A solo info-coaching founder audits a punishing $100M year of leadership gaps and burnout, then lays out a 2026 plan built on direct-to-cart selling, an 80% organic-bookings goal, and a sweat-equity deal with Whop.
Posted
8 months ago
Duration
Format
Essay
sincere
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4.7K
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57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
A business that scaled to nine figures on ads and a closer-only sales team lost a full year to leadership gaps and bureaucracy, so the fix for 2026 is speed, direct-to-cart selling, and hiring for people instead of building more systems.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You run a lead-gen or info-coaching business built on paid ads and a closer-only sales team, and you want to see what breaks when that model scales past eight figures.
You're deciding whether to trade equity or a percentage of your company for a strategic platform partnership instead of building the capability in-house.
You lead a growing team and want a blunt account of what happens when process and 'Enterprise' habits creep in faster than the business needs them.
You're weighing a long-term equity play against near-term cash flow and want to hear it argued against by someone who tried it.
SKIP IF…
You're early-stage and pre-revenue: this is a post-mortem on scaling problems, not a guide to getting your first customers.
You want tactical ad or funnel breakdowns; the numbers here are personal reflections, not a walkthrough of campaigns or creative.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
An info-coaching founder whose business collected roughly $33 to 34 million in 2025 (about even with 2024) walks through why a record top line still felt like standing still: a leadership and delegation gap, months of 15-hour days that didn't convert into profit, and a slide into 'Enterprise' bureaucracy that made simple projects take months. He turned down consulting and equity offers out of a no-selling stance he now regrets, then pulled off a $10.6 million 60-day sprint that broke the team. For 2026 he's shifting from paid-lead funnels toward direct-to-cart, aiming for 80% organic bookings, rebuilding sales around treating every lead as a person in pain rather than a number, and trading sweat equity for a stake in the platform Whop, running account activation, management, and growth for other sellers.
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Ryan Clogg returns after a few months off to recap 2025: roughly $30M in 2024 cash collected growing to about $33-34M in 2025, described as a hard year despite the record top line. He frames the video as unstructured personal notes, not a pitch.
02:37 – 06:16
02 · The L's: leadership and inputs vs. outputs
Leadership and people are named as the single biggest skill gap of the year, including losing talented staff to competitors with stronger leaders. He also flags that 15-plus-hour days produced a record top line but missed both the profit and revenue goals actually set.
06:16 – 08:40
03 · Spread thin, doing nothing, and no opportunities
Taking on a personal brand on top of running the company led to routinely 15-hour days. He admits he's never comfortable doing nothing, doubling down instead of resting, and that he turned down every consulting and equity offer this year on principle, some of which he now regrets.
08:40 – 11:05
04 · Fitness rollercoaster and long game vs. short game
A five-year daily gym streak broke in the last few months of the year. He also describes chasing an equity-value project instead of quick cash-flow wins, without the expertise to execute it, which cost the business focus and near-term revenue.
11:05 – 13:31
05 · The wins: YouTube, events, family, and a $10.6M sprint
Starting YouTube is named as his top business move of the year, opening doors to industry events (Cole, Iman, Jeremy, Daniel Fazio) and relationships. He also highlights leaning into family and friends, and a $10.6M revenue sprint in 60 days that he calls both a win and a loss, since it burned out the team.
13:31 – 20:46
06 · MainCo 2026: efficiency, direct-to-cart, and organic
The 2026 plan for his info-coaching business, MainCo, opens with efficiency and speed, fixing a slide into corporate bureaucracy, and rebuilding the sales team around treating every lead as an individual rather than a number. He commits to shifting from ad-funded lead generation toward direct-to-cart selling and a goal of 80% organic bookings, plus adding MRR and LTV through partnerships, physical products, and continuity offers.
20:46 – 28:02
07 · The Enterprise mistake, then the Whop deal
He admits wanting the company to 'be Enterprise' was a mistake that made simple projects take months and required custom, disconnected reporting tools. He then details a new deal with the platform Whop (transcribed as 'WAP' in the audio, confirmed as Whop from the on-screen board and video description): sweat equity in exchange for running account activation, account management, and account growth for other sellers on the platform, plus a merit-based community gated by processing volume.
28:02 – 32:17
08 · Personal 2026: time, fitness, and avoiding self-sabotage
He closes on personal goals: reclaiming time from 18-hour, 16-to-20-meeting days, training for a physical challenge for both fitness and mental space, solving for the cold climate hurting his mood, hiring his first personal assistant, and returning to a consistent content cadence. He ends on a single guardrail for 2026: avoid doing things that are just self-sabotage or a dopamine chase.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
A business can post a record top-line year in revenue and still feel like a repeat of the year before if profit and team health didn't move with it.
Losing talented people isn't just a pay problem: a company can lose them because a competitor offered a stronger leader and a stronger organization.
Fifteen-plus-hour days for months straight produced a record top line but missed both the profit and revenue goals that were actually set.
Turning down every consulting or equity offer on principle can mean passing on real upside from genuinely strong companies, not just low-quality pitches.
A single traffic source, a single funnel, or a single sales team each carry hidden volatility; when more than one breaks at once, the whole business goes sideways.
