39:42Nick Saraev Daily Updates · Talking Head
Un-pausing My Daily Updates
A $4M/yr founder returns after a year away, reveals his current revenue numbers, and lays out a four-lever plan to hit $500K/month.
June 17thThe argument in one line.
Tripling service revenue from $3k to $10k per month is not a marketing problem — it is a sequencing problem: fix churn before adding traffic, raise ARPU before adding seats, and let compound math do the work over 90 days rather than trying to land a single large client.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run a freelance or agency service earning $2k–$5k/mo and feel stuck at that ceiling despite adding more clients.
- You operate a community, membership, or cohort product and your churn is eating new revenue before it compounds.
- You want to see how an operator uses AI to generate and triage strategic options — not vibe-code, but structured ideation at scale.
- You run cold email or LinkedIn outreach for B2B clients and are unclear on domain strategy, guarantee structures, or how to price pay-per-lead arrangements.
- You are deciding whether to invest in a marketing channel (e.g. Upwork) when your current income feels too thin to risk any of it.
SKIP IF…
- You are looking for a polished playbook — this is a live thinking session with detours into GLM model benchmarks and YouTube growth stats.
- You need a beginner intro to freelancing; the host assumes familiarity with cold email infrastructure, Upwork mechanics, and basic SaaS metrics.
- You have no existing service revenue and are starting from zero — the $3k→$10k framework assumes you already have at least one paying client.
The full version, fast.
The host feeds his Maker School membership data into an AI agent, gets back a thousand possible next steps, and filters them to three structural levers. First: ARPU expansion — annual plans, an elite pricing tier, and migrating grandfathered members up via added value (blending from $85 to $150 ARPU adds $100k ARR with zero new members). Second: churn reduction — DM any member who has not introduced themselves within 7 days, fix broken tutorials, reactivate $10k alumni with a five-email sequence. Third: ascension — sponsorships, inner circle, affiliate stacks, B2B via LeftClick. He also walks through a worked example of a community member who went from $849/mo teaching English in Shanghai to $40k on Upwork in 12 months, illustrating the core insight: the $7k gap between $3k and $10k only feels scary until you realize it is three clients at $3k each with half the hours.
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00:00 – 00:47
01 · Cold open — channel framing
Host states the channel format: YouTube comment Q&A → build in public → growth stats. Goal benchmarks: $300k/mo → $500k/mo revenue, 450 → 1M subscribers.
00:47 – 05:00
02 · Q1 — mental friction at 17
17-year-old viewer asks about energy, procrastination, and burnout. Host reframes: burnout is a self-fulfilling concept amplified by therapy culture. Forefathers in coal mines never used the word. Live your life, treat it like a video game.
05:00 – 09:50
03 · Q2 — $3k/mo to $10k/mo: the worked example
Viewer earns $3k/mo as AI dev, wants $10k. Host breaks down the math: the gap is $7k, but that is just three clients at the same rate. Key friction: fear of spending 12–15% of income on Upwork connects. Worked example: Syed Turun from $849/mo English teaching to $40k on Upwork in 12 months by investing in outbound.
09:50 – 13:00
04 · Q3 — existential: why $500k/mo?
Host reflects on the Europe trip with his girlfriend (now a doctor), the wheel-of-life imbalance, and why financial goals need to stay meaningful. The $500k/mo target is partly clickbait, partly a directional compass — the real goal is net positive impact.
13:00 – 15:00
05 · Q4 — LinkedIn outbound script critique
Viewer shares a cold outreach script that teases a one-page doc without sending it. Host calls it a gimmick that worked two years ago. Recommendation: actually build and send the doc with personalization. LinkedIn allows link delivery without deliverability penalty unlike cold email.
15:00 – 16:40
06 · Q5 — cold email agency mechanics
Multi-part Q from a B2B cold email operator: send from client perspective (yes, 90% of the time), never burn the primary domain (use branded variants), client should own the software stack for IP reasons ($200/mo at 2% of $10k potential — easy close), guarantee structure starts at 10 and scales up as data accumulates.
16:40 – 20:00
07 · AI ideation on Maker School — the setup
Host explains the AI-as-search-space-explorer framework: pump all business context into an agent, request 1000 possible next steps, then filter by first principles and personal taste. Shows the output for Maker School quality improvements. Churn is structural: 25% monthly, most of it fixable.
20:00 – 25:00
08 · The three-lever framework for $300k→$500k MRR
AI output distilled to three levers: (1) ARPU expansion — annual plans, elite tier, migrate grandfathered members, 105→150 blended ARPU = +$100k ARR with zero new members. (2) Churn reduction — 15% monthly churn; every 1% cut = $26k/yr; DM non-introducers in 7 days, fix broken tutorials. (3) Ascension — inner circle, affiliate stack, B2B via agency. Week-by-week action plan sketched in Claude Code.
25:00 – 28:00
09 · GLM 5.2 — model comparison and cost analysis
Host pivots to GLM 5.2 (open-source model, on par with last-gen closed-source frontier). Tops Design Arena for single-turn HTML web design. Cost: roughly 25% of comparable closed-source model. Host ran out of credits doing queries on 5.2, tops up live. Suggests running this same ideation pass on GLM for cost efficiency.
28:00 – 31:10
10 · Growth stats — YouTube, Instagram, Maker School
YouTube: 458,894 (+0.2% day). Instagram: 521,162. Maker School members: 2,092 (down 1 on the day, vs. 30/day loss during previous hiatus — host frames this as progress). Maker School ranked #6 on School platform.
31:10 – 32:30
11 · Wrap — AI as search space explorer
Final principle: AI's best use is exhausting the search space of options faster than human brainstorming. Apply human taste at checkpoints. Compile high-ROI next steps, act on them, not AI's output verbatim.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Every 1% reduction in monthly churn is worth $26k per year — fixing retention is higher ROI than acquiring new members.
- You do not need to find 10k/mo in one client — three clients at $3k each, even at half your current hours per client, gets you there.
- Blending your membership ARPU from $85 to $150 via annual plans and a premium tier generates $100k ARR without adding a single new member.
