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Escaping the 7-Figure Trap: Alejandro’s Anti-Hustle Blueprint
12 Plays5 days ago
In this episode, Ken Freire sits down with digital strategist Alejandro Reyes to unpack how he walked away from a seven‑figure agency, healed from burnout, and rebuilt a lifestyle‑first coaching business that runs mostly on $5/day ads, email, and leveraged workshops. They dig into integrity as a productivity unlock, redefining “hustle” as purposeful work, and a simple path from newsletter ➜ customer ➜ client—often without sales calls.
Resources Mentioned
• Holy Hustle Podcast (Alejandro Reyes) - Apple Podcasts
• Alejandro Reyes — Website - https://alejandroreyes.com/
• Alejandro Reyes — Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alejandroreyes/
• Google’s 7‑11‑4 Rule - https://flashhub.io/7-11-4-rule/
• Robert Cialdini — Pre‑Suasion - https://www.influenceatwork.com/pre-suasion/
• Peter Drucker on marketing ("make selling superfluous") - Article reference
• Alex Hormozi — $100M Offers / $100M Leads - https://www.acquisition.com/books
• Codie (Codie) Sanchez — Contrarian Thinking - https://www.contrarianthinking.co/
Timestamps
• 00:00 – Welcome & setup: when success steals your freedom.
• 01:24 – From Pushpay hypergrowth to an in‑demand agency in the faith space.
• 03:01 – Panic attacks, burnout, and cutting the agency in half to survive.
• 04:35 – The mindset shift: integrity with yourself and setting a hard shutdown date.
• 11:57 – Redefining “hustle”: holy, purposeful work vs. 60‑hour grind.
• 16:30 – The simple framework: build brand → audience → email list → offers.
• 23:16 – $5/day list building + low‑ticket workshops to collapse the 7‑11‑4 rule.
• 28:03 – Pre‑selling so sales become superfluous; selling high‑ticket via DMs & a “money doc.”
• 33:00 – When to use sales calls (and why founders should do a few early on).
• 37:25 – Pick your model, commit for 6–12 months, and execute with integrity.
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Transcript
Introduction and Topic Overview
00:00:00
Ken Freire
Welcome to another episode of Solo Scaled. am your host, Ken Freire.
00:00:05
Alejandro
Thank you.
00:00:06
Ken Freire
And today, we're going to talk about is what if the very success you've been chasing is quietly destroying your freedom?
Journey to Burnout and Recovery
00:00:14
Ken Freire
Alejandro Reyes built a thriving agency serving celebrity clients and hitting seven figures.
00:00:19
Ken Freire
But behind the scenes, he was having panic attacks, drowning client demands and running on fumes and ultimately burning out. Today, thankfully, he works under 20 hours a week.
00:00:29
Ken Freire
And there's some weeks he might work a little bit more. But he has learned balance. And today what we're going to talk about is revealing his anti hustle blueprint that got him
Launching a Business and Balancing Work-Life
00:00:38
Ken Freire
there. Alejandro, man, welcome to the show. And thank you for being here, man.
00:00:42
Alejandro
Yeah, man. So pumped to be here, Ken. And yeah, thanks for tuning in to this episode. Yeah.
00:00:49
Ken Freire
Yeah, man. Well, Alejandro, you are a digital entrepreneur. You've been doing it for a while now. You've been in the space. You know the high-ticket coaching space. You're marketing strategist. You are the creator and the host of the Holy Hustle podcast.
00:01:01
Ken Freire
And like I mentioned, you previously ran a seven-figure agency with well-known people from like Hit Hosong, Kerry Newhoff, Sean Kennel, right? And you experienced some deep burnout. So walk us through, like, after you built a wildly successful agency,
00:01:17
Ken Freire
you ultimately walked away. Like what pushed you to kind of say, I'm done.
00:01:21
Alejandro
Yeah, well, I worked at a startup in the faith space, a SaaS startup called Pushpay. And from 2015 to 2017, they gave me half a million dollars a month spending ads.
00:01:33
Alejandro
And we went to $100 million in a couple of years. And we were written about as a unicorn. And so you're kind of working for unicorn. You see things.
00:01:42
Alejandro
that not every it's like the matrix. You kind like, holy cow, I can kind of see how this really works. And so when we moved from Seattle to Eastern Washington to be closer to my wife's family, I did not want to start an agency. I wanted to start a coaching business and mentoring business and helping solopreneurs scaled in six and seven figures.
00:02:03
Alejandro
And what ended happening was one week, John Acuff, Carrie Newhoff and Brady Shearer all reached out within the same week. And I felt like God was going, you have this hundred million dollar enterprise level thinking and inject that into people that work in and around the faith sector in the church world.
Family Focus and Mindset Shift
00:02:26
Alejandro
And so did not want to start an agency, bro, because knew what was going to happen. was I was going to work hard and yeah, I knew it was going to happen.
00:02:32
Ken Freire
Yeah, you're just going to work a lot.
00:02:32
Alejandro
I know myself.
00:02:33
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:02:34
Alejandro
And so And so what ended up happening is I started this agency and we were very lean and everybody started hearing about us, you know, and at that time when people were thinking about, you know, how to scale courses, coaches, a lot of people in the face space reached out to me.