Deliberately pursuing an 'Enterprise' feel can be exactly the wrong move: it brings nine approvals and multi-month projects to a company that needed to stay lean and fast.
Treating leads as a percentage or conversion number instead of individual people in pain is an easy way to quietly lose a sales function.
A closer-only sales model can carry a business a long way, but it breaks once the market shifts and setting becomes part of the job.
Chasing a long-term equity play at the cost of near-term cash flow can hand a market to competitors who are only playing the short game, and playing it well.
A single $10.6 million, 60-day sales sprint can prove a team's ceiling and break its acquisition, sales, and leadership systems in the same stroke.
Sweat equity in exchange for running account activation, management, and growth for other sellers is a way to get platform upside without building a competing product from scratch.
Gating community access and perks by a merit threshold, like monthly processing volume, ties status to results instead of to a flat fee anyone can pay.
A single strong core offering with good retention can mask the absence of a real continuity or physical-product revenue line until growth stalls.
Consistent long-form video, even in a plain talking-to-camera format, can be the fastest way into rooms and relationships that ad spend alone doesn't buy.
Takeaway
What breaks when a lead-gen business scales past eight figures
THE LEADERSHIP GAP
A record revenue year without matching leadership, systems, or profit growth is a sign to fix delegation and speed before adding more ads, more hires, or more product lines.
01Cold open and revenue recap
A business can grow from roughly $30 million to $33-34 million in a year and still describe it as a hard, effectively flat year once team and profit strain are counted.
Naming exactly what did and didn't work in plain terms, rather than a polished year-in-review, is itself a useful planning exercise.
02The L's: leadership and inputs vs. outputs
Losing skilled people to competitors with a stronger leader or a stronger organization is a leadership failure, not just a retention problem to patch with pay.
Matching the right person to the right seat matters as much as having any person in the seat at all.
Working 15-plus-hour days for months is not the same as producing 15-plus hours of results; inputs and outputs have to be tracked separately.
03Spread thin, doing nothing, and no opportunities
Taking on a personal brand and content on top of an already full operating role, without hiring for the time it takes, produces unsustainable hours rather than more output.
An inability to sit with unstructured downtime, and doubling workload instead, is a pattern worth naming as a habit, not dismissing as just being driven.
A blanket 'I'm not selling anything' stance can cost real upside when it blocks equity or consulting offers from genuinely strong companies, not just low-quality pitches.
04Fitness rollercoaster and long game vs. short game
A five-year daily fitness habit can break in months once a founder starts treating desk time as the only legitimate use of hours.
Committing resources to a long-term equity play without expertise in that specific field can quietly stall a project for a year while focused competitors pull ahead.
A decision made on an unverified belief about what builds long-term equity value should be treated as a guess, not a strategy, until it's tested.
05The wins: YouTube, events, family, and a $10.6M sprint
Publishing long-form video consistently, even in a plain talking-to-camera format, opened doors to industry events and relationships that ad spend alone never would have.
A single all-hands sales sprint can prove what a team is capable of, but running it without a sustainable structure behind it can quietly break acquisition, sales, and leadership for months afterward.
Leaning harder into local relationships and family during a demanding year is a deliberate trade worth naming as a win, not just a fallback.
06MainCo 2026: efficiency, direct-to-cart, and organic
Bureaucracy and multiple approval layers can creep into a company gradually, without ever feeling like a deliberate decision to become slower.
Treating every lead as an individual person with a specific problem, rather than a percentage in a funnel, is a sales-culture fix, not just a script change.
Shifting from ad-funded lead generation toward direct-to-cart selling reduces dependence on any single paid channel, at the cost of needing a sales team built for a different kind of buyer.
Setting an explicit organic-traffic target, such as 80% of bookings, forces concrete decisions about where content and hiring investment goes instead of treating organic as a side effect of paid spend.
07The Enterprise mistake, then the Whop deal
Deliberately pursuing an 'Enterprise' feel, meaning more approvals and process, can be exactly the wrong move for a company that needs to stay lean enough to ship fast.
Splintered, custom-built reporting tools can get so disconnected from a single source of truth that even the founder can't make a clean decision without personally assembling the numbers.
Structuring a platform deal around sweat equity, in exchange for running account activation, management, and growth for other sellers, is a way to get upside without building a competing product from scratch.
Gating community access and perks by a merit threshold, such as monthly processing volume, ties status to results instead of to a flat fee anyone can pay.
08Personal 2026: time, fitness, and avoiding self-sabotage
Running multiple companies without ever hiring a personal assistant is a common way founders quietly cap their own output.
Pairing a physical challenge, like training for an endurance event, with time away from a phone can double as both a fitness goal and forced thinking time.
A content cadence only holds when it's a standing commitment to an audience; once the promise lapses, output tends to drop to zero rather than just slow down.
Naming a single guardrail question, such as whether an action is just self-sabotage or a genuine dopamine chase, is a cheap way to close the gap between two similar years.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Direct response
A marketing approach built around paid ads that drive leads into a funnel, followed by a sales team that closes them, rather than selling directly off the page.
