A real consulting call, unedited, where a Meta ads consultant walks a 15-person email marketing agency through the creative strategy and production system it's missing.
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4 days ago
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educational
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Big Idea
The argument in one line.
An agency scaling toward $250K a month doesn't need more angles, it needs a repeatable ad structure and format system, plus a production pipeline that stops the founder from being the bottleneck on every edit.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
An agency owner or service-business founder who has a rev goal like $250K a month but hasn't mapped it to an actual client count and churn rate.
Someone running paid ads or organic content who keeps testing new angles instead of varying ad structure, format, and funnel awareness level.
A founder who is personally bottlenecking creative production, whether that's editing video, designing emails, or answering every Slack message instantly.
Anyone building a coaching or consulting practice who wants to hear what an actual paid strategy call sounds like end to end.
SKIP IF…
You're looking for platform-specific Meta Ads Manager steps like campaign structure, budgets, or pixel setup, this call is about creative strategy and operations, not the ads dashboard.
You run a DTC ecommerce brand, the speakers explicitly note that agency and B2B creative strategy runs narrower on angles than consumer offers do.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Leo Moore, a Meta ads consultant, runs a live coaching call with Kieran, who runs a 15-person email marketing agency and wants to hit $250K a month. Leo turns the goal into client math: enough new signups to outpace churn, not a fictional spreadsheet model. The real constraints turn out to be creative and operational. Most agencies fail not from too few ideas but from testing too many angles instead of varying ad structure, format, and funnel awareness around the two or three angles that already work. Kieran is also personally editing his own ads and answering Slack instantly, so the fix is a bench of contractor editors, a kanban pipeline, and a protected weekly review block.
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The call opens on the punchline before the context: Kieran names $250K a month as his revenue goal.
01:44 – 03:07
02 · Session structure + meet Kieran
Leo lays out how the call will run, then Kieran introduces his 15-person email marketing agency working with about 30 brands.
03:07 – 08:31
03 · The North Star and the cozy trap
Kieran names ads and organic growth as his priorities; Leo flags that he's drifted into a 'cozy' zone of occasional client pickups instead of consistent lead generation.
08:31 – 10:47
04 · Reverse-engineering the client math
Leo walks through churn math behind the revenue goal: Kieran needs roughly 35 clients to hit the number, closer to 50 acquired once expected churn is factored in.
10:47 – 17:02
05 · The editing bottleneck
Kieran admits he edits his own ads; Leo calls it the real constraint and recommends a bench of five-plus contractor editors in one Slack channel, mirroring how Kieran already fixed an underperforming email designer.
17:02 – 23:18
06 · Case study: Nathan's organic run
Leo cites Nathan Perdriau, who posted 10-20 times a day and rolled out 7-10 ad formats, as proof that volume plus quality plus a proven format list compounds into inbound deals.
23:18 – 30:57
07 · Creative strategy: structure, format, awareness, not angles
Leo names the three real creative variables and argues most advertisers waste effort chasing new angles instead of the two or three that already work, illustrated through Brook Hiddink, Jordan Lee, and VShred's shared ad-copy structure.
30:57 – 34:26
08 · Recreating a winner without cloning it
Leo explains extracting a winning ad's underlying principles, the hook, the structure, the core issue, and rebuilding them in a different format so it reads as new.
34:26 – 38:37
09 · Building the production system
The conversation turns operational: a five-stage kanban board, front-loading editors with brand assets, and deliberately varying edit styles so ads don't blur into a 'sea of sameness.'
38:37 – 42:47
10 · Installing a weekly feedback loop
Leo pushes for a protected weekly block, during work hours not weekends, to review ad and organic performance and plan the next week's formats, the same reporting discipline Kieran already runs for clients.
42:47 – 46:16
11 · What to hire out vs. keep
They map which tasks are worth outsourcing, editors and YouTube-agency-style script and thumbnail support, versus what stays with the founder, creative strategy and recording.
46:16 – 55:41
12 · The real constraint is intentionality
The call closes on mindset: Leo describes training a personal mental cue to override the urge to quit or get distracted, landing on 'be intentional with every second' as the through-line behind everything discussed.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
A 10% monthly churn rate means an agency with 100 clients has to sign 10 new clients a month just to stay flat, not to grow.
Most failed ad accounts don't lack ideas, they have twenty-five different angles and zero strategy behind which three or four actually convert.
An agency's real creative variables are ad structure, ad format, and funnel awareness level, not the number of customer avatars it targets.
If every ad in an account looks visually the same, a viewer who has already seen one will scroll past the rest even faster.
The winning move is to strip a proven ad down to its underlying principles, the hook, the structure, the core issue, then rebuild those in a new format rather than remixing the same execution.
Financial models for ad spend are almost always wrong; what matters more is a consistent decision-making strategy inside the ad account.
An agency spending under $200 a day on its own lead generation is under-investing relative to what it can actually afford once clients are sticky.
The optimal client-signing rate for a $100K-$300K/month agency is roughly 10 to 25 new clients a month, more than that usually signals a broken CAC.
A founder who personally edits every video is quietly capping the business at whatever hours are left after client work.
Responding to every Slack message within minutes trains a team to stop solving problems on their own, creating learned helplessness.
Posting volume only compounds when it comes with a real feedback loop; posting daily with no analysis just produces the same mistake at higher volume.
The value of a coaching call is often less new information and more having someone reflect back the things you already know you should be doing.
A weekly review block scheduled during work hours gets taken more seriously than the same hour blocked out on a weekend.
A single trained mental cue, a phrase repeated until automatic, can override the urge to quit or get distracted in the moment it happens.
Takeaway
How service agencies actually scale past six figures a month
WHAT TO LEARN
Growth stalls less from bad ideas than from vague math, too many creative angles, and a founder who won't get out of the production pipeline.
03The North Star and the cozy trap
A revenue goal without a client-count and churn number attached is just a wish, not a plan.
Getting 'cozy' with a handful of steady clients quietly caps growth even when the relationship with those clients is genuinely good.
04Reverse-engineering the client math
Back a revenue goal into a client count first, then pad that number for expected churn, since some clients signed this year will already be gone before the goal is hit.
A financial spreadsheet model for ad performance is almost always wrong; a repeatable decision-making process for the ad account matters more than a projected number.
05The editing bottleneck
A founder who personally edits every piece of content is often the actual bottleneck, not a lack of ideas or ad spend.
Building a bench of several interchangeable contractors in one shared channel protects a business from any single hire being flaky, overpriced, or inconsistent.
When a hire underperforms, bring in two or three replacements in parallel and let work quality decide who stays, rather than debating it.
06Case study: Nathan's organic run
Volume only compounds when it's paired with quality and a genuine feedback loop; posting constantly with no analysis just repeats the same mistake faster.
Consistent daily output over months, not a single viral post, is what builds an organic following that eventually generates inbound deals.
07Creative strategy: structure, format, awareness, not angles
The real levers for ad diversity are structure, format, and funnel awareness level, not a growing list of customer avatars or angles.
Most accounts that feel stuck on only two or three genuinely different angles are actually fine; the fix is more executions of those angles, not new ones.
The specific sequence in which an ad introduces the problem, the mechanism, and the offer is a repeatable structure reusable across completely different scripts.
08Recreating a winner without cloning it
Copying a winning ad too literally usually underperforms; extracting its underlying principle, the hook, the core issue, the beat structure, and rebuilding it in a new format works better.
An ad account where every ad visually looks different, even while repeating the same few winning angles, outperforms one where everything looks the same.
09Building the production system
A simple five-stage kanban, not started, in progress, review, revisions, complete, is enough structure for most small content operations.
Front-loading an editor with brand assets, past wins, and style references up front pays off for months afterward.
10Installing a weekly feedback loop
A protected weekly review block, scheduled during work hours rather than a weekend, gets taken far more seriously and actually happens.
If you'd never let a client run without a performance report, running your own marketing without one is the same mistake.
11What to hire out vs. keep
Outsourcing works best on tasks that are cheap to replace, editing, scripting, thumbnails, and worst on tasks that carry the founder's own judgment or authenticity, ad ideas, on-camera delivery.
