TLDR – What’s The Verdict On Douglas James Marketing?
Douglas James teaches a business model called local lead generation.
Essentially, you’re going to learn how to send leads to local businesses by running Facebook ads on their behalf.
I think local lead generation is one of the most exciting online business models currently out there.
There are so many local businesses around the world that need extra customers, yet there’s a lack of knowledge about how to run profitable online ads.
Once you learn this skill, it won’t be difficult to find clients, especially with someone that’s an experienced expert outlining the steps you need to take.
If you choose Douglas James to be that expert, I’m sure he could help you make money in this niche.
But there are a few holes in his course that make it difficult for me to rank it #1 in this category.
My biggest turn-off is that Douglas only teaches his students how to run Facebook Ads.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Facebook Ads.
It’s just that some business owners may prefer to hire a lead generation expert with a wider variety of skills.
Who would you hire? The guy who specializes in Facebook or the whiz-kid who promises leads rushing in from all directions?
There are great courses out there that’ll teach you how to run ads on various different search engines and social media platforms. What’s more, these courses are roughly the same price or cheaper than a Douglas James program.
So, it feels a little silly to tell you to invest in a partial skill set.
Instead, I’d like to recommend a program that taught me all the skills to run a fully-functioning digital agency.
I’m earning $500 – $2,000 per client per month thanks to the skills I learned here. This has given me the financial freedom to spend as much time as I wish with my friends and family, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision to give their system a shot.
Whenever potential clients ask if I can fulfill a particular service, I say ‘hell yes’ and that makes it so much easier to find happy customers.
If you want to learn more, go ahead and watch this video about Digital Leasing.
Who Benefits From The Douglas James Course & Who Doesn’t?
There are plenty of good Douglas James reviews on Trust Pilot, with hundreds of students taking the time to express their gratitude for the program.
Many have shared their own personal success stories, saying that it changed their lives to learn local lead generation. Others say that they learned skills that will serve them well throughout their lives.
Indeed, Douglas James training courses may be a suitable investment for some people.
You might appreciate the Douglas James Marketing course if
- you’re only interested in learning how to run Facebook ads.
- you’re already running Facebook ads on behalf of a business and want to learn more skills.
- you’re willing to spend whatever it takes to learn from a true expert in this field.
However, if you’re just getting started with local lead generation, I’d say you’re better off with a course that teaches you the full rainbow of online advertising skills. This way, you’ll be better prepared to impress every potential client you make contact with. And you’ll have even more skills that’ll prepare you for a lifetime of success in digital marketing.
There are plenty of affordable courses out there that’ll teach you a wider range of skills (I like this one).
Seeking more options for digital marketing education? Discover additional recommendations in my dedicated article on Digital Marketing courses.
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How Does The Local Lead Generation Business Model Work?
Douglas James made his fortune by mastering and teaching a business model called local lead generation.
His most well-known course will teach how to generate leads for local businesses and be paid handsomely to do so.
I think he’s smart for choosing this business model.
There are others out there which can make you money if you have the right skills. But, having tried out all the major online business models for myself, I haven’t found one that pays as handsomely and consistently as local lead generation.
It’s futureproof as well. There will always be local business owners out there who want extra customers. Plus, no matter how many people decide to get in on the gold rush, there will always be an abundance of markets to target.
That’s the beauty of targeting local businesses. There are 50+ markets in 500,000+ cities across the U.S alone. There’s far less danger of the market ever becoming saturated, especially compared to business models that target global audiences like dropshipping or Amazon FBA.
Anyway, there are two different types of local lead generation; organic vs paid.
With organic lead generation, you’ll need to master the art of search engine optimization. This will allow you to create websites that rank at the top of organic search engine results. Imagine how much money it could be worth for a heating engineer to rank as No.1 on Google for a search term like ‘boiler repair New York City’.