Direct-to-cart
A sales model where a buyer completes checkout immediately from an ad or offer, with no lead form, call, or closer involved before the sale.
Closer-only sales model
A sales process with no dedicated appointment-setting step, where the same salesperson qualifies, books, and closes each prospect.
MRR
Monthly recurring revenue: the predictable revenue a business collects every month from subscriptions or retainers, as opposed to one-time sales.
LTV
Lifetime value: the total revenue a business expects to collect from a single customer across the entire time they stay a paying customer.
Account activation
Getting a new user or merchant on a platform from their first sign-up to a meaningful level of usage or spend, such as their first $10,000 in monthly volume.
Whop
A platform for selling digital products, communities, and software, where sellers process payments and can access platform-run growth support and community perks.
Continuity offer
A recurring product or membership, such as a monthly subscription, sold alongside a company's main offer to add predictable repeat revenue.
short, quotable maxim that stands alone as a business mantra→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
16:50
“Every single one of those people... is a person who has a problem that you can solve that is in pain.”
reframes a sales metric as a human problem in one line→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
21:40
“I wanted to be Enterprise. You know what Enterprise is? It is slow. It is clunky. It takes forever to ship things. It needs nine approvals.”
self-deprecating admission with a punchy list structure, easy to caption→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
32:10
“If you do the same thing, you're going to get the same result.”
classic closing maxim, works as a stand-alone caption→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
The Script
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What's up guys? We are back. It has been a few months, a few challenging months at that, but today I'm going to be going through a 2025 review and a 2026 plan.
All right, so we're going to go through the L's, the losses and learnings of 25, a few wins we pulled out, and then dive straight into the 26 plan for MaineCo, for WAP, which I have some fun updates on this I haven't shared on here, and personal as well. All right, so last year we did about 30 million in 2024 and 2025 that we're about to finish out.
We're currently at around 33 ish and we'll get. probably close to 34 in total cash collected in our info coaching business.
And yeah, I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm just sharing what did work, what did not work. There's a lot of did not works today and what we are actively doing to scale this business.
And everything I share in here is really just for me to be able to find good talent, opportunities, and network slash make friends with other people building cool stuff. All right. I'm a little rusty.
It's been a while. So give me some grace. So learnings and losses.
So number one, this is like by far, by far the biggest is leadership. people. This is going to be a theme across this entire thing.
I by far, by far, by far feel like this is my biggest skill gap in what needs to be developed. So on the people spectrum, it's everything from being attractive and being able to recruit. In quality talent, right?
Have the right roles and responsibilities for them that exist and having the business growing in a place where it can have those people, it can foster those people, and then also leadership of those people. And I feel like that was a huge shortcoming of mine. We got some really talented people.
We churned some really talented people as well. essentially for them to go to other places that had a stronger pull, a stronger leader, a stronger organization, and also more aligned with them too, in all fairness. But yeah, this was a really big one.
And I think if we could solve for this, it probably solves for 99 % of the problems that I could go through here and plans. And you'll see that in my 2026 plan. But this was a big one for me.
The tactical side of it, like where people sat on org charts, like what do they call it, like butts in seats. So they're in the right seat, and then is it the right person as well? And I think this is still under development, but we definitely had some challenges with this.
And then also my leadership or management or whatever you call it of that team as well was definitely a shortcoming. I feel like it's a huge unlock that might be some function of a silver bullet that I'm hopeful for, but that's a big push into 26. uh inputs do not equal outputs is another big one we i mean i had to have been sitting at this desk for just hundreds and hundreds of hours i mean i i'm not doing public math but no joke like 15 plus hour days pretty steady and a lot of inputs went in a lot of effort a lot of scatteredness team and leadership and like everyone felt it where everything was on fire at once and trying to put this out and do this and do this uh for a lot of inputs for not a lot of outputs i mean we did yeah record year in top line um but if you look at our goals that we had set uh in profit and in top line uh i mean we didn't hit either of them so definitely an l um by far so inputs do not equal outputs, prioritization of top projects, prioritization of what we're working on, like a healthy balance there and being efficient, which you'll see is a really big push into 26.
Spread, thin, and time management. This is for me as an individual. So coming into this year, I had just main co, essentially, and I had kind of gotten rid of any of the side quests I was doing and was pretty dedicated in on it, but still not working necessarily full days and then came in the personal, brand or whatever you want to call this style of things and that was the first kick at like okay i'm sitting at this desk like 15 hours a day like no joke um and that is because me in time management my inability to do that well or hire for it well i was still very in the weeds and operations and and across the entire business uh as well as trying to do all my own stuff as well as trying to have a personal life as well as so like it was just nonsense like it was it was crazy um so this is a big push for me as well because now i've actually taken on more commitments um because i think i got better at it at the time management um but i'm still feeling this right now um so yeah so this was this was a big l was kind of back back to the inputs like spread thin and time is all the inputs i'm putting in um
And it just feels almost wasted at some point, which is not a good feeling. When you go an entire year and you look back and you're like, oh, we're in the same position. And I don't feel like we are, especially mentally.
But if you look at stats, there are some things that would put us essentially in the same place, which is never a good feeling. Being okay doing nothing. That was a big L.