Any agency, including a YouTube growth agency, should be expected to deliver an incremental boost on top of your own effort, not a total fix for a broken strategy.
12The real constraint is intentionality
A single, repeatable mental cue, a phrase, a trigger response, can be trained into an automatic override for the urge to quit or get distracted.
Being reactive all day, answering every message the second it arrives, keeps the nervous system in a low-grade stress state that increases burnout.
Most consulting value comes less from new information and more from having someone reflect back the things you already know you should be doing.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Creative strategist (creative strat)
The role that turns a recorded ad idea into a scripted, edited ad ready for media buying, sitting between the founder's raw idea and the editor.
Ad structure
The copywriting sequence inside an ad, such as problem-agitate-solution, that determines when the hook, problem, and offer each appear.
Format maxing
Producing many different visual and production styles of an ad, talking head, green screen, tier list, VSL, rather than many different messaging angles.
Awareness level
Where a prospect sits in the funnel, cold and unaware, problem-aware, or solution-aware, which changes what an ad should say first.
Kanban (production pipeline)
A visual board with stages like not started, in progress, review, and complete, used to track ad or content pieces from idea to publish.
CAC (customer acquisition cost)
What it costs in ad spend to acquire one paying client or customer.
Turbo bombing a constraint
Attacking a single business bottleneck, like a lack of editors, by massively overinvesting resources into solving it once, permanently, rather than patching it repeatedly.
34:26 – 42:47steadyProduction system & feedback loops
42:47 – 46:16steadyHiring leverage & outsourcing
46:16 – 55:41denseMindset & intentionality
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in terms of rev goal i think right now my biggest one that's in the foreseeable future would be like 250k usd yeah cool so you want to hit 250k usd do you know how many clients you need to be able to hit that in terms of like the top two things that are probably worth solving number one is the creative strategy and number two is probably the system behind it what most people are doing really heavily right now is like very heavy on angle like too many avatars too many individual angles don't go super wide on the angles try to find your top three to five then i've been talking about like format maxing format is not actually the end of it.
Cause there's a thing called like the structure of the ad. Like you might've heard of copywriting structures like problem agitate solution. You do the editing?
Yeah. Oh, that's fucked up, man. I'm not even kidding.
Like that's super fucked up. What we do is we'll just have like five editors that we use and we'll just have a Slack channel with all of them. We'll just use one of them.
Even if you're doing something like a tier list ad and it's like tier list ads of how to run your email marketing as an eight figure brand. So boom, we've got Kieran. Welcome to the channel.
Obviously we're gonna dive in today and do a bit of a rundown of everything. currently doing, see if we can do it any better. Do you want to just introduce yourself, give context to the agency and so on?
Yeah, for sure. My name's Kieran. I run an email marketing agency.
As a lot of guys, you've probably seen on Leo's channel. Yeah, we're going pretty good right now. We're at 15 team members.
Usually with email marketing agencies. There's a lot more people involved compared to like what the actual revenue that we're doing. Yeah, the team consists of email designers, Klaviyo technicians, account managers.
And I've also recently just bought on a senior strategist slash account manager as well. That's helping me scale and run the operations side of things. But yeah, I think we work with about 30 odd brands, give or take right now.
And yeah, still continuing to scale. Yeah, nice. Structure of this video is pretty much going to be like, we'll go over like what you want to have happen essentially.
And then we'll go over like what you're currently doing. And we'll go over like maybe some changes you need to make. or what you should probably do to scale up either faster, more efficiently or whatever.
So in terms of like, what's the North star right now and where you're like, from where you're currently at to where you want to go, like in the next six to 12 months, what's that look like? Yeah, I think, I think the goal is definitely to be scaling more in ads and also just building up more of like an organic following as well.
That is what I feel like is just kind of like unlimited in terms of scale. Like there's no like cap to that point. What about, what about rev?
You have a rev goal or not? Just like rev goal would be funny. When I've been talking to people recently, I'm like, what do you want to do you want to just max cash or what and they're just like yeah like just max cash is good yeah Yeah, you always got to be looking at the profit margin, man, at the end of the day.
Yeah, it's like, I'm trying to get more cash, man. Like, that's kind of it. Because, yeah, I guess the goal, like, long term is to build, like, a business that's, yeah, good cash flow and just put that money into investments and keep the agency alive as, yeah, as long as possible.
In terms of rev goal, I think right now my biggest one that's in the foreseeable future would be, like, 250K USD. I think that would be, yeah, pretty good place. But, obviously, it's going even further and further.
Like, I've seen my other competitors. I'm like, dude, there's no, like, cap to this. Yeah.
Everyone says like, oh, agency gets too complex over a certain amount. But I don't know, but you're looking at other competitors, they keep scaling. So there's no real end to the game.
Yeah, especially in Australia, man. It's kind of weird that it's almost like so easy because there's like no one. Like there's like five people that are even in, like in your space particularly, like in the e -com email.
People say it's saturated, but there's actually like three of yous. Yeah. It's not that hard, you know what I mean?
And every brand like pretty much works in an agency for email because it's like - It's so time intensive. Yeah, it's just a time intensive channel that needs to be done correctly, so. Yeah, and there's so many moving parts as well.
Things are like, yeah, like obviously e -commerce is only growing and growing. There's so many dudes that I talk to at like borderline, like drop shipping, but they've just started their business like four or five months ago and they've already scaled up to like 200, 300, 500K months. Sometimes it's crazy.
Like sometimes, yeah, if you're talking to a business that's been there for like 10 years and they're still only doing like 200K or 300K a month. And then it's like kids like our age, they're like doing like 300, 400K. Yeah, it's kind of sickening.
If you can crack the right product in that market, it's pretty nice, but I don't know for sure. Yeah, cool. So you want to hit 250K USD.
Do you know how many clients you need to be able to hit that? Here's where it actually gets hard. If you're an agency or any sort of service -based business and your churn at a certain point is going to get very tough.
For example, let's say you've got 50 clients and your churn's 10%. That's five brands a month that you're churning. Let's say you've got 100 clients and your churn is 10%, which is not that unreasonable for a lot of people around that range.
10 % means you've got to sign 10 clients a month just to not go down. So that's like the fucking Hormozy equation I learned like four years ago. That's very important.
you will get to a point where it's like we've grown to this point just signing like three or four brands a month consistently or semi consistently and then you know some months we might not sign that many brands because it's organic or we just kind of do legion when we feel like it but it kind of does become an existential thing and we have this with a subscription offer as well that we work with like if they're not spending over a certain amount per day they won't grow at all because their churn on a subscription offer is like pretty high so you have to keep Like you just have to keep pushing.
Otherwise you're going to death spiral. So that's just something I would look out for. Number one, especially if you've gotten into this cozy, this cozy kind of vibe of like, yeah, we'll just pick up a couple of clients.
I feel like I'm like just off that point. Like, yeah, right now I'm definitely a bit too cozy. I'm just like, yeah, we'll bring on some brands.
We'll focus on the ops. But exactly like you said, I need to build a bit more of like a consistent like lead generation because right now my ads are working one week, the next week they drop off and same with my organic posting. Like whenever I get busy, that just takes like a second step.
I would say for you, like just from having known you for a while, obviously coming through like the 1000X ecosystem and a bit of consulting over the years, biggest constraint. is going to be like you'll bias so heavily towards ops yeah and that's a very you know i actually think it's kind of a good thing now that i'm a bit old like i used to be like oh my god like you focus on ops like what are you doing yeah but i'm a pretty big believer that like the relationship you have with your clients especially in a really small market like australia like if you are really good and like you're good to your clients and stuff like they'll love you they'll look after you pretty well so it's not the worst thing but you need to know that that has been a problem that's been coming up for like years so yeah we'll touch on that in a bit maybe well like what else do you think is getting in the way like outside of just time like like what's like when you post or you or you run ads like what happens i think just having like a good system to output ads because i've also noticed whenever i like refresh my ads um i usually get another boost of like book calls simply just refreshing the creative even it's like the same message as well yeah the creative strategy in general
yeah the creative strategy in general um like right now q4 is coming up so right now i should be like creating more ads to around q4 messaging hey ecommerce brands you need to be playing at emails um content calendar and stuff like that so that's the type of ads i would need to be thinking about doing right now so it's like creative strategy and the system to record do you have any problems with like the actual recording like is the recording kind of easy for you in terms of time and effort input and so forth yeah i'd say so like i got my phone i got my camera on my desk as well i think that i think I think I've got a pretty good system there, like open up OBS.
