Graham Cochrane (00:05.646)
Most coaches think that the only way to make seven figures is to work 50, 60, even 70 hours a week. But what if I told you you could actually hit seven figures a year in just 20 hours a week? Well, the truth is you can, because it's not about working harder, it's about working smarter. And in this episode, I'm gonna show you the three biggest shifts that help me scale
while working less, specifically how I generate millions per year working about five to sometimes 10 hours per week. So if you're tired of grinding and ready to stop working so hard, stick with me. I got you.
Graham Cochrane (01:09.643)
So if you're working more, if you're working 40 hours a week or more, I'll say it that way, and you haven't reached a million dollars a year in your business yet, we got some work to do. In fact, if you aren't making a million dollars a year and it's taking you more than 20 hours,
a week to even hit a million dollars a year, you're doing it wrong. Okay? And I want to help you. If you want to work more, that's your prerogative. But most people want other things in addition to their work. They want to make the money they want to make, and they want to have a family, or they want to take care of their health, or they want to travel and not have to live the laptop lifestyle, which is not a lifestyle you want to live, meaning you don't ever actually take a vacation. You just work in beautiful places. Okay? Those are two different things. I don't mind working in a beautiful place, but that's not a vacation. Okay?
So if you want more out of life, then you should cut your work hours in half. And that's what I help my clients do all the time. But most people think that you have to choose. Like, Graham, I would love to work less, but I don't want to make less. I'm like, I never said that. I think you can probably 2X to 10X what you're making now and work half as much. And those numbers are pretty conservative and reasonable because most people overwork and are underpaid. Most entrepreneurs especially. They work
way harder than they did when they worked a nine to five job and they make maybe the same amount if not less. And I mean profit, I'm not talking about revenue, revenue doesn't impress me. Profit, how much do you actually get to keep? That's what matters. So there's two things going on here. One is a cultural lie and the other is sort of a personal lie, like a mental block that we have.
The cultural lie is easy to attack because it's out there and we can point a finger at it, but it's real. And that is the hustle culture, which is a lie, it's a myth, right? The idea that you have to rise and grind, you have to push, push, push, that real entrepreneurs and real business owners are just waking up at 4 a.m., 5 a.m., and they're just crushed in all day long, and then they're having these late nights, and there's a badge of honor. The reason this is pervasive is because some of our greatest
Graham Cochrane (03:15.956)
entrepreneurial heroes purport this idea. mean, they literally tell you to work around the clock to sleep when you're dead. And they celebrate how hard they work. And I think in America, at least in the West, like, there's a cultural like support of this. We're like, yeah, like, wow, look at them. They work so hard. And there's some reason for this that makes sense historically, right? I'm not a historian, but we have a very, if you look at where our country came from in the US, the Puritan work ethic, like,
hard work, like there's something beautiful about we just, if you want your life to be changed, you go change it. You make something of yourself. And Americans are very individualistic and we're very much like, we can go create anything. And I think that's what's attractive about America to a lot of people is like, man, these people, they want to change their life, they go do it. And I think there's something beautiful in that, right? When most things, it's a mixture. And I think that's one of the beautiful things in that mixture is, yeah, man, you don't like your life, go change it. And we live in a country that allows you to start a business
And it's very pro-business, which means it's pro-human, it's pro-chase your dreams, it's pro-serving other people well at a high level, creating products and services that win. It's a system that allows the good to thrive, right? If your product sucks, it doesn't help people, you won't last long and you're out of business. And so it's a great model. And that's wonderful. What I think we've gotten way wrong in our country is this idea that hustling is the goal. We write songs about every day I'm hustling.
