Hardcore Closer
Ryan Stowman's sales training business began in January 2012, when he decided to name it Hardcore Closer. Before that, it was just him helping a few people in the mortgage business. He positioned the brand against traditional sales tactics. As he put it, "instead of cold calls and all the stuff that sales guys hate, we do things like build funnels have lead follow up systems, lots of automation."
Stowman was not a web developer, so he paid someone to build the site and app. He also paid for traffic, mostly mailers and events, and he offered a modest entry program: "all I offered was like a thousand dollars for six weeks, like, working with me program." The first year brought in about $96,000 in gross sales, but after paying for leads and technology, he said he "really didn't make any money if all things considered."
The audience grew through content and then through paid social. Stowman said 93% of his traffic came from social media, according to Google Analytics. He spent heavily on Facebook ads at one point, reportedly "over $250,000 of my personal money to grow that page," and later reduced spending to about $10,000 a month because the audience was growing organically. He also used guest posts on Forbes and Entrepreneur to build credibility and inbound links. His list reached about 35,000 people.
The product ladder worked. Buyers often started with a low-priced product and returned to buy more. In Stowman's words, "some of those people have bought five and six times from us throughout the years." Gross sales rose from about $96,000 in 2012 to $803,000 in 2015, and he reported $2.3 million in 2016 gross sales so far. Costs were significant. He paid 20 grand a month for Facebook ads at peak and later relied on contract sales affiliates who received a percentage of sales. He also earned roughly $20,000 a month in residual affiliate commissions from software recommended to buyers.
As of the interview in 2016, Stowman had about 12 people on retainer, 57 customers in the $30,000-per-year program, and a podcast averaging about 25,000 downloads per month. He said he expected to finish 2016 near $3 million and hit $5 to $6 million the following year.
- •Revenue grew because a low-priced entry product led buyers to repeatedly purchase higher-priced offers, so each customer was worth far more over time than their first purchase.
- •Paid social acquisition built an audience of people who had already bought something, which made the list more valuable than a list of passive likes.
- •Organic growth on social media after the initial ad push reduced dependence on ad spending while keeping the audience engaged.
- •Positioning the brand as a modern alternative to cold calling and pushy sales tactics made the content feel distinct in a crowded sales-training market.
- 1.Build a tiered product ladder that starts with a low-cost product (such as a book or short course) and leads to progressively higher-priced offers.
- 2.Use paid direct-response ads to find buyers, then retarget people who responded to build a list of engaged purchasers rather than casual followers.
- 3.Publish content on social platforms regularly, repurposing blog posts as image-and-quote posts, and track traffic sources in Google Analytics.
- 4.Use guest posts on established publications to build credibility and backlinks, and recommend partner tools that generate affiliate income.
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