Retire & RISE
A live 3-day training in October, and an honest account of what it is, what it isn’t, and who should walk away from it.
When I ask what you want more of, the same answer keeps coming back. A little more coming in each month. Nothing dramatic. Just some room.
So when something turned up that’s aimed squarely at that, I looked at it properly. Then I spent an evening reading the fine print, which is the part most people skip.
It’s called The ClickBank Profit Challenge. Three days of live training, October 6th to 8th, an hour or two each afternoon, run by John Thornhill and his son Alex. He’s been selling on ClickBank since 2004 and has hit their top one percent of sellers nine separate times. That’s a real record, and you can go and check it yourself.
The Challenge is not a standalone course, and I would rather you knew that going in. It is an introduction to a bigger system called the ClickBank Profit Club, and across the three days it shows you why building a list, following up, and having a proper funnel are the things that separate people who earn from people who keep starting over.
That is a feature, not a catch. Three days and a small ticket is a cheap way to find out whether that way of working suits you, before anybody asks you for real money. Sitting through it and deciding “this is not for me” is a perfectly good outcome, and you will have paid very little to find out.
And you keep the training either way. The list-building and follow-up lessons are worth having whether you ever go a step further or not.
That is honestly how I would use it if I were starting again. Pay a little to find out properly, rather than wondering about it from the outside for another year.
I’m not guessing about the system this teaches. I joined the Club myself, and in my first month it has paid me $357.
Now the part nobody else is going to put next to that. Their own published figures work out to roughly $5.55 per member — $80,235 paid out across 14,449 members since April. So I have earned about sixty-four times the average member.
Before you read anything encouraging into that, ask why the gap is so wide. Because that is the whole story, and it decides whether the ticket is money well spent for you or money thrown away.
It isn’t talent and it isn’t luck. Most people who buy something like this never do the work. They buy it, feel good about themselves for a week, and never open it again. The average gets dragged down by everybody who quit. The people who earn anything are simply the ones still turning up in month three.
So the real question is not whether the system works. It is whether you will be one of the people who does the work. Only you know that, and you should be honest with yourself about it before you spend anything. If the answer is no, keep your money. I would genuinely rather you did.
Whether it works for you. I haven’t taken it. Nobody has — it hasn’t happened yet. Anyone telling you it’s proven is guessing.
What I can do is go in with you. I’ll be there all three days, and afterwards I’ll get on a call and tell you honestly what it was like.
General Admission is $9 as I write this. It climbs on their schedule between now and the event:
| From | General Admission |
|---|---|
| Now | $9 |
| September 14 | $19 |
| September 21 | $27 |
| September 28 | $39 |
Then, straight after you pay, you’ll be offered an upgrade. It’s called All-Access and it’s $47 on top of the ticket, not instead of it. So the ticket is $9, and the full version is $56. Their own FAQ calls these “two ways to participate,” which made me think it was a choice at checkout. It isn’t. You buy the $9 seat first, then decide about the $47.
It is worth a minute of your time to get that choice right, so here is the whole comparison.
Check the live prices on their page before you decide — those dates are theirs, not mine, and I’d rather you saw it first-hand than took my word for it.
Worth knowing: you don’t wait until October to start. The moment you join you are inside the Challenge Hub, and the Affiliate DNA Quiz, the setup steps and the rest of the pre-challenge material are there the same day, along with the private community. The three live afternoons in October are the event, not the starting line. If you have been telling yourself you will decide nearer the time, that is the bit worth knowing — deciding later does not save you anything, it just costs you the head start and, on their schedule, a higher ticket.
This takes you to their page, where you can read the whole thing before committing to anything. The rest of this write-up is here if you want it — what the upgrade adds, what they’ll offer you afterwards, and who should skip it.
This is the decision you’ll face about ninety seconds after you pay. Worth thinking about now, while nobody is waiting on you. Here is what the extra $47 actually adds.
| What you get | Ticket only $9 |
Plus upgrade $56 |
|---|---|---|
| Three days live with John and Alex | yes | yes |
| The Challenge Workbook | yes | yes |
| The Affiliate DNA Quiz | yes | yes |
| The private community | yes | yes |
| Replay access | 72 hours | 30 days |
| Daily action-step one-pagers | — | yes |
| A traffic plan from your quiz answers | — | yes |
| Seat at the post-Challenge Q&A call | — | watch only |
| First chance to buy a $97 upgrade | — | yes |
Now the honest read, because four of those five differences are not equal.
