From Complexity Paralysis to $1.33 Million

Case Study: How an executive coach stuck in a $29,000 "funnel nightmare" generated $1.33M using simple email marketing. No complex funnels, no automation, just results.

The $29,000 Wake-Up Call

It was the end of March 2023. I just closed a two day online live event called "Business of Knowledge" which had been so much fun to run. One of the VIP ticket holders had booked a 1-to-1 strategy session with me, and I had just come off the call with her.

Carol had paid a "funnel hacker" $29,000 to give her everything she needed to pivot her successful coaching business online and launch it to the world. Six months into the project, the launch was still not ready, she was "behind" on the project plan she was trying to follow that this "guru" had sold her on. She needed to catch up by recording dozens of videos and re-write a large number of email templates that she was given.

But here's what made my blood boil, the “agency” she had employed was just a 22-year-old guy with less than 6 months experience in marketing. She discovered she was essentially doing all the work herself, just following templates and workflows from someone running a white-label funnel business and was just acting as an affiliate for a system she bought into as part of her purchase. A painful lesson in due diligence, but she was outside the refund period and felt trapped.

This is an All Too Familiar Story

On some of the live webinars that I run, I get comments and questions that say things like "I wish I'd found you sooner" and "I've wasted so much money on other people, I needed you six months ago."

Having been in this online industry for a long time. Those that get duped like this are often those that have been able to hustle through the start-up phase to get to somewhere around $10,000 or $15,000 a month in their business and then when they want to scale up, they find themselves stuck.

Stuck because they have a successful business, but don't know how to pivot this online or scale up in the best way. The answer many fall for is some kind of programme being pedalled by a guru or bro-marketer will give them all the answers. They have the cash available, and they buy in, hoping to find the answer.

The Cult of Complexity and Hustle

The "Cult of Complexity and Hustle" as I like to call it these days, is the doctrine preached by a lot of the gurus and fresh-faced millennial marketers cold DM'ing you every day. Everything is all about adding more things to your business, to your marketing, to your funnel, setting up AI agents and systems that do all the work for you, all so you can squeeze every last penny out of your funnel.

This was the trap that Carol found herself in. The young "expert" had told her that everything needed to be set up and running to be able to make sure that people could go through the funnel in its entirety. She was told she had to follow the process otherwise it would not work and any missing parts of the funnel would mean that it wouldn't work as it was supposed to.

He was just following a process given to him to follow, with no real understanding of what actually makes money online as he’d never done it before.

The Assets She Already Had (But Couldn't See)

On the Zoom call with her, I asked her to list what she'd already created, actually get a pen and paper out and write it down as she spoke it out to me. Five things jumped out at me as she read the list back to me.

1. She was already known online a little, with a good following in LinkedIn and Instagram, getting some serious engagement on her posts too.

2. She had a sales page ready for a $497 mini course that was complete and just sitting there.

3. She had a webinar that she had recorded and was ready for people to register so that they could watch it.

4. She had been building an email list over the years, and had grown an audience of 16,000 people who are getting weekly "value" emails because she had nothing to sell them yet.

5. And she had a community ready to start accepting people into.

The Radical Simplicity Solution

She had kind of realised this before I said it, but I said this anyway…

“Launch today by sending an email to that list telling them that your mini course's available and then offer them the ability to be part of the community for three months as a bonus.”

Yes, she didn't have her high $10k ticket offer ready yet, but she had an email list of people who would raise their hands in interest with what she was doing and were simply sat there waiting for her to make an offer.

The paralysis in her business was being led by somebody who didn't understand the simplicity needed to be able to start making money online.

The Minimum Viable Funnel™ in Action

In my book Simplify The Funnel® I talk about something called the Minimum Viable Funnel™ - it's a framework to be able to show up as an expert and start making sales fast.

If you are launching or pivoting online, you don't need 47-step funnels. You don't need 30 email sequences with 100's of emails. You don't need to automate everything or have an AI talking to your potential customers.

You need clarity. You need action. You need to start.

Every day you spend building complex systems is a day your competitors with simple systems are making sales.

Every day you look for another silver bullet to take you from where you're at in your business to the next level of success defined by somebody else, is a day wasted on implementing the wrong things.

Carol’s Initial Results

Carol took my advice. She sent that one email and made some sales.

She then sent a few more.

She banked $27,000 in the month after we spoke – that was 54 new customers paying in full for her $497 offer, before the whole "complex" machine was complete.

But here's where it gets interesting. She kept promoting this mini-course and her community. She wrote off the model she had spent months building with that marketing "expert" who just wanted to over complicate everything. Her community was buzzing and people were getting amazing results from her mini-course.

More importantly, in the couple of months that followed, she had grown her customer list to 203 paying customers who trusted her. These weren't just email subscribers anymore - they were buyers who had experienced her value firsthand and were paying for it. They were not just freebie hunters.

The Million-Dollar Question

That's when I got the next request from her for a Zoom call.

We spoke again and she shared those results and her decision to write off that investment she had made. But she had a new challenge...

"How do I launch my $10k coaching program without all the complexity?"

The beauty of starting simple is that scaling becomes natural. Her customers were already asking for more. They wanted deeper access, more support, bigger transformations.

In one hour together, we devised a plan. No ads, no affiliates. Just emails and a little social media. I wanted her to keep things simple and use the assets she already had. She didn't need to spend any more money to launch her core offer.

The 10-Email Strategy That Changed Everything

Looking at her list, it was around 21,000 people, a little growth since our first call. But the game-changer was those 203 existing customers from those that bought the mini-course.

In one hour we…

• We mapped out an open cart and close cart sequence.

• Added some bonuses to her main core offer.

• Outlined the content for the sales page.

• We then listed 10 specific emails that would go to her list - each with a specific purpose, angle, and call to action.

• She planned to run 2 live webinars and host 1 live Q&A session on the day that cart would close.

The emails weren't complicated. They were NOT written by ChatGPT.

They were simple, direct messages from Carol to her community (which she doubled up as community posts as well as the emails).

In less than a week, the sales page was up, the webinar registration pages were up and the emails were written.

So, we hit the GO button on the emails.

The $1.33 Million Reality Check

Here's where the numbers tell the real story…

• On her list were those 203 existing customers who had purchased her mini course.

• Of those customers 127 people (just over half), chose to upgrade to her premium offer.

• Only 6 people joined that were not previous customers but were on her email list.

• She made 133 sales, mostly on payment plans, but some as one-time $10k payments.

That is a launch of $1,330,000 by sending 10 emails, delivering 3 live online presentations and running no ads.

Let that sink in.

No complex funnel.

No automation.

No chatbots.

No AI copywriting.

Just humanly written emails to people who already knew her value.

This is the power of simplicity at work. The initial funnel of marketing her mini course got people bought in as customers. Those that got a result wanted even more time with her. So when the time was right to open up her coaching program, we went to a warm list first.

There weren't dozens of email sequences set up, there was no false scarcity, there was no AI chat bot or process of applying for a coaching call that would be dressed up as a sales call. This was simply emails inviting people who had already bought from her, to buy again.

You do not need to buy in to the cult of complexity and hustle to pivot an already successful business and start generating additional revenue online. You simply just have to look at the assets that you already have in your business and see how you can scale up.

It's time to stop overthinking it and time to start simplifying.