Or just literally on my iPhone and then upload it to a Google Drive. Probably the one thing that sucks on my time is just the editing afterwards. I need to find an actual group.
You do the editing? Yeah. Oh, that's fucked up, man.
You can't... Well, sometimes it's so easy to edit. That's super fucked up.
I'm not even kidding. Like that's super fucked up because it's the same as anything. Like there's so many things inside your business that are like, I could just do this so easily in 30 minutes.
And then you do it. And then there's like, oh, there's also 10 ,000 other things that I could just so easily do in 30 minutes. Like, unless it's like your thing, like if you're Max Sturt and you're going to edit your own video because like you're going to get up, you know, 100 ,000 views on it because you're just Max Sturt and you're just him.
That's like. That's fine. Like you can get away with it.
Like I remember one time actually when I was in school, like one of the teachers was saying like, oh, you've got to do this homework. You know, this is what everyone's doing. And I was like, no, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to study my way because I'm going to get whatever grades I want pretty much. And he's like, yeah, that's fair because you're an A plus. But if you like break the rules about like what's the right thing to do, you have to like have a really good fucking reason to break the rules.
Like, you know what I'm saying? Like if you're going to edit your own videos, like. are you fucking like you gotta be the most goaded editor ever but in like you know what i mean i would just in general like make sure to just follow your intuition of like what you know you probably should do yeah because that that's almost a thing of letting yourself do a thing that you know like i've got i've got like light editing experience so that's probably a reason why i'm just like taking like oh fuck it i'll just do it quickly but but that's what happens in ops too probably yeah instead of letting someone else do you probably just like fuck it i'm kind of the same yeah i would link you doing the editing and you doing too much as probably like one of the biggest reasons why you haven't been able to stay consistent on the organic and ad side what we do is we'll just have like five editors that we use and we'll just have a slack channel with all them yeah and then depending on the edit depending on the timeline depending on who's busy or who's not busy or how many ads or how how much we've used one person or how good they are or whatever we'll just use one yeah that's exactly what i should set up yeah so it's it's not like you're over reliant on one guy who's an editor because the thing is with editors they're very spotty sometimes they suck and sometimes they're good and then they'll just randomly suck sometimes they
fucking try to bill you for way too much money or something and then you say okay great yeah i'm just gonna use one of the 10 other guys that i've lined up yeah finding like a good editor is so fucking painful and that yeah it doesn't like overcharge it just like captions what do you do to get it uh we'll just stop work at the moment bro what i do is for anything like that i'm just gonna make a job post i'm gonna fucking spam it out to like 50 test tasker and then then take them off it's like yeah it's a good quote from homozy i heard recently it was just like you gotta just turbo bomb the constraint yeah you know what i mean like like you just Let's say, for example...
you like in your case like i can't find enough editors and it's like kind of griefing me a little bit it makes me just like feel bad about the process because i don't know if i record ads i'm gonna have to edit it yeah exit tasks like 2x like you could probably solve that like that's like that's like a two hour like i'm gonna solve it forever and i'm gonna have 50 in slack that's what i've that's what i've recently done actually with just like my email designers i was i recently had this guy that just absolutely sucked or was like rushing their emails a little bit just i just brought in like three other um email designers and then we would just got them into like separate slack channels And we're just like, all right, you're all in trial.
Bloody smash it out. I've just told all my account managers like, yeah, just pick one of them. See who does a good job.
And then within the next week or so, we'll bloody, we'll pick someone that actually. Yeah. Like that's a good example of like turbo moment.
I think the more that you can equate that type of action taking as like being the solution to these things is really good. Cause I know, especially for me and all the clients that I've worked with over the years, the ones that get stuck at a revenue level, usually it's something like that where they're like, oh, it's so hard to find insert role or it's.
so hard to crack ads for insert market or it's so hard to crack organic for insert market but a lot of the time it's like if you're gonna quit something at least first make sure that you've like really fucking maxed out that's good on the design side definitely do the same for editing what will be good for you is like even if you have an employee who's like a senior employee who's gonna who can like help you with certain tasks the way i have it set up because i've obviously got an ads agency so like i've got creative strats i've got editors i've got all this stuff yeah i'll be able to just be on a call with a prospect live, come up with an ad idea, drop it in Slack, Creative Strat will make it.
He'll have like five ad ideas or 10 ad ideas from that week already from me, like directly. He'll be able to just script them up really quick because the idea is already done, make some variations and so on. And then I'll be recording the ad that's actually still my idea.
So it doesn't sound like it sounds inauthentic or anything. It's still my idea, which isn't a bad thing if you're getting ad ideas from someone else, but like it's still my. exact ideas i'll record it i'll drop it in a google drive creative shot will take it to the editor he'll manage it he'll qc it and then it just gets uploaded by my media buy yeah so it's like per week how much time does that take it's literally just the recording yeah because i'm already you know what i mean so it just makes it so much easier if you have an actual system Yeah, like I've built up systems for my email marketing agency and now I need to build an actual system for the lead gen.
Yeah. So do you have any sort of like project management or pipeline or in terms of the commitments that you've made on the lead gen side? I would imagine what you're going to say is, well, I'm going to make probably five ads a week.
What's your budget? Right now I'm spending about 3K a month. I would probably double that, to be honest, at your revenue.
Yeah, now that we've grown, I think it's same. Yeah, like I would probably take some risk. Like at the very least, like you can afford four to six.
That's like a... low that's like really low 100 bucks a day like you're not gonna figure i think 200 bucks a day is like you lose that amount it's like fine especially with ecom clients once you get them on they're sticky they're so sticky you know the other thing i watched a jeremy haynes video the other day And Jeremy Haynes is really good because he'll just be like, you're a pussy if you spend under like 50K.
Which is kind of true. It's kind of true. But you don't have to start.
If you don't, like I think with an agency, in most cases with agency ads, if you're spending more than like 20, 30, 40, 50K a month, your CAC is way too high. And you're only still onboarding like 15 brands a month or 15 clients a month. Or your CAC is good and you're trying to sign like 30 to 50 to 60 brands a month or clients a month.
And it's like, that's kind of sus. like it's kind of I've never seen a good good good like even great yeah agency sign that many clients like kind of the optimal range in my opinion while you because when you when you're at way bigger revenue you have more system so you can onboard more people but if you're at 100 200 300k a month 10 to 25 is like the good rate like that's fucking time yeah and as long as I'm like you shouldn't hit that point of like too much churn based on x percent of churn and we need you shouldn't hit that point by when you're signing 10 to 20 clients like Like if you just do that, it's good.
And then I would build the onboarding systems and all the delivery and stuff based on that. But back to the first question, like how many clients do you need to hit 250K US? Then it just becomes, okay, well.
i need 35 clients or i need i need to sign 35 clients this percentage you're going to turn that means i need to run this many ads and actually acquire 50 clients as an example yeah break down the math yeah straight yeah way back down to the ads creative or out i created like output yes but the one thing i will say is that people really um people really like jerk off over like you gotta financially model your ads bro like people say that and it's like i have never once seen a spreadsheet actually come into reality yeah because if they did we'd all be fucking billionaires because I'm projecting a fucking 175 cost per call and a fucking 40 % close rate.
It's just not happening. Like 99 .999 % of the time, the financial model that you make in a sheet is not going to be accurate. What you really need though is like a strategy of how to make decisions in the ad account that you're going to stick to and like intentionally take.
