The hands guy
Robbie is a physical therapist in Nashville. He spends his days in people's homes, helping them move better. At some point he noticed something online: everyone was talking about knees and backs, and almost nobody was talking about hands.
Hands get stiff quietly. Most people don't notice until they can't open a jar, hold a pan or turn a key. So Robbie started filming short videos of exercises anyone could do at home, and he became the hands guy.
When I first found him, he had around 30,000 Instagram followers after only about three months of posting. By the time we started working together he was past 45,000 and growing by roughly 10,000 a week.
All that attention, nowhere to go
The first thing I noticed was his comments. People were thanking him because they could knit again, sew again, use their keys again. The trust was already there.
But there was nowhere for any of it to go. A comment on a video got you a free PDF. His link in bio had three free guides. No offer, no waitlist, and no follow-up after the first few emails.
So his content was doing its job, and none of it was turning into income. Honestly, it also wasn't helping people as much as it could. If you wanted more help from Robbie, there was no next step.
- No paid offer. His store made $0 in the two weeks before we started.
- A funnel that stopped early. Comment, DM, free guide, a few emails, then nothing.
- No time. A full-time job in home health, two young daughters, and content on top.
The first Loom
I sent him a short personal video. The message was simple: you have an amazing audience, people clearly want something from you, and right now there's nothing to buy.
He wrote back that he'd been thinking the same thing, and that I'd reached out at a good time. He wanted to launch something paid. He just didn't know which systems he needed, how to market it, or where he'd find the hours to figure it out.
He was a little skeptical at first. Josh and I look young, and we are. Over a few calls we walked him through how we'd approach it and showed him what we'd built before. By the end, the question wasn't whether to work together. It was what to build first.
Show them, don't tell them
Robbie didn't have time for one-on-one coaching, so a guided program made the most sense. That became the 21 Day Hand Reset.
The real question was how to get people there. We could have sent his viewers straight to a sales page, and we decided not to. His audience already trusted him. What they didn't trust was that their own hands could still get better.
You can't tell someone that. You have to let them feel it. So we built a free 3 Day Hand Challenge: three short videos where Robbie guides you through the exercises and answers your doubts as he goes. By Day 3, your hands feel looser and lighter. That's when the 21 Day Reset makes sense. You've just felt what three days can do, and here's the full plan.
What we built
We split the work like this. Robbie does about 80% of the content and 20% of the funnel, and we do the reverse. He brings the ideas and the feedback. We build it, run it and watch the numbers, so he never has to sit in a dashboard.
I led the emails and the DM automation. Josh led the sales pages, opt-in pages and challenge pages.
- The free 3 Day Hand Challenge, with emails that follow each person based on what they've watched.
- 17 email workflows holding hundreds of emails, from the first signup to program delivery to the community invite.
- His first paid program, the 21 Day Hand Reset, with its sales page, checkout and delivery.
- Instagram and Facebook DM automation that turns a comment into a challenge signup.
- A pre-launch warm-up for his existing list, with a waitlist, so launch day had people ready.
- Tracking and analytics across every page, so every change is measured.
- Content advice on how to frame videos so a free step leads naturally to a paid one.
Before: 1,051 store visits in a month, $0 in sales. There was nothing to buy.
$7.24K in launch week (Aug 31 to Sep 6), from his first-ever offer.
The sales page for his first paid program, the 21 Day Hand Reset.
A peek inside 1 of 17 email workflows we built for Robbie: the 3 Day Challenge.
Day 1 of the free 3 Day Hand Challenge, with the next step built in.
Email list growth, week by week. 4.6× active subscribers.
6.3M views and 56K new followers in 30 days.
Part of the 17 workflows, from free challenge to paid program to community.
60.6% average open rate across his email workflows.
Robbie's Instagram today, with the free challenge in his bio.
What working together looks like
It doesn't feel corporate, and I think that's why it works. We have a WhatsApp group for day-to-day questions and voice notes, and one or two video calls a week. Robbie usually takes them while he walks. Sometimes his daughters wander into frame and we all say hi.
On calls I bring him the few numbers that matter, not every number we track. He brings what he hears from his patients every day, which teaches me more about his audience than any dashboard could.
Small changes ship the same day or the next. A new sales page takes one to two weeks from idea to live. If something breaks and costs leads, we fix it within hours and keep him posted the whole way.
Timeline
- Late JuneI find Robbie at around 30K Instagram followers and send him a short personal video.
- Jul 30We start working together. He's past 45K and growing about 10K a week.
- Aug 5Robbie approves the plan: a free challenge into a paid program.
- Aug 16The free 3 Day Hand Challenge goes live. Warm-up emails start.
- Aug 31The 21 Day Hand Reset launches.
- Sep 11New opt-in page and a Day 1 button inside the DM.
- Sep 17A rebuilt sales page goes live.
- Sep 20New follow-up workflows, split by how far each person got.
What broke, and how we fixed it
Not everything went to plan. That's normal when you build fast. What matters is how quickly you notice and how calmly you fix it.
Launch week
On launch day I was on a short family trip, refreshing the dashboard. Every few hours, someone new bought. Weeks of warm-up had done their job. The audience Robbie had spent months building finally had something to say yes to.
What stuck with me wasn't the sales, though. It was the replies. Thousands of people wrote back to the challenge and warm-up emails, sharing their stories and thanking Robbie for helping their hands.
$7.24K in launch week, from his first-ever offer. His email list grew 4.6×. His emails average a 60.6% open rate. And with some help on framing, his Instagram went from 55K to 132K followers in 8 weeks. The videos are his. We helped point them somewhere.
Robbie's reaction was short: "Good work, guys." He knew launch was the first mountain, not the last.
Where it stands now
We're still working together, and it feels more like a partnership than a client relationship. Robbie is all in. He's always looking for the next thing to improve, and that makes Josh and me better too.
The funnel runs every day now. New people join the challenge from his videos, and we keep testing and improving each step. Next up are new programs, smaller offers, new challenges and more content ideas. The second mountain is taller, and I'm looking forward to it.