- Spend money to make money is not a platitude: if your connect costs are 12–15% of income, that is the cheapest customer acquisition you will ever find at this stage.
- AI is not good at telling you what to do — it is good at exhausting the search space of what is possible, so you can apply your taste to a pre-filtered shortlist.
- The guarantee structure for a cold email agency should start at 10 booked calls, then escalate to 15, 20, and 30 as you hit each threshold consistently — never set a number you have not already proven.
- Do not send cold email from the client's primary domain; use branded variants (go-clientname.com, getclientname.com) to protect their deliverability while maintaining brand association.
- A PPL (pay-per-lead) arrangement at $200/mo software cost versus $10k/mo potential revenue is a 2% overhead ratio — framing it this way makes the close trivial.
- Reactivating lapsed customers who already know your product with a targeted update email is almost always a faster revenue lever than new acquisition.
- GLM 5.2 outperformed more expensive models on single-turn HTML web design at roughly one-quarter the cost — always run a cost-per-task comparison before defaulting to the most capable model.
- The Upwork path from $849/mo (English teaching) to $40k in 12 months is a documented example, not a pitch — the majority of the money comes in the back half of the year as momentum compounds.
- Keeping new-member onboarding DMs automated and firing within 7 days is a churn reduction mechanism, not a marketing play — members who do not introduce themselves churn at materially higher rates.
Three levers that compound faster than new clients
SERVICE BUSINESS MATH
Revenue from $3k to $10k is not a volume problem — it is a sequencing problem where fixing retention and pricing creates most of the gap before you need a single new customer.
01Cold open — channel framing
02Q1 — mental friction at 17
- Burnout and mental friction are concepts that compound the more you engage with them — reducing the mental loop around them is itself a productivity intervention.
- Historical context deflates modern productivity anxiety: people doing far harder physical work for longer hours did not have a framework for burnout because they did not need one.
03Q2 — $3k/mo to $10k/mo: the worked example
- Reframe the income gap as a client count: $7k more per month is three clients at your current rate, potentially at half the hours — the problem is smaller than it looks.
- Invest in outbound even when your budget is thin: 12–15% of income in platform costs (Upwork connects, cold email infrastructure) is the cheapest CAC you will ever find at the $3k–$10k stage.
- The Upwork path from $849/mo to $40k in 12 months is front-loaded with slow months and back-loaded with compounding wins — the graph looks discouraging at month 3 and obvious at month 12.
04Q3 — existential: why $500k/mo?
- A financial goal functions as a directional compass, not a destination — you need to be moving to recalibrate, and standing still waiting for the perfect direction is worse than moving slightly wrong.
05Q4 — LinkedIn outbound script critique
- Teasing value you have not actually created is a gimmick that worked in 2022 and fails now — buyers' value radars have recalibrated and they expect delivery upfront.
- LinkedIn allows link delivery without deliverability penalties, which means you can send the actual doc — the medium removes the excuse for not sending it.
06Q5 — cold email agency mechanics
- Start guarantees low and scale them with data: promise 10 booked calls, prove it, then move to 15 — setting a number without prior evidence is how agencies destroy their margin on the first client.
- Protect client domains: branded sending variants (go-clientname.com) let you run high-volume cold email without burning the domain that anchors the client's entire business identity.
- Write from the client's perspective in cold email, not your own: 90% of the time the reader should believe the founder is reaching out personally, not a vendor.
- Frame software stack ownership around the client's IP: 'I want you to own this so I can never hold you hostage' is a more persuasive close than itemizing the $200/mo cost.
07AI ideation on Maker School — the setup
- Use AI to exhaust the option space, then apply your own taste: generate 1000 ideas, pick 10 you believe in — the value is the speed of exploration, not the quality of any individual suggestion.
- Churn is often a sequencing bug, not a product bug: teaching cold email on day one when your best results come from Upwork and Loom videos is a mismatch that drives early cancellations.
08The three-lever framework for $300k→$500k MRR
- ARPU expansion can generate more revenue than acquisition: blending from $85 to $150 ARPU through annual plans and an elite tier adds $100k ARR without onboarding a single new member.
- Reactivate your lapsed base before marketing to cold audiences: alumni who already trust the product and left because they hit their initial goal are easier to re-convert than strangers.
- Automate the 7-day non-introducer DM: members who never introduce themselves in a community churn at higher rates — a single automated message is the cheapest retention intervention available.
- Every 1% reduction in monthly churn is worth $26k per year — fixing retention is higher ROI than acquiring new members at this stage.
09GLM 5.2 — model comparison and cost analysis
- Model selection is a cost decision, not just a quality decision: for single-turn tasks like web design, a 75%-cheaper open-source model may produce comparable or better results than the frontier default.
- Run the same strategic ideation prompt on multiple models and compare output quality to cost — the winning model is task-specific, not universal.
10Growth stats — YouTube, Instagram, Maker School
- Tracking member count daily reveals the true health of a community product — a single net loss day after a period of 30/day losses is a meaningful positive signal, not a bad day.
Terms worth knowing.
- ARPU
- Average Revenue Per User — monthly recurring revenue divided by total active members. Used here as the primary metric for pricing lever analysis.
- MRR
- Monthly Recurring Revenue — the predictable monthly income from subscriptions or retainers, before one-time fees or upsells.
- Churn
- The percentage of paying members who cancel in a given month. A 15% monthly churn means every 1% reduction saves roughly 26k annually on a mid-sized community.
- PPL (Pay Per Lead)
- A pricing model for lead generation agencies where the client pays a fixed fee for each qualified lead delivered, rather than a flat monthly retainer.
- Connects
- Upwork's in-platform currency required to submit proposals. The host estimates 200–400 USD/month in connects costs for aggressive outbound on the platform.
- Maker School
- The host's paid community focused on AI automation, freelancing, and building client businesses — used as the live case study throughout the video.
- LeftClick
- The host's AI growth consultancy, referenced as one potential ascension layer for community members scaling beyond freelance into agency work.
- GLM 5.2
- An open-source frontier language model discussed as a cost-effective alternative for single-turn design tasks, benchmarked favorably against closed-source models on HTML web design arenas.
