 months after implementing our program and exploding his LinkedIn growth
Goals
Obstacles
Results
How it went down...
I don’t actually remember the first time I chatted to Bjion in the DMs → but I remember the first Zoom call I had with himself and his business partner Tor Abrams
(Tbh I remember them both being quite skeptical ??)
We chatted for a good 30 minutes
→ About their goals and what they wanted to achieve
→ About what they thought was holding them back
→ About how LinkedIn wasn't working they way they wanted
It was tough to hear tbh → because these two guys I could tell were A players
(I have a knack for spotting them early now)
And could see how hungry they were
But also how they weren't getting to where they wanted.
They were frustrated.
Especially because Bjion had spent 6 months building his brand and was invested multiple hours a day on content and engaging.
(I see this time and time again with creators who have been following the feed)
Bjion even later admitted to me that he was close to giving up on LinkedIn and was looking at alternative methods of generating leads as he didn't think it worked.
So A players being A players → once they implement the results were insane
(And tbh even to this day they still shock even me lol)
They took two major things from the program
1) The AI content system specifically how to write better content to attract leads and faster
2) The sell by chat system that we teach and the systematic method of reaching out and generating leads
From these two things alone
→ They booked 181 calls in Q4 2023
→ And another 59 calls in January 2024
→ And closed multiple 5 figure deals
Safe to say Bjion won't be leaving LinkedIn anytime soon.
He has also had quite a few of his posts pop off and go viral and has even grown 15,000 followers since then
(But tbh followers are not what we want to track here. We want to track leads, meetings booked and $ in the bank)
Next up we will be looking at how they can scale out their service delivery model so they can take on many more clients → as Bjion let me know two days ago that he had to stop posting for a couple of weeks because they were full.
And man of man I can't wait until we look at the results in the next 12 months.
I can nearly guarantee that once we implement the new delivery system that they will probably double my revenue haha → which I cannot wait for!
Creator 8 - Ryan Musselman
How Ryan went from trading time for money with a 50,000 follower audience to building a 7 figure run rate business as a solopreneur
Goals
Obstacles
Results
How it went down...
I know I’ve already shared a bit of the story of working with Ryan — so this won’t be as long.
One of the best parts about how I was able to help Ryan
Is how little time we actually spent together and
How little of our program he actually did to succeed.
I remember super early on Ryan asking me “Hey it looks like I might be building something similar. Is that ok if I use some of the stuff”
I literally said “Go for it. You can use anything in the program and repurpose it. I just want you to win”
(It’s what I told both Neeraj Shah ?? and Justin Fowler-Lindner who have also built epic programs themselves)
— We only caught up twice during that time
— He only did 20% of the program he told me
— We did exchange quite a few DMs back and forth
But that’s literally it — but he was still able to get such awesome ROI.
Much of it tbh was mindset and reframing what was possible for LinkedIn.
You see...
When we first met Ryan was in the “build a low priced course and community” mindset.
(This is something so many creators suffer from because they live in the LinkedIn echo chamber)
Once he broke free of that — he unlocked the true earning potential of LinkedIn.
And tbh I can’t wait to see what he releases in his new program that’s coming.
I’m pumped.
__
This creator thing is damn hard
→ You get the insane highs and lows of the impression dopamine hits
→ While trying to sell without the guilt being "salesy" to your audience
→ And then getting rejected 24/7 by people you know you can help
I know how you feel → because I am one of you.
Even though I was first a sales person
I'm truly a creator at heart ??
And that's why were are pivoting the business
Which were will be announcing in a couple of weeks.
But because you stuck through this long newsletter
And because I know if you did you are a creator
I wanted to give you a sneak peak of what's to come...
Would love to know your thoughts in the DM's on the new look and feel of the brand → because tbh Seven Figure Creators doesn't feel like us anymore.
We are 100% creator first.
With my number 1 priority now to
Take 100 creators from 6 to 7 figures
Just like Ryan and I have been able to do...
Oh and don't worry → if you are not yet at 6 figures
I actually already have a program for that for you :)
My current program → so DM me "Creator System" if you are looking to start generating the revenue and living the life you have only dreamed of.
Happy Sunday,
Matt
Enterprise Sales Director at Zoho | Enabling Business Success with Scalable CRM & Digital Transformation Solutions
6 个月Absolutely resonates with the grind! Sales can be a tough journey, filled with ups and downs, but hearing stories of perseverance like these is what keeps us pushing forward!
Absolutely true! The journey in sales can be challenging, but stories of success are a powerful motivator!
Sales Professional // All Round Business Apprentice
6 个月Sales can get demoralizing, you said it best. Great post!
The Payment Solutions Guy — I'll help you decrease processing fees by 20%, and improve approval rates (guaranteed) by finding the best Payment Providers for your business | Visit my website to learn how
6 个月It's true that the journey of sales can be tough, but hearing about others who have overcome similar challenges is truly motivating Matt Lakajev ??
You're like a real life superhero ??