We just, when people like say, how you doing? I'm busy, man, I'm busy. I'm working hard. What a dumb idea. What a dumb idea. But that's pervasive. So that's one reason why we buy into it, because we hear it all the time. If you live where I live in America, it's like a fish that doesn't know it's in water. It's like all around us, it's just what it is. And so we just assume we gotta work hard. But you don't. It's a myth, right? You're working way too hard. Some hard work is good, but too much hard work is literally inefficient.
at best, it's inefficient. So there's the cultural myth of the hustle culture. Then there's the internal myth. Like this is the lie we all believe, is, we're kind of logical in that if I worked, if I'm working this hard, let's say 40 hours a week, and I'm making $100,000 a year, which maybe that's your goal and then you would be happy with that. I totally get that. So these numbers, swap out your own numbers. Whatever you're making now,
Graham Cochrane (05:43.727)
and let's say whatever hours you're working now, but I'm just gonna use the example. If I'm working 40 hours a week and I'm making 100 grand and I've been capped at 100 grand, and now avocados and toast and rent and insurance and my kid's daycare or school or the car payment or whatever is going up and up and up and up because of inflation, but my income stays the same, I haven't cracked the code, I'm thinking there's no way I'm gonna make a million dollars because if it takes me 40 hours to make 100 grand,
I can't work 400 hours in a week, which would be 10x the hours to get 10x the output. And so we get discouraged, but what do we do? We functionally do that though. We don't work 400 hours, because that's impossible, but we might work 80. So instead of eight hour days, working 16 hour days in the hopes that what, maybe you 2x your income. We think linearly when we need to think exponentially. We need to think in these
power curves, right? Business is not linear.
To become a billionaire, billionaires aren't working a thousand more hours per week than you are. No, they're using leverage in all aspects of the word. You don't become a billionaire by working harder. You probably have to work hard. And if you're a billionaire, I am not dismissing how smart you are, how hard you work, and how lucky you are, because it's usually a combination of all three. I'm just saying,
It ain't about working a little bit more, getting you that percentage more money. It's not tied to how many hours you work. It just isn't. Your income has nothing to do with how many hours you work or how hard you work in those hours. If you believe that, that is your own internal narrative that is literally holding you back from a better life. So let's break that off today, okay? I'm gonna share just three solutions for you. You could take any one of these three and your business could pop off.
Graham Cochrane (07:41.679)
It could be the dam that breaks for you. If you take all three, it's game over. And these three are the only way I'm able to do multiple millions per year working on average five hours a week. That is no lie. If you look at how many hours it takes for me to run my business and what I need to do in my business throughout the month, divide it by the weeks, I'm averaging five to six hours on the heavy week of work.
because of these three things. You ready? Number one, solution number one, the 80-20 rule. Pareto's principle. You might have heard about it, but if you ain't leveraging it to be a millionaire in five hours a week, what are you doing? This is like the most powerful principle there is when it comes to generating business. So the 80-20 rule, if you've never heard of it, is very simple. 80 % of the outputs tend to come from 20 % of the inputs across anything in life. Let's talk about your business specifically though.
80 % of your revenue is coming from 20 % of your tasks and probably 20 % of your products and offers and probably 20 % of your clients.
But let's just look at your tasks. That means we think everything we're doing is equal. It's important. It's what I do. I gotta post to Instagram. I gotta get this podcast out. I gotta jump on the sales call. I gotta do this thing. You wouldn't be doing it if you didn't think it was important. And maybe, maybe, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it's all important, but the question is how important? Because not every task is created equal. The majority of what you and I are doing every day is kind of a waste of time.
That's the short answer. I'm gonna try to get right to the point today in this episode. 80 % of what you're doing is at best leading to 20 % of your results. So why do it? Why put four times more effort into something that's one-fifth as valuable? What if you just stop doing the 80 % freed up for, if you're working five days a week, you could stop working Monday through Thursday and just come in on Friday and just do the 20 % on Friday that gives you 80 % of the revenue. Your revenue would go down slightly potentially, but you have four,
Graham Cochrane (09:48.751)
fifths of your week back to guess what? To double down on the 20%. So then you can double this thing or quadruple this thing. Because things aren't always linear, they're exponential. So this is what most coaches do, right? They do content creation. And we could get into what is the 20 % of the content creation you're doing. But let's just dump it all into a big buck. They do content creation, they do admin, running the finances of their business, the backend of their business, right?