- Grandfathered base
- Community members locked in at a legacy price from an earlier pricing era. Migrating them up via added value rather than forced price increases is one of the three ARPU levers discussed.
- School Platinum
- A premium tier on the Skool platform where the host met other creators with large followings — mentioned as a potential referral and affiliate channel for Maker School.
Things they pointed at.
26:20toolDesign Arena (LLM web design benchmark)
Lines you could clip.
07:00
“10k per month might seem really scary to you, but think about it — that's just three positions like this, maybe half the time spent on each. You could absolutely do that.”
07:30
“From $849 a month teaching English to nine year olds in Shanghai, to $40,000 on Upwork in twelve months.”
22:30
“Every 1% cut in churn is $26k a year. So I can do that.”
16:50
“AI is just capable of really, really scanning the search space of all possible ideas much faster than a human being can.”
32:00
“Saves you a lot of time doing something human beings are really bad at, which is exploring a lot of possible ideas.”
14:30
“If somebody is on the edge and I think I can really deliver good results for them, I will cover the software costs — because the software costs are usually a small fraction of the total income I could make on a PPL arrangement.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
00:00Hey, this is my daily updates channel where I show you guys how I'm taking my business from around $300,000 a month right now and over $500,000 a month in revenue.
00:07I also wanna hit a million subs. Right now, I'm only at 450. So the way that this channel works is I spend the first few moments going over YouTube comment q and a, and that's just to answer your guys questions, deliver some value.
00:17Then I'll build and strategize in public before finally doing some growth stats across my YouTube, Instagram, and my products. This is my main channel over here, the four fifty, uh, eight sixty two. So we've grown a little bit since yesterday.
00:27And this one's grown considerably since yesterday, which I'm super excited about. Okay. So how do we answer the questions?
00:33I was just sort by new and then I start about two weeks ago, I think was the cutoff. So just going to scroll all the way down here, see as many of these as humanly possible. And it looks like the last question is from I m Namang Gupta who said, make him your biggest fan, like really?
00:48Thank you my man. I teach vibe coding on YouTube. I'm 17, Indian in high school and I work on my channel after school.
00:53I've made roughly $10,000 from sponsorships on my videos. And by working for business owners who reached out to me because of my videos, I also have a two hour course on a replet on my channel with a 150 k views that acts as a funnel.
01:05Can you imagine having this at the age of 17? I generally feel like you've already covered the business principles required to succeed in any field, blah blah blah. Okay.
01:12My question is, how do I find high levels of energy to work consistently on my channel every single day? I really wanna grow on YouTube badly, but laziness, overthinking, and procrastination are in my way.
01:23Coupled with high school, preparing for college, and trying to take care of my health, I barely have the time and energy. I know the key to growth is just to upload high quality value consistently, but how do I actually reduce mental friction and get there?
01:38Dang. I don't think I ever asked myself any question like that at 17. All I really cared about was parties, girls, and, you know, looking as cool as humanly possible, what hair gel I was using.
01:49So, yeah, pretty surprising to see a 17 year old bat. I want to say like relentlessly obsessed with growth. I certainly hope you're taking some time to hang out chill.
01:59Um, how do you reduce mental friction and get there? I mean, like, that's that's really the core question of life, isn't it? You have a bunch of these goals.
02:06And for the most part, the biggest thing that will ever stop you from achieving those goals are not some environmental thing. It it is yourself.
02:14So I guess you're starting to work on these early. I think what you need to do is you need to make it less of a big deal.
02:24The way that all of this works, you know, mental friction, stress, this whole concept of burnout and whatnot are these are self fulfilling prophecies.
02:35These are concepts where if you believe in them and if you take them super seriously and and consistently go over them again and again, loop them in your head, the probability of all of them occurring goes way up. I'll give you an example. I mean, you know, our forefathers were I say our loosely here.
02:51I don't think my forefathers were actually doing this, but just two hundred ish years ago, you know, you had working aged men, probably around your age, up to my age, crammed into a mine that they had to stoop over in order to get into, armed with a a crusty loaf of bread and maybe another two or 300 calorie meal.
03:09And they'd be crammed down there for like twelve to sixteen hours a day, mining, blowing up various things, and a lot of them dying in the process. If you were to go to any of those people and ask, hey, are you super stressed?
03:22Almost guarantee you, none of them would would say yes. Hey, tell me about your burnout. They'd have no idea what the hell burnout even meant.
03:29For them, life was literally just get up, get to work, and then come home, and with whatever fewer hours you have, you know, spend time with people that you love, your family, your kids, your wife, whatever. So the point that I'm trying to make here is the only reason why you're even thinking about this is because our culture has been overloaded with all of these concepts recently.
03:46We've really given into, you know, therapy culture, which, you know, I'm not knocking therapy necessarily. I've, you know, had a bunch of people in my life go to therapy.
03:54I've even tried going to therapy myself even though I found it mostly, uh, useless. I think we've just been overloaded with the propensity to, like, go over the negative things in our lives over and over and over again to the point where, like, 17 year olds are now worried, like, oh my God, like, you know, I'm overthinking, I'm procrastinating, I'm doing all this bad stuff, I shouldn't be doing this.
04:12You know, at the end of day, just live your life, Work on the stuff that you want to work on. If you don't allow these negative concepts to even like enter your mind, I think you will go lot further than if you constantly feel bogged down and weighed down by them. So just don't go through those negative loops, know.
04:25Don't worry too much about the mental friction. Obviously, try and optimize your life, but if you think about stuff like this all the time, it will just hurt you.
04:32It will just hurt you. So sorry I couldn't have more concrete advice, but I think if you took even like one percent of what I said there, I think you'd find yourself much more successful. And also, by the way, anybody that has really ever achieved, like, massive crazy outcomes, or at least the vast majority of them, typically ascribe to some sort of mentality like this.
04:47It's just like, I could spend my entire life hustling right now, and I could try, you know, spend the most effort ever, and it wouldn't really matter all that much, cause the world is way bigger than anything I could ever even hope to aspire to. So why not just like take it day in, day out and just try my best to show up, you know.
