One Coach Gets Paid in Someone Else's Customers

A guy reached out recently - he was evaluating Galadon Gold as a potential acquisition. Sharp guy, had an existing portfolio of B2B software products, and he wanted to understand what he was actually looking at.

So I walked him through it.

The front end of the site is a collection of tools - scrapers, lead finders, things like the BuiltWith-style scraper - that exist primarily as lead magnets. Someone comes in, uses the tool, gets a pop-up, gives their email. Then an automated sequence moves them toward a paid membership. The whole front end is just a lead generation funnel for the back end.

The back end is where it gets interesting. It's the community, the course library, and the coaching calls. That's where all the revenue lives. But what I really wanted him to understand - what I think most people miss when they look at a business like this - is the cost structure on the delivery side.

Specifically: how we staff the coaching calls.

The Three-Way Deal Nobody Talks About

We have three coaches inside Galadon. They run the calls, they know the curriculum, they handle all the live Q&A. I'm not doing any of that work. My role is onboarding new members - that's it. Everything else is on them.

Now here's where it gets unusual.

Two of those coaches work for free. Not because they're getting a salary they're deferring. Not because they're earning equity. They work in exchange for their membership - meaning they value being inside the community enough that the access itself is their compensation. They're learning, they're networking, they're building their own reputation as experts. That's the trade.

The third coach? He doesn't pay for his membership, and I don't pay him either.

His compensation is his own customers.

He runs his own SMTP platform - a sending infrastructure product - and the deal is simple: he coaches Galadon members on cold email and outbound, and in exchange, he gets to sell his platform directly to those members. He has access to a room full of agency owners and B2B entrepreneurs who are, by definition, already running email campaigns and actively looking for better sending infrastructure.

Think about what just happened there.

I didn't pay him $150 a week. I didn't give him a rev share. I didn't give him equity. I handed him a captive, pre-qualified audience for a product he already built - and in exchange, I got an expert coach who shows up every week, runs calls, and adds real value to the community.

He wins. I win. The members win, because they get access to a tool they might actually need.

Zero payroll. Three-way value exchange.

Why This Works (and Why Most People Don't Try It)

Most people think about compensation in one direction: I need someone to do a job, so I pay them money. That's it. That's the entire mental model.

The embedded vendor model inverts that. Instead of asking "how much does this person cost me," you ask: "what does this person want that I already have?"

In this case, what the coach wanted wasn't a salary. He wanted customers. He had a product - a legitimate SMTP platform - but no distribution. He was probably running outreach himself, trying to find agencies and email senders who needed better infrastructure. That's hard. That takes time. That costs money.

I had what he needed: a community of exactly those people, already paying attention, already engaged, already in buying mode because they joined a program specifically about outbound sales.

So the deal wrote itself. He brings expertise. I bring distribution. Members get both.

The key mechanic is alignment. His product isn't random - it's directly relevant to what members are trying to do. If I'd brought in a coach who wanted to sell, I don't know, HR software to a room full of agency owners, that wouldn't work. The product has to be something the audience actually needs.

In this case, cold emailers need reliable sending infrastructure. That's not a stretch. That's a layup.

The Payroll Math Nobody Does

Let's be concrete about what this costs versus what it would normally cost.

If I'd hired three traditional coaches at market rate - let's say $150 a week each - that's $450 a week, roughly $1,800 a month in coaching overhead. Not a huge number, but for a lean info-product business, it's real money. And you're managing W-2s or contractor relationships, dealing with scheduling, dealing with turnover when someone gets a better offer.

Instead, my total cash outlay on coaching is one coach at $150 a week. The other two work in exchange for membership access. The third works in exchange for access to my audience.

That's not just a cost savings. It's a structural difference. When someone is compensated in access - either to the community or to the customer base - they have a fundamentally different incentive than an employee. An employee shows up, does the job, collects the check. Someone who's compensated in distribution shows up because not showing up costs them customers. The value creation is tied to their performance in a way no salary structure can replicate.

The SMTP coach's deal is essentially performance-based, just denominated in a different currency. If he phones it in on calls, members don't respect him, don't trust him, and don't buy his product. His compensation is only valuable if he actually delivers. That's a stronger incentive structure than any clawback clause I could write into an employment contract.

Where I've Seen This Pattern Before

This isn't a new idea. What's new is applying it deliberately to community businesses.

Think about trade shows. Vendors pay to exhibit because the promoter has aggregated the audience. The promoter doesn't pay vendors to show up - vendors pay for the access. Galadon flips that slightly: the vendor doesn't pay cash, but contributes labor. Same underlying logic.