I did have gaps, and the gaps turned into these. As you'll see, these all kind of ladder up to each other, but never have I been okay with doing nothing.
I'll get to that in this personal section. But just sitting and doing nothing, instead I find things to take on or do or go and refresh or go this and this instead of just being able to actually have the refresh time. And I think that's been huge too.
I don't really believe in – I believe in burnout. I just feel like I haven't been burned out. I was probably as close as you could say to that at some point throughout this year.
And instead of when I had these gaps of doing nothing, I just doubled down and 5x down in situations like that, which is probably not the answer. And it probably was take a breath moment. And I didn't do any of that.
Zero this year.
No opportunities. So I say in these videos all the time, opportunities, opportunities. And I got the influx of all influxes.
Crazy amounts of influx of pay for consulting or help me with this or take a percentage of my company. And I denied all of it on purpose. But I kind of like looking back on that, like there were some really quality companies in there.
And, you know, this whole I'm not selling anything like I really don't have anything to sell you like still to this day. But, you know, being able to take some part of someone's company, help like an actual quality business grow. That was probably short sighted of me to just try and like stick stringent to my.
I don't even know if that's how you say that word. Uh, stick to my, I'm not selling anything when that's not really selling something like, like again, to this day, like, you know, I don't have a course or mentor or like anything like that. Um, but I, I miss out on some major upside of things.
Um, just because of this belief, which I don't necessarily prescribe to. So I still, even in this moment, haven't taken anything except for what I'll drop kind of below.
But yeah, that was a big one. Fitness rollercoaster. When this happened, I have always been like pretty dialed in on this.
Like I go every day, all day or not all day. I go every day, like 30 minutes to an hour every day, no matter what. And I'm in like pretty solid shape and like life's good.
I, in the last three or four months of this year has been some crazy rollercoaster of just like, I've been at my desk so much or feeling like I need to be on that. I've like actually stopped going consistently, which is crazy. Like we're talking like five years of never breaking that until this year, which is just really not cool.
Like even when I started to do all these videos for the first time. Um, so yeah, so that was a big one. And then long game hurting the short game.
So I talk on here a lot about how, you know, equity value and this like idea of us trying to break through this mold of info coaching and become an exitable business. And I think there's a lot of ways to do that. I also think that I, I think I don't know.
And I think I haven't had conversations with maybe the right people or consume the right stuff to know the answer to that. So you're kind of judging, I'm making decisions based on a belief that might not be true, which I don't. Want anyone to do I don't think anyone should do that and I'm even doing that so yeah made a lot of decisions around things that we wanted to add to the business that instead of doing it for a cash flow play that we could have essentially spun up in two to four weeks we went down a route a road that was for equity value and future and it's like big future thing that is a large undertaking and while being oops while being spread thin time management trying to do all the things also not being an expert in this field uh it basically never just got across the finish line and like even today we were talking about kind of the plan for this and i think we have a really good plan going forward but We're basically going back on this and being like, okay, cool.
How do we do a blend of this instead of doing everything ourselves and trying to build this equity thing as a stand -up side thing? It ended up hurting the short game because some function of focus was lost for some other big future thing, another kick the can. And again, it's just cash flow that was missed today.
There's competitors that are only doing that, and that's all they do, and they're going to beat us if they are only doing that and better and have product experience and all that. So yeah, some long game moves hurt short game. A couple short wins.
What are we at? We're already at eight minutes. Sorry, guys.
YouTube was probably my number one. I have waited to do this for a long time. I've thought about doing it for a long time, and I never really felt like I was in a place to do it.
Now I don't care. Now I'm happy I did it, and it has opened a lot of doors for me, such as all the events. I spoke at Cole's event, and I went to all Iman's stuff, and Jeremy's stuff, spoke at those, and Daniel Fazio, and you can just go down the list of info coaching events, and I got invited to all of them.
and got to, you know, people in the room knew me and had some really good connections and conversations with some people that I never would have met if I wouldn't have done YouTube. Like I was just talking to someone in a chat and like, I think it is by far the number one business hack of like our current time being able to produce long form in this, not necessarily this format, but this kind of style.
That's not just like click. Beatty. Um, it's like actually get to know the person, at least on the business level or a thinking level or whatever.
I think this is a life hack. So, you know, we're nine and a half minutes in and probably lost a bunch of people, but like the people who are here, like, I feel like there's some relationship at some point. Uh, and it has, yeah, it has soured.
So family and friends, I leaned into this bucket, um, a little bit more than maybe usual because, uh, I'm more local to them now, uh, after some moves and some other stuff, but. I feel like I have a better relationship with them than I've had in a long time, but I will be very honest. I'm still struggling immensely to be able to do this well and this well and this.
It's a pain. And then financial one, the business, you know, it's buried in here, but essentially we did 10 .6 in a 60 day sprint. That's the last video I think I have on the channel where we were trying to win a bet and we pulled all the stops and did all the things.
But I'm saying there's a win and a loss because we burned the team pretty heavy. I don't want to say the motivation was not ideal, but like. So we pulled a lot of stops out.
