How I Built an 8 Figure Business Selling Thin Air

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In this episode, Dan Henry is going to cover how knowledge is actually one of the most valuable things in life we have to share and to give, even though it’s not a tangible thing.

The first business idea Dan had was to sell a course teaching people on what he was doing at the time, which was advertising for local businesses. And most people commonly think that if you’re going to teach a course online, that the course must be about “how to make money” - but that’s just not true!

Dan’s going to go over the four stages of how to sell your knowledge and know whether people will want it or not before you invest a ton of time or money into the process!

In this episode, Dan is going to cover:

• How you can take WHATEVER your knowledge expertise is, even if it’s teaching people how to jump rope (no joke!) and make money from it
• Why people crave knowledge, and will actually pay to learn about almost anything
• What the four stages of selling your knowledge are and how to carry each one of them out

If you’re ready to learn how to get started selling your knowledge or advice online, then listen to what Dan has to say in this podcast episode right away!

If you got value from what you heard here, please be sure to subscribe and rate this podcast! Bonus points for you if you write a review! ;)

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— TRANSCRIPT —

In today's episode, I'm going to talk about how I built an eight-figure business selling thin air.

Welcome. I can't wait to share this with you today. And I love how that sounds, how I built an eight-figure business selling thin air. So thin air. What I mean by that is not a physical product, right? You learn something, you know, something that someone else wants to know. You have valuable knowledge, it's worth something, but technically it's thin air, right? It's not a physical thing. I mean, sure. You can put it on paper and you could print it and you could put it in memberships, area areas on, on websites. But ultimately it is knowledge. It is not a tangible thing, even though it's so valuable. And I believe it's one of the most valuable, if not the most valuable thing that we can pass on his knowledge because that is how society, that is how a race, a species moves forward is a current-generation passes knowledge on to the next generation and on and on and on.

And that's how we grow. I mean, we went from banging each other in the head with rocks to, you know, space exploration landing on the moon and putting a Rover on Mars. And how did that happen? That happened from teaching. That's how that happened. So that's, that's what I intend to share with you today is how I built an eight-figure business selling here. So let, let me, let me walk you through it. And then I'm gonna get into a little bit more detail in some of the following episodes. So my first idea for an online course was to teach people what I was doing at the time. And at the time I was doing you know, advertise, you know, business advertising for, for local businesses. Now, I want you to keep in mind that you may think that the only people making money from selling online courses or coaching is people who teach people how to make money.

And that's absolutely not true at all. I know people who have made a million dollars selling how to use Microsoft Excel. I know a, of a, of a group of brothers that make millions teaching people how to jump rope and how to lose weight through jumping rope. I've got people in my programs that sell some of it seems really weird. Like I've got clients that are, that make seven figures selling how to organize your desk. I've got clients that make seven figures teaching how to train your dog. I've even got clients that make money, teaching people very, very basic things. Like, you know, how to take your, you know, how to be a beginner photographer or for instance how to, you know, talk to your family, like how to get along with your family, better personal development all the way down to very simple things like how to do home renovations, like basic home renovations.

You know, the thing is, people crave knowledge because, at the end of the day, knowledge is the oil that makes this big machine work. Imagine if somebody handed you a, a, you know, a private jet and said, here's this $50 million private jet, but you don't get a pilot. You have to fly it. Well, what are you going to do with that jet? If you don't learn to fly, or even if you could hire somebody again, they have to learn to fly the plane. And so knowledge, even though you can't touch it is very valuable. I'll give you another example. I hired an accountant recently that I paid multiple, multiple tens of thousands of dollars. Why? Because that particular CPA or accountant knows so much about taxes and accounting, that she was able to save me far, far, far more in taxes than I paid her.

And see there's there you go. That is, you know, that it's worth something. It's in fact, it's worth a very specific dollar amount when you get your tax bill at the end of the year. Just like if you are overweight and you really want to go to your daughter's wedding and you want to be looking good, or maybe you have a kid and you're overweight, and the kid is always sad because you can't play with him because you're just really out of shape. So you don't obtain the knowledge necessary to get in shape quickly is valuable to you because it's not the knowledge that has the value, it's what you will do with the knowledge. And so let me just walk you through the stages. I usually call this alpha-beta live and automate. So in alpha, which is the very first beginning of the stage, you want to basically just give people advice for free your friends, whatever.

