2:17:43Jake Trinder · Interview
The Most Valuable YouTube Advice You'll Ever Hear
A two-hour studio interview with the 22-year-old who runs 100-plus YouTube channels, on why copied tactics fail and what the data is actually telling you.
October 4thThe argument in one line.
Publishing your own numbers every month turns a business into something you can audit instead of something you feel, because a loss only teaches you anything once it sits next to the goal you missed.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A solo or two-to-five-person agency owner who wants to see what a real monthly profit-and-loss review looks like before building their own.
- A service provider running retainers who has just lost one and is trying to decide whether to panic or keep selling.
- Someone who already tracks revenue but has never tied it to a written list of goals they grade pass or fail each month.
- A founder building an audience on the side of client work and wondering whether daily posting is worth the hours it costs.
SKIP IF…
- You want a tactical playbook. This is a retrospective, so the lessons arrive as asides rather than step-by-step instruction.
- You are looking for scaled-company finance. The numbers here are a sub-$20,000-per-month studio with contractors, not salaried staff.
- You have no tolerance for the personal half. Roughly a third of the runtime is a rental property, travel fatigue, and mental health.
The full version, fast.
A solo agency owner publishes his September in full: $15,600 top line across eight paying accounts, about $3,496 in business expenses, and close to $400,000 in lifetime revenue since February 2024. The structure is a five-part audit run from one Notion page. Finances, wins, concerns and lessons, life and property, then last month's goals graded pass or fail. September lost $3,000 a month in retainers and a $1,000 a month newsletter sponsorship, missed a $25,000 revenue target, and still counted as a workable month because the pipeline stayed full. The closing argument is that lead generation lags by months, so consistency on inputs is the only thing a founder actually controls.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:23
01 · Cold open and Q4 kickoff
A few days late because of travel. Consistency named as the actual metric of success.
01:23 – 05:32
02 · September by the numbers
Eight paying accounts, $15,600 top line, the expense breakdown, and the Monarch Money Sankey diagram.
05:32 – 09:47
03 · Wins: a one-call close and a full pipeline
A referral closes in one call, the enterprise healthcare project lands, Slack replaces scattered client comms, five podcasts recorded.
09:47 – 16:11
04 · Churn, a lost RFP, and a broken link
Two $1,500 retainers and a $1,000 sponsorship gone, a pharmacy RFP lost at the final two, and a call-to-action link shipped wrong.
16:11 – 19:58
05 · Twelve yards of dirt and an empty rental
Eighteen hours of manual grading around the foundation, a rental house with no tenants, and travel that cost a working week.
19:58 – 22:10
06 · Grading last month's goals
The previous month's list read out loud and marked pass or fail. Most of it failed.
22:10 – 25:04
07 · This month's goals and the funnel
A repeatable SEO process, two more website deals, the October 22 event, and a newsletter at 238 subscribers with a 63 percent open rate.
25:04 – 26:29
08 · Life targets and the Kentucky trip
Direct outreach for tenants, six gym sessions a week, 12,000 steps a day, and a weekend helping a friend move.
26:29 – 28:19
09 · An AI video detour
Higgsfield clips made from single photos of friends and family, described as the main source of laughs in a stressful month.
28:19 – 30:19
10 · The revenue chart and the honest part
Every month since February 2024 plotted on one chart, and the admission that the line correlates with his mental health.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A full pipeline is always a report on what you did months ago, which is why panic after a churn is usually aimed at the wrong month.
- Two $1,500-a-month retainers leaving at once removes $3,000 of monthly recurring revenue, and the reaction to that is a separate decision from the loss itself.
- A client who does not value the work tends to announce it through poor communication long before they cancel.
- A $1,000-a-month content retainer that demands 1,000 newsletter subscribers in thirty days is an expectations failure, not a performance failure.
- Paying contractors instead of salaries means a lost retainer becomes a cost you can cut in a week rather than a liability you carry for a year.
- Moving client communication into a free Slack channel removes the Microsoft Teams problem and gives every link a permanent home.
- A broken call-to-action link discovered mid-drive is an argument for a link QA step, not an argument for being more careful.