00:02:51
Alejandro
And so we ended up building it to like 21 clients, had a team of nine. And at like one or 2 a.m., my wife would wake up and see me at the corner of the day. like, I think I'm having a heart attack. Like,
00:03:04
Alejandro
You know, like I feel like, you know, and I was having these panic attacks and, you know, had to go to counseling, learn breathing techniques. And and, you know, thankfully, I shut my cut my agency in half.
00:03:19
Alejandro
Cut my clients, my team down to about three or four, including me. And it was a lot leaner, but it was still just like, I knew why I started this.
00:03:30
Alejandro
It was to fund my mentoring coaching business. And I hadn't even touched that really.
00:03:35
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:03:36
Alejandro
And so we ended up January of this year, shutting it down completely so that I can do mentoring And, uh, and, and coaching, teaching people how to scale solo folks, you know, like you and I that want to get to six and seven figures using better systems and automations and things of that sort. So I love the clients I worked with. I did a lot of it because of relationship.
00:04:00
Alejandro
but, uh, but man, I, I, instead of relationship with them, I was like, man, I got to double down on spending as much time with my girls and, I had 16 and 17 year old, my 17 year old is going to leave. It's her senior year right now.
00:04:11
Alejandro
So she's going to leave. So I've just been trying to spend as much time with my family as possible. So I built a business that allows me to have maximum time with, with my wife and my kids.
00:04:22
Ken Freire
Yeah. And that's that's where a lot of people who are in the solopreneur world want. Right. They look at you. Right. You were making about 30 to 50 K a month, you know, at any given time around that range. And some people would have been like, that's exactly what I want.
00:04:35
Ken Freire
Right. From a financial perspective, it could have looked like success. But deep down inside, it wasn't right because you were trapped. You're working nonstop. And if people are anything like you and I, Alejandro, you don't want to fail your client. Right. So you're like, OK, I got to grind it out. I'm going to keep working.
00:04:51
Ken Freire
I want to be successful for them. And in the faith space, right, it's all word of mouth.
00:04:56
Ken Freire
Right. So like if you do good there, it's going to bring more clients.
00:04:56
Alejandro
Mm-hmm.
00:04:56
Alejandro
Yep. Yep.
00:04:59
Ken Freire
You mess up your black sheep, man.
00:04:59
Alejandro
Yep.
00:05:01
Ken Freire
Like people are going to know it.
00:05:01
Alejandro
Yeah, you're done.
00:05:02
Ken Freire
You're done. So you really work and you still have a great name for yourself, a great reputation. But you just kind of had to take a pause and say, I'm going to reorient my priorities. so that I could be with family.
00:05:15
Ken Freire
And as you started to do that, what was like one of the big mindset shifts that you had to do in order to make
Integrity and Professional Boundaries
00:05:20
Ken Freire
that happen? Because a lot of people would not give up what you had.
00:05:24
Alejandro
Yeah, it is, you know, like the golden, the golden handcuffs, you know, where it's like, it's like, it's like you want I would try to do some coaching and some stuff on the side, but when things got busy, it got overwhelmed.
00:05:40
Alejandro
My new stuff, my mentoring, my side hustle wasn't the priority. I would always need to make sure that my clients got results. So when you're running for ads for clients, ads are 24-7. So you kind of always...
00:05:55
Alejandro
you know, even though I have a media buyer, you're always kind of looking at it. And so that's why I think, you know, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do it on my own.
00:06:06
Alejandro
And I just set a date, like January was the date. And there's this idea I recently read an article about integrity. And like me sitting on this chair, there's four, like it's responsible to keep me, you know, sitting and not falling apart, right? It's whole, it's complete.
00:06:27
Alejandro
And so when we create our word, a lot of times our word with a lot of people, we give our word and there's the lack of integrity and it's not whole, it's not complete. And we don't, we are not integrous to other people.
00:06:41
Alejandro
The bigger problem, Ken, is that we're not integrous to ourself. And when we commit to certain things, our word doesn't mean much. And so the first thing I had to do was make sure that my word, when I said I was going to do it, all the other times I said I was going to do it, I lacked integrity, right? That wholeness, that completeness, counseling helped this.
00:07:00
Alejandro
And so I'm like, I'm going to set a date. It was three months from then. I had one client that wanted to pay me 30K a month. He was paying me a month. I'm like, if I'm going to cancel this business in January, Saturday, January 1st, I've got to be integrous to myself and not take that 30K.
00:07:19
Alejandro
It was really hard to say no to it. And so for me, the mindset shift was... Integrity, like John Maxwell says, you know, leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.
00:07:30
Alejandro
Integrity is your word and doing and fulfilling on that word. And so I think a lot more solopreneurs because you are by yourself.
00:07:40
Alejandro
No one's watching you. No one's keeping score. You're solo. So keeping your word is probably the first most important shift that I had to make that I'm making that is, has been a game changer. And you will watch your productivity go up because I could say, I'm going to do this by four o'clock. I'm to do this by next week. I'm going launch that podcast in 30 days, but no one's watching.
00:08:03
Alejandro
And so you can put it off months. And I think there's a lot of people that are watching Canada going, you know what? I, I, uh, I'm not whole or complete with my word and my word is not bond, right? Like Ken, remember word is bond.
00:08:18
Alejandro
And so that's the first biggest thing I would recommend for people is really being integrous to yourself. And so that was the big shift for me, bro.
00:08:28
Ken Freire
Yeah. And just to reinforce that, I saw you do that with me, right? Like, I think a few months ago, we chatting, we were texting, and was like, hey, Alejandro, come on my podcast. And you were like, hey, man, I would love to, but I have so much stuff that I'm working on right now.