QuickBooks, they do sales calls for clients if you have one-on-one. They deliver or fulfill the coaching. There's actually doing the coaching calls. And then there's customer service, which is, you know, answering people's questions about the price, getting them into the program, I want a refund, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those are like five high level things that most coaches do. And you could argue that all five of those are important categories. But if you take 80-20 across those categories,
80 % of the content you're creating or the 80 % of the platforms you're on is generating absolutely nothing. And you probably know this. Look, if you're on Instagram and LinkedIn and TikTok and YouTube and you have a podcast and you have a blog, like just ask yourself, which of these platforms is the 20 % that's actually getting me most of the clients? What if you just stop doing all the other ones? I only do YouTube. Now I do have my assistant take my YouTube
and put it as a podcast, as an audio podcast, and clip some clips onto Instagram. But I know where my clients come from. They come from YouTube. Okay? What about admin?
How much of the admin is actually pushing your business forward? I mean, very little. Sales calls. Are you just taking all the sales calls that come in, all the, like, do you have any kind of filtering mechanism, any kind of application process that filters out people that you should never get on a call with in the first place? You probably can look at your sales calls and know that 80 % of them were a giant waste of time. Not that the ones that don't close are a waste of time, because some people were a good potential fit for the program, but it's just not the right timing yet. I'm just saying that,
Graham Cochrane (12:00.942)
80 % of the people that are getting on calls with you, if you're taking 10 calls a week, eight out of those 10 probably shouldn't even be on a call with you. What if you only took the two of the 10 or the 20 % that would be perfect fit and were like 99 % likely to say yes? You could take fewer calls and make the same amount of money, right? Which gives you more time for other things. Delivery we'll get to in a minute. Do you have an efficient delivery mechanism, fulfillment mechanism for your business? Did you know that you can change the way you fulfill your offers? Talk about that next, but.
Hold that thought. And the customer service, why are you doing it? Why are you doing it?
You shouldn't be doing it. It's one of the easiest things to outsource and the cheapest things to outsource. And this is coming from a guy that literally has hardly any team. I'm not a big fan of teams, because I just don't work well with teams. I like to move fast, I have a very lean business. But the first hire I ever made was customer service. The only way to win in business is to become incredibly disciplined at figuring out and only doing the 20 % of activities that truly move the business forward.
And then everything else needs to either be eliminated entirely, why even do it, automated, get a piece of software to do it or AI, and then whatever cannot be eliminated or automated and absolutely is necessary but you shouldn't be doing, then you delegate. Eliminate, automate, delegate, and in that order, and that's the only time you'd ever hire somebody. Everything else just, you could stop doing. When people say, how do make millions working five hours a week? You must be incredibly fast.
No, I just don't do most of the stuff you're doing. I don't have a TikTok. I don't post on Instagram. I don't respond to DMs. I don't respond to YouTube comments regularly. Like, I don't sit on my inbox. I don't get to inbox zero ever. My inbox has never gotten to zero. Who cares? That doesn't put money. Does inbox zero pay my mortgage? Does inbox zero pay my kids' tuition? No. Inbox zero does nothing. Literally nothing for you. So why do it? I just don't do.
Graham Cochrane (14:05.812)
most of what other people are doing. That's the way I have my time back, because I stop doing things. And then the few things that I absolutely need in my business, I automate. And then the very few things that I can't fully automate, I delegate. I have two part-time assistants that work five to 10 hours a week for me each. That's it.
Graham Cochrane (14:31.178)
Alright, that's it. I 80-20 rule.
I've been saying this for years and people go, I've heard that before. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. I'm telling you, if you would just do an 80-20 analysis of everything you're doing, every client you're working with, every offer you have, and if you had the guts to say, wow, most of what we're doing is not a good use of our time, we're only gonna do the 20%, your entire life and business would change, guarantee it. Solution number two, leverage group coaching. Okay.
It's amazing to me how many coaches think that coaching is a one-on-one thing. Whoever said it needs to be one-on-one?