And if you have that, it'll be exponentially better than like this fucking financial model. It's good because you got to know that stuff. And I talk about it like you got to know.
it but it's not like just gonna take it with a grain of salt yeah a lot of people when they launch they're like oh my fucking god like my cost per call is like 400 and they start freaking out it's like bro like like who cares like your cac is still going to be one to three k yeah pretty much no matter what you do like it's very difficult if you have good ads good offer it's going to be very difficult and honestly the only cases when i've seen people like fail at ads is sometimes in markets where you're trying to go into a market you don't belong in like if you got a really bad like eastern european accent you're trying to sell to the us or like you don't really have a market you don't really have a place that that can cause people to fuck up problem like even there's a guy in australia um agency owner for d2c he was trying to hit the us for like six months yeah we burned about 20 30 40 grand on ads like pretty much zero return and then i remember talking to him i was like dude just fucking run ads in australia like what are you even trying to do
Just go here. There's still a lot of brands in Australia. It's the same for me because sometimes I almost like bias too heavily towards the US, but then I actually look at like a bunch of my clients and I'm like, wait, like we've got some fucking big spenders in Australia.
And it's like, if you just get them and you just be a bit more patient, like you can really do a lot in Australia. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But anyway, where were we?
I'm kind of Kanye West on JRE muxing and just going on mad tangents. That's a niche reference. Have you seen that?
He just starts talking about random shit. You can probably guess. But yeah, so the things that I'm thinking about for you is you've got to have the system around the ad production and it's the same for organic.
The way I figured that out, just to give you the answer straight away, the way I figured that out was I looked at content agencies pretty much. So you look at someone who's running either a creative -only agency or an organic -only agency and how do they run it? Because they're producing 50x what you're going to need to produce on a monthly basis.
basis and they just run it like a kanban have you seen one of those like pipelines yeah yeah yeah um i can just show you one right here if you want but yeah just it just needs to be like that like it literally like a five -step can man not started in progress for review revisions needed send a client complete yeah like the like you probably have something more sophisticated than that for email shipping and then you just need to set up systems for all the core functions that you're going to want to have so like for you ecom email posting a shit ton on instagram is like high priority like someone was asking me the other day they were like If I have nothing to do because everything's systematized, you know, I've got like two weeks of Instagram post schedule.
I've got like two weeks of email schedule for my newsletter. I've got like 50 ads recorded. I was like, bro, like if you can post three times a day on Instagram and maintain the same quality, like that's better.
Like the great example of that in Australia and in ads in general, Nathan. He just fucking posted. Like I remember talking to him before he started his organic.
He's like, I think I'm going to start organic, but like I don't want to do it unless I'm going to take it super seriously. And I was almost like, yeah, bro, like just do it. Like almost just not expecting it.
I've seen that growth. I'm like, holy shit. What am I doing, man?
I was just not expecting him to do anything. And then he just started posting and I was like, this is really good shit. And then he just fucking keeps ramming like 10 posts a day, 12 posts a day.
And he's got fucking 50K followers now. Yeah. so like the the equity value that that would add to his to his business is like actually ridiculous i saw a post like it was like his 26th birthday and he's just like yeah i've been signing all these massive massive brands lately i'm just like dude that must be from the organic 100 i think i think because i talked to him about his ads ages ago like probably 2024 yeah um like his agency ads and They were doing really well after that, but they don't even need that now.
So you can almost be obsolete as an ad person. And now you're saving money from the ads. Yeah, but in general, what I would prioritize is if you're going to do volume, and this is a great thing that Nathan talks about as well, if you're going to do volume, it needs to be volume through the lens of quality and how do I achieve quality rather than what I've seen people do and fail at is they'll just spam posts that are getting 300 views each and it's not really a feedback.
There's no like actual intentional, you know, like learnings from the videos. There's no like, you're not trying to pull an outlier format or anything. You're kind of just doing stuff.
And that's like maximum pain because you're still doing like a similar amount of work. You're just not doing enough prep work. The thing I would focus on is like do the prep work very heavily, get your pipeline set up and get your systems to a point where you can just drop the files in a Google Drive and then they get posted.
And if you need help with that, I can refer you to people who can just execute for you. Because especially in an agency business, your bandwidth is probably going to be the constraint. It's probably going to be that you are trying to focus in all these different directions and you're not actually going in one direction.
That's most of the times. And that's not just you. That's literally...
everyone that i've ever worked with and they've like behind the scenes they'll like tell me what they're like thinking and feeling about their business it's like always yeah it's always that you don't have to necessarily worry about that you just have to find a way to fix it because it's still going to fuck you up if you don't fix it so that's that and the actual creative strategy for ads and organic is very similar these days you were mentioning that someone in australia they basically just say the same ad many different times in different ways that's something that's becoming like exceedingly true because you'll probably have like three to five angles maximum that actually work.
What everyone does right now that is terrible is like they'll go and produce like 25 ads and they'll all be just an AI script. They'll be doing like super diverse angles. I'll be like, I've got to have creative diversity.
So I need to make all these different angles and then they'll just launch them all with zero like strategy, zero thinking. It's not a proven structure. They haven't pulled a format from somewhere.
It's just nothing. So then all of a sudden they're testing. is going into like the 25 angles that will never work because they only have three they're actually good for that offer ever it's not like you'll have three angles and like you can kind of find more it's like no you have three things that you can say and you you basically have to focus on formats because a big big big problem when you're not getting cut through with the ads like when people aren't like immediately responding to them in a way that's like they're fucking heavily interested in this offer usually it's just because you're not getting cut through like they don't care they're not like visually attracted to the ad they don't stop the scroll like you're just essentially like noise in the feed um yeah and that can come down to format and it's the same with organic as well so a good case study is nathan you'll so you saw nathan basically roll out with like seven to ten formats like tier list um you know good better excellent like that sort of um green screen stuff uh ad reviews like you pick 10 and you roll out you do that for a month you analyze all the results you say okay this format's good this one's good this one's good and i think there was a point where nathan posted like 20 tier list videos in a row yeah because it was
was like the only shit that was worked. So he's like, I'm just gonna hammer this. It's a perfect mindset.
It's the same with that. This is BlueSense Digital for anyone. Yeah, he's organic almost, all he adds.
He doesn't even need to run anything. Sometimes, just going off what he said in that post of just how crazy he's grown since he's done doing that, sometimes I think, what am I even doing? Why am I stressing about the ops right now when I could just be doing that?
Well, yeah, you probably need to let go and let the team do more stuff. You've got some employees now that... are like pretty high paid.
Like, you know, they're probably pretty sharp. They're pretty able to be responsible for those things. Yeah, like another thing I've noticed is like, because I'm always on my computer, I respond very, very quickly.
Sometimes it's actually, I'm starting to think it's actually detrimental to the team because sometimes they're asking me about stuff that's pretty simple. Like they could literally figure it out. If I just took like another hour or two to respond, then they'll probably go ahead and figure it out themselves.
So it's like learned helplessness. Yeah, exactly. And just a bit too much macro managing from my side.
Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty. easy to reset because you can just reset the expectation like you can just at any point just be like okay i've you know gone and done something like this is kind of what i'm thinking is a constraint for us um and moving forward it's going to be like this so if you message me something that's like solvable like you should ideally solve that yourself because i'm not going to reply that quick yeah um the only problem is if you just do that and then don't give them the expectation like they'll kind of go what the fuck like i was waiting for you to reply or something yeah so you just you're always giving someone an expectation just based on your behavior like you're going to train them how to kind of like respond to you and treat you and like treat the business.
So I would just reframe that. Because for example, like if you're literally just consistent, like I would just have this mindset, like if I'm just consistent with posting a shit ton on IG and also running a bunch of ads and like actually really mastering that skillset, you're probably going to be like, it's literally just that.
So then it's like, all right, organic system, ad system, they're pretty parallel where it's like, you've got to have the idea, the script, the recording, the editing, the posting, all the uploading. And then it's just the feedback loop and the analysis of those things about like, okay, I've... i've launched all these ads how do i then go forward and like make new ads or like what's the what's the volume that i need to push or what angles do you do um so that's that's obviously a skill thing but again in terms of like the top two things that are probably worth solving number one is the creative strategy and number two is probably the system behind it to like actually enable the volume to occur again i think nathan nathan probably has like five five to ten editors to push that volume yeah from what i've seen i think he just records everything on the one day yeah you can you can you can you can batch it pretty well so yeah let's start with creative strategy.
So like I said, what most people are doing really heavily right now is like very heavy on angles. That is really bad. Like trying to go to too many different customer avatars.
