The Before & After Formula
Updated on April 2, 2026
Transcript
What’s up everyone? It’s Greg, your host here at the Opportunity Podcast. I’m a little bit sick, so apologies for my voice, but we are doing another solo cast this time around. This is in a series of probably three or four solos that we’ll be doing before we get back to our normal programming.
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And of course, click a link in that YouTube description box to go buy or sell a seven-figure business to help out my KPIs. Thank you very much.
In this episode of the Opportunity Podcast, I am talking about something that I think is extremely important, that can increase your valuation—or at least just your cash flow—quite dramatically if you take what I’m about to say in this podcast to the extremes. And of course, this applies to pretty much any business out there. Whether you’re buying an affiliate site from me, a digital course, an agency, even your local brick-and-mortar businesses, you can apply this to anything.
And this doesn’t require you to get more leads. It doesn’t require you to become some master of marketing. All that is required of you is to ask a very simple question: what problems are my customers facing? And you ask that question recursively, over and over again.
I call this strategy the before and after formula. What it does is we look at our customers and constantly ask: before they buy our product, what was the problem they’re trying to solve? And what did they have to buy before they even get to that problem?
Let me give you an example. To make this strategy work, a very important mindset to have is: for every problem my customer has that I help solve, the very act of giving them a solution most likely creates new problems in their life that I can come in and help them solve too. So every problem you help them solve creates a new problem that you also try to help them solve. And every problem you solve, of course, leads to you making a whole lot more money.
Now, the example I typically use is: let’s say you have an e-commerce store selling running shoes. What’s the problem that they had to solve before they even get to the point of buying running shoes? Well, they have to be a runner, right? Maybe you can sell a course about how running is a great way to lose weight, burn belly fat—you know, whatever it is. And you sell some kind of digital course to get people into the idea of running, which now creates the problem: “Okay, I need good shoes. I don’t know what to do.” Hey, no problem. We actually sell those shoes now.
What happens after they buy the shoes? Now they might have new problems, where they find running to be, honestly, quite boring and tedious. So how do we solve that problem? Well, maybe we sell a little thing we can put on their arm that could hold their iPhone where they can listen to music easier, right? So it’s not jiggling in their pocket all the time. Or maybe a water bottle backpack that they can drink from while they’re running.
So there are other problems that come about for each thing we solved in the previous problem-solution dynamic.
Let’s break down the before and after to really understand how this works. The “before” are all the problems that happen before they purchase something. These are problems in general, but also frustrations. They’re fears. What does your customer really get annoyed by that you can help solve so they’re no longer annoyed?
And then, of course, the “after” is: what is the outcome they’re looking for? What kind of feeling or identity shift do they have? Like once they buy the little booklet on knowing that running is a great choice for them, they have an identity shift: “I want to become a runner.” Great. Here are the shoes to go and do that.
Now they have another identity shift: “I’ve become a runner,” or “I’m about to.” Maybe there’s something in there like an accountability tracker you can sell them too. Or it’s a simple app that logs their daily runs so they can actually make that identity shift.
Then that leads into the boredom problem, right? When it becomes routine, it’s no longer exciting, and you have other accessories there to help them with that problem.
And this can go on forever and ever and ever, because the gaps between the problem and the solution are always your opportunity to make more income.
And the cool thing about solving a problem—like I said already—is usually the solution leads them to other problems. As we go through life, just because we solve one thing doesn’t mean we don’t have any more problems in that area. In fact, there is a very high chance you never run out of problems. So you can really take this to the extreme, and do all sorts of different things with this before and after formula.
So how do we do this? We want to map out the customer journey.
Step one: write out everything your customer does before buying. Now, if you’re just starting out, you may not have this data. Even if you have a business, you may not know how to get this. So in general, I always recommend: start with a good old trusty notebook and a pen or a pencil and just start brainstorming this. What are all the things my customers are doing before they ever get to my product where it makes sense for them to buy?
That’s the first step: the pre-sales frustrations. You want to identify every question, every frustration, every blocker, every objection they may have to your product before they go and purchase it.
The next thing you want to do is list what they experience after buying your product—both the wins (all the new identity shifts, all the good stuff) but also the new challenges that come with it. Like if we go and buy a gym membership, yeah, we solved a problem of not having access to a gym, but that doesn’t solve the problem of Greg being lazy and canceling on the gym all the time. So now there’s a new challenge that maybe we can do something to help them motivate themselves to get into that action, to really benefit from the product that we purchased. And by motivating them, we might be able to encapsulate that into another product or service that we can sell them on.
Number four: we want to connect each of these points—each of these questions and frustrations and challenges—with potential products and services. You may already have some of these products and services that you’re selling, but if you don’t, this is a great exercise to brainstorm: what else can you sell to these people?