We found a lot of broken things when we did this. We did it to do it. We hit it.
It's good to know that we could, but everything since then has almost been like down. There's been some up months in between, but in the last three or four months, it's been pretty painful because we broke things on acquisition. We broke things on sales.
We broke things on leadership. Not necessarily directly correlated to this, but ever since this, it has not been fantastic. So we're kind of rebuilding the ship right now again, which is the key point here.
But this was really good to see that if we all got behind something, we could do it. It just isn't sustainable in the current form. And I believe it to be in the future and kind of how we're changing things.
So getting into main code, where's this? Yeah. So the number one thing that we're kind of like isolated around is like efficiency.
So there's the mission and the values and everything we stand behind, which within main code, that is the forefront of all of this. And now the question is, how do you do it? Because that is going to continue to exist.
And we need to do it in a more efficient and to get a better return. Because back to the input -output and the leadership and people, the speed in which we almost got corporate and bloated. I don't even want to say bloated in a team sense because I don't really even think that we were bloated in a team sense.
We probably could have done more with less if we did XYZ. But just in general, almost bureaucracy that kind of came over and QA and touch points on things and passing things. to team and there being three or four people who could be responsible for it.
So it never got completed in a timely fashion. Like this was one of our biggest things like money loves speed and, and, and growth loves speed. And I think we, we took some L's on this and I know I go a lot faster than or expect a lot faster, but I think it was just, it's, it's apparent across the company and the team that like their projects that took two months or four months or.
a decision that took way longer. So this is a big one. Within team as well, like focusing on the priorities of what we're actually, what's the current bottleneck?
You know, everything I currently say or that I say, but then you have a whole team. So you're trying to get everyone. Make sure everyone is working on their prioritized things.
Like an operating system was not fully fleshed and that's on me. And who I put in place to lead it slash me to lead it. And I, yeah, this was just, this was just broken.
The efficiency of the projects, the flow of the prioritization adds huge on this. Like we did some diagnostic stuff and like looked at a year in review and we just, we botched it. So beliefs around optimization, beliefs around exclusions, beliefs around funnel distribution and diversification like we just we just botched it so we had you know shift in in management of this and about the middle of the year had crazy good success ran through the the summer um very good and then right after that just nuked it um and the thing with ads is it's like is it the ads or is it you know when you're running um sales team?
Like, is it on the sales side? Is it both? So there's a lot of play back and forth there, but just, I'm going to get into it down here, but the future forward is, is, is not as reliant on ads.
We have been very reliant on ads forever for literally ever. And it has been kind of the crux of volatility. So.
i'm sure you all know at whatever size at 100k or 500k or a million or 5 million or whatever like when you're really heavy spending into ads and things go wonky it can it can be pretty volatile and that happens at much higher ranges as well uh when that is the the core crux so like single traffic source or like you know very heavy in one traffic source heavy on a funnel um heavy on a sales team like any one of those goes wonky and like it kind of messes up the blend of all the numbers.
And when multiple of them go wonky, it's like, it's bloody. So yeah, that was a, that was a big pain there. And then leads, when I say leads, I mean sales.
So we've never been a company that's strong in setting at all. I mean, when we did our, some of our biggest months, it's essentially like closer only model and the market has shifted. So we are rebuilding entire CRM stuff right now.
We're building team to make sure that like every lead is, you know, treated. Where's my, where's my sticker? Like I'm like jamming this on my face.
It says every one is someone. It's like you get, you know, 5 ,000 leads a day and you're like, okay, cool. 5 ,000 plus 12 % plus this.
And it's like, no, no, no. Every single one of those people that opted in are interested in something or everyone who applied or everyone who booked a call. got to the point in their like awareness and journey to where they were ready to take a step and it's like it is a person who has a problem that you can solve that is in pain and that kind of got away from us a bit this year it was just like a it's kind of a numbers game and we could just be way more efficient like you know we can sell multiple percentages of the lead versus like one percent we can do a lot of low ticket and do a cent like there's just so many more paths to this so all this blended together is really like the core core focus of 26 um in manco we want to move direct response to direct to cart as much as possible so we've never been a direct -to -cart company um not a long long time and we kind of cracked into there a couple hundred units a day a low ticket um but then it feeds into into the sales function which has not been
within the company so like that's where we're focused on now is we can't scale into direct response direct to cart scale scale into it uh until like metrics are pretty much there um but I want to be able to lean very heavy into there, which then requires, you know, essentially like a sales army so that we can be very effective on the leads portion of this.
So this is a big change for us because we've really been direct response to lead funnels for majority of the time. I want to lean into organic juggernaut. Like I see it more and more and more of the brand in real life, the focus around.
that. Um, we've always done a lot of organic and you know, a lot is very subjective. Um, if you objectively look at it, we probably do not do a lot.
Um, but we've done, we do a fair share of organic, but it has never ever been first click heavy for us ever. Um, it's always because we spend so much, we spend into it, then they kind of get in the ecosystem. I want to try and really lead forward with this.
So there's a lot of cool initiatives and hires and stuff we're making to bolster this for each platform. So long form here, multi -face long form here. Um, sure.
across XYZ, like potentially affiliate like style or UGC style. Like there's a whole army thing that we can do with this that I really want to focus on. I mean, think of the extreme.