- Posting daily to a second channel builds the accountability loop that keeps outreach happening, which is worth more than the fifty subscribers it produced.
- Travel costs a full week of productivity, so an event invitation deserves the same scrutiny as a proposal before you accept it.
- Software and tools took 32 percent of all business spend in a month where contractor labor was the single largest line item.
- Grading last month's goals pass or fail in public is what makes the next month's list honest, even when almost everything is a fail.
- A revenue chart tracked month by month will map onto your mental health unless you deliberately build the detachment between the two.
- Lead generation inputs and revenue results sit months apart, so the only metric fully inside your control is whether you kept showing up.
What a month of real numbers actually teaches
WHAT TO LEARN
A month that lost $3,000 in recurring revenue and missed every stated goal still reads as survivable, because the review separates what happened from what it means.
02September by the numbers
- Report top line revenue, expenses, and account count together, because any one of those three alone will mislead you about the month.
- Software and tools took 32 percent of business spend here, which is the line most owners never look at until they audit it.
- Tracking collected revenue rather than invoiced revenue makes the monthly chart messier but keeps it honest about cash.
03Wins: a one-call close and a full pipeline
- A referral that closes in one call is not a sales skill, it is the compounding result of relationship work done months earlier.
- Moving client communication to a single free Slack channel solves the scattered-threads problem and sidesteps clients who live in Microsoft Teams.
- Over-communicating at the start of a large project is what produces the remarkable satisfaction later, not heroics at the deadline.
04Churn, a lost RFP, and a broken link
- Separate a pause from a loss. A client migrating platforms will come back, and treating that as churn distorts your read of the month.
- A client who communicates poorly and does not value the work is telling you the retainer is ending well before they say it.
- Agree on success criteria and a timeline before signing, or an unrealistic growth expectation will end the contract regardless of your output.
- Ask the buyer who rejected you for feedback on your process, because a lost competitive deal is the cheapest sales training available.
05Twelve yards of dirt and an empty rental
- Fixing negative grade around a foundation stops basement water at the source, which is cheaper than repeatedly treating the symptom inside.
- An asset that sits empty while you finish one more repair is costing you every month you spend perfecting it.
- Price a trip in lost working days before accepting it, because a week of productivity is a real line item against the relationships gained.
06Grading last month's goals
- Write the next month's goals as checkboxes you will grade out loud, because an ungraded goal quietly becomes a wish.
- Partial credit is allowed. Starting a community outline counts even though the offer is unfinished, as long as you say which part shipped.
07This month's goals and the funnel
- A process you are personally good at still fails at scale until it exists as weekly tasks with clear deliverables that someone else can run.
- Batching and scheduling content ahead of time is what survives a week of travel, while recording daily does not.
- A falling open rate on a growing list is normal, and the response is a re-engagement pass rather than a change in content.
08Life targets and the Kentucky trip
- Direct outreach to your own network converts better than a public listing, because referrals arrive pre-qualified and skip the unserious enquiries.
- Set health targets as counted inputs, six sessions and 12,000 steps, rather than outcomes you cannot control week to week.
10The revenue chart and the honest part
- Plot every month since you started on one chart, because the shape of the line tells you more than any single month's number.
- Expect your mood to track that line, and build the separation between business performance and personal well-being on purpose.
- The only input fully inside your control is whether you keep showing up, which is why consistency is the metric worth grading.
Terms worth knowing.
- Monthly retro
- A fixed review run at the start of each month covering finances, wins, losses, and goals from the previous month. The point is the repetition, not any single month's result.
- Sankey diagram
- A flow chart where the width of each band shows how much money moved along that path. It makes the split between income sources and spending categories readable at a glance.
- MRR
- Monthly recurring revenue. The predictable amount a business bills every month from retainers or subscriptions, as opposed to one-off project fees.
- Retainer
- An ongoing monthly agreement where a client pays a fixed fee for continuing work rather than a single project. Losing one removes that amount from every future month.
- Churn
- A client ending their ongoing agreement. Churn can be a true loss or a pause, and the two call for very different responses.