00:08:43
Ken Freire
And your priorities were your daughters at the time.
00:08:45
Ken Freire
And I just remember you were being integritous to yourself in that moment. I'm just giving people an example. Like you could have been like, hey, of course I want to get on podcast.
00:08:50
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:08:53
Ken Freire
That's like the game, right?
00:08:53
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:08:54
Ken Freire
Everybody wants to be on podcast, get your known so you can get more clients, right?
00:08:56
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:08:58
Ken Freire
And I just point that out. And I'm telling people that what you're saying is how you're living right now. And you're trying to do that really well.
00:09:04
Alejandro
And it's hard to do that because I don't want to like, run the risk of going, Ken's not going have me on.
00:09:11
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:09:12
Alejandro
And I think a lot of people are, especially me, I'm looking in the mirror, such people pleasers that we're so outward that we don't really take care of what's best for us. And, and so I've had to do that. And thankfully, you still had me on the podcast. Thanks, man.
00:09:33
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:09:35
Ken Freire
And I think that's the beauty, right, is that if people respect your boundaries, that's the people you want to be around.
00:09:38
Alejandro
Hmm.
00:09:41
Alejandro
Yeah. If you give them context, if you give them context, right?
00:09:41
Ken Freire
And that's what you've been doing in. Yeah.
00:09:44
Alejandro
Like if I'm like, nah, I can't do it. And I have this thing in the background, and maybe I'm trying to posture or there's weirdness or whatever, but I'm like, I can't do it because of this.
00:09:53
Alejandro
And if you share those same core values than I do, I think there's a level as we're bringing this up in the podcast that respect starts to, and I actually respect that he would do that.
00:10:04
Alejandro
And I'm more interested in talking and having a conversation relationship now because because they're shared core values. And shared core values are one of the most persuasive things in my mind known to mankind because, you know, if we kind of see eye to eye, like we're talking about the Christian space earlier, like it's almost like a believer in us, like that's the homie right there.
00:10:20
Ken Freire
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:23
Alejandro
Like they got values similar trust, not to man, but also to God. And so for me, you know, giving you a reason why in context, people say, know, I've heard someone say content is king, but context is supreme.
00:10:38
Alejandro
And so if I could just give you the context of like, man, here's why I can't do it. I think people really appreciate, appreciate that.
00:10:46
Ken Freire
100%, man. And especially when it comes to the core values, those are the types of people you want to work with, right? I have met some people that even I've like pre-interviewed for the podcast and I've been on different multiple podcasts and stuff like that.
00:10:59
Ken Freire
And I pre-interviewed, I'm like, this isn't the person I would want on my podcast, right?
00:11:03
Ken Freire
And I'm like, hey, man, I love what you're talking about, but I think we're going to go a different direction. And like, oh, why is that? I'm like, I just, I already had a guest on that. And I'm honest with them more like, hey, there's just certain things that we conflict with.
00:11:14
Alejandro
Yeah, it's good.
00:11:15
Ken Freire
Like you and were talking about before here, like we value family. So we're going to prioritize the way we spent our time in such a way that like we make sure that that's a priority.
00:11:22
Alejandro
It's good.
Redefining Hustle and Productivity
00:11:26
Ken Freire
And you did that in this past season, right? We were talking about like your podcast is called Holy Hustle. This is another mindset that you had, mindset shift. And you were like, hey, I need to, we talk a lot about hustle and our culture talks a lot about hustle, right? Where it's like, go, go, go, go grind.
00:11:39
Ken Freire
And you're like, no, no, we're called to work hard, but
00:11:42
Ken Freire
There's a different way we should work. Expound on that.
00:11:46
Alejandro
Yeah, I grew up literally in the hood and with rap culture and the hustle. Like in hustle in music growing up, the hustle wasn't time.
00:11:57
Alejandro
It wasn't work 60 hours. The hustle was I will do whatever it takes to provide for my community, my team, and ultimately my family. Like I'm going to hustle. And there's definitely a negative effect connotation in it. But as a, as a, as a young, you know, teen with, without a father, you're like, you look, you listen to the things like, oh man, I want to be a hustler. I want to provide what I didn't have.
00:12:24
Alejandro
And so you grow up and you hear people start applying the anti-hustle culture, you know, hustle porn and all this type of stuff that work 60 hours, work 60 hours. And I'm in the back of my mind, I'm going, that was never hustle.
00:12:40
Alejandro
So hustle to me is holy. It's beautiful. It's actually a mandate in Genesis. They call it the Genesis mandate. It's like Genesis 1.28, be fruitful multiply, fill the earth, subdue it.
00:12:51
Alejandro
And Nancy Piercy says, you know, we are called our purpose like is to build culture and civilization like that was ultimately to have kids, which is very important. Family is important, but was to was to build culture.
00:13:07
Alejandro
and civilization. And so we are called to kind of create and build. That is such a holy and beautiful thing. So don't ever let someone, when you're struggling and you have to, where kids are going out, hanging out with mom, go work from eight to 10 on Saturday. Now keep in mind,
00:13:24
Alejandro
I'm not saying that should be something you do all the time. Keep in mind, I work like four days week. I work about three to four hours a day. I'm just saying there are times when my wife is out. They just went to Spokane for back to school shopping.
