Likes Ain't Cash

The audience feels what you feel. This week I'm traveling and I have not recorded a single vlog. Shocking. I know. Not to throw shade at people who do. But I don't like it. I don't have a good time if I'm pretending to have a good time. Even though some people see me as a "guru" I'm big on doing things my way: I don't record vlogs. I don't do maybes. I don't run a sales team because it's too stressful to fill someone's calendar. I cap my client spots because I value predictability. I don't even have a landing page for my offer. I use a Google Doc with one of the default fonts they give you. Still clocked in a $100,000 (profit) month by day 21 of the month. I don't say this to brag but to show you that it's ok to not do what you were told to do. The people who tell you that you "should" do things a certain way miss the point: If you're not having a good time then the audience won't either. The audience feels what you feel. So the best person to create for is you. And if you don't like doing a kind of content then you're not obligated to.

I like naming every year: 2025, the year of ________. For me 2024 was the year of Trailblazing. I had a new goal and a new Model. It was unexplored territory but I wanted to do it anyway. Results: - From $4k to $94k in MRR and from 10 hour workdays down to 4. - 93 active Cash Creators. - 800 customers for my workshops. - 250,000 followers across all platforms. I'm happy with my trailblazing year. Yet trailblazing is messy. And I'm ok with doing messy things for myself. But I can't afford to do that for clients. Not spiritually because I don't tolerate producing mediocre work and not financially because the more I create for clients the more I create for myself. Which is 2025 is going to be the year of Mapping. I'm leaving a Map of what worked this 2024 I can give the Cash Creators the same outcomes without the mess. I want them to have this Map because I know what it has done for my life. And once you plug yourself in it and just work it, cashflowing $1 million a year is not a complex goal. I did it with just a VA and a laptop. But it's easier with a Map. Which I'll now trace so they can use it and see it through all the way to the million. This includes the 15 folks who join in this Final Intake. Opening on January 1st. Closing on the 15th or when spots are full. (Whichever happens first). Reply "map" on socials and I'll get you the details early.

Mission Failed A year ago I declared my goal to the world: I will reach $100,000 in MRP (Monthly Recurring Profit) by the end of 2024. As of today, December 30th 2024, I am deeply ashamed to say that I did not build a $100,000 MRP business. And that I only managed to build a $94,000 MRP business. Anyway here's what's next: Last time I reached a big business goal I kept going without thinking about my next step. And although I don't consider it a waste I did end up building a business that I didn't even want for 2 years. That experience taught me that sometimes it's not about staying in the race. Sometimes it's about pausing. Celebrating. And taking adequate time to think what's next. So that's my plan. I'm getting married soon and I've got plenty of things that need my full attention: Location. Investments. House. Children. Future. I built my business to fuel my life and not the other way around. It's been fun playing the game. But now I'm ready to take a hiatus from it so I can use what it created for me. Could take a few weeks or a few months. Who knows. I'll welcome the future with open arms and take what it gives me. My plan before that: 1) The Final Cash Creators Intake. I won't stop serving my clients. But I will stop taking new clients. This means that the next Cash Creators intake is the Final Intake. A few folks have saved their January Spot already and I plan to honor those commitments. I've got 15 more spots to work closely with me inside Cash Creators to build a $1 million in profit business this 2025. 15 spots and then it's closed indefinitely. 2) I will run a final cohort showing you how I got to this point: Almost $100k Profit. I want to leave a map behind. A map showing what I did to create a client business that created a business that makes (almost) $100k MRP. That's why I'm hosting my first (and last for now) digital event in February. Almost $100k Profit. A 4-week experience on how I created an (Almost) $100k MRP Business. I'll pass the Map down before step 3: 3) Hiatus I built a business that allows me to take a break and so I will. I'm focused on the future but I will open one more opportunity to work with me in the present. The Final Cash Creators Intake as we know it opens on January 1. 15 spots. One last dance. And then it's closed to outsiders. I will leave everyone else except for the Cash Creators and their plans to put $1 million+ in their bank account this 2025. I can get you an early invitation so see what taking one of the 15 spots for yourself would look like before the rush on January 1st. DM me "invitation" on socials and I'll send over the details.

