The Simplest Way to Make $10k/month

TL;DR

William Brown outlines a five-step framework — offer, traffic, sales, conversion, value — used to scale an online education business from $50 to $16.4 million.

Key Points

• 1.William Brown scaled from a $50 Word document to a $16.4 million business. He built an online education company, sold it to a US private equity firm, and now teaches others the same five-step framework: offer, traffic, sales process, conversion, and value.
• 2.The offer is built around an 'I help' statement with a clear promise. Define who you help, what result you deliver, and how — Brown's Canadian accountant client Kevin used this to reach multi-five figures per month helping other accountants grow their firms.
• 3.Price at 10–15% of the 12-month value the client receives. If your program adds $50k to a client's business, charge around $5,000. Even intangible offers like sobriety coaching can be valued — one client charges $85,000/year helping executives stop drinking.
• 4.The 1-to-10 skill scale determines who you can teach. You don't need to be a 10 — a 3 or 4 can profitably teach beginners. Brown's writing consultant was a 4–5 and was highly effective; professional qualifications are helpful but not essential.
• 5.Niching down shrinks your market but can increase prices and targeting precision. Brown initially opposed niching, but conceded that in crowded markets like fitness, specific avatars (men over 50, new mothers) convert better and face less pricing resistance.
• 6.Ads work as pure mathematics: spend $700, book ~10 calls, close 1 at $2,000 for a profitable funnel. A $70 cost-per-booked-call with a 65% show rate and even a low close rate can yield 2–3x ROAS; Brown's current ads return 6.7x.
• 7.Start with 10 ads built from 5 hooks and 2 bodies, run on Facebook/Instagram at $50–$100/day. Kill non-performing ads, scale spend on profitable ones, and rewrite copy when ROAS drops to 2–2.5x to reset costs — the copy matters 80%, production only 20%.
• 8.Sales calls follow a structured script: problem discovery, gap-widening, pitch, price, close. Founders close at ~35%, sales reps at 20–25%. The biggest beginner mistakes are going off-script, talking too much, and failing to handle objections, which are usually just fear.
• 9.Over-produced content often underperforms raw, authentic videos. Brown's iMac webcam video with a $30 mic got 500k views while polished three-camera shoots got under 1,000; a knitting client grew from $11k to $19k/month using simple YouTube videos linking to a basic sales page.
• 10.Saturation signals a good market, not a bad one — people buy people, not just products. The same six-pack abs offer exists everywhere, yet one client makes over $300,000/month at $5k–$15k per enrollment by differentiating through personal brand and trust.