Is that what you're saying? Like too many avatars, but also too many, too many individual angles. So like they'll try to do like.
you know name name 10 random angles they'll try to just attack the same offer from like all these different lenses they'll have like completely different scripts that like articulate the offer in a completely different way when in reality like i said there might be like three angles that work there might be one pitch that works like one sales argument that works yeah like for example look at hyros they have one they have one sales like one becca becca made a video about it recently i don't necessarily agree with everything that he says um obviously he's kind of hard to disagree with it's a huge tracking platform but um a lot a lot of that is true.
Like you will more or less have one to five, like. angles that you can really pitch something through unless you're like a really broadly appealing b2c stuff or like like something that actually has inherently tons of angles like people look at ima or they'll look at grunts or they'll look at these offers that can be articulated in so many different ways to different people and be like oh i'm gonna do that yeah but that's wrong i think yeah i think that's a clear good point like obviously d2c and how d2c ads run is completely different to like agency and trying to book calls because what i've noticed is when i'm posting organic while my ads are running is that i've also got a few fans is like just DMing me, you know, looking at my profile, you know, looking through some of my videos and actually going like, okay, this guy knows what he's talking about.
Let me have a chat with him. Like, for example, yeah, I got this lady that literally had a brand that on Insta had like a one mil followers, just like DM me. It's like, I have that little audit in my thing, like DM me for audit.
She's like, audit. I'm like, all right. Yeah.
Honestly, DTC is pretty good because they're all on meta. Like they're all always on platform. Yeah.
Everyone's on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah.
Mainly Instagram. Yeah. But yeah, so.
it's literally like in terms of creative strategy don't go super wide on the angles try to find your top three to four then I've been talking about like format maxing format maxing is not actually the end of it because there's a thing called like the structure of the ad like you might have heard of copywriting structures like problem agitate solution or fucking ADA and shit like that there's also like VSL structures or like talking head ad structures that are very very proven and probably the best example of this is if you look at a There's two guys actually that do this.
If you look at Brook Hiddink, his best ad of all time, in my opinion, just looking at the ad account from an external POV, is this one ad that's like, billionaires don't run dropshipping stores. I don't do that. None of my clients do that.
I would never tell someone to do that because it simply does not work. as an example yeah so that's literally the script and then he'll have him as a pixar animation doing that he'll have hook variations of like a news article that then lead into him saying that he'll have other people saying like the actual way that it goes and the angle that works is like drop shipping sucks you need to do high ticket more or less and then it's just re -articulated but the structure is like the structure of the copy and how it's running then you look at jordan lee so those guys blew up recently they got to like five mil a month and they they've got the same script so it's like i would never tell someone to to start an agency.
I don't do that, none of my clients do that. And it's like the actual flow of words is a certain way. And I think that is probably the number one thing that like service businesses do not get.
And even data seed people don't get that either really, unless they're really good advertisers. Like really good advertisers understand like the structure of the ad, when the problem is introduced, when the product is introduced, when the mechanism introduced, like what second mark is the product introduced or the offer.
Obviously, it's going to differ about when those things happen compared to like info DTC and agency ads. But the structure of the ad is very important. And then the thing that is like the nail in the coffin is Brooke and Jordan Lee both got that from VShred.
So VShred's one is like cutting carbs isn't going to make you lose fat. And then he does like, I don't do that. So it's like common solution.
is not the key to result. And then it goes through like the, I think it's called an anaphora or something. It's like an essay writing technique to like repeat something with the first three letters and then saying something else.
Yeah, so you hook them in with something that you would think is right, but they're saying it's wrong. It appeals to the current belief of like what they're trying to do. And it obviously shreds them because it's like, that's dumb, that's dumb, that's dumb.
That's super dumb. We do this instead because, you know. And then you can educate around problem agitation of the common solution.
So if it's like dropshipping, like the problem agitation of the current solution would be things like, you know, it's cheap, you can't get sales, it's scammy, you know, the shitty products from China, like, you know, all these sorts of stuff. And then you can introduce stuff later. But that's just all really to say that the structure of the ad copy -wise is very important.
So when you're doing your creative strategy, you want... your ad structures is one variable yeah your ad format is another variable so that's a green screen that's if you're doing a loom video that's if you're doing a talking head that's if you're doing a selfie that stuff is really important like yeah really important then you also have like the awareness level or like what step in the funnel is it like is this something that's going to introduce a stranger brand to us you have like middle of funnel you know bottom funnel obviously so the way that i kind of like to structure ad launches now is i kind of like to think through all those three things at once but at the start you obviously have to test angles a little bit to make sure that you're on the ball but if you just have that in mind and in terms of diversity like think of diversity through those three lenses of like structure format awareness level not so much on the angle particularly for agency like again there was a thing on twitter i don't know if you saw this recently but someone asked as connor sunderland asked you know what's the deal with avatars like avatars like a real thing that you really need to pursue and then everyone was kind of like yeah you can but it's more about the core the core issue and the core problem i tend to agree with that the biggest ad accounts we run are pretty much run through like we have core issues that we target
It's the same type of person that's buying, but they have a different issue. Then you have different angles and different ways to enter the conversation around that issue. Then you have different formats to visually represent what you're saying.
And they're all kind of linked to what makes the most sense. So with agency, the good thing is it's way more simple than that. It's way more simple.
Because again, you probably have one or two ads that are actually good. And then you're essentially trying to just use a different format. Even if you're doing something like a tier list ad and it's like tier list ads of how to run your email marketing as an eight figure brand.
Yeah. You know, and you might have in -house C tier. You probably have someone who's that shit.
You know what I mean? So like even stuff that's simple like that, it's ripped from proven organic scroll stopping stuff. It's where their attention is going.
And then you're just infusing your winning pitch into that structure with an indirect kind of angle. That sort of stuff will work mixed with you have your direct offer ads, which will probably work mixed with, you know, you have some testimonial sale ads and you just fucking get like 10 of those. a week and you try to mix across those elements does that make sense most people on their ads that will literally just come up with 20 angles they'll make like quote diverse ads but then they'll physically all look the same like it'll be batch recorded in one spot yeah that's really bad yeah like when you see an advanced advertiser you see in their ad account that if you squint at it everything looks different yeah if you're looking at someone who's like maybe they've just scaled up randomly you'll squint at it and it will be like everything it's like a sea of sameness in the ad library that's really bad like you want to you want to need different formats I think that's probably the easiest, lowest hanging fruit.
But at the same time with the format stuff, I've even been talking about it probably too much. Like even for example, we have an ad account spent about 30K a day, Oz, and about 22K a day, US. That ad account is dominated by probably two to three formats.
Yeah. And maybe three or four core issues. And we'll just like have a winning format, really, really learn about like, why did that work?
What was the exact style of the copy? And how can we recreate that exact same thing, but in a diverse way? And if you think about that, if you actually execute that, it will...
be very successful that's the number one thing like how can i make something still diverse but still maintain all of the principles of the winner yeah so the principles might be like visual hook included this the idea is around this it appeals to this person with this sort of angle so i could replace that with something else stephen georgie posted a breakdown of a winning ad on twitter as well it was basically like the winning ad and i don't think he used the exact angle but it was like the winning ad was can blueberries solve issue or something like that you really analyze the winning ad really actually fucking try and really be intentional about it.
And then you'll be able to recreate it way easier. Usually people will remix it too close because they'll be like, oh, I'm going to make a remix. Sometimes that can work.
but it's better to be able to like get the fucking tease the principles of the ad out. Then you fucking parlay that into something that's the same, but the algo looks at it as different. Maybe it appeals to a different type of person and all that sort of stuff.
I think the meta lesson there is that you should index pretty highly on like creative strategy and learning that skill. Because again, most people in high ticket type space, like they don't really know. And it's not really a thing, even in like the biggest masterminds or like, it's not really a thought thing because a lot of people kind of cope.
with a brand like if they've got a big high ticket personal brand you don't really have to go super deep on that stuff yeah i only really got into that when i when i started taking like b2c like health offers info ads very heavy on offer and sales team yeah really heavy it was basically that like you're not going to micro optimize your way million to month with an info and i think that's pretty true like you kind of just have to have a killer offer that's like growing market of problem or solution aware people meaning like ai biz op was a big one like at the start of 2025 -ish.
