The simplest offer I've ever made
ft Calendly and a blog post
[ MAIN IDEA: SIMPLE PAYMENTS ]
In 2004, Howard Wein started selling Philly cheesesteaks for $100 each.
In 2013, Nipsey Hussle sold 1,000 mixtapes for $100 each.
In 2014, he sold 100 for $1,000 each.
In 2023, MSCHF sold a microscopic 3D-printed handbag for $63,750.
This blew my mind.
But after thinking about it, it started making sense.
They may have been offering similar products to their peers, but they were playing an entirely different game.
Howard was challenging your perspective on classic food.
Nipsey was using music as a funding mechanism to uplift his community.
MSCHF was leveraging clout to highlight our insatiable appetite for status and small handbags.
These creators knew they were doing things differently, so they refused to market and price themselves like commodities.
We devs should take notice, because our traditional funding sources are empty at their core.
Deal sites like AppSumo enroll you in a race to the bottom, where you’re selling lifetime deals for $29
Launching an NFT involves a lot of education and convincing people you won’t rug pull
VC often requires you to trade your soul and control for time.
Raising from friends & family exposes the wholesomeness of your relationships to the brutality of the marketplace.
But what if, like those creatives above, we took a different path?
What if we found a few people who valued our stuff so much that they’d be willing to pay 100X what a normal user would?
That’d change things, a lot.
You could make it insanely useful for them.
Suddenly you have daily users who really care.
They’re emotionally invested, so they give better feedback and are less demanding.
With that extra profit, you can reinvest in improving the product, support, and your local community … while also having enough left over to feel stable enough to shoo away those VCs who tempt you with a quick flip.
Your perception of yourself improves. Most importantly, you keep your soul — the pure essence that gave you the courage to start in the first place.
It sounds too good to be true.
Well, I figured I’d find out for myself if this theory holds weight.
[ THE STACK ]
So today my goal was to create a high-ticket offer — the simplest way I could.
No fancy landing page, no pipeline of automations, no ads, no images, no analytics, no funnels.
Just a blog post and Calendly.
Here’s how it works:
The blog post explains the offer. Here it is for reference: https://www.compasscalendar.com/blog/crew
There are two CTA links in the post that redirect to Calendly. Part of the offer is a call with me, so I wanted people to book it directly without adding a delay or another step.
Calendly requires payment before finalizing the meeting. I connected Calendly with Stripe, so payments get tracked there. I didn’t even have to create a new Stripe product to set this up.
When someone books, I get an email from Calendly and the money. Calendly handles the reminders, and then I just have to worry about fulfillment, which requires me to send a physical CD in the mail.
This whole project took fourteen hours, but eleven of those were crafting the offer and refining the copy. So if you already know what you’re selling, you could copy-paste this approach and be live in three hours.
I didn’t have to fuss with ads, product demos, screenshots, or high-res pictures. Just words, a link, a $12 subscription, and a few integrations.
That’s not bad!
Will the offer work? I guess we’ll see. Either way, it’s pretty cool that you can go from having an idea to having a way to monetize it in one day.
[ INSPO ]