05:00Treat it like a video game and I think it'll go pretty far. Okay. Y t k r says, hey, Nick.
05:07Happy to see you back again. Thank you. So I started watching your videos almost a year ago, now I'm working for a company as an AI dev for 3,000 US per month.
05:13Nice job. I mean, that seems good. But I'm feeling really saturated.
05:15I don't know how to expand more. Being from a third world country, have an Indian accent, so it's impossible to do cold calls. Not necessarily, but I understand where you're coming from.
05:22I've seen tons of your videos on Upwork, but I'm not very sure about if I want to and should start from scratch for about 10 to $15 an hour. Now, I wanna reach 10 per month. So considering my situation, what would you advise to me?
05:33Considering I'm already in a job, what can I do to scale myself more? Also, of luck to your, uh, six mil AR and one mil subscriber goal, for sure. You know, one of the major issues here is, you know, you're you're you're at 3 k a month and you wanna hit 10 k a month.
05:47So you're like, okay, the gap is 7 k a month. But because you're at like a middling level of income, I I imagine it's 3 k a month and you probably don't have anything else, you really wanna hold on to that. You're trying to save every dollar, uh, I would imagine.
05:58If you wanted to grow from this 3 k a month to 10 k a month, you'd have to spend a lot of your money. You'd also have to risk some of that money. So what I mean by this is you're, like, not sure about if you want to start from scratch on Upwork for 10 to $15 an hour.
06:10You know, like, you were to do this, you'd probably spend somewhere between 200 to $400 a month just in connect costs if you really want us to take it seriously. That's like, you know, 12% of your maybe 15% of all of your money. That's the thing that I personally think is probably stopping you from wanting to say yes.
06:24The reality is though, you know, gotta spend money to make money. My my my take to you, my recommendation would be to take everything that you are doing here, whatever 3,000 USD minus your living expense, so whatever you have left over, and then spend it on on marketing. Spend it on sales and marketing.
06:37So Upwork is a great example. Um, you know, we just had a guy in Maker School. Um, I think it was Syed Turun, who is absolutely one of the coolest guys in this group.
06:49And he's been with me for a while. And I think he has relatively similar situation as you do. So from 849 a month to teaching kids teaching kids to 40,000 on Upwork in twelve months.
06:59So a year and a half ago, was teaching English to nine year olds in Shanghai for $8.49 a month. It was stable, predictable, and the wrong life.
07:05So I mean, obviously, situations are a little bit different because making 3 k, you're making 3 k versus his $8.49. But, you know, he just dove in on like freelancing and AI automation. And you know, now he's made $40,000 an upward.
07:17Granted, it's in twelve months. So if you do the math on that, you know, it's not the same thing. But keep in mind that the majority of that money is pushed into the future.
07:25So I imagine the way that Sai probably started was he probably started with a $500 month, then a thousand dollar month, then a $1,500 month, then a $2,000 month. And also, this is just Upwork. There are a million different ways you can make money online with AI and automation.
07:37You know, I'm not telling you you have to do this necessarily, but it is a very simple and straight line path for somebody in your situation. So what you could do is the first couple months, you could go on Upwork, make a grand, $2, $3, and then you could take that money and graduate to more efficient marketing approaches as well.
07:50Things like cold email and and so on and so forth. So I mean, that's what I would do. And 10 k per month might seem really scary to you, but think about it.
07:57That's just like three positions like this and maybe like half the time spent on each. You could absolutely do that. Thank you very much, m z maestro.
08:05Your brains are half algorithms at this point, basically. Yeah. That's how I feel.
08:08Good stuff. Thank you. Thank you.
08:10Oh, this is like one of my very first actually, this was my first video. How would I create another 39 k per month? So it's cool seeing people watch that still.
08:17Simchi says, Nick, setting yourself the goal of 500 k a month, is that because you wanted to reach the 500 k, you're chasing the money? Or is that because of externally, potentially more intrinsic goals? And this is an easily identifiable target to reach it.
08:28In addition, what would you say is your biggest drive in life to become the biggest person in the space? Money helping people? Hey, know, I've thought a lot about this.
08:33So I just spent a month in in Europe. Right? And, um, the whole reason why I went out there was I was just with my girlfriend.
08:39We were celebrating basically her month break after medical school, as she's as she's now a doctor. And, you know, they don't get a lot of breaks. So it's like one of the big ones.
08:47And I figured I would tag along for the ride, have have some fun. And, you know, while I was on that break well, break, really. I mean, I was still doing maker school.
08:56I was still running a couple of my businesses, just not anywhere near at the same level of intensity. While I was on that break, despite the fact that I was, like, maxing my life out in, like, the relationships category, um, I was really lagging behind on the health and the career category.
09:09And I realized that I was giving into the same mistake that I had been giving into previously in my life, which was maximizing the relationships category, or maybe the health category at the cost of other categories. And so what I'm trying to do now is I'm just trying to be much more consistent on all categories.
09:24And what I've realized is in order for me to progress, at least in in my business, you know, in order for it to stay fun, I need some sort of goal. And so the 1,000,000 subscriber goal, you know, some would call it naive, but it is it is a goal. The reality is I'm not gonna get in the exact perfect direction, like, right now from the get go, but I need to get moving in a direction.
09:43And once I move in a direction, eventually I can sit down, recalibrate, and then identify is that the direction I really wanna go in and maybe change pivot, and so on and so forth. So 500 k a month is pretty cool because it's, um, it's a direct reflection of how engaged and high quality people find my content, which, um, I think is a pretty good near term goal to strive for.
10:00If, you know, people like my content, then they're probably more likely to wanna pay me money. Subscribers and views and stuff are a lot more superficial. So, you know, my my content's not doing very well views wise, for instance.
10:11At least not as well now as it was before, but financially, not much has changed, which is quite nice. So I just wanna push towards towards financials. Okay.
10:21Almost shed it to you. Good to have you back. I'm running LinkedIn outbound for an AEO or AIEO agency.
10:26This is like AI optimization. Sorry. I'm realizing the sun is gonna really crush me here.