That's a good example. Like the offer is there. It's kind of first to market for a big AI biz op and you have a really good sales team and you have a really good ad strategy.
Yeah, you're going from like nothing to like crushing like pretty quick just with that stuff in place. So yeah, info ads is interesting. You just have to crack it.
Like it's because the TAM is there. If you really crack it correctly, like it'll kind of just work. And I kind of think that's an edge for any agency or B2B or high ticket person that can really learn that and apply it, especially in Australia.
It's like you've discovered FIRE and everyone. still trying to like not have like they don't have fire you know that's kind of the whole of australia in general like even the brands in australia they're not really that high level direct response like they'll have a ugc brief and it's like oh my god i just found this product like it's amazing i'm gonna fucking make spectacular ads and like have really high standards and it's the same with organic to some degree.
What did Nathan do super well? Just had high standards and was just like, I'm just going to post 10 times a day. You don't have to do that, obviously.
It's going to become a time thing pretty quickly. That was the second point that we kind of identified. I think the takeaway of don't over -index on angle testing.
Maybe you test like a couple of new angles, but it's going to more or less be the same stuff. And you want to focus really hard on the hooks. The other thing people in high ticket ads don't really do that well is really focusing on like the hook and the scroll stopper.
Like sometimes people just go straight into like the educational. They'll go straight into the problem in the hook. I've also had a really good experience.
to like actually make the hook like do its job, which is like stop the scroll of the type of person that I want to see. That might be like a result dump. That might be something a bit snappier.
That might be something where you're calling out a common solution. You got to try and think where is the customer's consciousness at? And then just think, how can I take like a proven hook quote unquote from organic?
A lot of the best creative strategists that I've spoken to have said the same thing as well. Like they'll go on like TikTok and shit for health offers and like for B2B stuff, you can kind of just focus on Instagram. So yeah, and then in terms of the system, you want to have a Kanban.
It's like not started, in progress, recording. recorded, edited, that sort of stuff. And then you probably won't even need that.
If you have like one to two people helping you with the editing, an advanced editor who can like kind of pick up where you're leaving off, like you just drop a file in Slack and they'll just like produce it. The one thing you want to make sure is that they have enough B -roll and like all the wins photos and like they have all the logos and all that stuff.
You want to front load that. One person said to me, they were like, that's so good, dude. Like this editor just has access to all my stuff after like six months of working with them.
But if you just do that at the start, it will also just greatly, you know, improve. of your experience and then you will have editors that just suck at like b -roll selection there's a yeah the fine line between like an edit like super expensive like you're almost overpaying and like a super cheap editor that just doesn't even know how to spell like words on the captions i like um if it's just captions like i'll find like a va but if it's like a proper edit i'll probably look to pay like 20 20 to 50 bucks an edit which is like i think that's pretty reasonable usd you can also get guys that do like proper animations and shit it's actually not a good thing to just use the same style of edit like if you just have 50 ads that are the same style all about it and they're all like hyper production it's like Number one, they'll look the same.
So like when people see them in the feed, like they don't look different. They stop scrolling. Like a big part of the fucking whole strategy on meta right now is how do you like stop the same person's scroll with diversity as well?
If I see an ad that looks the same as an ad I've already seen, I'm scrolling even quicker than before. But if I see an ad, for example, that's a completely different format, it's from a different page and the angle is like similar, like it's the same thing that I was looking at before, but it's different. I'm going to consume that ad because I almost don't know.
that it's associated with that person which is exactly what you want because essentially what you're trying to do in an ad is like you're trying to get them to consume the sales argument like unwillingly so like you want them to like grow in awareness without realizing they're being sold to and then you give the pitch and like they're already in and they're like going down a slippery slide to like buying in terms of paid like different pages and you probably don't know you get too sophisticated with that like even like different locations like you said like if i'm recording in my bloody living room or office living room slash office all the time then yeah it's gonna look the same like the same backdrop so yeah like if you're doing a round of ads like Like sometimes I'll record some ads here and I'll just do like some over there, some over here, some over there.
Might put a jumper on, might do some in the other room. You know, might do some with like a higher quality setup. And it's actually not that hard.
Like it's really not that hard. And the other thing is if you're selling to people who are sophisticated advertisers, they'll look at it and be like, yeah, you have like really good ads. But it's just because they look and feel diverse, which everyone's kind of like freaking out.
What do you think is going to be your problems with like actually executing this stuff? Because I think you're in a great position. Rev's good.
You do need a level of urgency behind. getting stuff up and running half the value of meetings like this or chatting to someone you haven't chatted to in a while is like it returns you to being very intentional about the actions you're taking for a time this is how i felt after that meeting or that event where i was like really lit up i was really intentional about what i was doing with my time i was really motivated but that only happens every three months how can i do that every week like is there a feedback loop i can install every week or something like that that can like bring me back to that in terms of people i've consulted like that's probably why it's actually useful is like it actually just gives them 20 30 minutes a week to like sit down and like look at the stuff and then plan and then do it you can also do that on your own like you can just cross out time to do that yeah like weekends obviously have a lot more time on my hands like there's not much stuff going inside slack and that's the time to really yeah reset analyze stuff like what's worked one of my mates parents um was the ceo of a like a 50 000 person company and they said
or she said she would do that for two hours a week during work time so not on the weekend not at the end of the day like during like high leverage deep work quote -unquote it'd be like thinking time i said the same thing to her when when i was saying like oh yeah that's a good idea i'd probably throw it on the weekend like that's the best time and she's like no because if it's not like in your actual go time you almost won't take it as seriously you need to see it as a really high leverage thing the thing that will probably come up for you is like oh but i want to answer slack or i want to do this i want to do that but you wake up fucking early bro you wake up early like i've seen you Hammering Slack at like 5 a .m.
pretty consistently. So it's like, what's it going to take to break the gravitational pull towards Slack? Slack is my biggest op -ed.
If anyone's like smaller or like watching this as like a smaller agency, even now that I've hired that senior person, it's still going to take a couple months for her to fully take over. And I'm still putting out little fires. Like obviously I'm still growing a little bit, but you're never going to get to a point unless you actually intentionally close out Slack and do the things you're supposed to.
do if you're not gonna do it on a weekday just schedule on a weekend like if you know already like it's not gonna be possible for me to like schedule like an hour to have a feedback loop on a weekday just do it something's better than nothing man yeah for sure in that time analyze the ads properly you know analyze all your organic properly look at what brought you like the most shares saves and follows plan the next week's list of formats and ads one thing people don't do on their ads is like have an actual report yeah when you run your own ads like you won't make yourself a report that's fucking really dumb because you'll be running the ads but you're not actually like analyzing like you're not looking through and like, hey, this is what I'm finding this week.
Like that's kind of a bit of a no brainer. You know, like the same way you'd report for your clients. Like why are you not doing that for yourself?
Like I've already built the system for the email agency. It's just about why aren't I also doing that for ads? For sure.
And like, why aren't you trying as well? Because I think you'd probably be able to figure out most of this stuff if you were really like fucking like, yeah, I'm going to fucking log in. Because the other urgency point for people targeting DTC is post like Friday and stuff like kind of slow going for the most part.
The growth that you'll get for the year is probably going to mostly occur. during the next like how long till like friday like two months yeah like and the other thing is that it's it's also very operationally heavy setting up all the client stuff oh yeah you're not gonna have that much time like in the next two three months you'll probably blink and it'll be like november and you'll be like far and then it's november and no one's really doing that much in terms of like signing with new agencies then it's gonna be january like all right great That's six months from now.
So you could be in like an amazing position post Black Friday. What do you view as the action items? Obviously, again, that creative system in place, getting a shit ton of editors on the Slack channel.
I think that's a big thing. Obviously, yeah, like you said, editors are really spotty. Sometimes they can do shit work.
So just getting just a lot of different guys I can just easily reach inside Slack. And they should be pretty chill with that as well. Like they're all contractors.