- RFP
- Request for proposal. A formal process where an organization invites several vendors to pitch, usually across multiple rounds, before picking one.
- Lagging indicator
- A result that reflects work done well before it appeared. Pipeline and revenue lag the outreach that created them by weeks or months.
- One-call close
- A sale agreed in a single conversation, with no multi-round proposal process. Usually only possible when the lead arrives pre-sold through a referral.
- Offer stack
- The full set of things included at a given price tier, written out so a buyer can see exactly what they get before committing.
- Re-engagement
- Deliberately mailing subscribers who have stopped opening, either to win them back or to identify who should be removed so the list stays healthy.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
00:29
“But I'm staying consistent and that is the metric of success.”
00:58
“On paper, everything is good. Day to day, it's been very up and down.”
05:37
“Lead generating activities are always lagging efforts. So when you experience a full pipeline, it always comes back to your inputs from months earlier.”
12:01
“Growing a newsletter to 1,000 subscribers in one month from zero is very high expectations. So just make sure your expectations match.”
19:31
“It's basically a full week of productivity loss, which I can make a lot of money in a week.”
28:46
“As solos, I think we equate a lot of our own self-worth with the performance of the business. I'm by no means free of that.”
29:15
“I am still convinced that the only way you lose is if you quit.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogystory
Hello, hello, it is October 5th and September is over. Welcome everyone to quarter four. That is just absolutely insane to say out loud.
But top of the month marks the time for my monthly retro. Again, a few days late on getting this in, but I think I have a valid excuse. I was traveling to Atlanta all of last week.
This weekend was just, last weekend, this week honestly was just crazy. But I'm staying consistent and that is the metric of success. So yeah, I'm excited to get into it this month.
As a whole, I would say very dynamic and a lot happened. Before I do these, I always go through my calendar, just my notes, review last month's retro. And obviously finances are a big part of this.
And on paper, everything is good and perceived well -being wise. Day to day, it's been very up and down. There was a few client churns.
There was a lot of travel. And it's crazy that I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate. When you travel, things seem to go super fast and super slow at the same time, which is maybe not the best way to put it or maybe doesn't make any sense at all.
I don't know. But I've got a lot to get into this month, and I'm excited to share with you guys. Um, September, 2026, eight paying accounts, top line business revenue, 15 ,600, which if we look at, you know, all of our past months is about average.
Um, we're almost at 400 K for the business and we will certainly cross that next month. So 400 K and, you know, two years is February 1st of 2024 is when we started obviously a little bit more than two years, but I'm. Proud of that, you know.
Something to, I mean, maybe not towards exactly where my goals are, but, you know, net on net, I'm focused on building a growable, sustainable business and enjoying my life, you know. So, yeah, top line revenue for September, $15 ,600. business expenses a little under 3500 so 34 .96 personal income 366 through dividend reinvestment stock portfolio things like that and personal expenses uh 2 528.
if we look at our sankey diagram which i've been loving doing and unfortunately it's really hard to keep all this eloquent because we have collected revenue and not everything is completely elegant in terms of the dates that everything transfers over but this right here if you guys have any sort of visualization of this is called a sankey guy a diagram and i use a tool called monarch money which will be linked below um if you guys are interested in monarch money been using it in every single video and every single retro that i record which i've been doing for the last 33 months 30 months or so so Yeah, inflow of this month, $28 ,000 out was $3 ,500 just business -wise, and obviously personal expenses aren't factored into this.
Pay for mortgage, utilities, gas, groceries, things like that are all personal, but business -related. Business expenses were the following, $1 ,735 to contractor labor. $1 ,129 to software and tools, $250 for networking and outreach.
That was the conference ticket only, I believe. So that makes sense. Travel and meals, $205.
Business rent, $125. And utilities and communication, $52 .10. So we did manage to, that includes the travel fees.
So hotel room, food while it was gone, gas. you guys can notice i tend to travel pretty lean and if you want to check out uh the youtube vlog we just posted i just edited a full vlog with the travel to atlanta super entrepreneurial 72 hours in the life of a locked -in entrepreneur that was super fun so you guys want to see the full recap uh check out that video i'll link it either in this description or in the card so that was fun um i edited that myself so Don't come at me, guys.