It's like, if I want 80 % of my bookings next year to come from organic, like what would you have to do? And it's like a crazy thought for us especially, but I think it's very doable. And I think it'll lean into the brand aspect, which will make it much better for this as well.
Sorry if this is long. I haven't been on here in a while. MRR and LTV maxing, back to what I said, long game hurts short game.
We are now open -minded to looking at actual strong partnerships, co -brands, full brands, purchasing within the space of who has your customer. So partnerships, physical products, continuity. Right now, essentially, most of our LTV comes from the fantastic product.
We have extensions of that. It crushes for us. We have a lot of client wins, and they want to stay for a long time.
But we essentially have one core offering. We technically have some function of continuity, and we technically have some sample -style low tickets now. But there needs to be more.
more ways to help and service the customer and get paid for that. And that was what we were kind of building here, but it is getting more and more in a place that there might be something that we can do partnership or buy or something, uh, instead of standing this up from, from the ground up. And that kind of fits in this physical product zone.
Uh, the continuity thing would be on us and kind of one of these, right? Cause these all would have continuity. So that's a big one.
People, people, and systems. People, people, people, and systems. You'll see me talk about that a lot across all of these.
But that's my big belief, and that is my belief as to where my skill set is lacking and where it needs to be developed as well as what is kind of the unlock here is business is a collection of people at some level, collection of skills, interests, time zones, all the things. And I think we could do a much better job at...
curating really high quality talent for very specific positions um that are managed in a very good way that are compensated in a very good way and i think that that would be a big unlock for us um coming to this next year i think we have a lot of really quality people um i just think almost me or the the structure and how it sits right now is not optimal for them or us.
And then systems, you know, I'm not going to deny that there are ways that you can automate an AI and your way through things. And that's kind of how we built this initially was a handful of really quality people with a lot of systems. And now it's a ton of people with kind of lesser systems.
So finding the balance there is going to be big. Best in class results and brand. I don't have to go much into this.
I mean, this is what it is. You know. What's the quote where if you have good enough product, you don't need sales.
If you have good enough sales, you don't need marketing, whatever it is, right? Like down the trail. But essentially, like imagine you have the literal best product ever, ever.
Like between referrals and just everything will flock to it. And so leaning in there and leaning into the product suite and leaning into what we can do as an actual company in terms of results and customer success and client happiness and all of that. That's just going to be a pillar.
That's always been a pillar for us, and we're just going to continue on and lean into that. And then data clarity. So we got really messy with the data when we started to do more volume.
So it's not really a dollars thing as much as it is a units thing. So units of leads, apps, bookings, different funnel sources. With the continuity, different plans, different pay amounts, different pay periods.
There's a lot of that that starts to happen at volume. We were good for a while with some function of duct tape. Then I said the words, I want to be Enterprise.
I want to be Enterprise. I said it for two months straight. Then I got it.
We became Enterprise. You know what Enterprise is? It is slow.
It is clunky. It takes forever to ship things. It needs nine approvals.
That's what happened.
That was a mistake. I wanted to be lean and scalable and be built like functionally to scale and enterprise is not what I wanted. So we went way down some custom rabbit holes of building custom data solutions and custom reporting tools and all this stuff.
And like to the point that I cannot even make, I couldn't make like clear business decisions unless I like scrape together my own data. And like, that's not the point, right? Like the point is to be able to make good ones.
So yeah, that was. That was a big learning. So now we're essentially pushing everything back to source of truth in a tool that we already all are in.
So we basically have a user -side source of truth, and then we have a client -side source of truth that extends now to fulfillment. So this has been a big one for us because everything around financials and everything around early indicators to make decisions was a bit messy. So that's another big push.
So WAP. This is a fun one. I don't sell anything.
I still haven't sold anything. And this screenshot, I don't know if I said yet, but this is WAP. So we moved a portion of our processing, basically a lot of the new processing over to here as well as financing.
But we still have a bunch of legacy cards and stuff. So this still, Stripe is still running right now, but we're basically pushing all that over into WAP. So I knew these guys for a long time, for like coming up on two years maybe now.
And we were always in talks about something for main co and then also for me and like back and forth. Uh, and finally I was talking to Iman about something and I went up there for, uh, one of the events and was talking to Iman actually flew from Jeremy's up to New York, uh, Iman chat, and then over and talking with Cam and Steven founders and something just like clicked.
And I was like, maybe this can be a good play for me where. You know, Iman writes a check and gets his and does all what he does. And I was like, I have a lot of sweat.
Like I can, I can do some sweat equity. So we basically structured a deal around accounts. Okay.
So no new acquisition, but essentially account activation. So think everything accounts account activation. How we're focused on that is getting from basically new merchants, new sellers on platforms from zero to 10K.
So Gavin stepped in here as well as a bunch of other really strong leaders inside there to own WAPU. So this is getting developed out as essentially like the free course on. all things internet so it's going to be how to do offers it's going to be how to sell service it's going to be how to sell info it's going to be how to essentially like offer publish scale info probably going to be around how to sell apps and software as well that you can build on there so i just saw behind the curtain with a lot of these conversations and i was like yeah i'm down i'm down so account activation Account management is in current form basically for any account that's over XYZ dollars and monthly.