00:13:38
Alejandro
And so I was working on Saturday and I had a lot of fun because my family was out. But we're supposed to work. It's a beautiful thing. That was our original purpose here. But the key word is purpose. When you're working, make sure there's some purpose behind it, where it's not just about you, but it's about the work, the talent, the Time, treasure, and talent that you have is all about giving it to other people. So it's almost selfish to keep that work to yourself because I believe, Ken, I really believe this with all my heart, that there are things and talents and giftings that I have inside that
00:14:16
Alejandro
that if enough people heard about it, it would be their breakthrough. Like you have, I believe that you can have some things inside of you that if you were to keep that inside, that's probably one of the most irresponsible things.
00:14:29
Alejandro
There are unlocks that you have here to provide to people that can be a massive breakthrough in their lives. And so work is beautiful, but working 60, 70 hours, don't remember the last time I did that.
00:14:41
Alejandro
That is not hard work to me. Hard work is like doing something beautiful, focusing purpose and, and giving it to people so that they can have the breakthrough in their life, get unstuck and, and ultimately win, man, as a result of you providing that insight and to them.
00:15:01
Ken Freire
Yeah. And what I'm hearing is that hard work or hustle is purposeful productivity,
00:15:07
Alejandro
100%, say that again, say that again for the people the back
00:15:07
Ken Freire
That's what you're doing. I said, yeah, we're going to church. Hard work, right, or hustle is purposeful productivity.
00:15:15
Alejandro
end.
00:15:15
Ken Freire
like, that's what you want to do.
00:15:15
Alejandro
100%, that's like, I'm gonna steal that, yeah.
00:15:16
Ken Freire
So take it, bro. It's free. It's free. I coined it right on the spot. You can take it. But that's the goal, right? Is that like
00:15:23
Alejandro
Yes.
00:15:23
Ken Freire
what we're trying to accomplish is to create something ultimately not to work 60 hours a week and and that's what's leading so much burnout so so what did you do alejandro because you were like i'm done shifted you changed your agency for those people who are now listening to this what's a good framework for them to start being like i want to have a coaching business
00:15:26
Alejandro
Yes, 100%.
00:15:29
Alejandro
Yes.
00:15:45
Ken Freire
I don't want to do what some people are espousing, right? Where it's like, let's just keep hustling. Let's keep working. Let's work 12 hour days. There's a better way. Walk us through what that better way looks like.
00:15:57
Alejandro
Yeah, first of all, it's, you know, I would never say quit your job, your freelancing business, your agency, like fire all your clients overnight. That's the first thing. That's like that. That's the first thing. Don't do that.
00:16:10
Alejandro
But when I had this agency, so before I worked at this faith startup, Pushpay, I was doing launches with coaches.
Building a Coaching Business Framework
00:16:18
Alejandro
So I'd been doing direct response marketing for a long time, got to push pay, took all that knowledge, injecting it there and at a higher level.
00:16:27
Alejandro
And so when I started injecting it to these kind of like Kerry and Sean Cannell and those folks, there was system and process I take.
00:16:36
Alejandro
right, is very, very simple. You gotta build your audience, you gotta get some customers, and sorry, sorry, build your brand, build your audience, build your email list, and then ultimately, like, make offers to those people.
00:16:51
Alejandro
So it's like, that's everywhere I go, that's what you literally should be doing. So whether I did it at Pushpay, build our brand, build our email list, make offers,
00:17:02
Alejandro
is the same thing with Sean Cannell, is the same thing as someone starting up. So you have to realize you're not Sean Cannell, you're not Kerry. These guys have been doing this for 10, 15 years. So they're a little further.
00:17:13
Alejandro
They're probably at the like, I need to grow my email list and my audience more so I can sell more. You may be at the place where you're like, I don't even have an email list. I don't have an audience. And so you need to figure out where you're at in those different sections. The way I like to kind of think about this is Google has this, if someone's spending $1,000, it takes about seven hours to interact with you, 11 different touch points, and four different platforms.
00:17:42
Alejandro
So Google's saying if you want someone to spend at least $1,000 for you, there's this framework that you can't bypass. And so you've got to figure out where you're at with your audience.
00:17:54
Alejandro
Are you just getting going? And then you've got to start there and be honest. You're not going to have the same results as Ken or someone else. So you have to take audit and not be jealous or envious of people further along.
00:18:06
Alejandro
Well, they say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. So start building your audience and email lists because eventually as you build trust, the 7-11-4 rule, you will sell to these people.
00:18:19
Alejandro
I think you can collapse time by doing webinars, by doing workshops. We just saw Hormozy break the world record for book launches and-
00:18:28
Ken Freire
which was pretty cool.
00:18:29
Alejandro
$100 million launch that he did, which is incredible. But what Parmosi did for three years, I got nothing to sell. got nothing to sell. nothing to sell. I got nothing sell. And then when he sells, there's so much goodwill that is like this combustion just popped.
00:18:44
Alejandro
And and that's that's a lot like how how I think about these things. And so, you know, the mindset should be like, where am I? Where do I start?
00:18:54
Alejandro
And if you are in the freelance space or you have an agency, you have a process that you took people through. So you can instead of doing it done for you, you can do what we would call done with you in the in the group coaching space.
00:19:09
Alejandro
Instead of going one to one. You go one to many. I have this process for taking wedding photographers through, going their Instagram account and selling in the DMs. It's step one, step two, step three.
