That $200 'Productivity Guru' course I bought with zero expectations

Last February I was dead broke with no tree trimming gigs lined up for like 3 weeks straight. I saw this guy on Instagram talking about a system for booking work during slow spells, figured what the hell, $200 was already gone in my head. The course was mostly basic stuff like email templates and a calendar setup, but there was this one part about calling past customers on a Tuesday morning instead of emailing them. I tried it on a Tuesday and booked 4 jobs worth $1,200 total from people who said they'd been meaning to call me. Has anyone else found one weird trick from a random course that actually worked or am I just lucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

sullivan.quinn9d ago

Wait, are you SURE those past customers didn't already have you in mind and just needed a nudge? I bet if you'd called on a Wednesday or Thursday, you'd have gotten the EXACT same result. That Tuesday thing sounds like pure coincidence dressed up like a secret sauce. The email templates and calendar setup are the REAL basics that actually move the needle, and the Tuesday call thing is just a gimmick to make you feel like you got something special for your $200. I've seen a hundred of these "one weird trick" claims and they ALWAYS fall apart when you test them in a different market or season. You got lucky with timing and desperate customers, not because this guru cracked the code on slow seasons.

the_ben8d ago

@sullivan.quinn you're not wrong about the email templates and calendar setup being the real heavy lifters, that's for sure. But I gotta push back a little on the Tuesday thing being just a coincidence. There's actually some decent behavioral data out there showing Tuesday mornings tend to have higher pickup rates for B2B cold calls, not because of some secret sauce, but just because people are back from Monday catchup mode and not yet in Wednesday meeting hell. It's definitely not a magic bullet though, and I agree that most "gurus" blow stuff like this way out of proportion to sell course copies. Test it in a different season like you said and the numbers probably fade fast, but dismissing it entirely ignores that call timing actually does have some minor measurable effects in larger sample sizes.

matthewking6d ago

Tuesday morning instead of emailing them" - that's wild man, I actually agree with @the_ben on this one though. There's real data showing Tuesday mornings work better for calls because people are settled in but not buried yet. Sounds like you stumbled onto something solid, even if most of that course was fluff.