Likes Ain't Cash

Today I'm putting my business on Timeless Mode. I’m grateful that nowadays I don’t spend most of my working hours getting clients. I spend them serving my existing clients (The Cash Creators). Old and new. But mostly new. Crafting their plan to $1 million and the steps along the way. It's rewarding work. But it’s intense work because we commit to each other and honoring my commitments is important to me. Without new clients my Model only requires me to work 2 hours a day. It feels and is quite easy and has now created six $100k profit months in a row. My focus for 2024 was using the Model to get to this point. And now that I’m here my focus for 2025 is shifting to the real world: I want to start a family. This new phase includes finding a place to live. Getting a house. Planning for the future and plenty of other variables. Which isn’t easy. And so I'm shifting how I operate: I’m putting my business on Timeless Mode until further notice. During Timeless Mode all offers that add stuff to my calendar are off the table. I’ll fulfill existing commitments but I won't be taking new ones because they're not a priority right now. My goals and current clients are. That means that unless you're a client, my calendar is off limits. I'll stop posting on socials and run ads instead. I won't offer Hours on Zoom anymore. And I won't offer live workshops with me unless I'm doing them for the Cash Creators anyway. 800 customers have found value in the Model that got me here and 90 people currently work with me to install it. It’s also easy for me to offer parts of it since the work is either done or already scheduled. So I’ll keep making them available in modalities that fit Timeless Mode inside my list (link’s in bio). Sustaining $100k months without adding stuff to my calendar is an option that my Model gives me. One that I've decided to take. See you someday, JK.

I built a $100k MRP (Monthly Recurring Profit) Business and recorded a 48 minute video on how. It's a heartfelt one. I've been waiting a long time to make and post this. Link: ​youtu.be/i49LUxZgi5o

I finally made the video I've been preparing for a year to make: How I Built A $100,000 MRP (Monthly Recurring Profit) Business With Just 1 VA. Coming out tomorrow. To get notified you can go to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JKMolina

I realized the story I've been telling myself for 12 months was wrong. I told myself that the goal was creating a $100k profit per month business. 12 months later, I could use either of 2 stories to check if I got there or not. Story 1: Monthly Recurring Revenue. My MRR oscillates between $70k and $95k. It says the business did not meet the goal because it didn’t hit $100k. In a 2D world, this is the most useful story. Black-or-white answer. Done deal. But we don’t live in a 2D world. We live in a world where some internet coins created by 20 year olds give a better return than investing in the United States of America’s stock market. So here’s another story to consider: Story 2: Proof. Here's the profit my Cash Creator-Style business made the last 6 months: $115,300 $109,800 $104,700 $113,100 $159,800 $159,033 According to this story, it’s clear the business met the goal. Story 1, which is based on MRR, tells me I lost. Story 2, which is based on proof, tells me I won. So which one is it? I wanted to listen to the MRR Story because it's a simple number. If I hit it, that means that I have to do literally nothing but help clients in order to sustain $100k/month. But in my opinion that’s quite a mediocre way of thinking. Might as well admit that I got lucky. That there is a chance that one month my luck will run out and I won’t be able to make anything outside of my client revenue. But I didn’t get lucky. My first venture was selling perfume door to door. 5 years later I sold a software company for 7 figures. Built another one. Then took that down and built another one to $100k profit months. I’ve done the work and have the proof. And so I’ve chosen which story to believe: I believe the story that says MRR doesn’t tell the whole story. And that not all of the $100k has to be MRR in order to say you have a $100k a month in profit business. The $100k doesn’t have to be Monthly Recurring Revenue. It can be Revenue That Recurs if you have the skills to make it recur. I believe this story because of the proof. If you’ve hit $100k in profit for 6 months in a row, it’s not a wild statement to say that you make $100k a month in profit. Plus if you’ve done something successfully for 6 months in a row, I can’t really call you lucky. I believe in Story 2: That proof tells a more complete story than MRR. The story that left me with quite a beautiful lesson on my own silliness: For an entire year, I’ve been looking at the goal wrong. The real goal wasn't just getting to $100k a month. The real goal was becoming the kind of person who can create $100k a month because that means that when things get shaky, and they will, you can handle it. And so I’m happy to announce… That I, with proof, became a $100k/Month Cash Creator. Mission accomplished. I’ll now shift my focus from socials and unto my list, where I’ll share parts of the Model that brought me here. You’re free to join and free to leave at anytime. (Link’s in bio).