10:31Give me one sec.
10:39That's marginally better. Um, I'm running LinkedIn outbound for an AEO agency. This is my current script.
10:45Any comments? Hey, name. Just Google the use case twice and check chat gbt.
10:49Keeps showing up instead of company. So I put together a one page doc on what exactly is happening and how to flip it.
10:58Like, I see why you're saying this. Do you want it? Yeah.
11:02Like, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna send this in the thing? Yeah.
11:06That really didn't work. My my issue with stuff like this is, you know, if you really had it and if you really did just put together a quick one page doc, you just would have sent it.
11:15This was basically a gimmick that worked pretty well a while ago, uh, you know, maybe like two and a half years ago. But nowadays, people's, like, value radars are are quite different, and they want a lot more value upfront. So if you can't send that value upfront, uh, you know, people will notice, unfortunately.
11:29So I don't know. I mean, if there was a way to, like, actually generate the doc and then send it via LinkedIn, uh, I would do that. Um, you could make the doc seem human written.
11:38You know, refer to them in the first name like, hey, Peter. Uh, so I know you run x y z business, you have yet to hear about me, but I put this together for you because I think I can offer a lot of value. And my mom always told me, give people value up front.
11:49I don't know. Some silly shit like that. You could probably do that in the doc and then send it over and have some success.
11:54But, um, yeah. The cool thing about LinkedIn is you can only really send, like, 20 to 30 of these a day.
11:59And links aren't treated the same as they're treated in, uh, in cold email. Like, you don't have the same deliverability impact. So you can absolutely just send the links.
12:06So just send the value. Next rep for president. Thank you.
12:11We seem to only vote for jesters and fake people in office. He would fit right in. Everything is a grift to these people.
12:16We do love the grift. Thank you. Insightful.
12:19Uh, Jarrett says, hey, Nick. Glad to see you're back making this content. Question.
12:22How do you think about how you want to be remembered outside of externally weighted indicators of success? How does that shape what you're pursuing? I've come back to this question many times personally in recent months.
12:32Appreciate the value as always. Yeah. You know, I love that we're we're moving to more meeting based questions, and it looks like, um, a lot of people here that have had success probably following some of the the the business content and the automation content are now at the point where they're like, hey, what the hell is all this for?
12:46So that is extremely, you know, valuable in and of itself. The very fact that I've, like, helped people get to this point to me is is basically the answer to that question.
12:56I wanna be remembered as the sort of person that, like, helped catalyze people's best best selves, if that makes sense. And that's really inspired a big chunk of this.
13:04Obviously, the monetization is nice, though. But, yeah, I I want people to know that the 500 k a month goal is, you know, it's it's it's a it's part flashy because it gets clicks.
13:12People are like, woah. Wasn't that, like, half $1,000,000 a month? Woah.
13:16So, like, it is to my best interest, but it it does not meaningfully impact my life at this point. The thing that meaningfully impacts my life is, you know, like, what is the meaning of what I am pursuing?
13:25The things that I do on a day to day basis are not necessarily financially related. How do you wanna be remembered? I wanna be remembered as somebody that, like, gave far more than they consumed.
13:34I wanna be remembered as a net positive impact on the world. Utility, you know, a lot of philosophies there.
13:41But I also wanna be remembered as, you know, like a good partner. I wanna be remembered as like a a good man, somebody who stood up for the the the right thing.
13:53And, yeah, we'll see how that goes. K. Caleb says, Nick, thanks so much for the awesome videos.
13:57I just started building a high touch SaaS product and I wanna know sun's still in my face? Yeah. Okay.
14:02Much less. I wanna know how much knowledge do you think somebody needs to succeed in this industry? Should I do coding or some part of technical understanding?
14:13Oh, you know, feel like you asked me that question the other day, Caleb. Sorry. I'm just gonna move on from there.
14:17Um, voice deepening to increase perceived value or competence, asks Jarrett. He says, I've been checking out your old personal blog a month ago and I saw a post on making your voice deeper.
14:28Yeah. This is from forever ago. I was, um, making a bunch of SEO blog posts like seven years ago.
14:33And, uh, one keyword that I used Ahrefs to find me, like, key phrase anyway, was like, how to make your voice deeper. And so I just I just made a post on it. It actually has nothing to do with anything.
14:45Uh, I I just made a bunch of posts on stuff like that. You know, up until quite recently, I actually had a bunch of, like, very explicit content on my blog, which is funny, um, because there were a bunch of explicit keywords that nobody wanted to touch and I just didn't give a shit.
14:57So you'll find all sorts of posts on my blog. It's, um, they're they're kind of silly actually. I don't know.
15:01Can I show you guys from here? Don't I don't even know. I go down to page, like, 10.
15:06Like, what do we got? Quit treating music like drugs? How you can say this is my literally my first automation post back in 2019, by the way.
15:15Top 10 best Anki decks of 2019. Like like, is this in any way, shape, or form related to what I talk about now? No.
15:21Not at all. Um, I was just trying to rank for search terms. So this was literally a post all about, um, how you shouldn't be listening to music all the time because it just burns you out.
15:31Yeah. Look through that stuff.
15:34Uh, you got some funny funny, uh, anecdotes.
15:38Okay. Last one from Tells the Goat. Really sad to see the daily update videos back then.
15:42I got a few lead gen questions. I run a cold email service for b two b where clients pay per lead gen. When sending cold emails, should emails be written from my perspective as a lead gen provider or from the business owner's perspective as if they're personally reaching out?
15:53Should be written from the business owner's perspective, like, 90% of the time. What should the sending domain or email look like? The client's actual domain or something completely separate?
15:59No. You should not use the client's actual domain. You will burn them out.
16:02You should use, um, things that are branded like the client's domain, but maybe include, you know, a prescript or a postscript. For instance, if you were running cold email for leftclick.ai, I would not recommend you send as leftclick.ai.
16:12In fact, I would highly recommend you don't. Otherwise, you're gonna burn out my domain. I'd recommend you send us go left click, get left click, sign up left click, left click kit, left click center, leftclickhub.com, whatever.