Bad editing. But my main metric of success was just posting it. Otherwise, I'll go back to Notion here.
No, go back to Monarch. Sorry. Otherwise, a reasonable month of contractor labor.
Most of that goes to Ali and Rhoda. Ali worked a bit more this month because he was engaged in a dev project for one of our support clients. So his hours were up about...
about double than usual so that's where that comes from and then rhoda is 320 per month which we cut her hours back slightly which we'll get back more into but i'm i'm okay with those numbers we did trim a little bit of fat on our subscriptions which was a goal for last month but yeah let's get into the wins and concerns so wins Business and revenue, about average.
A surprised client project ended up closing at the end of the month. So super fast sales cycle, came in from a referral, agreed on a price, one call close. And it's a really, really exciting and cool client.
Great fit for us. And I'm excited to share more about that because it's a really cool client and good budget fit. Sales are moving well with several clients in the pipeline.
I've been managing it well. I have made a few mistakes in terms of... Timeliness just because of travel and getting proposals out, but I'm very optimistic on the pipeline front And just a reminder that these are lagging, lead generating activities are always lagging efforts.
So when you experience a full pipeline, it always comes back to your inputs from months earlier. So I need to stay consistent on it, and this is good reinforcement. Finally launched a 2SP website and migrated them over to a retainer, which is nice.
And enterprise healthcare client that we're working with, it has gone really well. And I will say this client in particular was probably... was our biggest project -based client, and I have managed the project -based portion of this incredibly well.
Like, they are remarkably satisfied, over -communicated in the beginning. We changed our client communication process over to Slack, and that's been remarkably, that's worked remarkably well. It contains the, a great place to store links.
You can do it on a free Slack channel, and it works well, especially because some clients are on Microsoft Teams, and we don't have to worry about that. So yeah, good lessons there.
We'll be doing that moving forwards. Relationships and network. Atlanta trip at the end of the month to connect with Chris and Chris LaFay.
Both went well. Travel was very stressful, and it does always tend to be, especially for someone who travels very lean like I am. Again, if you guys want to know more of what I'm referencing, definitely check out the...
Definitely check out the vlog because it does tell a lot of these stresses. But that went well. It was great seeing them.
If I can pull up the picture of meeting LaFay and Dubois, two legends. Good to connect with them. Conference went well.
Reconnected with Nikhil over coffee. It was good to connect with him. He came to our networking lunch, our marketing leaders lunch a few weeks back, and we got coffee afterwards to talk collaboration, referrals, and things like that.
Met Megan Wimmers for an in -person coffee. Really good. Shout out to Peter Guba.
Really good long walking founder call. And I really enjoyed it. Learned a lot from this guy that really stood out this month.
Good way to get steps in. And walking phone calls are underrated. Really, really recommend.
Recorded five podcasts this month. Ezra McCarthy's episode was awesome. Big standout.
I'm actually going down to Kentucky to visit him next month. Some more on that later. Posting daily on YouTube felt fulfilling.
I have really enjoyed the second channel. I don't know. I'll be airing this on there, but I'm not sure if you guys are subscribed to the Andy the Marketer channel, but I've been really enjoying doing that.
I've dialed in the format using either Riverside or Tella to record them, and I've just remarkably enjoyed it a lot. I did fall off in consistency towards the end of the month. It's been five days since I'm uploaded.
Now that I'm home, I'm going to be prioritizing it a lot more. But I need to stay consistent on this because for me to continue to do outreach and share my journey. And I've reached escape velocity in terms of the format, and it's already grown to over 50 subs.
So I'm really proud of that, and I need to continue to do that. I kept going to the gym consistently, even with low energy. Something about my current workout routine is just not enjoyable for me.
I literally see myself looking at the time on my watch and trying to just get to 45 minutes. And I do push myself on the intense sets, but it's because I'm gaining weight and I'm bulking. And you don't see the results of your inputs because you just feel fatter.
i do really enjoy running i've enjoyed runs i've been trying to work on my mobility more as well but i need to iterate on format because it's just not enjoyable for me right now so yeah good good transition here to losses and concerns or concerns and lessons we had two clients turn this month both were relatively small retainers uh 1500 a month so 3k is effectively paused and gone from our pipeline one of them was a very long -term client who was clear that this was more so of a pause.