Presuming he lives in NYC, it could easily bring in thousands of dollars of new clients to him. In such a scenario, this chap would most likely be excited to rent out this website for $500 – $2,000 a month. It makes money for the owner of the website and hopefully even more for the renter. That’s why we call it a ‘digital asset’.
With paid lead generation, we create digital assets even quicker by paying for adverts at the top of search engines or in social media feeds. The renter will cover the cost of the ads. They’ll have to pay either every time someone clicks it (on Google) or based on how many people see it (on social media).
This involves a different skill set to organic lead generation, as the expert will need to be able to write ads that stand out and attract the right customers. It’s a difficult skill set to learn, which is why many business owners are happy to outsource it.
Douglas James teaches paid lead generation in his courses with a specific focus on Facebook ads. The main advantage of this model is that it’s easier to start making money quickly. The main disadvantage is that it can be harder to attract and retain clients when that involves persuading them to spend hundreds of dollars per month on ads.
Most local lead generation experts create a lead generation agency (or an ad agency) even if they’re running a one-person business. It looks more professional when your agency is its own entity. Plus, there are tax and legal advantages if you run it as an LLC.
Douglas James’ business is called Amped Local. Unlike gurus in other niches, he’s still actively promoting this business and serving clients, rather than solely focusing on teaching others how to do it.
That says a lot about the financial opportunities of local lead generation in the present day and the future. Gurus promoting courses in oversaturated niches tend to focus their attention entirely on coaching once they realize that this generates more money than the skills they are teaching.
Douglas says he’s helped 15,000 people by teaching them how to kick ass at Facebook advertising. However, if you want to create an agency that stands out from the crowd, I’d recommend learning BOTH organic and paid lead generation.
Better yet, if you can prove your expertise at running ads on several social media platforms, imagine how easy it will become to close those high-ticket clients.
Imagine it’s you (the all-around expert) vs. some other guys pitching Facebook ad services in a CEO’s LinkedIn DMs. It should give you a significant head-start if you can create custom digital campaigns on several platforms (and I’ve found a course that’ll teach you all of these skills).
Local lead generation is not a completely passive business model. With paid lead generation, you’ll spend some time checking and optimizing your analytics. But this business model has still allowed me so much more freedom than the 9-5 grind ever could.
I’m earning monthly payments between $500 – $2,000 from a handful of clients. I can work the hours I want from whenever I want, and that has allowed me to spend so much more time with my two sons.
Travel isn’t my thing, but I know some super-cool guys and gals who run local lead generation agencies while touring the world. You can really create your dream life as head of your own lead generation agency (and that’s why I want to recommend the course that made it possible for me one more time).
| Area | Score | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Time Investment | 4/5 | There’s a lot of time investment upfront, learning the various skills you’ll need to build an ad agency. But, once you’re up and running, the process becomes quicker and easier than most online side-hustles. |
| Level Of Control | 2/5 | You’re in charge of every aspect of running your ad agency, but you’ll still have to answer to clients and follow the rules set by Facebook, Google etc. |
| Ease Of Implementation | 3/5 | Once you’ve learned the necessary skills, you can be attracting clients and running ad campaigns for them within days. |
| Profit potential | 4/5 | You can attract high-ticket clients on a monthly retainer, and there’s little danger of the market ever becoming saturated. |
Who Is Douglas James? Is The ‘High Ticket Client Guy’ Legit?
Douglas James is known for being an expert in Facebook and YouTube ads guru, but he certainly lived an interesting and purposeful life well before earning the nickname of the ‘The High Ticket Client Guy’.
Growing up in Covington, Louisiana, Douglas always struggled academically. In an interview with Authority Magazine, he described himself as “a C student at best” who was always getting into trouble and had no desire to pay attention in class. Teachers thought he may have ADHD, and he was held back in the 2nd and 7th grades as a result.
On top of that, he was overweight as a child; weighing as much as 260 pounds at age 15.
