Magicians, Movie Stars, and Marketers – How We’re Helping Dan Ulin Grow Elite Student Coach

This week I had the privilege of flying to Los Angeles and working with Dan Ulin of Elite Student Coach and Dennis Yu, founder of Blitzmetrics.

After 32 hours of no sleep and working 6 hours on the plane – what’s the first thing we do?

Go to the Magic Castle, of course. The Magic Castle is a magician’s paradise – filled with world famous magicians, all performing for small audiences in a renovated 1910 mansion in Hollywood. No pictures allowed – strict house policy.

All the magic made me realize something – magicians and marketers are the same.

For instance, before a magician goes on a world tour, they’ll visit a place like the Magic Castle and practice tricks for a smaller audience. Once they find winners and get positive feedback, they’ll add the trick to their set for a bigger audience.

Dollar-a-day works the same way.

We test ads for small audiences, and then once we find winners, we amplify them.

In between shows we grabbed dinner and talked about business.

Elite Student Coach is designed to mentor promising young adults and kids and set them up for a bright future. Whether that’s getting into the college of their dreams or being a leader in their communities, Dan wants to be known as the go-to guy to make this happen. 

For context, we’ve tried many different things for Dan in the past. This included ads, cold emails, and building other trust-building assets.

As fun as the Magic Castle was – the real reason we flew to LA was to find a solution to this problem which had been plaguing us for months now. To do that, we scheduled a VIP day with Mark Lack, an old friend of Dennis who’s known as the “personal branding guy”. 

Since we were meeting him early the next day (and since I hadn’t slept in 2 days), we decided to pack it up early at 11 PM and get some beauty sleep for the big day ahead.

The next day, we joined Dan in an Uber down to Orange County to visit Mark.

VIP days are admittedly new to me. In many ways, I felt like the odd one out here observing and taking notes while Dan, Dennis, and Mark bounced around ideas.

Dan sells his services for around $50k, but was worried that if he charged more he wouldn’t be able to get the new clients he’d like.

The problem with high ticket services is that unless you have a large amount of trust and a big audience, you’ll get most of your clients through referrals. And the problem, as Mark put it, was that at a certain point you need more support in order to scale to $10 Million in 5 years, which is Dan’s goal.

Therefore, we have to look for our competitive advantage here.

Is it a big audience? Nope. Is it hundreds of thousands to throw at ads? Nope.

Dan’s competitive advantage was networking and knowing others who can share his mission through his trips to Pakistan and India.

For example, Dan is good friends with Rehan Allahwala, someone who deeply cares and is invested in building schools and helping others. Through traveling, Dan has built a rolodex of connections of folks who actually care about the mission.

There were three big takeaways from our meeting with Mark Lack.

1. Dan should become business partners with one of these high profile entrepreneurs who cares deeply about the mission of helping kids succeed. This can solve the financing problem and allow us to scale with they’re support and Dan’s know-how.

2. Dan should charge more for his services. Instead of charging $50k, Dan should charge $150k, with a $50k incentive for referrals. Since referrals already make up the bulk of Dan’s businesses, this offers a massive incentive for clients to spead the word.

3. We need more authoritative assets for Dan. Specifically, his book “Lean In, Stand Out, Step Up” which we’re working on at this very moment. This will raise Dan’s authority with potential clients, and allow us to boost it with Dollar-a-day on Amazon. 

What’s the conclusion of our meeting?

Firstly, Mark Lack is an awesome person and a genius for thinking like this.

It makes so much sense to amplify our existing assets like Dollar-a-day, sponsored by someone else who really cares and is invested in the mission.

Secondly, this shows how marketers can think outside the box where it matters. With high ticket offers like Dan’s authority and connections matter more than a VSL or landing page on Clickfunnels.

Moving forward in the next few weeks, I’m excited to see what we can do to help Dan grow Elite Student Coach and am so excited to see him crush it!