When you have a perspective that allows you to see the inner workings of over 5,000 businesses, patterns begin to emerge.
Cole recently sat down with Gordon List and Client Ascension founder Daniel Fazio to break down the best deals they’ve seen.
Between the two of them, they broke the spectrum of business expansion. Daniel shared the most reliable offers for beginners from $0 to $250,000 per month, while Cole revealed the “core” offers from $5 million to $15 million per month.
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to jump into the eight-figure range, the secret to big growth almost always lies in the structure of your offering. Here are some of the most profitable business models and offerings on the market today.
Part 1: The Best Entry-Level and Mid-Level Offers ($0 to $250K/Month)
If you’re starting from scratch, you lack examples, authority, and capital. The best deals for beginners are those that require high “logistics intensity” (doing hard work that customers don’t want to do) or that completely eliminate risk for the buyer.
1. Performance-Based Cold Email Lead Gen It’s an uphill battle to ask a client for a large payment and advertising costs when you have zero credibility. The solution? Performance-based cold email. You charge a nominal maintenance fee (for example, $500 per month) to cover the costs of your inbox, and then charge a flat rate (for example, $300) per call booked for each qualified sale. It’s a no-brainer for a client, and as a newbie, your only job is to put your head down and work.
2. Ready for cold calling Cold emailing has become oversaturated. Because the software was too cheap to send thousands of emails a day, the response rate dropped dramatically. Enter: Done-For-You Cond Calling. Almost no one wants to do it because it is very difficult (high logistical intensity) to build, train and manage a team of cold callers. If you can provide this service, you will face very little competition. It gets you more leads than cold email, allowing you to pay premium retainers ($6k to $12k per month).
3. Setting up an e-commerce email “Trojan horse”. Thousands of agencies offer monthly email marketing services to ecommerce brands. To stand, you must rotate the offer. Instead of setting a handler, set a one-time setting: “We’ll generate 52 emails across 9 automated streams for a one-time fee of $4,000. No retainers.” When they get on the phone and agree, you hit them with a twist: “We also have a $4,000/month management service. If you sign up, we’ll waive the $4,000 setup fee.” This structure gets a large percentage of prospects to happily agree to the retainer.
4. Offshore Talent and Staffing Agency ($2 million to $8 million per month)
If you want an offer that will sell itself in any economic environment, look to offshore staffing. While selling coaching or consulting requires convincing a business owner to make a new investment, selling offshore talent is a “$1 for $20 bill.” This actively reduces their overhead costs while increasing their production volume.
Agencies and placement firms make more than $5 million a month by finding, vetting, and placing highly skilled offshore talent (typically from Latin America, the Philippines, or Eastern Europe) with US-based companies. Whether they’re placing recruiters, executive assistants, or media buyers, this proposition is nuclear for three reasons:
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This eliminates high logistics intensity: Searching, interviewing and testing 500 foreign candidates to find that one absolute rock star is exhausting. Traditional business owners don’t have the time or systems to do this. They’ll gladly pay a $5,000 to $10,000 placement fee or an ongoing monthly fee to remove that friction entirely.
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Huge, immediate ROI: If a US-based founder can hire a high-level, bilingual operations manager for $3,000 per month instead of the local equivalent of $8,000 per month, the service pays for itself in no time. This is a mathematical achievement for the customer’s profit margin.
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Excessive viscosity: Once a founder integrates a talented helper or setter into their daily workflow, they never want to let them go. Latency rates drop to near zero, making this one of the most sustainable, high-margin recurring revenue models in the B2B space today.
5. Personal content agencies for traditional business It’s hard to sell remote video editing to a marketer – they already know how to do it. But selling a personally A content creation service for a local home care provider, financial advisor, or medical clinic is a gold mine. Because you physically go to their location, set up the cameras, shoot them, and take them home to edit, 100% of the friction is removed. Because of this logistical effort, you can pay between $5,000 and $7,000 per month.
Part 2: “Nuclear” Advanced Offers ($5M to $15M/Month)
Once you move to the elite level of the business, the bidding mechanism changes. Businesses that make $5 million to $15 million a month typically have three characteristics: high barriers to entry, high prices, and a target audience with deep pockets.
6. Timeshare Exit Law Firm ($15 million per month) There is a large law firm making up to $15 million a month by bailing people out of predatory timeshare contracts. This suggestion works great for three reasons:
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Selling a $20 bill for $1: If a client owes $20,000 on a timer over the next five years, paying the firm $5,000 to get rid of it today is a guaranteed, mathematical win.
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Automatic qualification: The only people who own a timeshare are the older demographic (Boomers) who had the disposable income to buy a timeshare in the first place. The problem, naturally, is sorting through the richness of the perspective.
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High barrier to entry: You can’t just wake up and decide to become a lawyer. The legal barrier keeps competition at a significantly low level.
7. Functional Medicine and Health Coaching ($4-10 million per month) While many fitness coaches struggle to make $100,000 a month, top functional medicine and health coaching offers more than $10 million a month. They do this by charging high prices (typically $10,000+) and using great acquisition models. For example, one company uses a low-ticket funnel where prospects purchase an at-home blood/urine test kit. The prospect must refer to the sales call to decode the results. Having biodata on a prospect makes the close rate of a high-ticket sale astronomically high.
8. Virtual family office / tax preparation ($10 million to $30 million per month) This offering provides high net worth individuals with a holistic tax strategy, asset protection and a stream of vetted investment deals. Again, it relies on the concept of “a $20 bill for $1.” If the firm pays $10,000 a month but saves the client $500,000 a year in taxes, the service pays for itself. Also, the switching costs are so high (loss of trusts, insurance and tax strategies) that it’s hardly worth it.
9. B2B trading platform cooperation with B2C brands ($10 million per month) This is one of the most unique business models in the space. The company has built a large, highly skilled sales floor with more than 100 commission representatives. Instead of running their own ads, they partner with large direct-response B2C companies (like $200 million-plus-a-year brands) that have millions of low-ticket buyers but no high-ticket back end. The sales pitch calls these customers, sells them a $5,000 coaching program, and splits the revenue 50/50 with the brand. Zero advertising costs, net profit.
10. Bringing traditional B2B services to “Blue Ocean” markets Many B2B agencies are limited by what they sell to people on their echo chambers (eg, marketing agencies that sell to other marketing agencies). Companies that have gone nuclear are taking advantage of these marketing services and targeting traditional, cash-rich industries. Whether it’s a UGC (User Generated Content) agency focused on home services (HVAC, Solar) or a content agency focused on financial advisors, the result is the same: customers with more money, less marketing know-how, and stay longer.
Ultimate Takeaway
If you’re having trouble scaling up, look at your offer.
If you are a beginner, you should be ready to accept the intensity of logistics – to do the difficult and tedious work that experienced business owners are willing to throw money at. If you’re an advanced operator looking to get to the moon, you need to look for high barriers to entry, raise prices to attract good customers, and find ways to sell “$20 bills for $1.”