Graham Cochrane (15:13.378)
I'm sure you might have seen other people do it one-on-one and sure a lot of people do one-on-one and maybe you've had a great experience with one-on-one and I have nothing against one-on-one other than you're never gonna scale with one-on-one coaching. Never. Actually, that's not true. can. The only way to do that is you can't do all the one-on-one coaching. You have to hire other coaches under you to do the one-on-one coaching. And that is a legitimate model and maybe there's a small percentage of you out there that might be listening to this that that is the correct model.
because it is possible that what you're doing must be done one-on-one. But until that is proven, challenge it. Assume you don't need to do one-on-one. The only reason I can make millions of dollars working a few hours a week is group coaching. I am not coaching all my clients one-on-one. That would be literally impossible, okay? Group coaching is the secret. your goal is to sell your time one to many.
one to many, not one to one. You're never selling your time anyway, we'll get to that in a minute, but you don't want to give up. If I can spend one hour and serve one client, but I could also spend that same hour and serve 100 clients in a group coaching call, I make way more money and have way more impact. And here's what's amazing. People think that group coaching is a lesser offer than one-on-one coaching. It's like, yeah, you're right, Graham, I need to do group coaching to scale.
because I can't do one-on-one, but I should charge less, it's not worth as much. That's where you're wrong. Group coaching is arguably more valuable than one-on-one coaching. And I'll prove it to you. Last week I was running my challenge, the 10K Offer Challenge, which you should come to if you haven't come, if you wanna learn how to create an irresistible high ticket offer. I'll link to it below. And I was teaching them, like when you create a high ticket offer, one of the things you have to decide is the fulfillment. How am gonna fulfill this? And everyone starts to freak out, like, if I'm gonna,
charge $10,000, a $20,000, a $50,000, I gotta give them everything. I gotta give them my phone number, I gotta be on calls every single day, and they get nervous that they're gonna have to give up so much to justify the price. That's the language they use. When what you put in the offer has nothing to do with the price. That's not how you price your offer. It literally is irrelevant. If you could give your client a magic pill and they would instantly be thin or instantly have a better marriage or instantly make more money, they would buy the magic pill over all your one-on-one calls, right? Because they don't want you, they want the result.
Graham Cochrane (17:40.591)
So let's just stop saying you gotta shove all these things in, that's not what people are buying. They don't care about you. They don't wanna waste their time on calls with you. They want the end result. So I was trying to beat this into their brains gently, and I was talking about group coaching and how valuable group coaching is, and how it's actually more valuable than one-on-one coaching because you don't know what you don't know, and other people in the room are asking questions that you didn't even think to ask, and you can benefit from their questions and the coach's answer to that question.
and have a complete unlock and one of the guys said in the VIP session, because I have VIP tickets and general tickets, VIPs pay a little bit more to come twice as long, they get to come an hour early and do group coaching with me, so they get a taste of my group coaching. And so one of the guys like, dude, that's exactly what's happening here. I didn't even ask a single question in this hour and the questions that were asked were questions I didn't even know to be asking and it like blew my mind and I got a page of notes off of other people's questions and if I had hired you one on one,
I would have never asked those questions because I didn't know and I didn't know what I didn't know. So he's like, so I'm so grateful for this group because otherwise I would be further behind. And that is the power of group coaching. And here's the truth, 85 % of your clients all have the same questions. Or looking at it this way, 85 % of the questions your clients have are the exact same. Which means those questions can be answered in a curriculum of videos and in group coaching calls. So.
not only is group coaching a great way to leverage your time, it's a great way to add more value, not less to your clients. So you get more answers, which is valuable. You also get social proof. When they see other people in the group winning, it gives you social proof that you're a good coach. And then it makes these other people go, crap, well, if she's winning, doing Graham's thing, I should be able to do this. So you get social proof. You get community, which everybody needs, right? We're all so isolated. so sometimes we just need camaraderie and peers and people to support us. And then fourthly related to that, you get accountability.
Right? If you're coaching one-on-one, you should be giving accountability, but when you're coaching a group, there's so many more people in the room to hold all of us accountable. Accountability is a powerful thing in coaching. It's what makes coaching work. And usually the one-on-one coach is what provides accountability, but I say, why not add to my accountability as being your coach in the group, the other 99 or other 50 or other 20 or other 10 people in the group, extra accountability.