Or think about media companies. Morning newsletters run sponsored sections where a vendor basically becomes a featured contributor. The vendor gets distribution. The newsletter gets content (or cash). The reader gets a recommendation from a voice they already trust.

The difference with the embedded vendor model is that the vendor is inside the community, not just advertising to it. They're on the calls. They're answering questions. They're building genuine credibility with the audience over time. That's more valuable than a banner ad, and it costs me nothing.

How to Find Your Embedded Vendor

If you run a community, a mastermind, a coaching program, or even a small group of clients, you can do this. The framework is simple:

Step 1: Map what your audience already needs to buy. My members are running cold email campaigns. They need sending infrastructure, lead lists, CRM tools, copywriting help, appointment setters. That's the product space I'm looking for candidates in.

Step 2: Find builders in that space who lack distribution. Look for people who've built a legitimate product, who know what they're talking about, but who are grinding for customers the hard way - through cold outreach, content, word of mouth. They have the product. They don't have the audience.

Step 3: Make the pitch. "I have a community of [your exact target customer]. I need someone to run [specific role]. Instead of paying you, you can sell your product directly to my members. You in?"

Most people in this position will say yes. Because what you're offering is worth more than the salary you'd otherwise pay. You're handing them a distribution channel they couldn't buy.

Step 4: Set the terms clearly. You're not giving them the community to spam. They earn trust by delivering value on the calls. The selling happens organically - through reputation, through Q&A, through members watching them be competent and asking "what tool do you use for that?" You're not a billboard. You're a stage.

The alignment piece is non-negotiable. If the vendor's product doesn't genuinely serve your members, the whole thing collapses. You'll erode trust in the community faster than any bad hire ever would. The product has to be something you'd recommend anyway.

The Lead Magnet Front End Makes This Whole Thing Work

One thing worth noting: this structure only works if the community itself is healthy and growing. A stagnant community isn't a valuable distribution channel - it's a liability. Nobody wants access to a room full of disengaged members who stopped showing up three months ago.

The reason I can offer real distribution value to embedded vendors is because the front end of the business is constantly pulling in new leads. The scraper tools, the lead magnets, the email sequences - those are what keep the top of the funnel full and keep the community fresh.

If you're building something similar, start by getting the lead flow right. You need people coming in consistently before you can make distribution promises to vendors. If you want a starting point for that, I put together the Best Lead Strategy Guide - it covers the mechanics of how I think about building that top-of-funnel engine.

And for the community members themselves - the reason they join is almost always the same: they want new clients. They want to book more meetings. They want a cold email system that actually works. That's what the coaching is for, and that's why having coaches who are genuinely expert in outbound tactics matters. If you're early in building that system, the Top 5 Cold Email Scripts is a good place to start, and the 7-Figure Agency Blueprint covers how to structure the whole operation.

For sourcing leads to power those campaigns, tools like ScraperCity's B2B lead database and the email finder sit alongside tools like Smartlead and Instantly as the infrastructure stack members are usually building around. Which, incidentally, is exactly why an SMTP platform coach fits so cleanly inside this community - the audience is already using this stack, already spending money in this category.

The Bigger Idea

The guy I was walking through this with eventually decided it wasn't the right fit for his portfolio - he was looking for pure SaaS IP, something more like a standalone email or outbound tool. Fair enough. Different buyers want different things.

But before he left the call, he said something like: "This is actually a really cool business though." And he was right, even if it wasn't for him.

What makes it cool isn't the revenue numbers or the course library - it's the compensation structure. The fact that three coaches run a program, and I'm paying less than $700 a month in total coaching cost while delivering multiple live calls every single week, is not an accident. It's a deliberate design choice.

The premise is simple: your audience is an asset. Most people treat it as a sales target. The embedded vendor model treats it as a currency - something you can trade for services, expertise, and labor, without ever writing a check.

You don't need a thousand members to make this work. You need a focused, engaged audience of people who share a specific problem, and then you need to find someone with a specific solution who hasn't figured out how to reach them yet.

Then you introduce them. And you take your cut in coaching hours, not commission.

That's the whole model. It's not complicated. It's just a different way of thinking about what you actually own.

If you want to see how I've applied this kind of thinking across the broader Galadon program - the coaching structure, the community design, all of it - the best place to look is Galadon Gold. If it's a fit, great. If not, at least you'll know exactly how the machine is built.