He managed to turn things around physically by joining a couple of sports teams and the Reserve Officer Training Corps. This was a big factor in his eventual decision to join the Navy.
Douglas served as a corpsman for the best part of a decade. In 2015, he was deployed on a humanitarian mission to Papua New Guinea and other impoverished countries. It was this mission that inspired him to build a life where he could give back to less fortunate people.
His last six years of military service were spent in San Diego, where he still resides today. He got out of the military and began his mission to make a name for himself in internet marketing.
He quickly chose local lead generation a business model that can not only remain profitable for a long time but also give him the chance to give back to his community.
After learning his trade from online marketing legend Dan Klein, he never looked back. Now, according to his Instagram page, he’s made $60 million from renting out ‘digital real estate’ and has taught over 15,000 students to do the same. And it would appear as if he’s just as proud of that second stat.
He told Authority Magazine: “Not only do I want people to look back at everything I have accomplished in my lifetime and everything associated with my name, I want people to be able to look back at the people around me and what they were able to accomplish also.”
Douglas isn’t just teaching paying customers how to create an ad agency through his online courses, he’s also doing the same on his social media channels. He has over 12,000 subscribers on YouTube, 110,000 followers on his Instagram and 3,000 followers and LinkedIn. On top of that, he has been featured in the Inc 5000 and appeared on mainstream media channels such as FOX, Entrepreneur, Yahoo, ABC, NBC and more.
| YouTube | Source | “On my channel you will find a variety of content around the topics of Business, Financial Literacy and Leadership to include strategic action based content around Marketing, Sales and Personal Development.” |
| Source | “Marketing Leader to 15,000+” | |
| Source | “Build, Systematize & Sell Proven Revenue Ready Digital Businesses to Entrepreneurs & Investors.” |
Douglas James Cost: How Much Money Will You Have To Spend?
It’s not clear how much the programs from Douglas James cost.
For almost all of his services, you’ll have to get on the phone with a member of the Douglas James team to determine your suitability for the course.
It’s possible that different students are being charged different prices for the same course. It’s also possible that Douglas continues to raise his prices as his business becomes more successful. Both of these scenarios are common in the digital marketing world.
With that said, we can estimate how much Douglas James Marketing Courses will cost by investigating reviews from former students.
For example, this student said he paid $4,000 for a Douglas James Marketing Program (but wasn’t impressed with his investment). Meanwhile, this Trust Pilot user and several others say it costs $25,000 for a VIP program that includes “done for you” local business funnels.
Assuming these estimates of Douglas James training cost are accurate, we can assume he’s among the more expensive digital marketing gurus to work with.
Please remember that you’ll be running paid traffic ads as part of this training, so you’ll need enough money to cover the cost of that. You may be expected to sign up to various other paid software on top of that too.
My Personal Opinion On Douglas James Marketing
I think Douglas James is a stand-up guy and I really admire what he’s achieved. I also believe a local lead generation agency is one of the smartest online businesses to start in the modern day.
If you want to be coached by Douglas James to make it in this industry, I’m sure you’ll do fine.
But I can’t recommend his courses as the most intelligent choice.
Not when there are so many online courses out there that offer more at lower price points.
Is Douglas James Legit?
Is Douglas James legit? My answer to this question is undoubtedly yes.
It’s always a good question to ask, as the world of digital marketing is unfortunately rife with snake oil salesman.
Yet, I have no doubt that Douglas James has made millions of dollars through local lead generation. I’m sure his methods can help you make money with this business model. I’m so bullish on local lead generation as a top method for making money online.
But I still can’t recommend his course as the top choice to help you create an ad agency.
The fact is Douglas James would appear to be one of the most expensive marketing mentors you can hire, yet his courses only teach you how to excel at Facebook marketing.
You’d be correct to question the value for money here. There are many competitors to Douglas who offer more for less.