16:23Who covers and manages the software stack? Instantly, Google, Workspace, Apollo, etcetera. I try and get the client to cover that wherever possible.
16:30Although, there have been a few offers in the past where I've just covered all the costs, and they've been fine. Generally, if somebody is, like, on the edge and I think I can really deliver good results for them, I will cover the software costs because, um, you know, the software costs are usually a small fraction of the total income that I could make on a PPL pay per lead sort of arrangement.
16:45Do I create and manage everything under the client's accounts for the most part? Yeah. Especially if they cover and manage the software stack.
16:49You know, really cool thing that you can say, um, you know, in order to, like, help push them towards it is, hey. I really want you to own the IP. Like, I want you to own this whole stack.
16:56I don't want you to feel at any point in time, like, I can just up and take your whole marketing mix. So, um, I want you to own this. And, obviously, as part of owning this, you need to have some sort of small monthly cost.
17:06Does that make sense? And people are like, well, how much does the monthly cost? I'm like, it's, like, $200 a month.
17:09Like, it's very little compared to, like, the $10,000 a month I'm trying to generate you. Are you willing to pay 2%? It's like, yeah, obviously.
17:16Especially with guarantees, the math ends up being really stupid. It's like, why the hell wouldn't I say yes?
17:21When you're starting out, how do you decide the numbers behind an offer? Like, I guarantee x booked calls in y days or you don't pay. What's your thought process for choosing realistic x and y figures before you have much data?
17:30My thought process is pretty straightforward. I try 10, and if I can hit 10 consistently, I try 15.
17:35And if I can hit 15 consistently, I try 20. But if I can hit 20 consistently, I try 30. And just over and over and over and over again.
17:41So in my case, I ended up somewhere around 20 in sixty days. That's about it. So it's not about choosing them before you have much data.
17:48Just start low and then work your way up. Okay. Hopefully, that makes sense.
17:52So you guys will have noticed I, uh, I'm trying a different, like, setup on my daily updates. Normally, I have, like, a face in the bottom left hand corner. I was just looking at a couple of ways that people were laying out content, and, um, I really like the half and half screen.
18:02We'll try this out for a little bit. I don't have super high expectations. I also don't think my face is that important that I have to see this big of it, but it was cool.
18:09I just like changing stuff from time to time. Now that we've talked about this, let's move over to some some growth stuff.
18:18One thing I really like doing recently is I've really liked just absolutely, like, pumping everything to do in my business through a bunch of agents.
18:31And then asking, what would you do? I want you to create a thousand possible next steps towards my goal and then filter them based off of like first principles and my own framework.
18:42So what I just had AI do here, for instance, was I had it give me a list of like a thousand ideas, essentially, on how I could improve the quality of Maker School.
18:52And, you know, the reason why I do that is because AI is just capable of really, really much faster than a human being can.
19:03So for instance, what it's telling me to do with Maker School is week one to four, resequence week one to the Upwork Cloud Code Loom fast win path. Number two, patch your broken tutorials because there's some broken tutorials. Three, add last verified dates and then add a quarterly freshness pass.
19:20Three, add a fast win onboarding dms, plus turn on the free trial, plus cancel flow, and then activate the 40% level one pool with level gated unlocks and a week one points goal. So I mean, like, these are all ideas that this model is providing me where it thinks, you know, if I do them, there's a higher probability that I'll make I'll make money with this stuff.
19:39One second.
19:46Now, do I agree with all this? No. I would say, actually, most of this I don't agree with.
19:50But the idea is not every one of these ideas has to be good. The idea is, you know, of a thousand ideas that this comes up with, I could pick 10, and I could pick 10 in a hundredth of the time it would take me to come up with these ideas. And so that's what I'm doing.
20:03It's very similar to, like it's almost similar to, auto research in a way. Like, I'm just having this farm ideas and come up with as many things as humanly possible.
20:10So anyway, here it's saying the product is genuinely high quality. The community is healthy and responsive. It's not a bad product.
20:15Um, I have churned about 25% as of today, which is structural or sequencing, and most of it traces to one fixable mismatch. So it tells me what's going well, what's going low, and so on and so on and so forth. I like this idea.
20:27You buy domains, set up cold email warm up, you have weeks of infrastructure before any payoff in a very high churn window. That might help. I don't know.
20:35Curriculum is not what actually works. Every recent win is Upwork Cloud Code Loom.
20:39So, you know, people are sending looms, people are pushing Cloud Code builds, people are doing stuff on Upwork. But on day one, I'm teaching cold email. So basically, it's saying, like, why don't you switch it up and just, like, start with Upwork, the thing that people are are, like, pushing to win?
20:51Why don't you start with, like, send Loom videos over DM? Because a lot of people are doing, like, DMs and stuff. Bugs q and a are full of members stuck in outdated lessons.
20:59So that seems like a pretty obvious fix that I could do. And the graduation is baked in. Nothing structural keeps a member after the first client.
21:06I mean, like, that's not true. And then 40% of members are level one. So realistically, what I think we should do if we really did wanna decrease churn is I should have some sort of system where I, like, DM any member that has not introduced themselves within seven days.
21:18And I think I can probably do that. If in case you guys don't know what I'm doing or why I'm doing this, it's because one of my goals was to improve maker school revenue. I think I can get it back up to $300,000 a month with, um, even, like, marginal marketing, um, simply by reducing churn.
21:32One other thing I recently did was, um, yesterday, I jumped on a call with a bunch of school communities, and these are great school, uh, not school communities, sorry, creators. And these are all creators that are considering jumping on a school community. I think there was, like, a 100 of them on the call, probably, like, a couple 100,000,000 total followers worldwide.
21:47I think getting people like that helping me and, like, referring and recommending Maker School can actually actively really improve the revenue of the product without me actually having to do much more marketing. Um, so what I'm considering doing is just sending all of the members in school platinum, which is the community where I met them on, uh, a quick little DM and just saying like, hey.
22:06What's up, man? I saw you on the call. Thanks so much for watching and stuff like that.
22:09Also, I'm pretty sure I crushed that call. I think people really liked it. So, um, yeah, that'd be pretty fun.