Now, I want to make a little detour here, because I’ve had many friends on the internet webs where they build businesses where it’s one business, but they’re selling like 50,000 different products. Now, obviously this is hyperbole, but they’re selling so many random products that it doesn’t really make sense. They might have, like: “Here’s some running shoes. Here is how to make garlic bread. Here’s a juicer. Here’s a pickleball paddle,” right? None of this really makes sense. There’s not a lot of theme going on here.
When we’re building our business, we really want to hone in on our ICP—the ideal customer profile. We really want to get to know them as much as we can, because the more we know this one person with this one thing that they’re trying to do as best as they can, that’s really where the doors of opportunity open up for us to have all these adjacent products and services that we can eventually sell to them.
So it’s very important that we thematically go after a single person rather than kind of the spray-and-pray, shotgun approach that some of my digital marketer friends use.
Now, as you’re building this list, you want to emphasize different emotional states someone might be in: fear, then relief; confusion, then clarity; shame, then pride. These are the before and after emotions that they’re feeling. And this can help you also figure out: what kind of other products and services should I be selling my customers?
And customers will happily buy from you again, by the way. In fact, they would love to buy from you because they don’t want to go find someone else that they have to build all this trust with if they already bought something from you. So if you can map out each one of their emotional states as they’re going through this problem-solution, problem-solution, and you put your product there every single time, then you are going to make a lot more money.
Especially if that product solves that new problem, right? But you tie the product back to the emotional states. Those emotional states are created by whatever new problem they have after solving their previous problem.
So you might end up creating a funnel for your business that looks kind of like this:
A pre-purchase funnel (meaning pre your core offer), where it might be education or trust-building content—say like a digital ebook, webinars—something small that’s easy to get them to commit to.
Then you’ll have your core offer, which is your main product—say like your running shoes.
Then you’ll have your post-purchases, which are all the new problems that come up. These are add-ons, subscriptions, community, consulting, or just more physical products that you can bundle together to give to your customer.
And when you do this right, you get to create this entire roadmap—not just for your own business, that can be really profitable, but a roadmap for your entire customers—where they get this sense of continuity and they get this sense of convenience. Because people love this. They want the transformation, but they want to be spoon-fed at the same time until they’re able to push themselves into action.
So by you owning this entire emotional journey—not just one product, but all the products in that emotional journey—it really allows you to sell this extremely convenient, transformative bundle that your customers will absolutely love, and your P&L will also absolutely love.
This is a very simple concept to understand, but I think it will be helpful to truly internalize it if we go through some examples. I already gave the running shoe example, so let’s take the running shoe and go with it one more time here, and then we’ll move into some other business ideas.
In the before state, people are researching how to start running. Maybe they have fears about injuries, fears about motivation, all that kind of good stuff.
So then our offer path for a running e-commerce store might be a $10 running ebook or quiz, like “What kind of runner are you?” Or the results require premium—$10 to get the results or whatever—to help you build this out.
And then you sell the shoes that match what kind of runner they are based on the quiz. And it might be the same shoe for every answer—I’ve seen that too—but try to make it as honest as you can.
After they buy the shoes, then you do an upsell: say that running accountability app, maybe as a smartwatch integration, something like that they already have. Maybe you even have an affiliate link to go buy a smartwatch that your app can be downloaded on. There are a bunch of different ways you can do that.
Then maybe you have a subscription package, because what happens if they become a dedicated runner? Well, they are going to have some smelly feet, right? They’re going to have some smelly socks that get worn down. So maybe you have a subscription for new socks, new insoles, new hydration products. These are all things that can help.
Maybe you can also be selling other shoe maintenance stuff like polish, or whatever it is that might help keep those shoes in tip-top shape as accessories. Because we want them to identify as a runner. And if they identify as a runner, they’re running all the time, which means they’re wearing down the shoes. So this is the next thing that we want to sell them.
And then after all that, now their identity is firmly pretty much switched. We can offer them a community membership for runners where they do monthly challenges. There are leaderboards, maybe even built in with your app as part of a freemium/premium kind of model, where they can also connect with other runners when they go to different marathons or whatever, wherever they’re going. And it creates a whole community around your brand.
You see how expansive this can get pretty quickly. This might result in a one-time—like, if you didn’t do any of this—you might get one person purchasing your shoes for, say, $80 to $150. But if you do all this, that same one person might not spend $80 to $150—they might be spending $500 to $800 with you when all is said and done, just by mapping out the entire offer path of the before and after, and recursively asking the same question over and over again of what their next problem is.
Let’s move away from running shoes, because I’ve harped on that a little bit. If you want to go start a running e-commerce store, don’t just buy one from me, of course, but let’s talk about another example.
In this one, we’ll talk about a project management tool—a SaaS example. So in this case, we’re selling a productivity tool, a project management tool.