And there's a little trick I'm going to teach you called the curious expert. So if you're wondering, you know, Hey, would anybody even be interested in, in, in me knowing you know, in what I know all you have to do is this, let's say you're good at something. Okay. Just, just think of all the things you're good at, right. It could be the most obscure, random things, or it could be very valuable things like building a business, losing weight whatever, think of that thing and think of something you're passionate about, and you would love to teach and then go on your social media or wherever, or just ask your friends and say, Hey, you know I know how to do this thing. I've been doing it for this many years, or, you know, I'm very passionate about this, and I know a lot about it.

And I've thought about putting together a free training, or maybe even writing a book. And if I did, so who would be interested in checking that out? Now if people comment and they say, I would love to check that out. I would love to know that here's what you have to understand. If people are willing to take the time to listen to you for free, a certain percentage of those people will also be willing to pay for that same knowledge in greater detail or pay to get help with that knowledge. So if you post what I just said, and people start responding and expressing interest, you could have the workings of a profitable digital business. Because again, if it, if, if people are interested, some of those people will pay for that information in a more premium fashion and in more detail. And so what I started doing it at the time was I, again, I was, I was advertising.

I was doing Facebook ads and I was advertising. And let me just take you back actually before that, you may not know this, but when I was in college, I was really good at it at sound engineering. Cause that's what I was going to college for. Like, you know, recording music at home, home music production. And I was struggling to pay my way through college. So one day I was at guitar center and this guy could not figure out what microphone to buy. And so I helped him for free, right. For free. I just said, Hey, you know here's how to choose what, and I, and I helped him and he was very happy. And then he said, you know what if I paid you, could you come to my house and teach me how to use my, my other gear? And I said, yeah, he says, I'll pay you a hundred dollars an hour.

And I was like, okay. So I went to his house and I taught him and he paid me a hundred bucks and I left and I was like, man. And the funny thing, the funny thing about this was that I was so bad when I was in college. Like I had so little money that I used to tell my dad, I was hooking up with girls from the fashion department and that's why I wasn't coming home. But in reality, I was staying in my car. I was sleeping in my car. And then I was using the shower at the, at the campus gym because we, I lived an hour away from the college and it was an idol Chevy blazer. And that thing sucked gas. And so it cost so much money to go to and from college. And sometimes I'd have a class at like seven at night, and then I have to be back at seven in the morning.

I just slept in my car and, and you know, went to the gym shower. Well, one night I, I told him that. And then that was the night that I went to this guy's house and got paid a hundred bucks. So I took the hundred dollars. I bought gas and went home when I got home. My dad's like what happened to the girl? And I was like, Oh, Oh, she, she, she rescheduled. Or she, she called it off. Or I don't remember what I said, but I had to listen to my dad, give me a 20-minute lecture on female rejection. But it was worth it. It was so worth it. So anyway, you know, the point is, is what did I do there? I gave the guy something for free and he wanted more. So he paid me.

And that's when I got my first idea for selling information. Now let's take you back to within the last several years you know, a lot of people were asking me, Hey, Dan, you know, you're making money selling or you're making money running ads for local businesses. Can you teach me how to do that? So I started doing that and I started offering a little coaching session, some were free. So my, some I had people pay for. And when I realized that people really knew how, or really wanted this information, that's when I took selling an online course seriously. And so I went to, I did a beta, I did what I now call a whiteboard webinar where, and I talked about this in my book where I just pretty much did sort of a lazy webinar. I just taught some stuff on a whiteboard for, for free.

And then at the end, I said, Hey, go to this order page and you can buy this course. I'm going to make for like, you know, 70% off we haven't filmed it yet. We're going to film it. You can, you can attend it live. Okay. And if you buy now, you not only get that discount, but you can attend it live and, and, and ask questions. And I think it was like seven or seven or so people bought and I made a few thousand, I think I made 3,500 or $4,000, something like that. And I was like, wow, I have money. Like people paid me for this. And so over the next couple of weeks, I, I did the lessons. I filmed them live and allowed people to attend and ask questions. And then I worked with those people over the next couple of weeks to really make the program good, ask them what they didn't understand, like really just dive deep into it.

And when I did that at the same time, I was promoting and hyping up for my eventual live launch of the refined program. And by the time I was ready to launch, I had refined the program. I had made sure it was good. I made sure people loved it. They were getting results, worked with them, spent more time with them. And then when I launched it live and I did a live presentation with know fancy slides, and I did the whole you know, I just made it more professional, not just me on a whiteboard, but I had, you know, well thought out marketing messaging, well thought out advertising strategy a well thought out way to present. Whereas the first time I just kinda, you know, did it as a draft basically. But again, because I made a few sales that told me that the idea itself was good.