00:19:22
Alejandro
Instead of just looking for one client and charging them $10,000, I'm gonna find 50 clients and charge them $1,000. And so you create a little bit more leverage. And so why I stopped that business Ultimately, was for leverage so I can have a little bit more time to spend with my family. And so that's kind of couple of ways that I would think about productizing, creating a protocol for my work and going a little bit more one to many.
00:19:49
Ken Freire
Yeah. And, and what's really key there that people need to hear because they probably are getting a bunch of ads, right? A bunch of solopreneurs of your solopreneur, high ticket coach consultant, you're getting ads all day, every day about like grow your business in 30 days or less, right? Like start getting 10, 20, 30 K right now.
00:20:07
Ken Freire
And I, I look at all those and there's one thing that they always miss is that all of those assume that they have an audience and it's like, well, what if you don't have an audience?
00:20:17
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:20:17
Ken Freire
But they don't say that in the ads, right? They don't say that till later down.
00:20:19
Alejandro
They don't.
00:20:20
Ken Freire
like, oh, you got to get like, where's your email list?
00:20:21
Alejandro
You get the highlight reel.
00:20:23
Ken Freire
They got the highlight reel, they buy, and then they feel like they got this bait and switch.
00:20:24
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:20:28
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:20:29
Ken Freire
So, and this is why really Alejandro, I've enjoyed seeing your content and your, like the conversations we've been having, because you've always been like, well, where are people at? Where they at? Like, do you have an audience? Like you said earlier, like, you're not a Kerry Newhoff.
00:20:41
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:20:41
Ken Freire
I think people need to just hear them be like, oh yeah, I don't have, 10, 20 years of leadership, like authority in the digital space, the way Kerry does, or I'm not an Alex or Mosey where I've been posting for eight years, right?
00:20:51
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:20:55
Ken Freire
Getting ready for this launch, right? You just started your coaching practice. So for those who are like, just,
00:21:01
Alejandro
They started somewhere though, right? But like the good news, the good news is they started from scratch at one time.
00:21:09
Alejandro
Like, think about it. You didn't just learn how to walk, learn how to swim. Like everyone Everyone, don't care who it is, you start, unless you're like an implant, right? Like Hollywood implant, you know, like you are starting at this, everyone starts.
00:21:25
Alejandro
That's one thing I love about my friend, Sean Cannell. He has, you just got to start. You just have to press record.
00:21:29
Ken Freire
Let's do it. Yeah.
00:21:30
Alejandro
You just got to press record. And, you know, starting is is is so can being OK with that and going, know, the 28 days on that ad, then you could do this in seven days or 14 days.
00:21:41
Alejandro
And that's all marketing. But you got to kind of see through that go, OK, I'm just starting out. I need to build my email list. What's the fastest way can go organic? which is fine. but I recommend like just spending five bucks a day, running some lead form ads to grow your email list, nurturing them well.
00:21:57
Alejandro
and then two to three months, like make them an offer. Uh, but, but, but yeah, you just got to start someone and be okay with that. and it's, it's, it's fun, man. It's, it's a beautiful thing and you're creating, which is amazing.
00:22:11
Ken Freire
Yeah. And I don't want people to miss what you just said, because that, that is literally the simplest framework people could have, but they'll be like, oh no, no, it's gotta, like, there's gotta be more to it. So your framework would be $5 a day for an ad lead format, grow your
Authority Operating System and Marketing Strategies
00:22:27
Ken Freire
email list.
00:22:28
Ken Freire
And then from the email list, you nurture them to an offer and that's it.
00:22:32
Alejandro
Correct.
00:22:32
Ken Freire
All right.
00:22:33
Alejandro
Correct. Yeah. The model, the model, it's what I call the authority operating system, the authority OS, uh, hashtag TM trademark. It's not trademark. but you guys can go trademark whatever.
00:22:43
Ken Freire
Purposeful productivity, trademark.
00:22:43
Alejandro
I'll name it. I'll name it something else. it's literally newsletter to customer to client pre COVID. It was really lot easier to run an ad, to book a call,
00:22:55
Alejandro
to close someone with brute force sales. And a lot of the ads you see, you talked about Ken, a lot of those guys, we'll call them jokers.
00:22:58
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:23:03
Alejandro
gonna say any names. We'll call them jokers right now. Cause clowns is too hard. call them jokers. They are talking about results that they got before COVID.
00:23:11
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:23:11
Alejandro
which is really sad. We talked about integrity earlier. What you have to realize is getting someone to go from, I don't know you, I'm just joined your email list to $10,000 or $1,000. It's very, very difficult. You have to be a top 5% copywriter in the world. And I'm certainly not.
00:23:29
Alejandro
So what I like to do is I like to grow my email list on autopilot The powerful thing about Facebook and Instagram ads or any other type of ads is I don't have to think about adding people to my email list every day because Facebook helps me with that.
00:23:44
Alejandro
And so instead of going just newsletter to client, what I do is I like to do low ticket workshops. I like to do low ticket mini products. My favorite is like a paid workshop because you can collapse that 7-11 for Google rule in a 60 to 90 minute session because people see your demonstration, they see your competency, they see your philosophy, your core values in a heightened sense of live event.
00:23:54
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:24:09
Alejandro
Harmosi just did this, right? And so it's easier to get someone to go from one spending $1 to $1,000 than to get someone to go from zero to $1.