They get assigned an account manager, which acts as like a VIP CS inside your Slack channel, inside all of that. Helps problem solve, helps understand bugs or issues they have. account activation, account management, which is focused on keeping merchants on, someone like us on MainCo or beyond, any questions, any helps, and then also rolls out any new products or offerings or updates that happen across the platform.
And then the fun side on what I was really excited about was account growth. This is basically how to get people ramped up into the 10K zone, which means that they're basically starting to stand alone. Management is making sure that we can support them and help them and be there for them.
And how can we help them across that? Account growth is around how do you then grow the accounts on platforms? If you think about it and you join like a Stripe, for example, you don't expect, if you're doing a million a month and you go around Stripe, you're not expecting Stripe to help you grow to 2 million a month.
Like it's just not going to happen. So the theory and thought here is how do we do that within WAP? Right.
So how do we make it so we can grow them? Uh, which is the part that I was actually really excited about. So instead of making my own, you know, Ryan's inner circle or something like all these, um, other guys do and crush it with it.
So there's no hate on that. Um, at all. I was like, what if we did it instead of paying 50 K or a hundred K or whatever a year?
What if we did it inside WAP merit -based? So if you're at a hundred K a month on WAP and you're, and, uh, you're earning a hundred K on WAP or over a million a month, uh, you have merit -based. access to these community, these chats, uh, in -person events, live events in there, bring in experts, um, plaques, like all this kind of stuff.
So that's where we started. So I have plaques on the way, uh, that we're going to do that. We're sampling out 1 million, 10 million, a hundred million.
Um, we have group chats that literally just went live today, um, for a hundred K and a million a month people. Again, you have to be processing on WAPT. It's kind of like the, the exchange here is like, how do we get people on platform, staying on platform, excited about it and growing.
So yeah, I'm a believer in it. I see behind the curtain on some of the stuff they're working on. It's crazy.
It's kind of this unknown on like, what are they? What are they? But they have some very solid business lines already that.
beat out a lot of things in the market so yeah so double down on that and decided to take in there and then the other growth arm is essentially a partner network so you see the the shopifies the hub spots or whatever that have these partner networks um and they partners are cool because it's another unlock for accounts on platform to grow so if you're on um xyz and you're processing a million a month and your bottleneck is sales for example you can get connected with a partner network that's vetted that's through um you know through this that can help you unlock the sales because the sales agency or you have media buying issue a creative issue or xyz um so yeah that's kind of the the goal on activation management and growth um and this was my way of being able to not charge still um and you know still not sell anything but basically get upside from the back and get from, yeah, you know what I mean?
So that was my plan there. And then same thing, people, people, people, and systems. So first thing on this is just like, I need more coverage and we need more experts, need more pros.
Um, so Gavin in here, for example, was, you know, essentially the first one through mass hiring for account management so we can help and support more accounts, uh, even at lower tranches and current, uh, and then growth side as well. So like, how do we do top tier events? How do we have the top, top people go to XYZ experience in person?
How do we do stuff in New York? That's all over. So.
Back to my spread thin and time management. I'm trying to do the best I can here as well as the best I can here through people and teams. On the personal side, time for me.
I need some function of this because I am bursting at the seams on some days where I'll be sitting here for 18 hours. Literally with 16 to 20 meetings on my account. It's crazy.
I've never performed super well on that for extended amounts of time. But I've taken none of this when you include multiple companies now and personal life and other things. So a big focus is how can I block out and actually stick to it and throw the phone and do that.
I put an LOL because we'll check back in a year. Big physical challenge. I've said this for a while.
I've done a marathon. I've done this. I've done that.
But I think this would allow for the mental space at the same time as accomplishing something. So it would be kind of like... two birds, one stone situation where if you are training and running or biking or doing whatever, you know, one, you're just kind of like a forcing function, not on your phone and not doing things there.
So you're in your head more, you can listen to more, you know, finally get back on audible and podcasts. I used to live somewhere and I would walk for like five miles a day or run or do whatever every single day because of the weather. And it was amazing.
And I would like learn and have all these ideas and do all this and just like barely have my phone and then, you know, jot them all down after. And that has just not happened ever since. basically in the last year.
So I think this would be a good one for me as well. Sun and warmth. I move somewhere that is cold.
I don't know if you can hear it, but I just get sick and it's just like stay inside and sit here, honestly. And that's probably not good. I don't know how I'm going to navigate that, honestly, other than just trips or I need to make a pretty drastic change.
But a lot of these require me to be in places a lot of the time where I do not get that for over half the year. So I need to be able to balance this and figure this out.
In case you guys didn't notice, this is the opposite of a Blake Rocha video. I just watched that this morning, and he cracks me up. He's just got life.
dialed in exactly how he wants it and i'm over here just like you know i have 18 hours meetings a day um personal team i've never had an assistant um i've only had team that is essentially leadership through um and then some team here um that's kind of like a a various spread but i'm on the hunt right now for an assistant i am starting i think with remote just because i'm not sure of my physical location and i don't want to you know get someone trained have them all ramped up and then be like bouncing around or like not here or move or something um so I'm going to try and start with a remote.