You know, the marketing wasn't the greatest, I wasn't using fancy webinar software. I wasn't, you know, it was just an iPhone and a, and a, and a, and a whiteboard. And my thought was if I can sell it basically with ankle weights on, if I can sell it without needing all this fancy stuff, even if I only make a few sales, that means it must be good. Cause when I really do put effort and, and fancy software and all that stuff into it, it's really going to explode. And it did, we made 48 sales, the very first webinar and I charged nine 97 for this program. So 48 grand did an Encore a later and I did a 52 sales. So it was a hundred thousand dollars in sales. And then from there, I automated it. And man I, I remember when I first started this, people would buy this program and I'd have I'd sell.

I mean, sometimes I'd sell you know, just dozens and dozens and dozens of copies in one day automatically they would come in and it was just insane because the how passive it was, but it was, you know, the effort was front-loaded because I really took the time to make the program good. I really took the time to do what I call a beta and, and not just throw all my marketing together and see if it worked spent weeks and weeks and weeks. I did it in stages where I did a little bit of effort made sure that that was working out. And then I moved on to the next thing. So I was leaning me and I didn't waste time or money. And that really, really, really worked out for me. And, you know, pass that, I learned so much about pricing, about customer service, about actually running business things I didn't know before you know, I was just a marketer, but when you, when you grow that fast and you have to hire a team and you have to do all that, you start to, you know, you have to rise to the occasion.

You have to learn things that maybe you weren't comfortable with before. I wasn't comfortable hiring employees and managing them and dealing with accounting and all this, I was just a musician, but I learned all that stuff because people were getting massive results from my programs and they were just doing well and they loved it. And I thought, well, I'm good. I can't, I don't, I didn't know I was good at teaching. I didn't know I was good at this. So I better do something with it because I didn't do an analysis with my life. Right. And that's what I did. And then from there, you know, over the years I got so good at selling digital products. I became one of the best in the industry. I got asked to speak at some huge stages. I got asked to speak at Russell Brunson's funnel hacking live in front of 6,000 people.

And I just thought, well, I got to share my knowledge on this as well. And so I wrote the book, digital millionaire secrets, and from there started helping people sell their knowledge. But I can tell you that the road to seven or even eight figures is a road that, that happens in stages. It happens with alpha-beta live and automation. You, you know, you have to make sure that people are interested, then you have to make sure that people are willing to buy. Then you have to make sure that your product is great. Then you have to launch and, and that you don't have to launch. That's the one thing you could skip, you could go right to automation. The reason you would do a live launch with a bunch of hype is, is, you know, and when I say hype, I mean, you know, you're teasing it.

You're teasing your product offering for a few weeks beforehand, and then you do it live. And then you close the cart and all that. That's good. It makes a lot of money at once. So if you need money, it's a great thing to do. Like you can make a bunch of money at once, but when you get to the point of automating where you don't make a bunch of money at once, but you still make a lot of money, but it's every day, day after day after day after day, not only that, but you're impacting and you're helping people day after day after day after day, that's when it grows. And it scales into something big. And, you know, a lot has happened for me. Pat, you know, in doing that. And so that is what I wanted to get across to you today is that, you know, you, you, you have to create a great product and you have to make sure that people like or not like want what you're offering you can't, you can't teach and sell something nobody wants.

And by going alpha-beta live and automate specifically the alpha-beta part, that is where, you know, because you wouldn't want to spend all kinds of money on a business. So you don't even know if it's going to work out. So if you're interested in, you know, if you're interested in learning more about that whole journey and that whole process, then I highly recommend you grab a copy of my book, digital millionaire secrets. Cause I go into it in-depth, in-depth. And I'll leave a link to that in the show notes. But anyway, that is, that is what you want to understand is that you have to make it good and you have to make sure it gets results. And then you can scale because nobody you can't scale in today's day of social media, you cannot scale a business with a crappy product. And word will get around. You have to be good. And so in the next episode, I'm going to talk to you about why anybody can actually do this, even if you're not an expert at anything. And then in the episode, after that, I'm going to walk you through that first 30 days that I was talking about where I did a hundred thousand in the first 30 days. Okay. So that said make sure you grab a copy of my book, make sure to subscribe and I'll see the next episode.