I was recently interviewed by Gumroad – a platform where I’ve done well over a million dollars in sales – and published in their creator spotlight.
They’ve published an abridged version of the interview on their website.
For anyone who wants to build an online business, this is required reading:
Hey everyone! I am Harsh Strongman, the man behind Life Math Money, the #1 Self-Improvement Website For Men. The goal is to teach men what they don’t learn in schools – things like physical fitness, dating skills, social skills, business, managing taxes, and the like.
And that’s what I’ve been doing with LMM in the last 7 years (time flies!).
What inspired you to create LifeMathMoney? Was there a specific moment or experience that sparked the idea?
Over a decade ago, I came across men’s self-improvement websites like Danger and Play by Mike Cernovich and Bold and Determined by Victor Pride and became one of their regular readers. I found that other than these few niche blogs, no one was actually trying to help men at all.
You would have all these women’s help sites, forums, and everyone was up about protecting and saving women (institutions, media, charities, etc.) while men were entirely abandoned. The mindset was (and to a large extent still is) the idea that men have had their turn and now it’s women’s time to be on top. No one wanted to help men. In fact, back then just making a men’s only website was dubbed misogynistic and sexist by the media.
I wanted to create a resource dedicated to helping men and giving away information they needed to know to be successful in their lives. If we could help men get fitter, lose fat, eat cleaner, make money on the internet, be able to date more attractive women, improve their social skills, and improve their mindset overall, I would consider that a win.
Sometime around 2017, Victor Pride created his e-book Spartan Entrepreneur: Blog Artist and I decided I’m going to use it and make it happen. I registered the domain LifeMathMoney.com (not wanting to waste too much time picking a name) and the rest is history.
What were the biggest obstacles you faced when first starting out, and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge you’ll find as any type of content creator is getting readers/viewers/listeners. Just because you’re out there publishing great content doesn’t mean people are lining up to read/watch/hear it.
The internet is extremely competitive. Instead of reading your site, people can read some mainstream news stories. Instead of watching you on YouTube, they can watch PewDiePie. Instead of listening to your podcast, they can just listen to Joe Rogan.
This is not 2003 where you could just make something and wait for people to find it. Unless you push it out and market your work, no one finds you (exceptions aside). You have to make your own luck.
How I overcame this was simple – I went where the people are. Since I’m a writer, I needed to find people who read. What was the text based social media platform that has a large male audience? TWITTER (called X now).
I built up my X/Twitter audience, used that to get readers to my blog, built my email list, and it all fed from there. You need to find the growth engine for your brand. It could be YouTube, X, TikTok, Instagram, or anything else. Build up your audience so you actually have people checking out what you’re creating.
Walk us through the process of creating your first product. How did you decide what format and content would best serve your audience?
My very first product was just a compilation of my newsletters as a PDF document. It sounds really dumb now but when I started out, it was a product I knew I could build easily and sell. I started selling it for $5.
My background is affiliate marketing, so I knew the best way to start is by testing an MVP type product at a cheap price.
It was as simple as it sounds. A simple PDF file with all my past newsletters in it for people who wanted to read them. Back then Gumroad itself was very basic and didn’t support a lot of things like content pages, so PDF it was.
Over time I built more (much better) products, charged higher prices, and have had tens of thousands of delighted customers.
My advice is – if you’re starting out – don’t overthink it. Make something simple, price it cheap, and get some sales rolling in. You can do the complex stuff after you have some revenue.
What was your approach to pricing? How did you determine the value of your products?
In the long run, you don’t want to be selling cheap $5 ebooks. You just won’t get anywhere with that pricing and you attract very low quality customers who are never happy.
You want to make products that should be priced enough that they hurt a little but should be so good that customers are still delighted with their purchase.
That said, you should still have a cheap product or two to give people a taste of your knowledge. And some medium level products for people who cannot afford your main products but still have a problem that you can solve.
In practice it looks like this:
Cheap products: $10-50
Medium price products: $60-200
Main products: $300+
Improve your products over time and make them as good as humanly possible. People should thank their stars they found you – your products should be so good.