They're migrating website platforms, so the support work we do for them isn't needed during this time. So I'm confident that this will continue in the future. But the other one just wasn't a really good client fit, the other $1 ,500 a month retainer.
It was a framer retainer. They just didn't really value the work. They didn't communicate well, and I could just tell it was kind of a matter of time before this ended.
And I ended up terminating our... developer who was the lead point person on that project. And it's tough.
You have these hard conversations. And to be honest with you, I didn't take it that bad. I could have stressed out about it a lot.
I could have said, hey, this is where a good portion of our MRR is coming from. And I just didn't stress. We have a full pipeline.
We can continue. with higher retainers for better fit clients who are in healthcare, who we serve best. But yeah, it caused a lot of internal thought like, okay, you know, what retainers should we prioritize moving forwards?
And technically on paper, that is a loss, but I'm confident that we can get it back in more. So that would be the headline loss. The content sponsorship that I talked about last time, the newsletter churned after just one month.
And it wasn't a huge retainer. It was a thousand a month for three weekly newsletters. on Substack.
And this one I was not upset about at all. The clients, in my opinion, had very unrealistic expectations in terms of the growth that was going to happen with a newsletter in such a short time. So we were basically like a full -service marketing agency trying to grow that for them.
And when we first started, I really enjoyed the content. It was like finding, it was, there was a newsletter that was based off of finding novel websites and writing a short piece about them and redistributing them for a sub stack newsletter posting about it on linkedin but the amount of time energy it took to grow that just would not have been worth uh 1k a month of my time and i was creating articles on the weekend and to be honest with you guys the second channel is i would rather spend time producing content for the second channel and sharing that with you guys so that was another loss but It's a lesson to communicate better in the beginning and just align on expectations because growing a newsletter to 1 ,000 subscribers in one month from zero is very high expectations.
So just make sure your expectations match. So the same thing with any client relationship. We lost a RFP to a local pharmacy system that I thought we were great fits for.
they were local they had three locations and i thought we could have done an incredible job for them three it was a three call sales process ended up becoming the final of two and just unfortunate because we could have done a amazing job for them and i know we could have and i also built a decent rapport with the staff members there so i did have hopes that that would go through and it was a bit of a surprise to see that but um i did reach out to them asking for feedback on how we managed the process so A good lesson to learn there in terms of managing the sales process and lessons to be learned from it.
Operations and execution. We cut down two of our team members' hours just because of retainers and those being lost don't need as much support, hourly support from our developers. So it's technically a loss, but it just makes sense.
Honestly, a positive given the nature of my business model. We can control costs. We're not stuck with long -term salaries.
And that's why I love working with remote team members who are still very talented. So the right call, but still technically a loss. A stressful scenario.
As I was driving down to Atlanta, I created a dedicated landing page for the CTA on the ColumbusMarketing .org site for the VA workshop. And my bonehead put in the wrong link to the CTA page that was going to advertise my slides and get leads to the newsletter. Realized I put the totally wrong link into the CTA, both for the podcast and for YouTube.
So once that happened, I was literally driving and I was like, well, fuck, you know, nothing we can do here. Pardon my language. But that was unfortunate.
And I fixed it afterwards. 10 hours later in the car ride. It's like, what's the real point?
So unfortunate there. Daily YouTube posting fell off towards the end of the month. I was really good about scheduling these out, recording quick wins.
But all in all, we grew the channel to 50 subscribers in one month, which doesn't sound like a lot. I don't know that. But this consistency is going to be really helpful moving forwards.
I'm really looking to build that muscle and get better at content in general, get better at speaking to the camera, building authority, dialing in the format, and moving the business forward and using that as a funnel for the newsletter readers to be helpful for answering their job search questions and also to beginners who are freelancers as well.
Community offer still isn't finalized and the next event isn't even on the calendar. Every day invites goes out as costing me. So I want to get together the next Marketing Leaders Lunch and I have not done that yet.