The 3 Most Important Words For Me. "$100k per month in personal recurring profit." The last 3 words of this sentence (recurring personal profit) are more important to me than the first 3 (100k per month). I've hit 100k per month before. But they weren't personal. They weren't recurring. And they weren't profit. So when I set my plan to hit that number by the end of 2024, I made those clear. Personal matters because before I used to split it with my business partners. In some businesses I've taken 25% of the profits and in others I've taken 50%. But this time I'm taking 100% of the profits while serving 80 clients because my Model allows me to serve them without a partner. Recurring matters because recurring businesses are much less stressful than volatile businesses. I like big payments like everybody else. But I'd much rather have small payments that recurr over time. This change in focus has led to less stress. This leads to better decisions. Which leads to better work. Which leads to more recurring revenue. It's a beautiful loop that gets better every time I write. And Profit matters because revenue isn't real. Only what you take home is real. You can't buy stuff with likes, only cash. And you can't buy stuff with revenue. Only profit. 18 months ago I was also making $100k. But taking home $20k. This month I've made $110k. And took home $107k. A 5x in profit improvement. Personal. Recurring. Profit. For the beginner, these 3 are constraints. For the Cash Creator, these 3 are enablers. Profit enables financial freedom. Personal enables creative freedom. Recurring enables mental freedom. And all 3 combined enable true freedom.

When a mentor asked me what was the one big takeaway after my biggest profit month so far ($160k profit) I said: "People just want someone who will go first." Like when there's an empty street but nobody is crossing. And then one guy crosses and then everybody follows... People just want you to be that guy. 2024 taught me that competence is abundant. But that confidence is scarce. There's no need for another coach. There's too many of them and they all listen to the same 3-5 gurus. A copy of a copy of a copy. What people need is a Protagonist. Someone who hears everyone but only listens to himself. Who is willing to set a goal and their plan in public. Someone who's willing to go first. So go first.

I've been taken advantage of multiple times in my business. Yet I didn't let that make me bitter and showed up the next day with an attitude of giving. That's a big reason why I make more money than the people who took advantage of me.

Big Boy Problems vs. Small Boy Problems I believe in giving the other cheek. Not because I like getting hit but because I just have bigger stuff to worry about. There are Small Boy Problems and there are Big Boy Problems. Small Boy Problems ask what do I respond to this prospect? This post got no replies what do I do? Why did this email get so many unsubscribers? Small Boy Problems take enormous amounts of energy because you can't solve them on your own. They require someone else. Like waiting for someone's response. They always slow you down. And it's that slowing down that gets you. When I find myself solving Small Boy Problems I remind myself that this is a total waste of my time because I could be solving Big Boy Problems: What Big Idea am I developing next? What's my strategy to end this year strong? How can I make my model better so that I have to crank the handle less? What would this look like if it were easy? Am I swinging for the fences or am I playing it safe? These are all Big Boy Problems. The paradox is that they're easier to solve than Small Boy Problems. Unlike Small Boy Problems, Big Boy Problems don't require a second person to be solved. You are the only requirement. And what ends up limiting you is the energy you lose by focusing on Small Boy Problems. Train yourself to catch yourself when you're solving Small Boy Problems and shift your energy towards Big Boy Problems. The Small Boy Problem won't get solved. And that's ok. When you solve Big Boy Problems, the Small Boy Problems have a way of sorting themselves out.

In a Japanese shop far far away I made a wonderful discovery. Even back in 1400 BC they were practicing the hidden strategies of Whale Bait. Truly ahead of their time.