If you are new to this, the daily one-pagers are the one that matters most. The usual way three days like this goes wrong is not that the teaching is bad. It is that you lose the thread somewhere on day two and never quite catch up. A single sheet telling you your next move is aimed squarely at that. The longer replay window matters too, if your October is unpredictable.
Two of them are worth less than they look, so read them properly.
The Q&A call is a watching seat, not a speaking one. Their own page says All-Access gets you a backstage pass to watch John answer questions from the Platinum ticket holders. If you were picturing yourself asking him something, that is the $97 ticket, not this one. And “first chance to buy” that $97 upgrade is not a benefit either — it is the right to be sold to earlier than everyone else. Don’t let either weigh on the decision.
One more bit of fine print, because I said I’d read it. On the replay window their page contradicts itself — the FAQ about missing a session says All-Access extends replays to 30 days, and the FAQ comparing the two tickets says lifetime. I don’t know which is right. If that’s the thing deciding it for you, ask their support before you pay.
So: if you can genuinely sit down for all three afternoons and you back yourself to keep up, the $9 ticket is enough and I would not push you past it. If your honest worry is getting lost, or October is unpredictable, the one-pagers and the longer replay window are worth the extra $47 on their own.
Full disclosure: I earn more if you take All-Access. I have just told you when not to, and I meant it.
I’ll tell you this before you pay, because nobody else is going to:
| What | When | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Partner Seat — a second seat for someone you know | Add-on box at checkout | $7.95 |
| Pre-Challenge Buzz Builder | Shortly after you pay | $27 |
| Done-For-You Setup Check | Shortly after that | $17 |
| Platinum ticket | A few days before the Challenge | $97 |
None of it is required. You can attend all three days having spent nothing beyond your ticket. But you will be asked, and if you find it hard to say no, it is better to know that now than at 4pm on day three.
The Platinum one has a squeeze built into it, so you may as well see it coming: their page says it’s capped at 25 spots, that the doors don’t open until a few days before the event, and that All-Access holders get emailed about it first. Limited, late, and in a queue. That is designed to make you decide quickly. Decide now instead.
One thing you will need that is on nobody’s list. To do what they teach you need an autoresponder — the thing that sends the follow-up emails to the list you build. Their page recommends AWeber Plus at about $20 a month, so you may see that figure and think it is a required cost. It isn’t. The free AWeber account carries up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails a month, which is far more room than you will need starting out, and other free options exist too. Start free and upgrade only when the list outgrows it. I mention it because I would rather you knew now than found out on day one.
My advice: decide your ceiling before you join. Write it on a piece of paper. Then a decision made when you were calm is doing the work, instead of one made when the room is excited.
The Freedom Number Planner Works out how much more you actually need each month to live the way you want. That’s the figure Day 1 asks you for. Free and open to everyone, so use it either way.
Before You Upgrade My honest guide to every paid step inside — what each costs, and which ones I’d skip. Including the total if you said yes to all of it.
A live debrief call, Sunday October 11th The three of us on Zoom going through what we actually learned, what’s worth doing first, and what to leave alone. Recorded, if you can’t be there.
Claim numbers 2 and 3 on the bonus page after you join.
This takes you to their page, where you can read the whole thing before committing to anything.
This isn’t for everyone, and I’d rather say so than have you find out after paying.
Skip it if you want money in the next few weeks, or if three afternoons in October aren’t realistic. At $9 I’m not going to pretend the ticket is a big financial decision — the things they offer you afterwards are where it can add up. So the honest question isn’t whether you can afford $9. It’s whether you’ll use what you paid for.
There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee that runs from after the training ends. You have to turn up and do the work to qualify, which is fair, but read it as written — it isn’t a no-questions refund.
See you at the bank,
Bob
And if you read all that and thought “none of those are me” — here it is one more time, so you don’t have to scroll back up.