Graham Cochrane (20:00.684)
And then what I love about group coaching personally, maybe you'll find this to be true, is that your energy stays high versus getting drained with repetitive one-on-one calls. So I never know what I'm stepping into with any of my group coaching programs, right? Whether it's my Inner Circle or my Accelerator, like any of these programs, I have no idea what we're gonna talk about when we get on the calls because they bring the questions and I give custom answers to them. We put everybody in the hot seat. What do you need? What do you need so we can serve them at the highest level?
I love that in one hour or 90 minutes, I'll have 10, 20 different questions that are all over the map and so fascinating. And they give me ideas for content like this for you. They give me ideas even for my own business. I'll write down stuff that people say, I'm like, dude, that's a good idea for me, right? So if my energy stays high, one-on-one, it can be draining because I'm really serving this one person. And if I have to do multiple calls with them, even if I love them, it can drain me where I find group coaching gives me high energy. So.
that might be a benefit you find. So leverage group coaching, it's literally the only way to do a million dollars a year in 20 hours a week or less. Not the only way, it's not true. You could have a one million dollar offer with one client and you could crush it. Or you could have a $250,000 offer like I do for my one-on-one coaching and do four clients. So it's possible, but for most people, the fastest and easiest way to get to a million dollars a year working 20 hours or less is a good group coaching program.
Alright, and solution number three, and this one is the easiest and somehow the hardest. Stop undercharging.
Graham Cochrane (21:34.479)
It makes no sense to look at your coaching and let's say you're $50 an hour or $100 an hour. First of all, stop charging by the hour. Stop charging by the calls because people aren't buying hours of your time. They're not buying calls. They're buying an outcome. Charge based off the value of the outcome. Number two, it's amazing though. Let's assume that you're like, charge $100 an hour and I can only take this number of hours per week before I get burned out, which is real. That's a real thing, by the way.
Stop saying like, well, or most people like, how do I get more people? Or maybe I'll charge a little bit more, I need to get more leads and charge a little bit more. The fastest way to make more money and work less is to double your prices, minimum. Like whatever you're charging, it's at least, you need to at least double it. I know because I work with clients all the time and everyone severely undercharges and they already think it's a lot. It's not a lot. You're undercharging. If you can change somebody's life, you're undercharging what you're charging.
So the fastest way is not to like, how do I get more leads? How can I run more better Facebook ads to get more leads? How can I increase my conversion rate? What objections do I need to obliterate on the sales calls? Those are all important things. And I'm not saying they don't have a place in your business, but they're in the wrong order. The number one thing you need to change to grow your business before you talk about anything else is you look at your price and you say, wow, I'm charging $1,000 for a coaching package. This needs to probably be $10,000 or $20,000. I mean, it depends on the value you create.
Right? So, but no one goes there. It's the most obvious knob to turn, it's the most effective knob to turn, it's the easiest one to turn because all you have to do is literally change the number on your website. Go, now I charge this. Or on your next sales call, yeah, this is how the program works and it's X. Like, it requires no testing, it requires no work, but you know what it requires? Courage. And a proper perspective on the transformation you actually bring.
And I find, especially running this challenge every month and coaching my high ticket clients, I find most people don't actually understand what they're giving their clients. And they don't understand the value of the transformation they give, which then makes sense why they're charging so little. Because if you really understood the value you give, my gosh, you would charge way more because you would know it's worth it. Right, like.
Graham Cochrane (24:01.09)
There's a reason why I charge $250,000 for my VIP day. You come to Tampa, you spend a day with me, we transform your business in eight hours. $250,000. Why do I charge so much? Because I know the value of my transformation. I know that if you're eight hours with me, and then you have to be a certain place in business, like I don't even take the phone call, you have to apply. You have to be a certain place in business for this to make sense for you and for me.
But if you fit those categories and you come and you pay $250,000, I know in those eight hours, I know what we're gonna be able to do and I know what that transformation is gonna bring you. Likely an extra two to $4 million per year in your business. So why would I charge any less? Like to me, 250,000 is already a steal, right? I'm not charging for how many calls you get or how many hours of my time or.