I bought into Digital Leasing and I learned how to run all types of digital marketing campaigns for local businesses. On top of that, I became a master of paid advertising on several social media platforms. social media optimization, website development, and other digital marketing skills. No wonder I’m seen as more useful to my clients than a simple Facebook ads guy.
The coaches have a proven track record of making big money with local lead generation, and they were on hand to assist with every step of the journey.
It didn’t take long to find my first client. Digital Leasing has your business up and running within a few days, and I was also taught how to pitch my services like a pro. That becomes much easier when you’re the paid ad expert who’s comfortable on every platform.
At this stage, you’re essentially running your business on auto-pilot. It’s a simple copy-and-paste system to create new digital assets and find new clients.
I have several clients paying $500 – $2,000 per month to generate leads for them. Digital Leasing taught me how to do that with the minimum amount of fuss. Their method is as passive as it gets for a lead generation business.
That means I get more time to enjoy with my partner, kids, family and friends.
Want to live a life like that without offloading $25,000 for VIP training? This video explains more about how Digital Leasing works.
What Can You Learn From Douglas James Marketing Courses?
Douglas James currently offers several different tiers of digital marketing courses. Some are aimed at beginners while others were designed for local business owners.
Below, we’ll focus on the training courses that are likely to be relevant for you.
At the time of writing, these would be
- The High-Ticket Experience
- Industry Marketing Academy
- The High-Ticket Expert
- Online Training Course Development
- Mentoring Services
Anyway, let’s break each of them down to see if any of them are likely to be the right fit for you.
The High-Ticket Experience
The High-Ticket Experience is an online course which teaches you how to book and close sales calls. This is an essential skill to learn when you’re running your own lead generation business. After all, this isn’t a “build it and they’ll come” business model. Your target audience needs to know that you can exist and (more importantly) how much value you can deliver to their business.
Douglas James has branded himself as the High Ticket Client Guy plus he’s supposedly closed $60 million worth of sales, so you’d imagine he’s a qualified candidate to teach this skill.
The course will teach you a winning system for finding qualified leads and booking sales calls with high-ticket clients. This involves creating a “value funnel” that demonstrates your expertise and makes potential clients excited to get on the phone with you.
You’ll also be shown a variety of useful sales techniques for selling a high-ticket item, program or consulting service over the phone. This includes the exact phone script that Douglas has already used to close 7-figures worth of sales. The end result should be that you find it easier to scale the price of your services and still them to clients with ease.
Bear in mind that you’ll need to hop on the phone with one of Douglas’ high-ticket closers before learning the price of this course.
Industry Marketing Academy
This is the course which Douglas James is arguably most well-known for creating. Indeed, it’s this course which has attracted the most reviews from former students. For that reason, I’ve centered most of my Douglas James training review around what’s on offer here.
Industry Marketing Academy is where Douglas James will teach you to become a Facebook ads expert, launch your own ads agency, attract clients and eventually spend your days rolling in piles of money. If that’s what you’re into, of course.
You’ll learn the basics of launching your own business, targeting potential clients, getting them on the phone and closing a deal so you can start working with them. The meat of the course will teach you about running Facebook ads on a client’s behalf so they want to keep paying you month after month.
A key selling point is that students will receive 50+ “done for you” industry funnels that they can use for their own businesses. There are also plenty of advanced strategies here to help you dominate Facebook ads and generate exciting results for your clients. Weekly group coaching calls, a private Facebook group and messenger support are all part of the package too.
You might notice some overlap in curriculums with the other courses he sells, but this is the most comprehensive course out there. If you want to become the next Douglas James, this is the course to buy. His website suggests that students can start making money within weeks of joining the academy and that’s certainly believable. When I started learning local lead generation, I was also attracting clients within that timeframe.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere though, Douglas’ course focuses a bit too much on attracting clients via Facebook. There’s barely a mention of Google Ads, search engine optimization or other social media platforms throughout the curriculum.