22:14Um, anyway, so this is stupid. This is like downright stupid. First client to build and scale your AI business is dumb as hell.
22:21So you need to you need to have the intelligence to be able to like point out when something is dumb as hell. Right? There are 55 posts that, um, the auto mod wants to ban.
22:30Um, I also have the Anthropic Workshop, map meetings, a formal contributor coach program. This is interesting. I don't know how I feel about, like, adding coaches to Maker School, like, um, a bunch of them.
22:39I've experimented with this in the past, and it's worked okay. But, um, yeah, we'll we'll see what we do there. Um, I used to run a, like, a a competition where I was, like, the person that has the most activity every month, like, wins a certain amount of money.
22:52And then it just became, like, the same person every single month because they just crushed it at what they did and didn't really didn't really do much. So I guess I could probably do that. Um, I do like the idea of somebody to help with tech because we do have a lot of people that require more help on the tech side, people that are, you know, really new to automation, but then we'll make, a post every day being like, hey.
23:13How do I do this tutorial? How do I do this tutorial? How do I do this tutorial?
23:15And it does end up consuming a fair amount of my time. And, also, I don't think I'm capable of providing the same level of, like, value as I as I could to them. So maybe I'll do that.
23:24Um, and then the yeah. And then, like, the price drop.
23:27I can't I can't drop the price. The price is too high. And, um, well, it's not too high, but it's high.
23:32And I I I just have to keep it there, and I have to increase the value that I provide in order to, you know, make people wanna stay in even more. A really good churn reduction mechanism in the past was I was increasing the prices over time, and now that was freaking sweet.
23:44But, um, I can't really increase the price anymore. Like, I feel like after a certain point, it stops being a low ticket product. Like, if I charge $400 a month, you know, people are gonna obviously be like, well, that's not really low ticket anymore.
23:52Right? Now you're, like, squarely mid ticket. It's like 5 k a year.
23:57So, yeah, we'll we'll see what happens with that. Yeah. That that was one.
24:00And then, uh, I was doing the same thing with, um, GLM, actually.
24:06I don't know if you guys saw my recent video on GLM. But, yeah, I was doing the same thing with GLM, and GLM's freaking awesome.
24:12So I'm actually just going to top up a bunch of my credits, and then I'm just going to run this exact same thing on GLM. So I want $10. I think I might have to hide my card here.
24:25Yeah. I think I have to hide my card here. Okay.
24:28I'm just gonna, like, purchase this. Yeah. Let's just use that.
24:31Uh-oh. Nope. Nope.
24:32Let's not do that. Let's just move this over here so you guys don't see all of my precious card details. I'm gonna use this card.
24:38I'm gonna get a text from this service. And then with this text, I'm going to get more GLM credits because I ran out because I was running these queries on 5.2, like, for an hour the other day.
24:53Okay. Uh, and then I'm just gonna run and show you guys how that works. So, um, yeah.
24:56Anyway, I published a YouTube video yesterday on my main channel, and it performed quite abysmally, which is unfortunate. But, uh, the sad thing is it's on something that I really believed in, which was this GLM 5.2 model.
25:08I don't know if you guys have seen, but GLM 5.2 is really good.
25:12It's like, genuinely speaking, a very awesome model. To make a long story short, it is an open source model, so you can actually like go and, you know, run it locally in your computer if you wanted to, although you need a pretty big computer to do so. It is approximately on par with Opus 4.7, I would say, on most things.
25:33Maybe Opus 4.8 on, like, design and stuff like that. And realistically, you know, it's like the first time we've had a model that is not one of the closed source frontier ones that is actually pushing frontier level ability.
25:45And it's not because it, like, is the craziest, hottest model ever. It's just because, you know, Anthropic has gated Mythos. The usual release cadence is Anthropic drops the best model ever.
25:55Then OpenAI drops a better slightly better model. And then Google, two years later, drops the best model ever. And then they exist for five minutes before Anthropic beats them again.
26:03But that normal release cadence was stopped because Anthropic has not released that Methos class or Fable based model because it's had to, like, pull it back. So, I mean, Fable is definitely way better than GLN 5.2, but GLN 5.2 is about on par with the last gen, which is what people currently have access to. And, you know, there's a lot of really dope, like I'll show you guys a bunch of designs.
26:23There's a lot of really, really, really dope designs here. Let me see.
26:29I just typed in design here, then scrolled all the way down to the very bottom of this. What we see there's a post that I responded to with a link to an x thread.
26:43And it was just so far. It was like the the best ever.
26:48Okay. Check this out. How GLM 5.2 beat Fable five, a website design on Design Arena.
26:54So GLM 5.2 ranks first overall on Design Arena single turn HTML web design non agentic evaluation. So basically, one shot, it just creates the best websites, especially per cost.
27:06So, I mean, like, check this out. Left hand side is Fable.
27:12Right hand side is GLM 5.2. So there's obviously some distillation going on here. Left is Fable, GLM 5.2.
27:18Fable, GLM 5.2. And so Fable's like, well, hold on a second.
27:26I remember seeing a really good example that I wanted to show you guys. I think this was a GLM 5.2 site right here. And these are a bunch of just like, oh, here we go.
27:36GLM 5.2, GLM 5.2, GLM five against various models. So that's pretty cool. This is an example of like animated site that GLM 5.21 shotted, and so on and so forth.
27:47So, yeah, I mean, website preference versus speed. You know, it takes a really long time, but then people generally prefer it like ELO wise. And they do this, I think, by just, like, having the models generate, like, tons of websites and then showing them to people on this design arena.
28:01So it's not trivial. Like, it's actually quite a good model for that.
28:04Right? Okay. Great.
28:06I'm just gonna say high level summary actions and dump here.
28:12I can show my audience.
28:16And then after I'm done with this, I'll wrap the video up and then do some stats because we did do some growth in the last twenty four hours. K. Cool.
28:22So here we go. So it's saying how to get Maker School to 500 k a month. Half the base is grandfathered, three levers are ARPU.
