YOUR $100,000 MISTAKE

I’ve had a few people tell me lately, “Bryan, stop yelling at me with your subject lines.”

Fair. But this week, in the wise words of Steve Barth, a client of ours, the content below is a “banger.” More importantly, I mean it: define your offer.

You’ve started building the brand. You’ve defined your message. You’re sharing a newsletter, LinkedIn posts, and videos that hold people’s attention. You’re starting conversations with the market online, on the phone, and in person. People recognize that you are showing up.

That is incredible. You are expressing yourself and building a community around what makes your heart beat. It can be scary. It can be vulnerable. And yes, you may still wonder, “Why me? Why add another voice to the abyss?”

Your brand can create attention, credibility, and trust. But your brand alone cannot answer the most important commercial question: What can someone actually buy from you?

That is the job of product definitions. They turn trust into a structured, repeatable, and commercially viable way for someone to work with you.

This matters because your job is no guarantee of stability. People are buying you. If you work at a great company you love, or started one yourself, that’s great. But future-proofing for your next chapter means building a brand that can endure beyond any title, employer, or season of your career.

One of the biggest obstacles is not creating more content. It is figuring out how to take a career’s worth of experience and structure it into repeatable ways people can pay you, ways you are actually excited to deliver.

Without that definition, every opportunity can look attractive. You say yes because the work is available, not because it fits your model. Eventually, you are doing work for other people that you never intended to build a business around.

Take my friend Ben Thompson, Founder of Treble Health. Over lunch recently, he told me his incredible story. He built a YouTube channel for people with tinnitus to more than 200,000 subscribers. He wanted the freedom to adventure beyond the job that was holding him down. Then he began taking individual consultations, making $3,000 per month. From there, he productized the offer and built a strong, enduring business with his brother.

Given his audiology background, Ben started with content, built community, learned what people needed, and then turned that knowledge into an offer. Go Ben.

A lot of people arrive from the opposite direction. They spend decades building business experience as CEOs or executives. They crush their goals and eventually realize, “I’m more than my company. I have so much to give the world beyond the work I’ve done.”

Then they write a book without giving much thought to the brand around it, let alone the commercial strategy. They spend $100,000 on publishing and PR and feel like they got robbed. The truth is, they often did not get robbed. They just failed to plan for the reality that they were becoming a Business of One.

The book, brand, content, community, and product offer cannot live as disconnected pieces. They have to operate as one entity.

The Bridge From Expertise to Revenue

A product definition is not a vague service list. It is a set of decisions that tells the market exactly how your expertise creates value. At minimum, it should answer:

• Who is it for? The specific person, company, or buyer you are equipped to help.

• What problem does it solve? The costly or urgent problem your experience helps them navigate.

• What changes? The result, transformation, or decision the buyer can expect.

• How do you do it? Your methodology, frameworks, sequence, and point of view.

• How is it delivered? The format, cadence, access, responsibilities, and duration.

• How does the money work? The price, terms, recurring or one-off structure, and path into deeper work.

This is the work we have recently been doing with clients. The output is not another abstract brand exercise. It is a commercial architecture: what they sell, who it is for, why it matters, how it is delivered, how it is named, and how the pieces connect.

Once that architecture is clear, your content has a job. Your brand has a destination. Your sales motion has something concrete to sell.

There is a specific structure for people with deep experience to make six figures or more per year. The exact offers will vary, but most experienced leaders should think about three layers.

1. The Recurring Core

Advisory and Coaching

In advisory or coaching work, the client is primarily paying for your judgment, perspective, pattern recognition, and access. You may meet weekly, biweekly, or monthly. You may have worked in their industry, led a company down the path they are trying to travel, or made the mistakes they are trying to avoid.

Most CEOs and executives do not need more information. They need someone credible who can help them see around corners, make better decisions, connect them to the right people, and avoid expensive traps. The client still owns the execution. You help them decide what to do.

This could mean advising on a go-to-market motion, serving as a CEO whisperer, or helping a leader build and execute a health strategy.

Consulting and Operating Advisory

Consulting and operating advisory move you closer to the work. The client is paying for your judgment plus execution. You are stepping inside the business to own a defined workstream, build something, lead a process, or produce a specific outcome.

This work can be especially valuable because you are getting real reps. You are testing your thinking in the field, refining the method, and seeing the difference it makes inside someone else’s company.

The danger is becoming a vague extra pair of hands. If the scope is not defined, consulting can swallow your calendar and pull you into work you never wanted to own.

