The magic middle

Hey there,

Here’s something you probably know, instinctually: The message you lead with, and the offers you go to market with, shape the clients you attract.

But then you look through your LinkedIn followers and CRM contacts and think, “Why do I keep attracting the wrong people?”

I’ve been working on this same challenge since launching in 2023.

After lots of experiments, I’ve finally landed on the right offers, the right message, and the right clients - the ones I do my best work with, and are happy to pay me to do it.

If you want need to attract more of your best clients, who pay you what your worth, this is for you.

The wrong clients

When I first launched Profit Ladder, I talked a lot about freedom.

Freedom like…

I could step away from the business for a week and not have everything collapse.

Clients get results without feeling like an ER doctor, on call 24/7/365.

Some of our revenue comes from active client delivery work, and some is more passive and re-occurring.

That kind of freedom.

I talked about digital offers, like online courses and toolkits.

I talked about replacing custom proposals and one-off projects with repeatable, productized services that protect your boundaries (and are way more profitable).

It generated attention, quickly… but from the wrong crowd. Get-rich-quick creators and side-hustlers. The kind that want to sell $47 Notion templates from a beach.

I had alienated the people I meant to serve - business owners.

Real B2B service providers, with clients paying them five or six figures for real results. And a reputation they weren’t willing to trash for an online course empire.

So I pivoted - even changed the name of the business from Passive Profits to Profit Ladder.

I changed my narrative, too. Less about freedom and more about business basics: attracting more clients and stabilizing cashflow.

I shifted from courses and lead magnets to productized services and wedge offers.

The creators vanished. The business owners started showing up.

The almost right clients

Things felt better. These were my people.

I had been in their shoes before. I knew their pain points, intimately. And they loved my offers… especially the free ones.

I was attracting and converting, but fewer than I’d hoped.

These were amazing business owners, but still early-stage. Too early.

They hadn’t spent enough time doing the work - they lacked service-market fit.

They were also up against real revenue woes. And it’s hard to spend money when there’s none coming in. I’ve been there… I get it and completely empathize.

But I’m also running a business. And so as valuable as my offers are, too few of the right people were finding and buying them.

I felt stuck. I had the right people at the wrong stage.

But then I had a conversation that shifted things again…

My best clients

A strategic partner and I were catching up on her business. Someone I respect, deeply. Smart, grounded, and allergic to hype. The kind of operator who has no patience for people selling dreams on TikTok.

She said something that created a pattern interrupt:

See, there’s so much snake oil about passive income, digital offers, and 4-hour work weeks that we’re all on high alert. We denounce it publicly.

But behind closed doors, the truth comes out - most of the seasoned business owners I work with do want freedom. They just don’t want to trade their business model and reputation for a YouTube channel.

They don’t want to teach strangers online how to do what they do.

They want to keep serving smart, high-caliber clients - without chewing through their time, energy, or margins.

That conversation got me thinking: Maybe, a while back, I’d softened the wrong thing.

Maybe the goal isn’t to distance myself from freedom, but to reframe it.

So I did, quietly. No big announcement. I just evolved my offers and messaging again…