28:29Annual plans and elite tier step new member price migrate the grandfathered base up via added value. 105 to 150 blended means a $100,000 is zero to members. That makes sense.
28:37Churn reduction, a 15 monthly churn is every 1% cut is 26 k a year, so I can do that. Ascension Libra's revenue outside members times ARPU, low nick time, inner circle affiliate stack.
28:47Yeah. Inner circle is a big thing. A lot of people have asking me for it.
28:49I don't like inner circle, which just seems kind of lame to me. Maybe I should, like, really examine that, but I just don't like the idea of people paying, like, 10 k a month just to hang out. You know?
28:59Pull true MRR, ARPU churn by Coherent, launch annual plans, auto fix affiliate links, apply to Anthropic Partner Network, reactivate 10 k alumni with a five email. We're like, this is cool. That's actually a really good idea.
29:09I haven't done that. That's a totally that's a great idea. Yeah.
29:13We should totally do that. K. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna steal this.
29:19Just put just pasted that.
29:23K. Wow. That's a pretty solid idea.
29:25Can't believe I didn't think about that. Of course, we should be re emailing people that used to be in Maker School, and we should offer them things. Oh, and I should let them know about all the updates that I've made recently.
29:33Oh, brilliant. Brilliant. For instance, I'm creating and I have created a bunch of new modules.
29:39Right? The ones that I talked about yesterday. I'm already half done most of them.
29:43I'm half done one of them. And I've done the outline and then even got all the visuals for another one. That's pretty sweet.
29:49Right? If you, you know, left maker school because you made 10 k a month and you're like, hey, don't need to stay in this community because I've already achieved my financial goals. And I'm like, hey, what about these things?
30:00I can get a lot of those people back.
30:03Instagram DM automation? Yeah. You know, I don't know if I'm currently doing that.
30:07Overall YouTube CTAs? No.
30:10I think that's fine. I think that's fine. You know what's so funny?
30:13I think that realistically, GLM 5.2 actually came up with more valuable insights than Opus 4.8 here. And it cost me a quarter of what it, uh, what it cost an Opus.
30:22So let that be a yeah. How about them apples?
30:28Alright. Let's do some gross stats just while I have you. Um, yesterday, my YouTube was at four fifty one fifty eight.
30:36So if I go back here to my current subscriber count, then go to dashboard, we're four fifty eight ninety four. So the subscriber growth is pretty brutal, not gonna lie. I remember when I used to have like one to 2% days.
30:47That was the time. That last video did not pop. That's okay.
30:53This is point 2%. My Instagram, which is blast up. I go here is five hundred and twenty one sixty two.
31:00I go back to my tracker. See, we probably grew a very middling amount there as well. And then Maker School members, just because I can't show you guys the personal information of the people and there's no way to go to the members tab without doing that, 2092.
31:17Well, well, I just kinda fucking did that. Thanks, Nick.
31:22Well, why do we do this? Alright.
31:26Anyway, so we've gone down by one member in the last twenty four hours. That's huge. I mean, like, I gotta be honest.
31:30Back when I was the last time this happened, I took an extended hiatus. I was dropping like 30 members a day and I'm down to like one member loss a day, which is wild.
31:40And position is still six, which I will talk a little bit more about later. Okay. Anyway, thank you guys very much for joining me on another wild, whimsical chase of daily updates.
31:47Hopefully, you appreciated, um, at least some of the ideation that's AI is really good at ideating and exploring a massive search space in a very short period of time. And so that's where you should use it.
31:57You need to apply your human taste and knowledge at checkpoints along the way. But if you utilize AI in this way to quickly ideate over a large number of options, you can very, uh, reasonably and effectively compile yourself like high ROI next steps.
32:10And, uh, it's just way faster than if you were to spend all day long thinking about them for first principles. Now, obviously, have the AI think about them for first principles, and then consolidate all of them to think about them for first principles as well. But, uh, the point is, saves you a lot of time doing something human beings are really bad at, which is exploring a lot of possible ideas.
32:26Hopefully, you guys appreciated that. Have a lovely rest of day, I'll catch all y'all on tomorrow's daily update.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The title promises a step-by-step path from $3k to $10k per month. What you actually get is something more useful: a live operator session where every strategic assumption gets stress-tested against real membership data, real subscriber questions, and a real AI agent that generates a thousand ideas so the host can steal ten of them.
Named ideas worth stealing.
20:00list
The Three Levers (ARPU / Churn / Ascension)
- ARPU expansion — annual plans, elite tier, migrate grandfathered base
- Churn reduction — 7-day DM non-introducers, fix tutorials, reactivate alumni
- Ascension — inner circle, affiliates, B2B agency layer
The AI-generated framework for scaling a community product from current MRR to 500k/mo. Each lever operates independently — ARPU and churn work with zero new members.
Steal forAny membership or subscription business trying to grow MRR without purely relying on new customer acquisition
16:40concept
AI-as-search-space-explorer
Feed all relevant business context into an AI agent, request 1000 possible next steps, then filter by your own first-principles framework and personal taste. The value is speed across the option space, not quality of individual ideas — expect 99% garbage, harvest the 1%.
Steal forWeekly planning sessions, quarterly strategy reviews, any time you feel stuck on what to do next
15:50model
Guarantee Escalation Ladder
- Start: 10 booked calls in 60 days
- Hit consistently: move to 15
- Hit 15 consistently: move to 20
- Hit 20 consistently: move to 30
For cold email / lead gen agencies setting outcome guarantees. Never set a number without data — start low and escalate as you prove each threshold.
Steal forLead gen agency offer construction, any outcome-based service guarantee
06:40model
$3k→$10k Math Decomposition
The gap from $3k to $10k looks like $7k but is actually just 3 clients at your existing rate, possibly at half your current time per client. Reframing the gap from a dollar amount to a client-count makes the target feel achievable rather than abstract.
Steal forAny coaching or consulting conversation with a client stuck at a ceiling income level
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
32:30subscribe
“Thank you guys very much for joining me on another wild, whimsical chase of daily updates.”
Soft close only — no explicit subscribe push. Product links (Maker School, Clairvo, LeftClick) are description-only.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