How many workbooks you get that I designed beautifully in Canva? Like, no, I'm providing an outcome. I'm blowing up your business. I'm helping you blow up your business. That's worth a lot. I see this with relationship coaches that were severely undercharged. I'm like, bro, what's the cost of divorce? You're helping these guys with their marriage? And you're charging them $2,000, $3,000 to work with you? Bro, you're giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars in emotional currency back.
by saving their marriages and their families, Like $3,000, come on, man. That's crazy. So you want to price on value, not time. And here's the thing, one of the reasons why you want to do this is premium buyers complain less. In fact, they don't complain at all. And they get better results, which means you're gonna get better testimonials, which means it's gonna be easier to sell it.
which means you're gonna sleep all night knowing you're really helping people. Let me ask you honestly, of your $27 ebook customers or your $97 course customers or your $47 membership customers, how many of them are really getting fantastic results? I'm sure some are. Because there's rock stars at all levels. There's implementers at all levels, right? But let's be honest, how many of those people buying your low ticket thing are getting great results?
Graham Cochrane (26:20.46)
I mean, they might be happy, they might say, really enjoyed working with you, but what kind of results are you getting?
Graham Cochrane (26:28.854)
If you charge more, you will attract a different type of person who invests more. Because when people pay, they pay attention. When people pay more, they pay more attention. And when they pay more attention to your great stuff, which I believe you're putting on good stuff in the world in your coaching programs, they're gonna get great results. So don't you want them to get great results? Well then you gotta get them to pay attention to what you're saying. How do you get them to pay attention? You increase your fee. Your fee is not for you, it's for them.
is to increase their engagement and commitment level to the program that they get results because aren't you in the business of getting them results? Exactly. So stop undercharging because you're under serving them. All right, my friend. If you were to just, and you might be like, wow, those are nice cute ideas. No, they're not. These are a million dollar ideas, but only if you implement them. We said this a few weeks back. I think our world is information rich and implementation poor.
You want to transform your business overnight, start implementing some of this stuff. I'm not the smartest guy in the room. You don't have to like everything I say. It's totally fine, but I love you and I care for you and I want you to win. And I know it's possible for you if you were just to implement one of these three things. If you were just to do the 80-20 analysis to everything and just stop doing four fifths of what you're doing, you're getting so much of your time back. You could have a 20-hour work week tomorrow. And then you'd find that you'd be able to do just the things that truly scale the business and grow things.
Move the needle. Number two, stop doing one-on-one. I mean, you can keep one-on-one if you want, but just charge a crap ton more for it and focus. The 20 % of scaling in your business in terms of offers is gonna be your group coaching. Go to group. It'll change your life. And it'll change more people's lives as well. And then number three, raise your prices. You're undercharging. I guarantee it. I see it every single day. And this is the reason why I created an entire five-day coaching experience on this one topic. It's my 10K Offer Challenge. I'm gonna link to it below.
You should come, the next one's coming up. And what we do is in five days you get live coaching with me. This is not a one-off webinar, this is not a pre-recorded thing, this is a live five-day coaching experience with me. And I help you craft, price, create, and sell a $10,000 offer, or a $5,000 offer, or a $15,000 offer, or a $30,000 offer, or a $120,000 offer. We've had all of them created and sold in the challenge, by the way.
Graham Cochrane (28:56.622)
I help you create that offer and know how to position in such a way that it's irresistible to people. Where you feel confident about it, they are drooling over it and they're like, how do I find the money to get this thing because I need this thing? That's we do in five days. You should come. It's the fastest thing to transform your business. That's why I built an entire event around high ticket offer creation. And I teach you my magic formula that will just, it will transform the way you think about any of the offers you're selling. So come, it's super approachable. I made it.
reasonable for everyone to be able to grab a ticket. It's not free. This is game changing stuff, but it's super affordable. So come at 10koffertchallenge.com, grab your ticket. I'll see you there. I want to be able to coach you personally. And just know that at the end of the day, having a more effortless business, a million dollar a year business working 20 hours a week or less has nothing to do with how hard or how long you work. It has everything to do with what you choose to do with your time and how you manage the leverage of your time, the tools.
team members and the psychology of what actually grows your business. So stop grinding it out, stop hustling it. You're wasting precious energy and life and time. Let's scale your business faster, the simpler way. Thanks for hanging out today. I hope this was helpful to you. I'll see you on another episode real soon.