So I am confident that I could get at least 30 new people to the next lunch and I just need to send out invites because we need to do it. It's that time of year. We need to get one out before, you know, next month is November and then much after that is December.
So it's getting to the holiday season and I want to do it while fall is still here and we have to plan out weeks in advance. I'm deciding on October 22nd, and before the end of this week, I need to have a full guest list and invites. I have a full pipeline set up here in Folk, and I created tags for all of the past attendees and moving them through.
So being consistent on that is a very high priority, and I'll probably spend a lot of time tomorrow making that happen. Life and property. Order 12 cubic yards of dirt, not mold.
whisper flow understand me dirt and i unloaded it all by myself yes i did and i talked about this briefly in the last retro but guys like it is quite unbelievable how much dirt that is like you can't even imagine how much and just to provide some tactical proof here i have actual photos so if we go here to when was this exactly month dirt yes behold your eyes on the dirt masterpiece here so this much dirt so this was taken from my um from my deck and i basically filled in everything around the house with this amount of dirt and i know it doesn't look crazy but the bad it's literally this right here this is an entire garbage truck like watch this this is like unbelievable how much this is full and i'm still not probably doing it justice but like this is just a ton and i filled it in all around the house because there was negative grade leading to the foundation of the house water was getting in the basement every time it rained and the best part about this is that it actually rained right after rained right after super hard right after he unloaded it so it was mud
and i got a tarp on it as fast as i could i ran to harbor freight to get this done and oh my lord guys it was two full days over memorial day weekend or labor day weekend just probably it was about 18 hours in total just two to three full days in there absolutely kicked my ass but as you can see there's some progress there and i did a full walk through when it was like you know dark at night just with everything here fully walked around the house literally so much dirt you can see the difference between the the dirt with water and then the dirt that was dry all the way around the house and to the back to probably two feet high all the way around the house so unbelievable that was completely stressful but i'm glad it's done it was good hard work the house still has no tenants because i I'm in this constant process of I need to fix this first before this happens.
I've already paid for the bathroom repair downstairs. That was $1 ,200. I've already ordered the dirt, unloaded it.
It's by all means ready to go. And the leads that I'm getting from Zillow are just terrible. Like people don't even read the description.
They request an application and they think the whole house is for sale for rent for $800 a month, which is just people just don't use their brains. And it's been a huge. migrating waste of time i need to reach out to my network and get referrals that way which i'm good at but i haven't been able to do that travel uh last one travel was incredibly stressful i feel like sometimes i get peer pressured into saying yes to events and i don't really identify whether they're a good fit for my business and i just get sucked into the whim of wanting to meet one person and i don't consider the consequences and this was an incredibly stressful travel trip It was 11 hours to Atlanta each way.
I got home at like 2 a .m. Again, watched that vlog for the full details. But it was remarkably stressful.
And it's basically a full week of productivity loss, which I can make a lot of money in a week. I can spend that time doing a lot of things. And I have to rigorously evaluate a traveling arrangement like that due to the productivity costs.
And we'll weigh that more in the future. And that's a good lesson. All right, action items and goals.
Business and life. Last month, going over last month, 25K revenue. We did not reach that.
Plan next event logistics. We did not do that. Begin community outline.
We kind of did. So I built a sales page for early applicants on the website. It's not really a sales page.
It's more so just establishing offers and pricing and inclusions. I need to get this rolled out soon. I did meet Melissa Fisher at the Content Adventure Conference this weekend, and she and Michelle Garrett and a few others that were at our first event expressed interest in doing some kind of a mastermind.