00:24:20
Alejandro
The most daunting task as a solopreneur you'll ever have is to get someone to spend, come out of pocket and spend $1 with you. It's the most daunting task. So that's why I love the idea of like, hey, how do I get you to spend a couple bucks with me?
00:24:34
Alejandro
Because now if I get a couple bucks to spend with me and you're on an event, it's going to be so much easier for me to sell you to my high ticket because you've spent time with me.
00:24:45
Alejandro
You've seen that I actually have the goods and demonstrated how I can help you.
00:24:50
Ken Freire
Yeah. And the beautiful part about that is that if you're doing a low ticket, you know, workshop or low ticket offer, typically that's self liquidating for the ads that you're spending in the front end.
00:25:01
Alejandro
Correct. Correct.
00:25:02
Ken Freire
So for those of you who are worried of like, oh, well, if I do $5 a day, that's 30 days, that's $600. You know, like you're doing the math. You're like, uh, where am I going to come up with that money? Or I did horrible math right there.
00:25:12
Ken Freire
That's $150, right? said, $600, $150. You have a poverty mindset
00:25:14
Alejandro
Yeah,
00:25:17
Ken Freire
But you're saying, no, look, do that, have a newsletter, then a low ticket offer, right? That if you get 10 people in it, how much do you typically charge for a low ticket workshop?
00:25:27
Alejandro
anywhere between five 27 Right.
00:25:30
Ken Freire
Okay, so five to 27 bucks, let's just say five bucks, right? Well, if you get five and you, again, you do 30, you get 30 people in there, you just offset your ad spend.
00:25:41
Ken Freire
And that doesn't even include anything that you pitch them to high ticket. And if you close someone,
00:25:44
Alejandro
Correct.
00:25:46
Ken Freire
Now you've just made your money and you're golden. And that's it. That's the framework. Nothing super complicated, right?
00:25:53
Alejandro
Yeah, it's the unsexy that produces the sexy.
00:25:53
Ken Freire
Because they're in the workshop.
00:25:57
Alejandro
You know, this is one of the reasons I'm the biggest Cody Sanchez fan.
00:25:57
Ken Freire
Oh,
00:26:00
Alejandro
She talked about boring businesses.
00:26:02
Ken Freire
yeah.
00:26:03
Alejandro
And no one wants to hear it. They want the Lambo, the beach and all that stuff. We do the beach, we do the beach.
00:26:09
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:26:11
Alejandro
But it's really, are you willing to do the boring things? Are you willing to do the unsexy things? Because if you do run that play long enough and trust the process, there's definitely fruit.
00:26:25
Alejandro
At the end of that, and again, the unsexy really produces the sexy for sure.
00:26:32
Ken Freire
And as that happens, you know, when people are thinking about their high ticket pricing, one of things that you've done now with your new model, you don't have like a large sales team or anything like that, right?
00:26:44
Alejandro
We sell everything on DMs, bro. Like we have no sales calls.
00:26:49
Ken Freire
That's awesome. And that's what I think a lot of coaches would be like, dude, how do I do that? So when you're on the webinar, do you share your pricing or how do you go from webinar to pitch to the high offer?
00:27:00
Ken Freire
that you don't need sales calls. Cause that's where a lot of coaches I feel get stuck. They're like, Oh, I don't want to be on a sales call.
00:27:04
Alejandro
Yeah. So when you, when, when people that, when you have you, when you hear about people doing sales calls all stuff, it's brute force sales. I've never heard about you, but I'm going use persuasion and brute force to buy.
00:27:13
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:27:16
Alejandro
This is why refunds for those people, they get their Stripe accounts banned and all that kind of stuff. For me, Peter Drucker says the aim of marketing, the goal of marketing is to make sales superfluous, meaning the goal of marketing, the emails that I write, the top of funnel ads that I create, the workshops that I do.
00:27:35
Alejandro
All I'm doing with all of that marketing is pre-selling people on why they should work with me.
00:27:41
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:27:42
Alejandro
a book up there by Cialdini called Presuasion. It's all of the persuasion that happens before you make the offer so that by the time that they see a Google Doc, which I call them a money doc, by the time they see a money doc, it's like them sitting on a fence and just me tipping them over.
00:27:59
Alejandro
It's so easy. So that's kind of how we are able to sell and close by chat or email. But when I'm doing it on a webinar or a workshop, the same thing. They like kind of like the first time they see me is not the webinar.
00:28:13
Alejandro
They've seen emails, they've seen ads, they have context of who Alejandro is.
00:28:13
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:28:17
Alejandro
And what I do on the webinar or workshop in the beginning of it is like, hey, I'm you everything you need right now to go do this thing. So this one coming up is all about workshops. And it's basically, by the end of this, you can run a workshop and make some money.
00:28:34
Alejandro
You're going to have everything you need to do. I'm not going to make this incomplete. If you want, at the end of this, I'm going to make you an offer to do it with you so that you don't have to go out alone.
00:28:48
Alejandro
So just heads up. So through that workshop, through that webinar, I'm kind of future pacing. Like, so when you do work with me on this and you'll speed this up when you're working at the end of it, say, I told you at the beginning,
00:29:01
Alejandro
this is going to be complete. You have everything you need right now. If you leave right now, I just want you to let me know future. Give me a testimonial. Like, let me know you did it by yourself. That makes me feel really, really happy you did it alone.