For example check out my free product No-BS WiFi Money. Even this FREE product is so good that people will write entire emails thanking me for making it. I just use it as a lead magnet. You can download it and check out my email workflow if you like.
One caveat I will give you is to avoid the common advice of “price cheap and go for volume”. It does not work unless you are very big and popular like Joe Rogan. Largely this type of advice stems from consumers not producers because they want your work for negligible prices. They want you to take your decades of experience and give it to them for $5. Not fair for you.
Remember the adage: Broke people want everything for free or almost free and then look for a reason to not like the product so they can ask for a refund. Avoid broke people by pricing them out.
Have you experienced any “failed” products or launches? What did you learn from them?
Ah yes. MANY failed products. Not just with LMM, but with other business ventures too. I have a lot of different businesses from affiliate marketing to my tax/law firm to SaaS companies. I’ve failed at more things than I have successes.
The main lesson is that you should focus on products that solve some kind of problem. That doesn’t guarantee success but the likelihood of it succeeding is much higher. Products that don’t solve a problem are much harder to sell and often not worth the attempt.
Regarding failures – they are bound to happen. You cannot win them all. But don’t let it discourage you. It only takes one success to change your life. That’s the magic of entrepreneurship.
Even if you do fail (which you probably will) you will fall forward. What I mean by that is that your next try will be better than your previous one. All the experience accumulates.
Why did you choose Gumroad as your platform? What features have been most valuable to your business?
I chose Gumroad because everyone else was using Gumroad. To be honest, I didn’t do a lot of research beyond this. “Ed Latimore and PD Mangan use it so it’s good enough for me”.
I like that it’s simple and that it gets the job done. To be honest, platform doesn’t matter nearly as much as building a good relationship with your audience. If your audience finds your content valuable and you have proven yourself to be trustworthy, you could upload a PDF to OnlyFans and people will still buy it.
The main thing about the platform is that it shouldn’t get in your way. It should allow you to do what you want to do and you shouldn’t get blocked from doing something because the platform doesn’t support it (for example, some platforms don’t support automated affiliate payments).
If you could change or add one thing to Gumroad, what would it be?
Given that I’m a VIP seller at Gumroad because of my volume, I’ve not faced any significant difficulties with the platform. However, the people whom I’ve referred to Gumroad gave me very negative feedback because lately Gumroad support is automated with AI which doesn’t actually work as well as you would like. So lately I’ve stopped recommending Gumroad to people because they can’t get proper support when they need it.
What tools or resources (besides Gumroad) have been essential to your success?
Best tools:
- X – The main growth engine of the brand.
- Kit – To send emails. This is how we turn leads into sales.
- Semrush – To discover topics and to improve SEO. Good SEO = more people finding you = bigger email list.
- PayPal – To get paid.
- Fiverr – To outsource some basic level work.
- Dreamhost – To host the blog and all our websites.
Resources:
The Book of Pook – Not exactly business related but this book changed my life hands down.
Titan by Ron Chernow – A life changing read. It’s the biography of history’s richest man John D. Rockefeller. If you read only one book this year, make it this one.
What’s the biggest mistake you see new digital creators making?
- Not building an email list.
- Charging too little.
- Making crap products that don’t delight customers.
- Trying to copy other people’s content instead of creating your own. This is the recipe for mediocrity because you will never succeed as a copy of a successful creator… because people can just read/watch/listen to the real thing.
- Overcomplicating simple things too soon. For example, if it’s your first product, do you really need an ultra optimized landing page? No. A simple Gumroad landing page you can set up in an hour is more than enough. Once you’re making real money, you can worry about optimizations.
- Betraying their audience for $$$. Promoting offers they wouldn’t purchase themselves, creating products they don’t deliver on, not providing good after sales service, etc.
I would say most guys would benefit from coming up with their own version of the LMM Promise.
The LMM promise: I only make money by honorable means.