The before: teams are struggling with chaos and deadlines—and as a person with rampant ADHD, I can relate. But this is kind of the frustration we’re initially dealing with.
Afterwards, they have control and visibility. That’s what they’re hoping for: bringing order to this chaos.
So our offer path will be a pre-purchase. Maybe content on productivity frameworks, a webinar, a guide. There are tons of people selling digital courses about productivity, or little ebooks, or templates, stuff like that. That is a proven market. We can use that to build our list.
Then we upsell them into our core SaaS product, the actual management tool that we built. From there, we can add add-ons. We might have premium integrations with Slack, Notion, AI reporting. Maybe there are special dashboards they can get access to, special automations. We can sell them on all that kind of good stuff.
Then we can have an ultra-high ticket where it is a consulting tier: “Hey, let us do an audit of all your management workflows. We’ll onboard with you, and we’ll set up this system done-with-you throughout the whole thing.”
And you might even have an even bigger upsell where it is a done-for-you, where we will do everything for you and the system is already done—where you don’t have to do anything at all other than log in and get your team onboarded. Which, by the way, our team will help them onboard. It’s part of the done-for-you package.
After that, you might have an annual plan upgrade, or a customer referral program, or maybe a mix of both, where they can get a discount on an annual plan upgrade if they refer this amount of people to the business.
So from doing this, you might go from someone spending $50 a month on your management tool—which is a very competitive space with high churn because there are really big players in it, but there are always new people coming out too—to suddenly someone who might have spent $5,000, $15,000, or even $30,000 with you.
And now that might seem crazy to you, but I have seen—especially at the enterprise level—where enterprise businesses will gladly pay $30,000 for you to come in and do a done-for-you service to set up a productivity tool. And there’s nothing wrong with it being your productivity tool.
So this is another example of the before and after: “Oh man, I have a lot of chaos.” “Okay, I just read this ebook. This sounds really good. I want to do this. I’m going to buy their SaaS because they use their SaaS as the example, so that way I can follow it as closely as possible.” I get into their SaaS like, “Oh, there’s all this cool stuff I can have where it integrates with my Slack, so my team is more in the know. Obviously I want that. I want the automations, all that kind of good stuff.” “Oh, they offer a consultant tier. Maybe they can really help me figure out what kind of KPIs I should be focusing on, what kind of automations have worked best, all that kind of good stuff.”
So now I’m getting less and less chaotic and getting more and more order, which is what I ultimately want. That’s the emotional state I’m going for.
That’s an example of it in the SaaS space.
All right, let’s look at a marketing agency example, because I know there are a lot of marketing agency owners that listen to my podcast/YouTube channel. And by the way, if you’re a marketing agency owner, never been a better time to sell your business. We just sold a $7 million agency in like 30 days, and we just listed another $10 million one. So if you are a marketing agency owner, make sure you go to empireflippers.com, sell your site, and come sell with Grandpa Empire over here. Happy to make a big asset for you, but let’s keep going.
How do you do the before and after when it comes to marketing agencies?
So what’s our before with marketing agencies? A client wants more leads, they have unclear ROI, they don’t know what’s what, and they’re overwhelmed by complexity—which pretty much any marketer, especially in-house marketers, will tell you is extremely common because marketing is such a diverse array of skill sets and so fractured.
So the after—the emotional after state—they want predictability, they want growth, and they want peace of mind that everything is set up correctly, which is a task in and of itself.
So our offer path here might be a pre-purchase, like an audit to them—say an SEO audit, or something like that. Or maybe we give them a marketing scorecard, something that’s cheap that they can buy like a digital download.
Then that leads into upsell number one, which is a part of our service—something that we would have to do anyways if they signed up to our retainer—but it’s less scary than going out of the gate and paying a big retainer right away.
And then we upsell them into the core retainer because now they’ve gone through several yes ladders with us. After they buy that, there might be some post-purchase things we can do that are performance-based upsells, or other service add-ons like email, SMS, automation, CRO, all this other type of stuff that we could sell.
Now, if we are a marketing agency that only knows how to do one thing, an easy way for you to do this is just network with other agency owners that you vet and trust, that they can fulfill on. So if you only do SEO but you know a really good guy at CRO, you guys make a little plan together where you have some revenue sharing between that—where they’re giving you clients for SEO and you’re giving them clients for CRO, and you both get kickbacks. That’s a very common way I’ve seen agencies handle that because labor tends to be an issue when it comes to adding new services.
And one of my favorite things with agencies—this is something I have unsuccessfully (well, I shouldn’t say unsuccessful) helped a few agencies understand the value of—is one of the big benefits of being a marketing agency owner is you get to network with a lot of successful entrepreneurs. At least if you’re good at getting decent, high-quality clients, you’re networking with other successful entrepreneurs.