I am deeply ashamed to report that I failed to build a $100k/month in personal recurring profit business. And that I just managed to build a $94,974/month in personal recurring profit business. x.com/OneJKMolina/status/1741806790935756855

I sat down today to recap where I was last year and where I am this year. The naked numbers: - Recurring revenue: $4,000 vs. $80,000-$95,000 - Active clients: 20 vs. 90. - Revenue: $630k vs. $1.23M - Margins: 40% vs. 96% - Costs: $58,000 vs. $3,000 - Hours: 12 vs. 4 - Pressure: I actually feel more pressure now than I felt a year ago. And I love it. I love it because the pressure has nothing to do with money. 2024 solved the money issue. 2025's pressure comes from the unexplored territory I'm going into: Marriage. Family. House. Kids. True legacy. Old challenges are bad challenges. But new challenges are good challenges. Whenever you trade old challenges for new challenges that's a sign that you're moving forward. And 2025 is full of them. I'm grateful. One good year. That's all it took to solve the money challenge in my life for the most part. And now it's time to put this chapter on hiatus. I'll continue serving the Cash Creators during it of course. But I will not accept new ones after this Final Intake: Where you and I team up to build this business in 2025. Specifically, a $1M per year profit business that creates the level of freedom in your life that 2024 created for me and the Cash Creators. You bring yourself. I'll provide the Model and the Plan and we'll plug you in it to make the $1 million goal a reality. 15 spots. Then Cash Creators as we know it is over. DM me "Gametime" on socials and I'll get you the details.

Revenue is a fake metric. I was hitting big months but every last day of the month I had the same bittersweet feeling: Sweet because I made money. Bitter because I knew deep down that next month wasn't going to be nearly as good as that. It was a flash in the pan. A game of chasing. A fake metric. The real metrics are actually Recurring Revenue and margins. My margins are 96% so I've got that side covered. So the only side left is Recurring Revenue. And this is when the most beautiful graph I saw this year comes into play. This is a graph of recurring revenue of this year (purple) vs. last year (gray): From $4,000 in recurring revenue all the way to $94,951 in recurring revenue. Meaning that if I wanted to, I could post nothing for a month and just serve clients... And still enter next month with more than $90,000 coming in. I'm smiling as I type this because I realize how much I actually wanted a business like this. More than building. More than fame. More than hustling. More than validation. More than status... I wanted freedom. The freedom to say no to whatever I want and still be ok. 1 good year. That's all it took. And I'm happy to say that I failed. I did not build a $100,000 per month in recurring revenue business. But I built a $94,000 per month recurring revenue business. And to me that's not that bad. So I'm taking a hiatus. I'm getting married. I'll go on my honeymoon and I'll plan my future. Could take a few weeks. Could take a few months. I don't know. But what I do know is that unlike before, I have the option to take it. So I will. Before that, I'm doing one Final Intake for Cash Creators where I build this business with you in 2025. We open on January 1st. 15 more spots and this is it. I'm opening reservations if you'd like to save yours. DM me "reservation" on socials and I'll get you the full details.

How To Plan Your 2025 This December I’ve been looking back at what were the things to leave in 2024 and things to bring to 2025. It was a great year. (From $630k last year to $1.32 million this year). And so I’m thinking about what to leave in 2024 and what to bring to 2025. One of those things is my way of planning for the future. Part of why 2024 worked well was because of what I did not do. I didn’t try to predict the future. I can't do it. So I don't bother. I believe setting goals is helpful. But setting a straight line towards that goal is not. -- Example: I thought I was going to have to make $210,000 in revenue to get to $100,000 in profit. That was the initial goal. But then the option to split with my business partner appeared. And that meant I didn’t have to make $210,000 in revenue. But $103,000. I arrived to my goal sooner BECAUSE I didn’t follow the plan. -- Trying to predict the future is a waste of time because life is gonna life and things are gonna change. Creating the future is a much better frame. I have this Google Sheets Dashboard that tells me two things: 1. Am I on track to my goal? It shines red if I’m not and green if I am. 2. How many clients per Offer Shell tier do I need to get to turn the red into green? That’s it. That’s the entire planning process. It works because it puts you in the offense. You don’t have to think about the big goal - which can be daunting. You can just think about what you can do THIS month. Which is much shorter. Which is much easier. Not by predicting the future. But by creating it.

The Little Man. For the first time in a while... I'm pretty happy with my performance. A common theme in entrepreneurs' lives are that they're constantly unhappy with their performance. Maybe it stems from a childhood insecurity or an environment in which they were constantly "not enough". And so they try to cover their feelings of dissatisfaction with over-achieving. The entrepreneur they were 5 years ago would be star-struck if they met the entrepreneur they are today. Yet there's a voice in their heads. It's their inner Little Man. The Little Man that keeps telling them they're the same kid that can't do basic tasks right. I'm not exempt from this. Every end of every year I've felt quite anxious. I'm not big into planning. I'd much rather jump straight to the execution because I find working much, much, much easier than thinking. So I felt dread around this time of the year Always. But this year there's something different. I can't find the Little Man. Can't see him. Can't feel him. Can't hear him. And for the first time in a while I actually am happy with how I showed up. I took a half a million dollar debt and paid it off. Let go of my 15 person team to do this thing solo. Took the most money home I've ever taken. The quality of my work lived up to my standards. I'm grateful for how much time and love I gave the people closest to me. And I'm actually happy because this year I actually decided to be on my own side. The Little Man pops out every now and then but he's much quieter. There's a louder voice now. It's my own. And it gives me the validation I've looked for for so long. It doesn't say much but what it says is clear: "Good job."