This means: I sell products I am proud of, I don’t promote shit I don’t personally like just to get a commission, I don’t skip payments to our affiliates, I will not charge you for something after you cancel, etc.
How do you handle periods of creative drought or burnout?
If you’re facing a creative drought, you need more life experience in your field. There’s no substitute for life experience. No amount of messing around with ChatGPT will fix a lack of life experience in your niche. For example if you’re talking about affiliate marketing, and you’ve only had one successful affiliate campaign, you will run out of content very quickly if you start talking about it. If you’ve had 300 and ongoing, then you never will.
Regarding burnout – take some time off. Travel. Trek. Spend time with your family. Remember the big picture in life. At some point you will die and all your $$$ and investments and house and jewellery will stay here. You gotta have fun in life. If you’re burning out often, you’re doing something wrong.
What’s next for LifeMathMoney? Are there new products or directions you’re exploring?
You will see more articles, more podcasts, YouTube videos. We’re working on a few new products as well. One of them is a very serious topic that a lot of people have asked for: How to Pick a Wife.
I’m also considering building a private community for men. Let’s see how things go. I am not one to make very concrete unalterable plans.
How do you see the creator economy evolving in the next few years?
To be honest, I don’t know. Talent always finds a way to the top. I will say that AI tools will increase competition at the bottom level but there is always demand for people who have real life experience.
If you’re someone who knows what you’re talking about, then you should have no problems. On the other hand, if you’re making up stuff as you go along, you are in serious trouble because you have no moat.
Overall I don’t have a lot of “predictions” because no one knows exactly how much AI will impact us and our society. Not to mention crypto dominance, sovereign citizenship, etc.
One thing I will say is that the best place to build a business is right here in Dubai and this is getting increasingly truer every day. All the talent is coming here for a reason.
If you could go back to day one, what would you do differently?
Now I could give you a “beware of butterfly effects” or “buy bitcoin” type answer but I will answer this in the spirit it was asked:
- I would have created more products and faster. For many years I only had 2 products.
- I would have charged higher prices from day 1. This way I would have avoided all the problem customers.
- I would have built YouTube and Instagram and the podcast much more than I did.
- I would have focused less on SEO given that Google is quickly becoming irrelevant.
- I would have gotten married sooner and I would have travelled more (and this is coming from someone who travels a lot).
- I would have spoken to my friend Jon Anthony more (he committed suicide). As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that you will lose many old friends to drinking, gambling, drugs, suicide, car accidents, etc. You have to cherish your time with your friends because they are there with you for a short period of time. You are born alone and you will die alone.
- I would be more grateful for what I have. I grew up in a chawl (very similar to a ghetto/slum) and many of my childhood friends were children of prostitutes. Very grateful to be from a normal family even if we’ve had our financial hardships.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of building LifeMathMoney?
LMM is in the single digit percentage of my income. It makes about $20-50k a month while my other businesses combined generate 10 times that. However, this is the most fulfilling thing I do from all the businesses I have.
It may not amount to much in $$$ terms but it is easily the most rewarding thing I do. I would not part with it for any amount of money. (I know $20-50k a month may sound like a lot to the general public but think from my perspective)
We have saved so many men from ruining their lives, prevented men from committing suicide, helped men get better with women, change their entire financial situation, and so much more.
Moreover, I think, perhaps a long time after I am gone, my children and grandchildren will take all of my writing and feed it into an AI and be able to recreate a version of me they can seek advice and guidance from. In some ways, I am not just guiding my readers, but also my own children, grandchildren, and beyond. This is extremely rewarding in a way that is difficult to explain.
Since this article itself might get fed into the AI to recreate me: Remember that nothing can revive the dead. It’s good to use me to guide you in your path but do not be under the misconception that I am alive or feel anything. Don’t fall in love with the AI version of me (or any other AI for that matter), don’t give in to the desire to act like I’m still here, and if you can’t – delete the AI and forget I exist. Otherwise you are disappointing me.
With love,
Harsh Strongman