If you want to master the art of local lead generation and build a truly futureproof business, I’d say you’re better off investing in a course that teaches you how to excel on various online platforms (like this one).
The High-Ticket Expert
This is more or less an up-sell on The High-Ticket Experience program.
As well as learning techniques for sourcing potential clients and closing them over the phone, you’ll also discover how to automate your process of attracting high-ticket clients by using Facebook and Clickfunnels.
When you build a successful funnel in either of these programs, you be fortunate enough to have leads coming to you instead of having to go out into the wild and find them.
The time saved from learning how to build these funnels could be worth the extra money you’ll pay for this program, then.
There is a lot of detailed information online that can help you learn this skill for free, but hiring expert help from an experienced coach can still shorten your learning curve and help you fill up your calendar with sales calls a lot quicker.
Bear in mind that there’ll be some additional costs if you want to use Clickfunnels for your online business on an ongoing basis.
Online Training Course Development
Let’s imagine for a moment that you’ve already mastered the skill of making money online. Perhaps you launched your own successful ad agency, or you learned a skill like high-ticket closing or affiliate marketing.
The next logical step would appear to be coaching.
But the High-Ticket Client Guy Douglas James has gone one step further. He’s created an online course about how to create online courses. He’s the money-making guru teaching others how to become a money-making guru.
Anyway, in this course, you’ll learn essential skills for deciding a course strategy, developing your content, building a membership website, marketing your online course and more.
Mentoring Services
Douglas James loves to share the lessons from his entrepreneurship journey on his YouTube channel, but if you want one-on-one feedback on your business venture, that’s available too.
Douglas James offers one-hour mentoring calls on his website. He even reveals the price. It’s a smooth $3,500. That’s more than you’ll pay for a lot of digital marketing courses that include weekly coaching calls. His website suggests that this “high-octane hour” will deliver insights and ideas that will leave you ready to grow your business.
The VIP day is a full-day event hosted by Douglas James in San Diego. Throughout this day, there will be a range of speeches helping attendees gain valuable insights into digital marketing success. The event is limited to 20 action-takers. The ticket price includes a two-night stay in San Diego, a high-end networking dinner, plus six months of access to a private Facebook group and Voxer communication. You’ll have to apply to attend, and the price isn’t mentioned on Douglas James’ website.
The 6-Month group is a mastermind group limited to 25 hungry entrepreneurs. Members of this group will gain access to six mastermind calls with six experienced business owners. The calls with cover essential topics including sales, marketing, branding and business mindset. The group includes live online training videos that teach Facebook Advertising and High Ticket Sales. Members can also access a private Facebook group and Voxer messaging communication.
Douglas James Training Review: What’s The Conclusion?
Thanks for reading my Douglas James training review.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who found great value in Douglas James Marketing courses. After all, there is a lot of useful information that’s proven to be effective and plenty of personal guidance on offer.
However, for the average person just getting started with their online business, there are most cost-effective options out there.
Check out my Digital CEOs review for more insights into digital marketing courses. It’s the most comprehensive course I’ve encountered, offering unmatched support with a personal success coach and daily group coaching calls.
Additionally, read my Leadific review. Leadific course, created by Chance Welton and Abdul Farooqi, helps marketing agency owners manage their agencies with access to a supportive community, though it requires time and financial investment.
What Is My #1 Way To Make Money Online In 2025?
It’s time to get real with you for a second.
I created this website because I know how badly people want to create a steady stream of income online.
I’m a parent of two young boys. I took an obsessive approach to making money online because I wanted to spend my days helping them grow into awesome men. I didn’t want to miss out on their big moments because I was grinding away in a soulless corporate hellhole.
I know other people who have big ambitions to live a baller lifestyle traveling the world. I’m well on my way to making that sort of money, even though I prefer to stay in my home town close to my friends and family.
But it wasn’t easy to get to this point.
There are some many business models that claim to be the easy route to financial freedom.
Yet, I know from experience that few of these models are as dreamy as they appear.