You'd be surprised at how many of these "big" accounts are actually broke. I've seen accounts with 85,000 followers making less than $1k a month. I was an account with 70,000 followers that made just as much as a guy with 900. I met a dude with 300,000 followers that was LOSING money. And often the problem isn't their monetization strategy. The problem is their pain tolerance. As an entrepreneur you usually have more pain tolerance than the average person: You're simply willing to take much more. Bad engagement. Prospects not buying. Clients leaving. Tire kickers. False hopes. Up and downs in revenue. You're willing to endure all that because you have extremely high pain tolerance. Which is not always a good thing. Your pain tolerance might tell you that you're playing the long game when you're actually playing the wrong game: I've posted 52,300 times. (For reference: if you posted once a day for 143 years straight you would have 52,195 posts.) But then I met J with 10,000 followers making $250,000 a month. T with 900 followers making $30,000 a month. S with 2000 followers making $60,000 a month. And I realized I wasn't playing the long game. I was playing the wrong game. I learned that Pain Tolerance is both a plus and a minus: It can make you stay in the game. But it can also keep you stuck in the wrong game. At some point you need to stop enduring pain and ask yourself: "Am I enduring the right pain here?" The right kind of pain hurts but at least gets you things. The wrong kind of pain doesn't give you anything but it makes you feel like it does. It will get you comments from peers and admiration from strangers. It will get you a lot of impressions and a great deal of likes. And likes are cool. But likes ain't cash.

Writing a little bit worse can often lead to much better marketing results. It’s not just about telling big stories. It’s about telling small stories in a big way. Think Titanic. It's about a big story: The Titanic sinks. But it wouldn’t mean anything without Jack and Rose: -- When he painted her. “I’m the king of the world!”. Freezing in the sea. When the violinists kept playing even though the ship was sinking. -- My best-performing content is often about small stories. (1 small story I wrote this week got 1 new client at $2400/month and someone who bought a 1-on-1 call for $2000.) Small stories create insight. Insight attracts Whales. Whales lead to cash. Your bottleneck isn't content creation. It’s content collection: It’s how well you can collect the small stories you already know.

The Story in 2 Minutes: 1. Me and my business partner built a 15-person team in 2023. 2. I had around 20% profit margins and was profiting around $20,000/month. 3. After I switched to a better model, I let go of 13 of those people. Including my partner. 4. This model just needs me and a VA to run. It allows me to keep 95.4% profit margins while serving 85 clients. 5. And I don't have to work more than 3 hours a day to sustain an MRR of $82,000/month. (This is not one-time revenue. This is monthly recurring revenue that doesn't reset every month.) I don't do sales calls. I don't chase prospects. And I don't create content that I don't feel like creating. It's a business built around... me. And one I wake up excited to help Cash Creators model theirs around every day.

Why I Don’t Read Business Books I think, breathe, live and do business. But I don't read many business books. I don't like them. I feel like business books are talking "at" me. They add some sort of pressure that I don't like. I do read a lot though. But I read things completely unrelated to business: One of my favorites is about the beginnings of the UFC. Another one is about an expedition from Argentina to Antarctica. Another one about how real estate in New York was built, bought and sold. The things they all have in common? They're not trying to "convince" me of anything. They just share what already happened with me. They don't talk "at" me. They talk "with" me. There's zero speculation about the future. It's all about things that happened in the fast. It saves me the hassle of verifying if it's legit because it already happened. I can let my guard down and simply enjoy it. We all have a story. And our prospects want to hear it. But they don't want to feel like we're talking "at" them. That's why I don't create much new stuff.. I simply tell a story that already happened. I relive conversations I had with my clients. I don't speculate about the future. I just share the past so that I can save people the hassle of verifying the proof. I am the proof. My content strategy is literally just talking about myself. It's aligned. It's honest. It's why content comes "easy" to me. I don't need to manipulate information. I just convey it. And the money comes because of it. It's not that you need to create interesting content. It's that you need to find ways to talk about yourself in a more interesting way.

An entrepreneur has 3 resources and money is the least valuable. Money is nice. But one thing that's more valuable than money is time. Money is infinite. Time isn't. Any billionaire on their deathbed would trade places with a non-billionaire like me in a heartbeat. But there's one resource that's more valuable than even time: Attention. Where you put your attention determines the quality of your life much more than money or time. This is why 5 year olds smile so much. They don't have any money. They've only had 5 years of time on this Earth. But their attention is only spent on the things they enjoy - and that's why they're happy. A useful frame: Money is bronze. Time is silver. Attention is gold. Trading time for money (silver for bronze) is a negative trade. It's necessary at some stage. But there are better trades. Spending money to get attention is a great trade. It’s like spending bronze to get gold. You spend a lesser currency to get a better currency. The right systems are valuable because you spend lesser currencies to get the best currency (attention). And with it, the things that bring you joy.