So I’ve often told my agency owner friends: become an Empire Flippers referral partner. Because what is the ultimate goal here? What is the entrepreneur trying to do that is your client? Well, they’re trying to become richer, right?
And one of the only ways—like, the only two paths for any business—is to either die or to sell. So eventually your client needs to make that decision of if they’re just going to shut down the business or they’re going to sell the business.
So as the agency owner, you have a lot of trust—especially if you’ve been doing good work with them—and you can guide them to someone like me to come and sell their business.
Now, the feedback I’ve gotten from some agency owners: they’re like, “Well, then I won’t get my retainer.” But they forget: dude, there’s a referral partner. I paid $80,000 for him just referring that deal to me. So $80,000, for most marketing agencies I’ve seen, represents between 12 to, say, 36 months of retainer of services. So you basically get to collect all that money when you help a client come and sell with me.
But here’s the kicker: a lot of times when a business buyer buys a business from me, and that business has an agency relationship, what they do is they keep the relationship. They don’t want to rock the boat. They sometimes even spend more money to go harder and leverage it even more. I had a few referrals from agency owner friends who love it. Not only do they get to collect multiple months of retainer upfront, but they get a new client in the process, who is the buyer of the business. They already know how to market.
So it’s a bit of a win-win.
That’s kind of a unique thing with marketing agencies that you can do with this before and after formula that could be incredibly lucrative.
All right, let’s look at actual course creators, because this is a business model I really love. I think it’s a really cool business model.
The before emotional state is when an audience wants to learn or escape a pain point, which your course is going to solve. And after they go through your course, what they’re going to want is more mastery, more transformation, or a lifestyle shift—the whole reason why they bought the course in the first place.
So your offer path might look a little bit like this: a free or low-ticket lead magnet that is, again, a small $17–$20 product that they can buy. That upsells to your flagship course or your cohort, however you’re doing it—that’s your main offer.
After you sell that, then it’s a subscription to a community membership or a mastermind where they’re paying you on a monthly basis. You’ve seen this absolutely explode with websites like Skool, but it’s been around for a long, long time. Circle has been doing a lot of this type of stuff as well.
And then after that, your higher-ticket stuff might be a certification or a licensing program. But you can go even higher ticket, because similar to the SaaS example I gave, you can offer consulting services in and around this thing, and you can offer whole new services around what they learn.
For example, let’s say you have a course on how to become a freelance writer or something like that. You have a whole thing about how they can go get clients, but they can pay you a bunch of money and you will go get them clients. So you become almost like a marketing agency for these freelance writers who want to go get their own clients. And they’ve just gone through your course, so they are more likely to trust you on the next step, which is you going to get them actual leads that they can go and close.
This is what I mean: before and after. There’s always something before and there’s always something after. And once you solve this problem, there’s new befores and afters, because every solution leads to more problems and challenges. And all problems and challenges typically have solutions that you can cash in on and help your clients at the same time. It’s a win-win.
So there you go. That’s the before and after. I think this is one of the most slept on and simplest things you can do with any business you want to acquire—or a business you’re running right now. You can go and use the before and after formula and just dive deep.
It’s a very simple concept, but I recommend you go at least five levels deep: what problem were they solving when they bought this? What new problems does that create? What are the things that solve those problems? What new problems does that create? And you just keep going down and create this whole spreadsheet. You don’t got to do everything, but this is a very powerful brainstorming exercise.
And there’s one thing I didn’t talk about, which I’ll wrap up here because this helps Greg at Empire Flippers if you follow my advice. You don’t need to go create all these products and services yourself. You create this massive before and after list of all these different things you can apply so you can go and sell more things to your customers.
You don’t need to be the creator. I already mentioned the agencies, where they can do the referral kickback between two other agencies. But you yourself could just go and acquire companies that have those products and services already, where they’ve already figured out how to do that. And now you are just vertically integrating with your business throughout the entire value chain of that consumer journey—which is the real powerful takeaway.
In fact, where I learned this strategy from—or this concept from, I should say—was from a business buyer. And that was their main strategy. They would buy a business, then do this massive before and after brainstorm of every possible thing that they can think of within the space that they could offer a customer. And that was part of their criteria to go out and find businesses to go and buy, which is a crazy cool strategy. And it worked out really, really well for them.
So if this has got you inspired, make sure you buy a business from Greg. All right, I’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye.
There you have it. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it got you inspired with all the different things that are happening in this industry.
And of course, if you just want to buy a highly profitable business, you can always go to empireflippers.com/marketplace. Or maybe you want to make an exit of your highly profitable business, you can go to empireflippers.com/sell-your-site.
I’ve been your host, Greg. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a review. Give us a like, a follow, share it across social media. Talk to you all soon. See you on the next episode.