So I want to build out a circle community or a school community maybe and just get that into fruition. Dilara Casey I met this weekend also expressed interest in collaborating on some kind of a 90 -day course that we can use for entry -level people or people who are looking for a marketing job. that would be a very valuable resource and i just need to solidify the exact offer stack but the good news is that we made it public um so i think i think i'll give myself a check mark there because i did begin the community outline 12 youtube videos we definitely did that onboard editor i did that last night so that's a win trim fat on subscriptions we did do that i still have one more to trim we cut the moxie subscription and we cut the real room subscription and so that's 70 bucks a month back right there subscriptions are still too high though i'm not a fan of that begin new challenge with ezra we did not do that we finished dirt we finished we did finish dirt and leveling but we did not acquire three tenants visits and we did not have our finance sessions i need to text my finance guy eli and just have a session with him
uh talking about you know setting up a 401k solo 401k for the business all this other stuff and i just need to do that so we did not require any of our live goals which is unfortunate and we really didn't acquire any of our business goals either which you know a lot a lot of surface area for improvement this month though we have really dialed in goals um build a repeatable seo process i still feel like we've got our web process down I still feel like we're just winging it when it comes to SEO, which is really unfortunate because I'm good at it.
I enjoy it. I've got a team member, John, who's very skilled at it and very responsive, does good work. And I just haven't built out the functions in ClickUp when it comes to project management, Slack, you know, to...
really operationalize it and have default repeatable weekly tasks. And I just need to do that. I need to either talk to Sam or one of the community members and just create a repeatable SEO process.
And obviously things change really fast in terms of AI search, but just some kind of a weekly cadence for each of our clients that are on retainer and establish that moving forward and just have a framework to work from. that people that our team members can clock into that have clear sops and deliverables and really build out that side of the business so that's a big one close at least two more website deals our pipeline is full so i'm confident that we can already we already have multiple 3k mr retainers that are in pipeline and being proposed to right now so confident we can close at least one to replace some of the last the lost revenue from this month finalize the community offer host the event for october 22nd get the invites out this week ideally tomorrow keep the second youtube channel daily by batching instead of scheduling post ahead of time by bashing and scheduling ahead of time i want to upload every day this month well starting now upload every day this month do newsletter outreach every day that channel is working i'm having rhoda work from linkedin sales navigator and sending um
sending linkedin outreach and it is working remarkably well so we're going to continue doing this and check in on our subscribers here just to show you guys what we are up to and refresh quickly here up to 238 subscribers so it is growing we got a few from the content adventure conference this week i built a landing page for it which i am Pretty proud of that kind of just matches the existing site I did a little bit of work on for the SEO on the main website as well But this is a nice little opt -in get a confetti animation boom and then you get the welcome email just kind of cool Love building and ship studio love this website of the branding shout out to Jason Turner for the great branding on this one Um, so yeah, we're still have a high open rate, uh, 63 % that is falling as we grow a little bit.
So I want to make sure that we're doing re -engagement and making sure that our warm visitors are subscribing. So that's important, but yeah, onwards with our goals, uh, pre -launch QA, um, for every piece of content. I'm not overly stressed about that, but that's a good thing to add.
Lifefront, get new tenants for the house, start doing direct outreach. I have several people that are based here locally that would be very good to reach out to. Just, hey, you know, looking for, it's a good hormonesy sales approach.
Hey, this is what I'm looking for. And they could be direct fits of the offer. But if they know anyone, then it feels less salesy.
So I want to reach out to a lot of people here in Columbus. And if you're in Columbus and you know someone who would be a good fit for a house, hit me up. Would love to have you.
Got a great room for sale. You know, I am very laid back. Coolest guy I'll ever meet.
If you just don't get on my bad side. Need to get some housing tenants in here. Getting a tenant for the house before winter makes it harder.
Some reason that I added it twice. Health targets, six gym sessions a week, 12 ,000 steps a day, and tracking macros. And one mindfulness session every day.
Because why not? Add that on there. It can only help.
I want to use a Kentucky trip to help Ezra and actually unwind. This weekend, I am headed to... Somerset or Somerset, Kentucky, to help my friend Ezra McCarthy, who's a guest I mentioned on the podcast earlier, help him move into his killer new house, which I'm super stoked for for him, and help him do that stuff, meet his family, probably go on a run, crash in his basement, and do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of stuff.
So, by the way, Ezra, I have to share this, but in the Scaling Studio Mastermind, and sharing these AI -generated videos. I don't know if you guys have seen these, but this is just...
These are just inexcusably fun to make and I won't share with you guys how much I spent on the tokens for these, but all you do is give it photos and Higgs field will create videos like this.
