Why do you manually track metrics daily, and what benefit do you get from it?

#257 · blue collar work is the future (i'm serious)

Why do you manually track metrics daily, and what benefit do you get from it?

It's a good question. I'm the automation guy, yet I manually update a janky Google Sheet each day because the value isn't just the metric—it's the awareness and reflection it brings. Spending about 30 seconds daily yields far more value: I notice trends and spikes in follower growth that make me investigate causes. If you had many metrics and worked with a company, you wouldn't do this manually every day—it would take too much time—but as a small portion it's fine. I had meant to mention Mr. Beast because we're collaborating. I recently hung out with school friends Marty, Ryan, and Michael; Marty has over 5 million YouTube subscribers, Ryan about 160 k Instagram followers, Michael many millions on Instagram. It was cool to watch the local cactus squad and discuss optimizing school as part of a big challenge. School is going well; I'm in the platinum group for educational creators with 100 k+ followers, where we help each other grow. I comment on posts for five minutes daily and have reached number two on the leaderboard, meaning I'm a valued resource; people constantly ask for my opinion. I achieved this with little effort—just voice‑transcribing posts and noting my thoughts (X, Y, Z) in 15–30 seconds per post—yet I now get massive exposure. I love giving value and seeing how communities make interaction easy and human‑focused. The free school community is thriving at 7,400 members, and we've celebrated two members hitting 10 k‑month milestones. Each day I review new posts, quickly scanning for obviously AI‑generated content (e.g., a YouTube‑video‑style post) and delete it, then ask if it's truly a YouTube video; if so, I delete it. I must be trigger‑happy for time, but the rest of the community is great: I spot AI‑generated posts, remove them, and spend about five minutes leaving a few comments. New members often feel uncertain; seeing that success is possible encourages them. The no‑AI‑post rule has raised discussion quality. A recent post from Rodrigo looked suspicious due to odd M‑dashes, but he noted it was a Google translation, so language may explain it. I appreciate Nick's style—no hype, straight talk that works. Regarding a journey‑maker school example, I noted it was obviously AI, less tinkering, more doing, and deleted it. I can give a reason for deletion, but my rule is two strikes: first AI‑post gets benefit of doubt, second results in removal. I've become familiar with AI writing patterns, so I ban them aggressively, keeping the community high‑quality. I also sprinkle in posts as needed, though the top‑level look lets people market low‑value offers in the intro tab (e.g., 'Hey, how's it going? Do you want to make money online?'), which I only see when reported; then I ban the offender. I enjoy the community and will defend it with my Warhammer 40K sword metaphor. Direct messages have become a burden—many users just say thanks—so I read them but don't reply to stay true to my promise. Reading 40–50 DMs daily makes me reflect on how far one person can go; I might be the only one sustaining this volume for over a year. I use AI everywhere except for the actual coaching deliverable and my personal presence, which I haven't replaced, preventing the perception of being fake. It's an interesting thought experiment: could I scale the community to a million members a month while still managing it alone? Possibly, but we'll see. My stats show slowed growth (0.11 %), then a rise to 0.66 % after a Maker Zero boost to 7,500 members. I plan to add an email‑address question to Maker Zero to capture all member emails for promotions, accepting some leakage as inevitable. I'm aiming to return to the top three rank again.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Client Acquisition

Can you show your community-based outreach process in a Reddit or Facebook group in a 5-minute daily update video?

In terms of outreach, I'm currently creating videos about what I do with AI and online services, and I reach out to specific businesses via Instagram so they can check my profile. I have someone handling cold calls for me, and I'm about to set up a cold email campaign. I don't want to show an actual video because it would ruin my repurposing, but the process for community-based outreach looks like this: First, find communities that match your ideal customer persona. If you don't know your ICP, join a variety of communities. Communities are groups of people who share similar problems, so by scrolling through posts you can identify those suffering from issues they'd be willing to spend money, time, or energy to solve—questions like 'How are you managing XYZ?' or 'How are you dealing with the new Instagram update?' Compile a list of these questions and problems; this is a direct line to what you can build systems around to make people money. You can't just join a community, list problems, and start pitching a $4,500 solution; you need to show up consistently so people recognize your face. After building your list and developing solutions, start answering people's questions, offering value—for example, 'Hey Sally, I've thought about this a lot, and an approach I'd take is X, Y, Z.' This simple method works: spend 15 minutes each morning on a community like Platinum, answering questions and transcribing them. Doing this daily for a month makes you one of the top five most engaged members, landing you on the community's leaderboard, which drives profile clicks and interest. Once you've warmed up the community and they like your posts, you can monetize by sharing how you solved a problem they face, leading to DMs and calls. On those calls, qualify the leads—some will be unqualified, but a third to half may be genuine business owners who have tried paid solutions. Showing them your superior solution, derived from studying the group's problems, can lead to closed deals. You can do this for free, though paid communities offer a simpler path because free ones often act as sales funnels for their creators. From there you can build an effective funnel.