I think this will be an unlock for me if I can hand over the keys to enough stuff that gets in the way for me or just doesn't allow me to do the best self.
Content cadence, you guys saw, as soon as... this all ramped up and I was no longer on a commitment to myself to go every day. Uh, it just drops off.
So if it's not in front of me, if I haven't promised it to myself, I haven't promised it to you guys or other, uh, I just won't do it. So I would like to be on a cadence. Uh, I think these are very helpful.
I think even just making these and like writing some of this stuff down, like you're gonna see everyone's doing these like 2025 and review and they're all like thought out and like. flashy and like edited correctly and like proper learnings that they sat down and it took them like 15 hours like these are the things I was talking about these are the things that are on to -do lists except you know blurring out some numbers and some you know direct projects and stuff but like these are the general ideas and just being able to put this on here and then kind of talk through it has been very helpful for me across those months And it just fell off.
So I basically only go on X. I think there's a lot of room if I do want to grow this on other socials. LinkedIn, for example, I think could be very, very helpful for me in terms of recruiting and hiring as well as maybe some connections in proper banking and things like that where it's more traditional.
That would not happen in the same way on X. It can still happen there. And then Instagram I just don't really use yet.
But yeah, so I think having some sort of fixed content cadence, but I have to solve for these. first because then I become the person who's able to do a content cadence consistently. And don't do stupid shit.
That's where I'm going to leave you guys. But I am the king of finding stupid shit to do when I do not have things going on. If I could just avoid doing stupid shit, it would be insane.
It's going to happen, but it stacks up. So if you just avoid it, in my case, I would be multiples ahead in terms of... life and financially and, and, and where, yeah, I just shouldn't be playing in rings where I am not favored to win or playing, you know, doing it for the dopamine or doing it for the hit or doing it for the whatever.
And I learned this, you know, the hard way a lot of times, and it just like hasn't stuck through. And that's gonna be a core tenant for this year. It's just like, is this stupid?
Are you not, you know? Are you not favored to win in this? Is this just because you're bored?
Are you just doing this for like a dopamine thing? Like, is that a big focus? So that's a big one for me is just avoiding the potholes.
So yeah, hopefully this was some function of helpful. Hopefully this helps you kind of think through yours a little bit. I know it wasn't a lot of great detail like I usually do, but I talk for 30 minutes straight and I feel like that's enough.
So yeah, another record year on the top line, but not. I mean, I guess technically it probably was on the bottom line, but still not good. It was basically a repeat of last year, which was painful, you know, to be in the same position as last.
So we're going to make some fundamental changes because if you do the same thing, you're going to get the same result. So we're going to do something different and get a better result, hopefully. So I appreciate you guys.
I'm on X all the time, so chat me there. But talk soon.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A creator who says he's 'not selling anything' still commands a room full of eight- and nine-figure operators, and this is the year he admits his biggest bottleneck was never ads or funnels. It was himself as a leader.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:37list
The 7 L's of 2025
Leadership & People
Inputs Do Not Equal Outputs
Spread Thin & Time Management
Being Okay Doing 'Nothing'
No Opportunities (Kinda)
Fitness Rollercoaster
Long Game Hurt Short Game
A structured self-audit of what went wrong across an entire year, presented as seven named failure modes instead of a vague 'it was a hard year.'
Steal foran annual retro or founder self-review document
Whop's three-stage model for supporting sellers on its platform: get a new merchant from zero to meaningful volume, keep them supported once established, then actively help them grow past that baseline.
Steal forany platform or SaaS business structuring lifecycle support for its power users
20:46concept
People, People, People & Systems
A repeated belief that the business is fundamentally a collection of people and skills first, with systems and automation as the secondary lever rather than the primary one.
Steal forprioritizing hiring and org design before more tooling or automation
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
32:10link
“I'm on X all the time, so chat me there.”
Soft, low-pressure close after 32 minutes of explicitly saying 'I'm not selling anything' throughout; the only ask is to keep the relationship going on X, consistent with the video's own thesis that long-form content is a relationship channel, not a sales channel.
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An unscripted 70-minute live Q&A between two low ticket funnel operators, covering ascension, pixel optimization, and the pricing ladder that actually decides whether a front-end offer is profitable.
A 77-minute unscripted livestream where two direct-response operators vent about a brutal September, then spend the rest of the stream answering the audience's toughest funnel and offer questions live.
A whiteboard walkthrough of five funnel architectures the creator has personally watched real businesses run past eight figures a month, color-coded row by row on a live Miro board.
A single-host whiteboard talk laying out the five-part operating system one entrepreneur uses to run multiple seven-and-eight-figure companies without getting pulled into daily drama.
A live breakdown of the three-phase framework for turning one agency into a portfolio of owned businesses, from a marketing CEO who's lost as much as he's built.
A sales recruiter who has cash-collected over $100M walks through the five revenue levels that took him from bartending to $2.5M a month, and the constraint that defines each one.
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