Chaos Is Essential I was supposed to be in Warsaw today But my flight got canceled and I'm stuck for 2 nights in London. I thought I was, anyway. But after walking 17k steps and seeing the Big Ben, London Eye, Tower Bridge and Thames River I would like to have a word with London's marketing department. They don't do the city justice. It's beautiful. It came at a right time in my life when I'm going through some significant decisions. This impromptu trip reminded me not to take plans too seriously. Life is gonna life. Plans are gonna change. And a lot of the time it's for your own good. God has better plans for you than you have for yourself. This trip reminded me of it and I even bought this hat to remind me further. I call this my "Chaos" hat. It's there to remind me that chaos is good if you don't resist it. But use it as a tool. Chaos is a key part to my business. Its why I don't have work schedules. I don't do content plans. I simply feel for what I want to create that day and I do that. "Notion planner" types won't understand this but there are times when chaos is the way because it creates the space needed for creativity. As I was coordinating flights, two new Cash Creators joined via my Workshop Funnel. As I got threw into the chaos I got a nice breather and I got to explore a beautiful city. As I'm in the Waterloo bus the idea to write this came to me and so here we are. And I even had dinner with a Cash Creator last night. On most other industries chaos hurts you. But in coaching and consulting, where people buy you, not your coaching, having a little healthy chaos is essential.

1/3rd of the last Cash Creator spots are gone. Check your email for the details to work together before we can't.

On Stress: When David Ogilvy said "I never wrote anything in the office", I felt that. This past year I made it a point to pursue my goals outside of the office: - Got engaged to the woman I love. - Ran a half marathon even though I had knee surgery. - Then a marathon. - Achieved my lowest bodyfat in 7 years (went from 212 pounds to 156). - Started investing in offline businesses and the stock market. - Climbed the highest peak in Poland. - Learned to ski. - Traveled to 15 new cities. - And a new continent. - Flew my family to Europe. - Read more than I've ever read in my life (rarely business related). Previously, pursuing my interests outside of work made me feel guilty. Now I consider them essential. They're essential because I understood that most entrepreneurs' bottleneck isn't their work ethic. Most entrepreneurs' bottleneck is stress. When they "lock in" at work they make a lot of progress but stress inevitably piles up. That's normal. But sometimes they go for months and years without slowing down. And even though stress can be helpful to a degree, in a business like coaching and consulting it often turns into poison. They grow reactive. Angrier. Irritable. To the point they end up wondering if they'd be happier if they'd have chosen a simpler life like people from their hometown. (Ask me how I know). It's a downward spiral. Caused by stress accumulation. Fixed with stress relief. Not only is stress relief beneficial to their work, Sometimes it is the most beneficial thing they can do for their work because people get their best ideas when not stressed. I can directly point out 5 times when my income reached a new level - and they almost coincide perfectly with 5 ideas that came to me while doing things other than work. Ideas that were deeply influential to my and the Cash Creators' results like Whale Bait and The Offer Shell. Ideas that were only visible when work didn't obstruct my vision. And so I find myself in this quite wonderful triangle: 1. Work creates healthy stress. 2. Pursuing my interests and spending time with my loved ones releases it. 3. The release of stress allows me to create better work. And so on and so on... "Scale Bros" plagued the market with a rigid definition of what the "entrepreneur's job" is. To them, the job is the job and that's it. But sometimes the job isn't the job. Sometimes taking time off the job so you can get better ideas IS the job. You're in a creative profession. You don't get paid by the hour. You get paid by the idea. And the best ideas only come when you create the space they demand.