00:29:12
Alejandro
But there's some of you, if you're like me, you want the fast track. You want the shortcut. I've got templates. I got it. Would it be okay if I shared that system with you?
00:29:23
Alejandro
A hundred percent. Yes. Yes. If no, if someone said, if no one says yes, I'm great job guys. Yeah. see later, you know, like whatever, but that's never happened.
00:29:29
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:29:31
Alejandro
And so I introduced them and I talk about what they're going to get. Got some bonuses. I let them know there's a certain type of guarantee. I let them know that there's certain type of urgency that they buy right now. They get an extra call. They get an extra, this, they get an extra bonus or whatever it is.
00:29:46
Alejandro
And I make I make the offer. And then for about four or five days after that, I let them know via email because there's about 60% of people, 70% that maybe didn't show up that I'm emailing them. And you get a lot of email buyers from email as well.
00:30:01
Alejandro
And so it's just a really kind of seven day kind of cycle to collapse the 7-11-4 rule. There is data, Google, they're pretty big.
00:30:12
Alejandro
They have this buyer data on $1,000 points, do it with all the content and really spend seven hours, or you can put together a really simple webinar, really simple workshop and collapse that where someone can buy very quickly on that call. And I think you can give them the price if it's up to about $3,000. I don't mind that.
00:30:36
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:30:37
Alejandro
But I might go through all the benefits and if they like to learn more, Hey, do me a favor. type I'm in or whatever. I did couch money earlier this week on an email, but I'll send them to Google Doc. Hey, just so you know, have tell blah, blah, blah. Here's a Google Doc.
00:30:53
Alejandro
I try to sell and reveal the price then, but for higher than three or $4,000, like Google Doc. I have had three, sorry, two to three sales calls. I think it's two or three that are about eight to nine minutes over the last three or four years.
00:31:09
Alejandro
So saying I'm not opposed to sales calls. And if you like sales calls and you're good at sales calls or you're just getting started, should be doing sales calls. What I'm saying is if you filter people and pre-sell, you go from a 45 to a 60 minute sales call to 10 to 20 minutes.
00:31:25
Alejandro
So that's kind of the philosophy when I think about how to sell today. Yeah.
00:31:30
Ken Freire
Yeah. And that for those of you who are listening to this and you're like, I hate calling. Right. One thing that you said that's really important is like, don't forsake them. If you've never called, especially if it's a new offer and you're testing it, you probably should get on a few calls.
00:31:45
Ken Freire
Right. Like just to make sure you're hearing the objections and stuff like that.
00:31:48
Ken Freire
But then afterwards, it's all in the front end.
00:31:51
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:31:52
Ken Freire
You're pre-selling them all the way through.
00:31:52
Alejandro
I got to tell you this one story about, about, I saw this guy and I liked his marketing a lot.
00:31:54
Ken Freire
Yeah. Go for man.
00:31:56
Alejandro
We get on a sales call and he's probably 24 and at 24, I wouldn't mind sales calls. And he said, Alejandro, I'm going to, I'm going to make sure that your calendar is booked.
00:32:04
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:32:08
Alejandro
I looked him dead in the on zoom and I'm like, that sounds awful. And he like, he did the beatbox. He's like, what? You know, he like gave me the beatbox. And was like, why? I'm like, first of all, I didn't tell him this, but like, he didn't really know his audience and what I wanted most.
00:32:25
Alejandro
And what I didn't want is I did not want full calendars. actually want nothing on my calendar except for content creation and stuff. And it just sounded so awful. But so, so here's the thing.
00:32:36
Alejandro
If you have a family and you are very involved maybe in your church you have a family or you're married or whatever, and you're in your 30s, 40s, maybe selling in the DMs and emails for you.
00:32:47
Alejandro
If you're in your 20s and you got time and you're not married, look, I don't mind sales calls. I actually think that's actually good. I used to do sales calls. And I actually think it's good for you to do it.
00:32:59
Alejandro
And what I'm trying say, Ken, is like, I said it earlier too, know where you're at And, and audit and build something based on where you're at, where you want to be, what values you have versus just looking at an ad and say, here's what you need to Here's what you need to You're going to look at ads.
Purpose and Business Commitment
00:33:16
Alejandro
If you know your purpose, what you want to do, what you want to build, you're to look at ad and immediately go, don't need that $27 offer. Cause that's not what I want to do. Oh, I, I don't need that.
00:33:25
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:33:25
Alejandro
I don't want that. And so you just got to really understand who you are, where you're at in your process of starting out to am I hermosy? I'm not hermosy.
00:33:36
Alejandro
I'm probably right around here, right? So just some encouragement for people to not look at the highlight reels as John Acuff would say, not look at someone else's highlight reels.
00:33:48
Alejandro
It's really easy. That's what social media does. You just see their highlight reel, but you don't know all the work and blood, sweat and tears that took them to get there. So just want to encourage those that are watching right now that whether you're starting or whether you're stuck, you can literally get out of that and create new momentum in your life and your business right now with some of the stuff we talked about today.
00:34:15
Ken Freire
Yeah. And, and, you know, I've been in sales for, oh man, 15, 20 years now. And one of the things I tell coaches, I was like, Hey, I know you don't like sales, but trust me, if you just, even if you went on the sales call, quote unquote, just to get marketing feedback, it's going to help you so much in the front end.
00:34:24
Alejandro
100%. 100%. Yeah.
