I genuinely love AI, so I've been creating content and posting on socials, while also trying to get my agency off the ground. Content takes a lot of time to record and post — should I focus solely on the business and drop content for a while? My content isn't built in public, it's just generic valuable content about AI, not tied to the business, though it could bring clients or leads down the line.
The way I see it, content is a lead-generation strategy. The entire reason I went into content is because my CPMs with cold email were like $8-10, and I wanted them lower — I got my CPMs down to like two or three bucks with content, and my average ticket price also went up when I sold someone through content versus cold email. If I have two routes available and one is just way better in every shape and form, obviously I'm going to go down that path. But it's also worth saying this wasn't immediate — it took me a couple of months. Content requires a fair amount of effort and input, and you don't see results for at least a 3-6 month period, most people see it 6-12 months down the line. That's a lot of work and opportunity cost. If you have something capable of generating shorter-term revenue, like cold email, even with higher CPMs, you should probably do that to get yourself to a reasonable financial point before committing to the riskier, higher-payoff play. It's high risk, high reward, and if you don't have some runway or money in the bank to sustain yourself while you wait for content to pay off, it's probably not optimal.
That's an interesting point. I think the whole idea here about not pitching a specific service makes sense, but I don't believe it works in practice. I've tried not doing that and just being a results‑focused person who generates revenue, but I find uptake is a lot better when you can draw the shape of a solution for a client and then say, 'This is how I make money.' It makes it more believable. The good news is you have the ability to test this yourself. You could make a general vague offer that is 100 % results‑based around whatever you want, then compare it with a more specific copywriting offer where you guarantee the same thing, or a specific PPC offer with the same guarantee. I think you could answer this question and satisfy that part of your brain that's itching to know, but it would be more powerful for you to try it yourself. As a five‑year copywriter you probably have some capital saved, so you could try it instantly on your own. Keep those AI systems in the background if you want, but you can also sell to traditional copywriting clients. This is basically the idea behind my business.
You need to charge more, proportional to the value you provide. If you solve a $10,000-per-month money need, you can reasonably charge 30%–50% of that, i.e., $3,000–$5,000 per month. From the business owner's perspective, this is a simple ROI: hiring you should yield about a 3x return, acknowledging some uncertainty between the $3,000 fee and the $10,000 value. You can charge a proportion of the value delivered. Focus on profitability by charging significantly more for your services. On the expense side, avoid accruing unnecessary liabilities. Many who sell cold email or lead generation merely wrap a cold email product with minor added value and then bundle in unnecessary costs like email inboxes, platform fees, and domains. Instead, have the client pay for some of those costs so you're not left liable if you don't deliver results or fulfill guarantees. For example, one consulting client guaranteed a client $10,000 but only sought payment after delivering that amount; due to a long sales cycle, the client didn't receive the $10,000 for four or five months, while the consultant's ongoing email costs were $600–$700 per month, totaling $2,400–$2,800 over that period, yielding a 76% margin after COGS. Don't put yourself in that situation.
Sure, I'd recommend Apollo for lead generation. First, regarding CRM automations as a starting point: it's a viable option, but there may be simpler things to learn and sell. Second, about copywriting: I talk loudly in my videos; you can jump to my copywriting video around the 56‑minute mark where I show how I do my copywriting and share the templates I use. Third, lead follow‑ups, pipeline management, and email sequences are definitely good starting points—there are many good starting points, but those are solid. Additionally, I mentioned that getting a Starlink is a good idea, and I regret not roasting Broxton's Upwork earlier; I plan to do that right after this video. I also noted that buying a 5G device could be useful. On AI safety: I don't get many client questions about it; clients considering AI implementation usually aren't concerned about safety one way or the other. Personally, I care deeply about AI safety—I'm big on Less Wrong and AI safety in general—but I'm also an accelerationist who believes we should adopt AI as quickly as possible. However, I think the current incentives in big labs are misaligned, and if we keep responding to them, the risk of an AI‑related mishap remains high. Regarding brand stats: my main channel has 133,721 subscribers, the daily updates channel 6,684, and the Instagram channel 209,535. Overall growth is at 0.57, which is declining and unsatisfying; I'm not using the right metric. Growth has stalled—we were at 1, dropped to 0.5, and now we're back down. When looking at absolute numbers, there is some improvement just because the channel is larger, but relative growth shows no real change. Maker School churn is about 21.85%, down slightly from before. I created a thread asking what people want to know and got a hundred high‑quality comments, giving me a library of content for future Maker School exclusives—posts I only share inside the group to increase perceived value. My goal is to reduce churn to 17%; if I can get it down to 70% churn I'd hold the top spot longer, otherwise I risk being overtaken by competitors like Spencer Paulo, who is steadily gaining ground. Brian Decker at the Well Society, for example, made $8,694 in the last week while I made $4,548; at that rate he'd overtake me in about a year and a half if nothing changes. I'm going to keep providing value and redo the Maker School program to improve retention.
What a great question. This is more a consulting and strategy perspective than a building one. Naturally, if you're trying to make more money and thinking, 'Ooh, what's a way to make more money? I know AI is all the rage—maybe we'll add an AI chatbot to our website,' but if the chatbot doesn't talk to anybody, it won't make you more money. You've stumbled on a universal problem for many service businesses: they just don't have any leads. The real point of value, the bottleneck you could fix, is usually lead generation. I don't know how many people visit their site daily, monthly, or yearly, so it's hard to suggest exactly what to do next, but you're on the right track. The usual thinking is: get leads first, then worry about optimizing how you deal with them, nurture them, and improve conversion rates later. In your opinion, what's the best automation to sell? Could you make a video on it? The best automation to sell is something that increases or encourages lead generation, which we discussed. One of the main systems I sell is a cold outreach system where I build distribution for someone from scratch for about $200–$300 a month ongoing. They start with zero leads in their pipeline—usually an agency—and after the system is set up, they get roughly 30 leads per month that want to book calls. This is a game-changer and easy to justify as an investment for companies whose bottleneck is lead generation, like most businesses under $50k–$100k per month in revenue. Think of it this way: I'm solving their most dire problem—no leads entering the business. I charge them $3,000–$4,000 a month, which is fine because without me they wouldn't even have a business making more than $3k–$4k a month. In my experience, the best automations to sell for small to mid-sized businesses are those that help the top of the funnel. If they already have an outbound system but aren't getting many leads, I'd recommend a speed-to-lead system. Anything close to the top of the funnel—whether outbound or inbound—helps a lot, and that's what I'd recommend.