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youtube ↗Agency Operations

What tools are you using in your own business? Only ClickUp or something like Superbase? No, only ClickUp. I don't use um a database like Superbase. And where are you saving all your data? What's your workflow?

I use ClickUp as my main tool to store everything; it's visual and sufficient for my needs, so I don't need a real database like Superbase. I'll leave it there for now. Moving on to brand stats: my main channel has about 159,960 subscribers, Instagram around 26,648 followers, and the daily updates channel (where I answer questions) has about 8,844 subscribers. Subscriber growth is down to roughly 0.36% per day, Instagram growth around 2.62% per day, while the daily updates channel growth remains strong. Recently I posted about winning the school games, cross‑posted it to the schooler subreddit, and asked Sam Ovens and others to pin it to gain visibility and raise the standard in the school community. The post is long and was pinned, receiving comments from notable figures like Sam Ovens, Nate Herk, Spencer (who previously held the top spot), and Mr. Hormosi. I plan to meet them in the next couple of days. Although there's no direct ROI, I expect future returns from the connections and positive clout. On the sales front, I had to take down a posted sales call for Leftclick after the other party raised liability concerns; the first call already exposed potential issues, making me doubtful about continuing such posts. I’ve considered alternatives like sales coaching, role‑play sessions, or a podcast‑style format where I work with others and document the process, but these versions lack the perceived authenticity of a live, unfiltered sales call. Lead generation is doing well: Instantly launched an AI inbox manager, and the podcast campaign now yields a 2% reply rate, with about 1% positive replies. At my recommended volume of 270 emails per day, that translates to roughly one positive reply per day, or 20‑30 per month; I’m sending about ten times that volume, so I could scale up to ten calls per day if market capacity allows. I’ve also thought about simply giving people leads, but that raises logistical questions about booking calls and ensuring attendance without double‑booking. I’m open to any sensible solutions you might have. Finally, my channel’s relative growth rate has been declining, and I was about to publish a video intended to reverse that trend, though it hasn’t uploaded yet due to timing.

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youtube ↗Marketing

Could you break down where you started with your social media profiles, whether you were running them all at the same time and cross‑posting, what specific strategy you use for each platform, and what advice you’d give a beginner making $5‑$10k/month on which organic strategy to grow and monetize that traffic through school?

He runs one of the largest school communities generating about $300,000 per month while working roughly 90 minutes a day himself. He tracks brand growth across major social platforms on a page. He started YouTube on February 1 2024 growing from about 100 subscribers to over 45,900 by February 1 2025. He launched Instagram in early 2025 and LinkedIn a couple of weeks before the video. His daily updates channel began about 194 days prior. His four main content methods are YouTube (oldest highest value) daily updates Instagram and LinkedIn (experimenting). He does not manage LinkedIn himself; a helper creates content based on YouTube videos following a waterfall approach where YouTube is the core platform and other platforms repurpose its content. He does not run all platforms simultaneously; he started with YouTube then added Instagram then LinkedIn. For beginners he advises that YouTube remains criminally undervalued. The key metric is total minutes of content watched: YouTube averages about five minutes per view (≈300 seconds) while Instagram averages around five seconds giving YouTube a roughly 60× advantage in monetizability per view. Consequently his YouTube channel drives the overwhelming majority of school signups with Instagram contributing only about 2–3% and LinkedIn similar to Instagram due to higher consumption time. He also shares that after recovering from a shoulder injury his confidence and gym performance improved dramatically making his life fantastic.

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youtube ↗Mindset

What one piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

If I could give one piece of advice to my younger self, it would be to understand that outputs lag behind inputs. When you put in a lot of work, you won’t see the results immediately because there’s a natural delay—often about a month—before the effort pays off. If you have a tight feedback loop and expect quick results, remind yourself that the lack of immediate outcomes doesn’t mean your effort was wasted; it’s just the system’s lag. To work with this, ground yourself in the belief that what you’re doing is right, based on the logic and research you’ve done. Trust that belief deeply, and keep going. For example, if you were to send ten Loom videos daily to creators you admire and message them on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, or X, you’d mathematically expect a result. By sticking with it over a long period, the inputs eventually catch up to the outputs, and you start seeing results. I learned this from my own experience: I blogged every day for 30 days as part of a challenge, saw almost no views, and felt discouraged. But a year later, those posts were ranking on Google’s first page, driving hundreds of hits and sales opportunities. Had I kept that pace, I would have become one of the more prolific bloggers online. The same pattern happened with my YouTube channel—once I committed to daily videos for a month, the market rewarded me later, and I grew into a bigger, respected creator in my space. So, if you believe in your work, give yourself grace and extra time—maybe double or triple your estimate for when results will appear. That heuristic makes success far more likely.

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