I’ve personally tried all of the major online business models:
- I’ve sold fidget spinners through Amazon FBA
- I’ve drop-shipped a toilet-bowl putting green on Shopify
- I’ve sold women’s health supplements via Clickbank affiliate marketing
And I made money with all of them, so trust me when I say: there is no “perfect” business model.
That being said, my #1 recommendation for making real money online is, hands-down: Digital Leasing.
Whether you’ve never made a dollar online, or you’ve been in this space for a while but never really “made it,” Digital Leasing is for you.
Why?
1) It’s Flexible: got an hour a day? You can do this. Ready to drop everything else and dive in full time? You can do this. Yes, the more time you put in, the faster you see results. But even with a little time each day, you can move the needle in a Digital Leasing business.
And because this system is so flexible, you don’t have to constantly be working to make more money. It’s called PASSIVE INCOME because if you stop working, the money doesn’t.
Imagine taking 3 months off to just tour around Europe, rent a cabin in the woods to write a book, hike the Appalachian Trail, or live on the beach and surf all day.
Perhaps, like me, you’re a parent who wants to have the freedom to spend more time watching your children grow into little superheroes.
This is only possible if you have an income stream that’s not tied to your time.
2) You Own & Control EVERYTHING: With an ad agency, you don’t really own anything.
You’re a hired gun for clients, and entirely at their mercy.
Sure, you own your agency, but if your business grinds to a halt once you stop working, all you really have is a self-created job.
With Digital Leasing (a passive income stream), you own all the assets, which means you have all the power and all the control.
3) Little To No Startup Costs: It’s possible to get into Digital Leasing with zero dollars upfront. Because, using the strategies outlined in this program, you can get a client to pay you BEFORE spending a penny out of your own pocket…even before you do any work.
Even without getting paid in advance, you can have your first Digital Rental Property up, running, and generating profits for less than $100.
4) Easy To Duplicate: Ok, here’s the best part: once you have your first Digital Rental Property up and running, you can literally DOUBLE your income with a few clicks, a couple keystrokes, and a single phone call (and you don’t actually need the phone call).
Remember: each Digital Rental Property is worth $500 to $2,000 a month in semi-passive income (over 95% profit). Every time you decide to create another one and increase your income, it gets easier.
Because you have more knowledge, more experience, more results, and more momentum.
If you wanted to double your income with an ad agency, you’d have to double your clients OR double the monthly payment of your existing customers. And, guaranteed that’s a lot harder than a few clicks and a few minutes of your life.
5) Make Money Helping Real People:
There are plenty of online businesses that give you the freedom to work from anywhere, but the work itself isn’t fulfilling.
And the daily grind gets old really fast when your work is meaningless.
That’s another reason why I’m so grateful for discovering Digital Leasing. In this business model, you get to help real people with real problems.
Small, local businesses need more customers, and with Digital Leasing, you are unleashing a flood of happy, paying customers for these businesses.
You make money by helping them make money.
Not a big, faceless corporation either…a small business owner who’s using that money to put food on the table for their family, start a college fund for their kids, or take care of a sick parent.
Once you see how Digital Leasing impacts the lives of real people, you’ll sleep like a baby with a big smile on your face.
That’s what makes you motivated to get up and work in the morning, no matter how much or how little work you have to do.
Now, the choice is yours. You could continue browsing, looking at other online opportunities which could one day make you money.
You could continue researching other online business models, never making a decision.
OR, you could take a look inside, consider what you really want, and join a program that makes your dreams a reality. At the same time, joining a community of over 2,000 successful students who are living life on their own terms thanks to Digital Leasing.
A consistent, reliable, semi-passive stream of income that doesn’t depend on you or your time to keep producing profits.
All while genuinely helping real people who are grateful and happy to pay for it.
If this sounds more like what you want out of life (or if you just want some nice side income), click here to learn more about Digital Leasing.