The Method Is What Makes It Repeatable

For both advisory and consulting, define the offer with specifics for how you operate. Then give it naming architecture and a clear methodology.

A clever name alone does not justify a higher fee. A named process does, when it gives the buyer shorthand for a real, proven way of solving the problem.

Think about the difference between selling “LinkedIn ghostwriting” and presenting a clear process for turning a leader’s ideas into consistent content, market conversations, and qualified opportunities. Or think about your Sunday golf round. Ideally, your swing coach has a method and a long-term game plan, not a new opinion every time you meet on the range.

2. One-Off Entry Points

Speaking and Live Workshops

A lot of people think they are going to retire from the company they built and suddenly have $5,000 to $10,000 speaking checks fall from the sky. Unfortunately, that could not be further from the truth. There is far more supply of speakers than demand, and far more average speakers than great ones.

A keynote or workshop becomes a product when it has a specific audience, promise, structure, and repeatable experience. If you are new, define the talk and ask companies if you can present it to their teams. Get the reps. Learn where people lean in. Refine the stories. Make the material work before expecting the market to pay a premium for it.

This also exposes you to a new audience that may later hire you for advisory, coaching, or consulting. Speaking can sit at the top of the funnel while still being valuable on its own.

I’m doing this now by building a workshop on how to create a six-figure brand and Business of One. I’m pretty jazzed about it. I have never loved speaking to live audiences, but it is going to force me to grow a muscle. It also creates a natural path into the two entities I am building: Arcbound and Graviten.

One-off engagements without any follow-on offer are a hard way to build a stable life. A well-designed workshop can generate revenue, create trust at scale, and open the door to deeper work.

Retreats

Retreats are another powerful way to bring together the community you have built through content. People who have followed your thinking often want greater access to you and to the other people behind the curtain.

Whether it is a founder retreat, a breathwork or longevity experience for healthcare leaders, or something else entirely, a well-designed retreat turns the brand into a shared experience. The product is not simply the destination. It is the curation, access, relationships, and transformation created inside the room.

Depending on the audience and experience, people will often pay $2,000 to $5,000 to attend. The host takes responsibility for planning and producing the experience, but the economics can be meaningful when the retreat is built around a community that already trusts you.

Sponsored Dinners and Learning Events

Sponsored dinners and learning events create a different economic model. If you have a notable audience and a strong brand, companies may pay to access that audience and associate themselves with the trust you have built.

A few years ago, I hosted a learning event sponsored by JPMorgan. They walked away with a unicorn technology company as a client. It was a win for me, a win for the sponsor, and a win for the audience, which received a valuable experience without the entire cost falling on attendees.

The sponsor is not simply buying a logo on a backdrop. It is buying thoughtful access, credible affiliation, and a place inside a relevant conversation.

Retreats, dinners, and learning events are community-led products. They happen in concentrated sprints, but their value can ripple far beyond the event itself. They create relationships, referrals, stories, and trust. They become even more valuable when there is a clear path for attendees or sponsors to move into recurring offers afterward.

3. Downstream Opportunities

Board Seats

Board seats are different. They are not simply another product to package. They are governance roles that come with decision-making power, accountability, and often compensation through cash, equity, or both.

A number of our clients sit on boards and want to sit on more. What I have seen over the past eight years is that a well-defined brand, supported by substantive content, keeps leaders in conversation with the stakeholders who can invite them into those rooms. The brand does not replace board readiness. It makes the right expertise easier to discover and trust.

Investing

Investing is not a client offer either. It is an optional capital and ownership layer that can emerge from access. Some people invest in companies where they advise, consult, or sit on the board.

I recently spoke with a client who has taken two companies public. His model is not to invest immediately. Private companies often reveal limited financial information, so he prefers to get under the hood first. He can contribute through board service, learn the business, and invest later if his conviction grows. I thought that was an astute approach.

The Economics: Recurring Versus One-Off Work

Once you have defined the work, you have to decide how the business behaves. Is the offer a one-off fee or a recurring engagement?

When I started consulting eight years ago, someone told me, “You want predictable, recurring revenue.” I did not fully understand it then. I definitely do now.

Recurring work gives you the stability to build a team, get reps, refine a method, and create a system around the work. It also keeps you from spending your entire career hunting for the next project.