They're probably working with bloody 10 other people at the same time anyway, as editors do. I think that's a big one. And then, yeah, making that time just.
every week to review prep as well. Cause yeah. like we've learned from like watching Nathan and stuff like that, like just having that prep, I think that's a massive thing that we're just not taking off time.
Yeah, so we got the editor. Then the last thing you were saying is, yeah, get someone to actually post that out for you. It's probably like just a mindset change from like, you don't really want to be too much of a doer of these low leverage tasks.
Like you want to be like deploying people to do shit rather than like just doing it. At some level, it's good to like, you know, maintain your margin a lot and like not hire people just for bullshit tasks. some point as well so you kind of want to put stuff in place to protect that as to not nuke with tasks that are just not necessary for you and the other day it's just like a math problem like yeah how much can i afford to spend hiring this out and what's that going to bring back like in my opinion to go back to like the og 1000x funnel like the people that you need to execute that.
Like the whole thing, like Instagram, YouTube ads, lead magnets. The main hires that you need is like, I think having a YouTube agency is good because like they'll come up with better ideas. They'll give you better thumbnails.
If you have an in -house designer and you have good ideas yourself, do it yourself. but I think it does give you a general uplift at the start. Then you probably wanna have a bunch of editors for the amount of volume you're gonna have to push on ads and organic short form.
Then a lot of the rest can be done by you. If all you're doing is like ideas and recording and like creating. stuff like in terms of legion you wanted to be really focused on like the actual production of stuff that's going to be out would you think it's still high leverage to keep me myself as the guy that's coming up with the ad ideas um i don't think i can hire that out for like a cheap price for someone that actually cares or actually understands yeah it's probably going to be too expensive i would probably just do that yourself yeah because like editing posting it yeah i could be hired out pretty cheaply i would say for you like i would definitely learn creative strategy at like the highest level possible because it also help you understand your clients better yeah copywriting is like level one being a marketer creative strategy is like the ascension like you know like pokemon now you have like a charizard level one level five when you ascend as a copywriter like you become a creative strap yeah it's like the next level above so it'll come pretty easily because you're obviously copywriter like it's not like you don't know how to do all that shit already like how do you um look at an ad account and interpret what you should do next like just stuff like that that you probably haven't prioritized before because it's like your own business that it's going to grow and that's probably like yeah something to look into maybe
That's why all the brands are trying to hire creative shots. YouTube agency. I think that's another good play as well.
Because from what I understand, they bring you the scripts. They bring everything, the ideas. It's just up to you to record.
That almost like motivates you to actually do what you're supposed to do. Because otherwise, then you're losing money if you're not recording. Yeah, you got to get some good guys though that are like project management wise is usually what makes YouTube agencies fail.
So I work with some guys. They just give me ideas, edits and thumbnails. Boys at Creo Social.
They're pretty good to work with. Good guys, good team. Got some good accounts.
so much i would vouch for them just because i like the way they work like a good integrity that's probably the main thing and then like skill wise they're pretty high and then the rest is like because again with an agency what you want from any agency is like them to get you an incremental boost compared to what you'd be able to achieve on your yeah so like some people view an agency as they're just gonna fix my youtube strategy like they're just gonna fix it and like get me all these crazy results but really they'll get you like like any agency will get you like 10 to 20%, 30 % boost, unless you are a retard and they're insanely good.
You know, like sometimes that'll be the case. Literally like it will be the case sometimes. And we've been in cases like that as well.
But yeah, you kind of want to view it as like, you still have to do a lot of shit. Like you will still have to come up with the alpha, like in the video, like the value in the video and you know, your story, your proof, that's the stuff that really is like the juice. And then the packaging is like very important to get you that boost.
And sometimes packaging will have a big impact. Don't get me wrong, but that's kind of the way I view it. Again, it's focused on production of like ST.
and then you'll be good, yeah. Like that solves ads. Is that pretty clear?
I'm trying to think if there's anything else. Like honestly, I think the only thing for you outside of that would be like, how are you gonna stay accountable to these things? Would probably be like the big domino that would offset, like that would then put everything else in motion.
Cause it is pretty comfy. Like you're doing a good rev, good profit. You're in Australia.
So it's like people complain about cost of living here, but like if you have a good business, like it's not that bad at all. So yeah, it'd be like staying motivated, staying intentional, staying grounded. One thing that works for me on that front actually is like mental cues of like, what you're going to do.
Like, you know how when you're on a run, you might have like a random knee pain or back pain that starts like halfway through. I just made myself a mental trigger that when that would happen, my brain would immediately respond like, do not quit. And it would just keep going.
And it would work so fucking well. So anytime X happened, immediately I would think why, like without fail. So like when that happens, it's like a manual override of the desire to quit or get distracted or do something else.
So I would think about something like that. I got that off Conor McGregor, I think, because he would do the same for like fight camps. He'd like have a word that he was really focused on during a period of time, like capitalize or shit like that.
For me now, the phrase that I repeat to myself is like, put your foot on the gas and never take it off ever. And that just worked because for example, it's 3 p .m. and you're fucking tired.
You've been working for 10 hours already. It's like, put your foot on the gas. And it's like, all right, lock back in.
That could be the fucking solution. If you can find some shit that you really resonate with, that's just an idea though. Like I've literally just lost that spark.
I'm just coasting. Like I'm getting clients. It's tough to get back.
Sometimes you just have to wait it out. That's been true for me. Like sometimes you got to just wait it out and just get refreshed.
And then it just happens one day and you just fucking back. It's like, holy shit. Yeah.
Like I remember listening to, cause obviously we always look up to like Max Sturt as the bloody goat of email marketing in terms of like, yeah, even agency growth and stuff like that. And I remember him saying like, he was like freaking out if he didn't like post that day or something like that or something didn't get posted.
Like he would actually like freak out. I want that bloody urgency and that spark, you know? And I just need to get that back.
You know, it's like a mental. training thing yeah like it's like it's actually no it's literally a mental training thing like you have to train your brain to think a certain way matt actually had a thing about it matt larson he called it like thought patterns like train your thought habits yeah that's kind of the same thing as what i'm saying like read it every day or something yeah like there's studies done that if you read something or write something a hundred times like it becomes true in your brain and the guy that said that was like i hated public speaking and i just trained my brain or like i just said i love public speaking i remember reading the same thing i'm like yeah no some some people it's legit like yeah some people think it's woo -woo but like there was a time i was really trying to focus on attention to detail i was trying to write out like i have really good attention to detail it was really weird but like fucking after like a week like people started nosing they're like bro like how the fuck did you catch that shit like how did you find that like that small thing and the way that i determined that attention to detail was something i wanted to like focus on was because i was thinking about like what are the traits that i think i need in order to get to the next level and to like what are the beliefs and
traits that i really want to take on that i think are very very common for the most successful people i know that was a big one so i was like i'm just gonna train myself to think that way i'm just gonna like i'm gonna train myself to really focus on this stuff probably the best way to do it is like in the morning my current morning routine is like wake up go for a walk get coffee maybe write some shit like that maybe like really quick and then just like start working more or less i find that stuff very very effective like really really effective because you just have to do it like for example if you if you just wrote out like today i'm gonna focus on like just the highest leverage tasks.
Today, I'm just going to focus on this stuff. It would just start that auto suggestion where like you start doing something that auto, like your brain auto goes to the thing you're meant to be doing. That will happen from the writing or like from like doing the intentional thing and like staying on track.
When I'm like not at the desk, like my thoughts are always caught up with like, yeah, those small fires. Like, oh, how do I do this? Oh, this client bloody complained about this.
Now I need to fix this. But what you're saying is, yeah, be more intentional, actually write it down or intentional with your mornings because your morning set up your entire day. other thing that was quite useful for me is just letting go of like trying to control shit too much and quite literally like for example if we have a client that's like maybe they want to churn or something or like we've got some fire that needs to be put out i might get stressed about it for like a second but then i'm like it's like when you get turbulence on a flight yeah you can't do anything about it you just need to let it go what i do on a flight is like i will make peace with my dad if it's bad turbulence i'm like all right i'm making peace and i'm just gonna sit back and chill yeah literally it's like if this is how we go out i got plucked out today like it's fine you know yeah that's It's a good frame of mind sometimes.
