#89 · How a nobody hit #1 on the Skool Games (not even close!)
As of last month I made over $300,000, with about 85 % of that coming from education. So education is far more scalable than building a service.
My AI and automation agency makes significantly less money than my coaching. Coaching is extraordinarily scalable—when you run a YouTube channel with distribution like I do, the optimal next choice is to sell something hyperscalable with zero delivery or logistics, which is what my coaching stuff is. If you're a total beginner, your optimal choice changes depending on whether you have distribution: with distribution, you'd go for e‑commerce or info‑product with a templated service; without distribution, you'd run an agency because agencies let you get your first 10, 20, $50k in revenue super quickly. Agencies allow you to make a lot of money very quickly, but you tend to plateau relatively fast, with further gains being incremental. Contrast that with an information product business (like a community or SaaS), which has zero marginal cost after a fixed development cost, so you make little money at first but way more later. Does this make sense? From my perspective, when I started my agency I was up here, made money quickly, hit resistance, wanted to scale with as little headcount as possible, moved over here, and now I'm significantly higher. Would I recommend doing what I'm doing now to total beginners? No—many people throw away their businesses after starting coaching because they stop doing the main service, become disconnected from implementation, lose skill, and start teaching the wrong way. That's why this YouTube channel is valuable: I'm showing you how I actually generate leads for my agency. I want to change the fraction of my total revenue that comes from this channel; I don't think it's the most effective use of my time per dollar, but I believe it will indirectly lead to more money through authenticity, so I'm getting back to selling outbound for the agency, setting up more inbound funnels, adding calls‑to‑action at the end of videos, and going to hire a team eventually.
Long‑form content converts better, so the approach works. It’s really about trading time for money: calculate whether the revenue from the video exceeds the time you invested (e.g., using a $100/hour rate). You can also trade money for time via PPC, partnerships, or influencer deals. For maintenance, avoid selling it as a separate line item; instead, bundle it into a retainer as a ‘peace of mind’ offering that includes updates, availability, and strategy calls. Ultimately, it’s better to sell growth rather than just maintenance.
I’ve never started with sponsorship revenue; I went straight to my own product because the margins are much higher and it keeps everything congruent—you only promote things you truly care about, so there’s no credibility leakage. I later experimented with sponsors because they wanted me to pre‑record videos for them, which turned into free ad exposure and helped grow my audience. My recommendation is to make as much money as possible from your own product first, since it’s highly congruent and your core audience will value it. Once you’ve built a reasonable size—say a few million followers—you can start running ads for other platforms, as long as they align with your niche. That way you maximize earnings from your product before leveraging external sponsorships.
My recommendation is to first grow the SaaS a bit before you start a YouTube channel. Instead of advertising $2 K in MRR, frame it as a $100 K‑a‑year business. That kind of headline is more interesting to viewers. If you’re still early and don’t have impressive results, people won’t be inclined to spend time on your content. The key is to focus on what you’ve achieved that’s better than 99.9 % of the world. When you have a tangible outcome—say you’re consistently making $8‑10 K a month—you can use that as the hook for your videos. Spend time improving the SaaS, develop strong skills, and once you have a modest success metric, start talking about it. Use that achievement as the basis for your content and you’ll be able to attract an audience.