00:34:35
Ken Freire
And it's funny when I start telling them, they're like, yeah, I could do that. like, yeah, don't worry about the sale. Actually, it's not even a sales call. You're just trying to get feedback on what their objections are, what they don't like, because then you could bring that back to the marketing side of things.
00:34:48
Ken Freire
Or when you're doing the workshop, you're already handling those objections.
00:34:54
Ken Freire
But I have found that if they don't do that, they just get stuck.
00:34:58
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:34:59
Ken Freire
And, man, it's awesome when you don't have to take any more phone calls. Like, I take phone calls now because we're trying out a couple new offers.
00:35:06
Alejandro
Yeah, you got
00:35:07
Ken Freire
But once we're done, right, it's like, all right, I can just do it from the DMs. I can just text people.
00:35:11
Alejandro
Yeah, it's a choice.
00:35:11
Ken Freire
I'm like, yep.
00:35:12
Alejandro
It becomes a choice and you have an option to do versus I got to get on the call. I got to pack my calendar. It's a different perspective. And I think you choose to as opposed to being forced to.
00:35:23
Ken Freire
Yep.
00:35:26
Ken Freire
Yeah, absolutely. Alejandro, man, as we wrap up here, people are listening and they're like probably motivated, excited, encouraged. What would you say is good next step for them if they're listening this and they're like, okay, I want to try this out?
00:35:42
Alejandro
Yeah, I would say all my workshops. Just kidding. They're really cheap. You can look at them. But it's, you know, go watch the episode again.
00:35:50
Alejandro
Take the transcript, put it in GPT, Claude, whatever. And be honest. Hey, Claude, ask me five questions about where I'm at where I'm at my business, where I'm at the journey, what milestone am I at?
00:36:05
Alejandro
And get really clear on where you're at. Get clear on where you want to be and figure out the model that you want. If you want to make money very fast and get to quick, you know, 20 to 30 K months, run ads to a webinar or to a book a call. Like, like just go straight there and, and, and, and close. Like that's not, that's like probably the fastest way.
00:36:31
Alejandro
or you can build kind of more of a chill type of thing where you're growing your email list on autopilot, five, 10 bucks a day. You're nurturing them. You're sending emails.
00:36:42
Alejandro
which email outperforms everything. And you're inviting people to become customers so that you can ascend them to your higher ticket or your premium programs.
00:36:44
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:36:52
Alejandro
And so the advice would be know where you're starting at and build something that you wanna be doing in the next five to 10 years. And make sure that you commit to that.
00:37:04
Alejandro
that I'm going be specific. I'm going to commit to this model here. I'm going commit to it for at least six or 12 months. I'm going to have, I'm going to send messages to this accountability group.
00:37:17
Alejandro
Like be so specific, not like I'm just going to do this, like write it down, put your word on it and, and, and just attack it with enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
00:37:20
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:37:29
Ken Freire
Yeah. And that's huge. I think what you were just saying is make sure you stick to the plan that you have or which methodology, you know, for us at SoloScale, our big methodology is podcasting, right?
00:37:36
Alejandro
hundred percent.
00:37:41
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:37:41
Ken Freire
Start with podcasting because it's the content engine for everything else.
00:37:44
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:37:44
Ken Freire
It's a trickle down. You're doing it right. A lot of people are doing it. But I'm like, podcasting, if you're realistic, it's not a tomorrow. It's not like you turn that lever on and you're going to have 100,000 listeners.
00:37:52
Alejandro
Right.
00:37:55
Ken Freire
It's like, you need to give it at least six months, 12 months of work you're putting into We have systems to help you that.
00:37:55
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:38:01
Ken Freire
But if you don't do that and you go with shiny object syndrome like, oh, someone just told me about a new system and someone just told me about this. I'm going to try this.
00:38:08
Alejandro
Yeah.
00:38:09
Ken Freire
Man, you're never actually going to get off the ground. I have found most coaches, if they would have just stuck with the first thing that they were doing, they probably would have arrived.
00:38:18
Ken Freire
know, they probably would have gotten there.
00:38:18
Alejandro
I know I would have, that's for sure.
00:38:21
Ken Freire
man, Alejandro, I've appreciated this conversation. I hope those who are listening appreciate this.
00:38:24
Alejandro
Yeah, same Ken.
00:38:26
Ken Freire
What's the best way they can reach out to you, man?
00:38:28
Alejandro
Yeah, Instagram, Alejandro Reyes or Alejandro Reyes.com. And yeah, hopefully this served you well and you got an idea to to to go out there and win.
00:38:40
Ken Freire
Yeah, absolutely. For all of you solopreneurs out there, man, make sure, listen to this episode again. really appreciate Alejandro, man. Like you said, I'm going to put in the show notes where you can follow You can also follow him on Facebook, right?
00:38:52
Ken Freire
There's a lot of places that you could find it, but he is doing some amazing work. Alejandro, I do appreciate your authenticity, your integrity, especially in this space.
00:39:00
Alejandro
Ro.
00:39:02
Ken Freire
There's not a lot of people, right, that are trying to be that. So when I find those people, I'm like, I want them to be my friends. We got to all be in the same circle.
00:39:13
Ken Freire
So for all of you guys are listening to this, go check them out, man. And remember this, you may be a solo, but you don't have to do it alone. Keep reaching out to SoloScale. Keep reaching out to us.
00:39:23
Ken Freire
Let us help you grow your business. Hope you guys have a great day.