I'm having way too much fun with these so shout out to Higgs field not cheap but I mean all I did was give it these photos right here I gave it this photo of Sam and I gave it this photo you go see the the photo of Ezra that it used as well anyway I just gave it a photo of Sam and Ezra and did a remarkably good job right here give it that photo of ezra and i made that video this photo of sam uh this is the amigos rap video that i made with those characters i made one with me and my mom too which again just an ungodly amount i sent it to dad here but me and my mom.
Bro, I'm sorry. So if you guys are interested in that, check out Higgs Field and give it a quick spin because that's been, haven't laughed a whole lot this month due to all the stress, but those were the sources of a lot of my laughs. Last thing I want to show you guys before we sign out is this.
I put together this for a presentation that I gave to Otterbein entrepreneurship students. And it is a demographic chart of all of my revenue, all of my months of revenue that I've been tracking since I started on February 1st of 2024. And this correlates very, very sharply with my mental health.
And it's unfortunate that... As solos, I think we equate a lot of our own self -worth with the performance of the business. I'm by no means free of that.
We still have a couple more months to add on to here. Both of these have been good months that have been up a little bit. This month was actually a little bit down.
Looking at this, it's not been easy. It never is. I am still convinced that .
you know i'm gonna make this work either way um and i just needed to create that objectivity and that detachment from business performance business well -being and personal well -being um i've started to pursue uh dating a little bit uh i've downloaded a dating app called hinge which i imagine you guys have heard of and i'm getting way too personal with you guys my god but stuff like this i've put on put off for a long time just because i've been focused on building this business and obviously like i said this is very transparent and none of you guys are interested in it but um yeah i am starting to diversify on the life front a little bit i want to start playing pickleball and just kind of finding myself finding out who andy is beyond all this stuff because i put way too much into this sometimes and um yeah continual growth experience moving forward so um Way too transparent, but I hope you guys enjoyed this retro.
Subscribe for more daily updates like this, and I'll see you guys next month for October's Retro. Have a great Q4, guys, and let's get after it.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
There is a version of the public monthly retro that is a victory lap. This is not that one. Four minutes in, the number on screen is $15,600 and the host calls it average, and the hour that follows is mostly a list of things that did not work.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:20model
The five-part monthly retro
- Finances
- Wins
- Concerns and lessons
- Life and property
- Action items and goals
One Notion page per month, always in the same order, opened by reviewing the calendar, the notes, and last month's version of the same page before writing anything new.
Steal forany solo operator who wants a repeatable monthly review instead of a vague sense of how things are going
05:37concept
Lead gen is a lagging effort
A full pipeline today is a readout of outreach done months ago. The practical consequence is that a good month is not permission to stop, and a bad month is not evidence that the current inputs are failing.
Steal fordeciding whether a slow month means change the approach or keep the approach
12:01concept
Align expectations before the contract
The newsletter sponsorship died because the client expected 1,000 subscribers from zero in a single month. The fix is agreeing on success criteria and a realistic timeline in the proposal, not after the first bad report.
Steal forthe scoping call on any growth or content retainer
13:21concept
Contractor-first cost structure
Hours rather than salaries means capacity moves with revenue. Cutting two team members' hours after the churn was described as technically a loss but structurally the thing that kept the month safe.
Steal fordeciding between a hire and a contractor when the revenue behind the role is not yet stable
24:13list
The three-tier community ladder
- Free tier: job board, newsletter, playbook library
- $1,200 tier: masterminds, in-person events, online community
- $4,999 tier: team access, flat rate, billed annually
A public pricing page that lets a free subscriber see the paid rooms above them. The offer was still unfinished at the time of recording, which he counts as a partial pass rather than a win.
Steal forturning an existing free audience into a paid membership without building the whole thing first
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
30:07subscribe
“Way too transparent, but I hope you guys enjoyed this retro. Subscribe for more daily updates like this, and I'll see you guys next month for October's Retro.”
Single ask, eleven seconds, placed after the most vulnerable segment in the video rather than before it. No pitch for the paid community despite having shown its pricing page minutes earlier.
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.