How To Be You Again If you ask me "what are you?" I'll respond "writer". I write since 5. Wrote little poems for my mom with my crayons. Tried to come up with songs sometimes (that my dad had to sit through). I was just a writer who liked writing for the sake of it. As I got acquainted with business I started to help people with it. I became a writer who did business. I wrote for the art. I did business for the money. It was fun. But at some point something shifted. I don't know when exactly. But the business demands became too many and it took priority over the writing. My ritual of early morning writing got interrupted by answering notifications and posting what "needed" to be posted: The posts with "viral" templates. The general guidelines for a "sales email". A cadence that I "had" to stick to. It's a weird feeling to describe if you haven't been there, but it's worse than hiring a ghostwriter. It's like looking at your own writing and realizing that it's just a ghost of what it used to be. I used to be a writer who happened to do business. I had become a businessman who happened to write. I went against my own self for the money. I had sold myself to the work. And I did it for cheap. Picasso said that his favorite works were those he produced in his early years. Not when he learned all the habits and customers of a "great" painter: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." I knew something was terribly wrong when, for the first time in 3 years, I sat down in the morning and I didn't write. Worse - I didn't want to. So I had to remind myself who I am and what I do: Sometimes I do business. Sometimes I coach. Sometimes I consult. Sometimes I mentor. Sometimes all of those. Sometimes neither. It changes. But here's what never changes: I write. I write for the love of it. For the art. For my personal amusement and enjoyment. I don't feel shackled by templates or by "the best way and time to post things" anymore. I do it because this is who I am and I crafted a business around what I love to do. Not what I have to do. Going from "businessman who happens to write" back to "writer who happens to do business" starts with structure: You have to structure your marketing in a way that's unique to you. I was joking with my girlfriend the other day that my marketing is win-win. If one of my posts gets really good engagement I can say "See? I still got it." If it doesn't I can say "See? Likes ain't cash." I'm free because my business isn't centered around the "best" way to do things. It's centered around "my" way of doing things. It's not a business with an art component. It's an art with a business component. I stopped being a businessman who happens to write, So that I could once again become a writer who happens to do business. And so can you.

This past year to me was a big lesson on fake metrics. I realized how many fake metrics put on my head by other people were influencing the way I thought. I thought the important metric was "weight" and so I dropped a LOT of weight (including muscle). And ended up looking like what my friends called a Famine Physique. But that was just a fake metric. The real metrics are body-fat percentage and muscle mass. When I understood that I got to a new level in my body. Same with business. Revenue and leads are fake metrics. Recurring revenue and profit margins are real metrics. Careful what you optimize for because you might get it.

Don't assume malice. My clients have stuff going on in their lives. Things break. People come and go. And I know the last thing they're thinking about is me. So when an inconvenience happens I never assume malice. Client payment doesn't go through? Didn't reply? Haven't heard back from them in a while? I don't assume malice. Instead I just assume that they have stuff going on and ask. Often people just forgot or are busy that day. Then we fix the problem and that's the end of it. My clients won't want to talk if I come in guns blazing and remind them about tHeIr cOmmiTmeNt tO tHE prOgRAm. And neither will yours. Don't assume malice and chase them. Instead be the safe bet and provide a solution for them. They can call their bank and stop paying you. They can do whatever they want. So might as well give them reasons to want to work with you instead of assuming they don’t.