Like exactly like you said, like a client's about to turn around, you're like stressing about it. I just need to give this to the team and be like, dude, that's what you need to do. And I'm just going to stick out.
And you know what? Like I think Max actually posted something like this the other day. He was like, you know.
You stress a lot for someone that tends to figure it out all the time. I'm jumping in too quick. Yeah, like you get shit to work and you've got to just kind of be a bit less afraid of like, if this whole shit goes up in flames, like what am I afraid of then?
Like what am I really like trying to avoid? Like what's the thing that like underneath the client training, like what am I actually freaking out about? And then just like let go of that.
Be like, you know what? If they think that we delivered a bad service or like if that's what you're worried about or something, how can I just make sure that I still feel good about how I operate and how the team handled the situation? as long as we handle the situation in a way that's integrous and the client didn't get fucked you know they can still say afterwards that you know what we tested ads with those guys and it just didn't pan out but like they were great to work with they had high integrity and everyone tried their best we just didn't crack the offer as long as you can say that yeah the actual results is just like everyone knows in business that you're taking risk like if you're running ads and you have an unproven offer or you make a mistake or whatever that's just a part of business and anyone that doesn't understand that in my opinion is not that smart you just need a team that's going to able to execute at a high level and be responsible for their stuff and if something's going wrong they'll just like tell you and fix it you always gotta think about like what's the worst case now good frame of mind like i think of is like if the client's about to churn i'm just like you know i'll let my team handle it i'll let go and even if they do churn then that's actually a good thing because now we have more time to focus on the other clients and make sure they don't change yeah the one caveat with that don't take it too far that's actually what happened to me i almost let go mentally like too relaxed too distant yeah like like too relaxed because i was like yeah the team you know just trying to find that
It's like Goldilocks, you know, it's like Goldilocks. Everything's like Goldilocks, like too hot, too cold. And it's like, you get it just right.
And some people just spawn in and they just have that kind of balance for certain things. And it's just their natural talent with copy or ads or like selling. I was always like, I would just kind of get it.
Some people are a bit more, they just kind of get how to make a client happy or they just kind of get how to deliver or have ops, you know, run really well. You're going to find your shit and then try to replace yourself. And all that stuff's like the common trope of like hire for your weakness and blah, blah, blah.
I think you've got a good grip on it. I'm pretty bullish that you'll be able to scale up. It's just going to be a bad.
how quick you do it and how intentional you are yeah intentional is a big thing yeah i think and kind of how you feel along the way like if you feel like i'm not trying that hard i don't really have momentum that's just going to make you kind of burn a little bit at a higher rate so probably even more importantly than anything else i would really focus on that mindset piece and trying to find yourself some sort of auto suggestion or mental cue that will bring you back that will probably like change your life if you do it like in a very big way that's my opinion at least from knowing you pretty well over the last few years like obviously since a thousand x from like i don't even know when you started but obviously you need a fuck ton of action to get started in the agency space and get your first proper team and clients yeah woo -woo stuff intentional stuff writing down what you need to do for the day actually starts getting a lot more important it's actually just being very intentional with your time like there's a guy who's a sales manager called um jack rocky absolute beast he was in like the seals or something like he was in the army or something and then he became a sales manager and he's just like kind of carries that frame of like being very diligent and then that sort of stuff he posted a thing that said uh everything you do has
to be intentional if you're taking a break or like you're on your phone like you should be intentionally doing yeah and you'll notice that like if you're answering slack or you're like getting pulled in these different directions you are not intentionally doing most time you are automatically reacting rather than like seeing the stimulus and then responding yeah and that is the actual thing like it keeps your nervous system in a fight or flight state which means you feel more stress you get sick more you burn out more you feel more tired at the end of the day you don't get to do the shit that you know you need to do your view of yourself will be fucking diminished and then that's bad you know and then you're like and then you're like well why am i even fucking doing this shit you know yeah and and that can kind of be a negative spiral in itself so i agree for you i think intention is a big thing i would almost build a mental cure around i am intentional with every second of my life that would be a good one for you to just like in your brain like just fucking tattoo that shit until you forget that you're even thinking it and it just happens that's a fucking action yeah because at the end of the day like
i know everyone else that's in this game knows what they need to do to scale post more get more ads out yeah that root cause of being intentional um i figured the same thing actually because a lot of the conversations i have are very similar and it's just that someone like again it's like a consultant like anyone who's viewing you from the outside that has a very objective opinion they'll usually just reflect back to you the stuff that you kind of aren't doing and they'll just kind of be like hey you like doing all this and then you'll be like And then you have to go do it.
And that's kind of like - I've had this talk with you so many times. Yeah, that's kind of like why, that's why like the info consulting space, like the way I view it now is that if I'm paying someone for coaching consulting, I'm literally paying them to like just do that. Like just like reflect back to me what I'm not being intentional about or what I'm not seeing.
And I know I'll get tremendous value. It's same like you pay a coach to make you lose weight. The info space now.
is actually not ironically, it is a lot closer to the fitness space than it used to be. Because it used to be like, you're going to get this crazy alpha strategy that's going to change everything because there's these massive arbitrages available. That's gone because it's too sophisticated.
Now it's a lot more like, I'm going to like... Get held accountable. The thing is, like I said, if you have that feedback loop where you like have the stuff you're going to check yourself on every week, you can basically solve that.
You can basically do that yourself. The other option is just hire a coach or a consultant. That's fine.
Obviously, there's tons of people that are pretty trustworthy. I kind of bias towards getting coaching, but not from like typical sources. Like I don't really like internet marketing masterminds and shit.
I prefer to have friends or have a meeting with a team member that's a trusted team member that I'll go over stuff with or have time on my own or write stuff down physically or write stuff down. on a document that stuff tends to be very very useful because you're just trying to find that reflection that you can look into and analyze sometimes that can be a human sometimes that could be a document sometimes it could be journal friend whatever it's all effectively trying to solve the same problem which is like clara and like in being so yeah it's a really interesting and true point we'll see we'll see how the info space pans out and you can also do it with ai like with a language model i tend to think ai kind of the problem with it in in those sort of cases is that it'll give you a really high conviction statement that is not always true so i don't like that as much So like the information source does matter a lot.
It's the same with a coach. Like I've had people tell me like really retarded shit after I've like paid them for consulting and I'll just reflect and I'll be like, that's a really dumb idea. Like that's just not gonna work.
And maybe that's because of a limiting belief, but it is what it is. Even this talk right now, like with you, I've got clarity. I know what I need to do.
It's just that little boost to hopefully just keep going. If I was to say like the most important things to take away from this, it would be get your auto suggestion for being intentional, 1 million percent. You can probably optimize your energy.
and focus based on like environmental cues so like diet routine sleep all that stuff and that stuff you already know but like i would actually do that i would also try to figure out what's going to get you that spark you might just need a two -day break you might just need to go to the forest for two days on the weekend and just be like i'm gonna get so fucking mentally refreshed so i can go again before q3 that'd probably be wise and then learning creative strategies is like if you do that you'll like the world will be pretty much yours though i really don't think there's anything else and then probably the last one would just be that feedback yeah like like getting a way to do that Because it becomes more important as you continue to scale because you just need to like look at that thing and be like, oh, that, that, that, but still, still, still, still, still.
And again, there's many ways to do that. Yeah. Any other questions before I let you go?
That's it, bro. Good.
The Hook
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A paid-ads agency owner and a creator pulling 5,000,000 monthly organic views spend forty-six minutes turning scattered content and no offer into one sellable coaching program.
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Twenty-eight time-tested ad angle types, grouped into seven psychological categories, mapped to what each one demands of a market's awareness and sophistication.
Jeremy Haynes breaks down what actually controls Meta ad targeting, why your pixel isn't as smart as you think it is, and the exact 'Thunderdome' testing system he uses to find the 1-3% of ads that truly scale.
Eighteen years after founding it, Pat Flynn handed Smart Passive Income to email marketer Liz Wilcox. The two of them, with host Nathan Barry, walk through exactly how the deal and the six-month reveal actually worked.
A live Q&A answer where a marketer walks through what he actually builds with AI: lead acquisition systems, and the four offers most businesses forget to create first.
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