Advisory, coaching, and consulting lend themselves naturally to recurring revenue. Once the value and method are proven, I generally like engagements that last at least six months, with twelve months as the ideal in many cases. If you are very new, a three-month engagement may be enough to earn the first reps and sharpen the offer.

At the other end of the spectrum are one-off pops of cash: projects with specific milestones, assessments, keynotes, workshops, retreats, sponsored dinners, and learning events. They can be attractive and often look sexier on the surface, but they are difficult to build an entire business around unless the fee, volume, and demand support the life you want.

The strongest one-off products do more than create a spike in revenue. They generate trust, proof, and relationships that can feed the recurring core. I prefer to build that recurring core and treat speaking, workshops, events, and other one-off opportunities as extra icing on the cake. My mom’s chocolate icing, if you were wondering.

How Much Should You Charge?

This is hard. Price has to account for the value of the problem, the stakes of the result, the access you provide, the burden of delivery, and the proof you have earned.

Early on, what matters is giving yourself a chance to get reps, take on clients you can win for, and build your reputation. I have rarely tried to win by being the highest-priced option. I have focused on winning the right work, gaining the experience, and raising prices as the evidence compounds.

My dad once told me, when we were doing far more work for a client than we should have, “They’re a good loss leader.” I still like that lesson, with one condition: a loss leader should be intentional and time-bound. It cannot become a permanent excuse for an unclear scope or a client who takes advantage of you.

That is also why a well-defined contract matters. More on that in a future issue when we feature our GM, Blaire, and her expertise.

Then Build the Go-to-Market Motion

Now you have built the brand. You have defined the offer. You have designed the economic model. Next, you need a sales motion.

A sales motion in a silo is weak, especially when there is no infrastructure or trust underneath it. That is why hiring a lead-generation company without the marketing and brand to support the outreach often falls short.

What we have learned at Arcbound is that inviting someone onto your podcast and giving value before making an ask can be an effective relationship motion. It does not mean every guest becomes a client. This is not performance marketing. It is a long-term, enterprise relationship approach. If people eventually buy because they have experienced your thinking and seen your value over time, great.

I’ve written a lot about the tactics here:

• 3 Step Enterprise Sales Process

• The 7-Figure Sales Playbook

• The Relationship System

• The Connection Playbook

Do Not Stop at Being Known

Building a brand makes all of this easier. People look you up before they ever meet you. They decide whether they like you before the first call. They decide whether they trust you through your content, website, and LinkedIn presence.

My biased advice is to build the durable infrastructure that gives you a fighting chance. Build a brand that exists beyond a LinkedIn post. More on that here.

But do not stop at being known. Become buyable.

If you can explain what you know but cannot clearly tell someone what they can buy from you, fix that now. Define the audience, problem, outcome, method, delivery model, and economics. Then build the brand and go-to-market system that can carry it.

Your brand earns trust. Your product definitions give that trust somewhere to go.

Community Notes

1. Founders at the Gym

I listened to this episode of Founders with David Senra at the gym this week: How to Write Ads That Sell. The lesson was simple: work twice as hard as everyone else. It seems to be the common narrative, from the founder of beehiiv’s latest LinkedIn post to Alex Hormozi’s latest Instagram post. My biggest takeaway is that working six or seven days per week can be a major advantage and perhaps more people should try it.

2. Latest One Away Shows

My EO Forum mate Harold Jurado has built an incredible ramen shop in San Francisco called Ramenwell. He now has me addicted to his chili-oil product and consumer brand, Umami Hottie. Listen to his show here.

Andy Hilger, who led one of the largest recruiting companies in the country, recently came on to talk about the future of work. He is such a sharp, thoughtful, and kind human. Listen here.

3. New Launch: Leading Disruption With Charlene Li

I am SO PROUD to be part of this new brand extension and to see how Charlene continues to innovate with her brand. Leading Disruption with Charlene Li is live. Please subscribe, follow, and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

We have now crossed the 10-podcast mark at Arcbound, and three of our shows have 20,000 subscribers. More on that soon.

My biggest takeaway: just because you think everyone and their mom has a podcast does not mean the medium is saturated. Many people are boxed out from having a show because the cost and time are so prohibitive. We will be changing that soon at Arcbound. More to come.

4. Give

We work with dozens of incredible experts on an ongoing basis, all at the top of their fields. I absolutely love the client base we are building. If I can ever connect you to one of them, I would be more than happy to do so. Tell me what you need, and we will make it happen.

This newsletter was inspired by this guy Sharran I’ve been following on IG. Such real human content.