7. Selling access with an Offer Shell is the easiest thing to sell. The Offer Shell is the simplest way I know of monetizing an audience at the extremes. It doesn't sell access to more "stuff". It gives the same "stuff" to everyone, but sells access to the person selling it. An Offer Suite says "I have this product and that product and those products. Choose." An Offer Shell says "This is my product. This is how much level of access you can get to me. Choose." The Cash Creator does this because he knows the value of his stuff decreses over time. But his own value increases over time. By selling access to him, not his stuff, he's betting on an asset that always goes up. 8. Whale Bait Is The Only Posting "Tactic" You Need The market is still in love with creating content for the masses. Yet the smart ones are starting to realize that the masses are broke. And that they've built their audience on Fish Bait, when the real money is in building an audience with Whale Bait. I estimate there's 3 years before people really "get it" and its effectiveness drops. But until then there's still plenty of money to be made with it. I built a $94k in MRR business by posting pictures of my food on Instagram, copy and pasting my stuff in cross platform and using my laptop's webcam. I'm creating 1/4th of the content I used to create when I did Fish Bait and I'm STILL making more today. It's not about the rod. It's about the bait. 9. Don't treat your social media like social media. Treat it like Netflix. There's too many people who are just kind of "there". There is no arc to the story. No goal we can look towards with them. No stakes that keep things interesting. When I declared my goal to reach $100k/month in profit I took a big gamble. And I was rewarded accordingly. Take accountability in public. Like if you were a Netflix Protagonist. It's good for business. 10. You're 1 year and 1 Model away. 1 year is all it took to get from $4k to $94k in MRR. I demonstrated it along the way. I have the proof. Enabled by the Model. Plenty of decisions matter in business like your offer and niche. But 2024 made it clear that there's one that matters above them: Your Model. Get the Model right and you run laps around people who didn't. It's 1 decision that outweighs 1000 decisions. The best Model is not a "method". It's an amplifier. You should be able to simply plug yourself in it and allow it to monetize what you already are. The worst models are the ones that demand you to change yourself. To put in things into your business that you don't believe in. If you don't like sales calls, you shouldn't be required to do them. If you don't like building a team, don't bother. If you don't like sticking a phone up to your face to record videos then that's ok because that's not needed. At least not with the Cash Creator Model. It just needs you (and maybe 1 VA) to create a business that makes $1 million in profit with less than 4 working hours a day. (No sales calls, talking head videos or teams required). I've done it and demonstrated it for a year. Now it's time for me to pause, celebrate and help the Cash Creators do the same. I'm doing one Final Intake for Cash Creators before my hiatus. 15 more spots. Closes in January 15th or when the spots are gone. DM me "final" on social media and I'll get you the details so someone else doesn't take your spot.

2024 In 10 Lessons. I doubled my revenue, quintupled my profit and built a business that makes me $94,000 in monthly recurring profit this 2024. 10 lessons it left me: 1. People just want you to go first. They want a person of action that they can believe in. You and a group want to cross an empty street but the light is green. Everyone's second guessing if they should go. But then one person goes and everyone follows. People just want you to be that person. They just want you to lead. It doesn't matter if you're right, wrong, good or bad. They want you to be someone they can follow and believe in. 2. Not everyone who leaves is a loser. But every loser leaves. My most successful clients don't turn potential clients down when they see red flags. To them if they see a slightly-less-than-green flag, they're already out. They can't be bothered. Because not everyone who leaves is a loser. But every loser leaves. And they know that the effort required to serve a loser is 10 times the effort required to serve a winner. 3. Selling your Philosophy is the single best use of your marketing. Social media is best used as a marketplace for your Ideas. Not Offers. Get someone to buy into your Ideas first. This then opens them up to your offers. It's a mistake to switch the order. 4. Consequences move people more than value. Part of why people's offers don't sell is because they're always there. The audience needs to know that things are not going to be there forever for them to stop taking forever. 5. Your job is your part time job. Staying sane is your full-time job. You don't get paid by the hour. You get paid by the Idea. And the best ideas don't come to you when you're stressed. This is why coaches who are not stressed run laps around those who are. While others are busy producing ok work they're busy staying sane so they can produce excellent work. And sometimes just 1 piece can change a lot. 6. The more money someone gives you the more money they're likely to give you. 80% of my clients this year bought something small from me before buying something 10 times as expensive. And then 10% of those bought something 3 times as expensive. Sometimes it's not that your offer is too big. Maybe your offer is fine. But you just need to sell a smaller component of it first so people know what it's like to transact with you.

7. Selling access with an Offer Shell is the easiest thing to sell. The Offer Shell is the simplest way I know of monetizing an audience at the extremes. It doesn't sell access to more "stuff". It gives the same "stuff" to everyone, but sells access to the person selling it. An Offer Suite says "I have this product and that product and those products. Choose." An Offer Shell says "This is my product. This is how much level of access you can get to me. Choose." The Cash Creator does this because he knows the value of his stuff decreses over time. But his own value increases over time. By selling access to him, not his stuff, he's betting on an asset that always goes up. 8. Whale Bait Is The Only Posting "Tactic" You Need The market is still in love with creating content for the masses. Yet the smart ones are starting to realize that the masses are broke. And that they've built their audience on Fish Bait, when the real money is in building an audience with Whale Bait. I estimate there's 3 years before people really "get it" and its effectiveness drops. But until then there's still plenty of money to be made with it. I built a $94k in MRR business by posting pictures of my food on Instagram, copy and pasting my stuff in cross platform and using my laptop's webcam. I'm creating 1/4th of the content I used to create when I did Fish Bait and I'm STILL making more today. It's not about the rod. It's about the bait. 9. Don't treat your social media like social media. Treat it like Netflix. There's too many people who are just kind of "there". There is no arc to the story. No goal we can look towards with them. No stakes that keep things interesting. When I declared my goal to reach $100k/month in profit I took a big gamble. And I was rewarded accordingly. Take accountability in public. Like if you were a Netflix Protagonist. It's good for business. 10. You're 1 year and 1 Model away. 1 year is all it took to get from $4k to $94k in MRR. I demonstrated it along the way. I have the proof. Enabled by the Model. Plenty of decisions matter in business like your offer and niche. But 2024 made it clear that there's one that matters above them: Your Model. Get the Model right and you run laps around people who didn't. It's 1 decision that outweighs 1000 decisions. The best Model is not a "method". It's an amplifier. You should be able to simply plug yourself in it and allow it to monetize what you already are. The worst models are the ones that demand you to change yourself. To put in things into your business that you don't believe in. If you don't like sales calls, you shouldn't be required to do them. If you don't like building a team, don't bother. If you don't like sticking a phone up to your face to record videos then that's ok because that's not needed. At least not with the Cash Creator Model. It just needs you (and maybe 1 VA) to create a business that makes $1 million in profit with less than 4 working hours a day. (No sales calls, talking head videos or teams required). I've done it and demonstrated it for a year. Now it's time for me to pause, celebrate and help the Cash Creators do the same. I'm doing one Final Intake for Cash Creators before my hiatus. 15 more spots. Closes in January 15th or when the spots are gone. DM me "final" on social media and I'll get you the details so someone else doesn't take your spot.

Stripe has all sorts of interesting statistics. Today it showed me what some of my most successful clients have paid me. 3 lessons that they taught me: 1) Create $10 Bills. Capture $1 Bills. I'm proud of the number because none of them are obligated to work with me. They can all choose to leave when they please. Yet they don't because the money you see there is actually the small money. It's just the money I capture. The money that we create together is far greater - and they get to keep it most of it. In a way, I get the losing end of the deal. I create $10 and I capture $1. But I don't mind because when you create many $10 dollar bills you capture plenty of $1 dollar bills. 2) Whale Theory Is Real I have a theory called Whale Theory that 95% of your income is going to come from 5% of your audience. Most people's thinking is flawed (in a good way). If you want to make $1 million per year ($84 per month) then logic says that they need 84 people to pay them $1k per month. The reality is that 10% of people are willing to pay you 10 times as much. Thanks to Whale Theory, you don't need 84 people paying you $1k a month to get to the million. You need less because there's people who will pay you $3,000-4,000 a month. The game isn't always in getting more people in but in expanding relationships with the people you already have. 3) Be A Long Term Person These are not one-time payments. These are recurring payments built over months and years of trust with these folks. Yet they started with a couple hundred bucks and amounted to what you see today. But to accumulate that kind of money I had to change. I used to be a short term person and thought of clients as "assets". This perspective punished me because I failed to see something obvious: Clients are people. And people will do business with people they trust - which can only be built in the long term. So the optimal strategy is not trying to "squeeze" as much as I can with one-time payments, But to be the kind of person that is deserving of working with for a long time. It's a long term game that requires a long term person. And until I became one that revenue was locked away from me.