James Camp (2 Exits, $30M+ Strategy Firm): I Failed 1,000 Times Before My Big Exit

Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Jameson Camp. How are you doing today, sir?

Good, man. I'm excited to be here. Excited for 2026. Like I was saying before, excited to not be sick. We're pumped. I'm going super viral in Pokémon Twitter, which is the least important thing to me in the world. But dopamine is always fun. So yeah, I'm good, dude.

Yeah. Awesome. So, James, I was going through your Twitter past couple of weeks and I saw— I think it was on your caption on your bio where you said You've sold two businesses and failed a thousand times. And in particular, when I started diving into your letter, NanoFlips, and seeing what you do, from my understanding, it's more so that you buy and sell online businesses. Yeah. So how did you get into that space?

Purely by accident. And like the question right now, right now I'm mostly doing advisory on like buy-side advisory. And like sort of looking for, am I going to go build something from scratch again? Because one of the things I sold, I built from scratch. The other thing I sold is something I bought. And then I've sold like a bunch of like small blogs and stuff, like $10,000, $20,000 things, but like actual meaningful exits. Like I sold a business to Open Store. I was their first acquisition. That was a business I bought. And then I sold a business to a public company. I built that from scratch and we built, we bought some other stuff along the way in that, but how'd I get into that? Like, Who knows? I mean, that's the irony of my life. You know, it's like I've just wrote this whole thing about how I just like have just like thrown spaghetti at the wall and I have just like a generalist who has like horrific ADD. And then I really believe like in this, I think I'm going to call my new, new, my new newsletter Modern Renaissance. Like we are looking at the rise of the generalist and polymath in a way that couldn't be existed before. Right. And because. You know, I was always like beat up for having ADD. I mean, like my beat up by like society, my parents, school, like, oh, you should focus, you know, and ironically now being interested in a ton of things, like when you can just execute on them immediately with AI and in this future world, I think we'll be rewarded for. So I got into it because I sold a business candidly, you know, um, and I went through that process. I learned a lot through that and then I bought a business and that sort of sent me down that rabbit hole and I wrote about it on the internet and people started following me for it. And then people were like, why don't you tell people how to do this? So it sort of was all by accident, I guess.

And how many years did it honestly take you? Because I feel like for myself, I'm in this journey of making money online and like 2019, I had this dropshipping store that for the first year and a half I was just eating shit. Like, Hell yeah. I couldn't figure anything out for the life of me. I was trying to sell Bad Bunny sunglasses and dad hats, and I couldn't make one sale until I think about like 2 years in, I finally found the right product with bucket hats. I figured out how to use ads and I made— it wasn't anything crazy. It was like 600 sales in Australia and it was like $15,000. But that was kind of like my start. And through that I've been like trying and failing, trying and failing. In your own journey, how long did it take you to finally figure something out and get going?

So candidly, I'm 37. I hate to admit it, but I am 37. And I just like always was very curious and very money motivated. I think it's because I didn't grow up with money and I grew up around people that had money. So I started blogging when I was like 15. And like the first thing I had go viral, I was like 16 and I made $35 that day. Hell yeah. And I was like, whoa. I mean, dude, this is also for context. I'm, I was 16 with inflation. This is 20 years ago now. Right. I'd say probably like $60 from like $70 in today's dollars. And I was like, holy shit. You know what I mean? It was just like the coolest thing ever. Um, so I had some early wins in that regard where I saw that could work. And I built this little ad network that I sold for a very small amount of money when I was like 19. It wasn't big, but it felt like a win. And I blew it all in nightclubs and I became a nightclub promoter for 7 years. I worked for Tao Group and Butter Group, and I just like literally stood on a banquette chugging a bottle of whiskey and texting girls for a living for like 7 years of my life. It was like really— at 21, I would have signed a contract in blood. By 27, I was like, this is the worst job I've ever had. How do I get out of this? And I sort of went back to internet marketing and built this financial media business we sold. Point is to say that I really believe— I was writing, like I said, writing about this this morning. It took me like 10 or 15 years to find like my sweet spot into being able to be a generalist and, and be able to use pattern recognition to know where to throw the spaghetti. You're always throwing spaghetti against the wall, right, when you build something. Like you said, you tested lots of products, right? Like, that's always going to happen, but you probably have a way better idea of what wall to throw spaghetti at now, right? And so in the very beginning, you have to just like just get data. You just have to try tons of things and fail like a ton. And you have to recognize that, that, that data, that failure is just datasets coming back to you to tell you how to better be better at pattern recognition for what is going to work in the future. So I feel like I'm just hitting a real stride at 37 of like, I'm going to build something really cool. And I actually see like this chapter of life as the summer of life, like 37 to 60 is like, oh, Like I'm actually plugged into people. I actually have enough wind under my belt that people respect me. I actually know what works and I actually have some money now. And so, uh, I hate to say it, but like 15 years to get it, but I think that gets compressed in AI future is where I was going.

Sorry. Yeah. I mean, to that point, I mean, I think I heard a stat that Warren Buffett made like 97% of his wealth after the age of 60.

So yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully for my sake, please let it be before 60.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

It's compounding. I mean, it's so silly. All these things are just tropes, right? We learn all these things. We don't, they go in one ear and out the other when we're kids and we get over like, oh, what? Like it really is compounding interest, right? And you have to recognize that like knowledge and your effort, it's very easy to see in math on a spreadsheet what compounding interest does, but that also happens with your effort in life, right? Like your network is compounding, right? And some of those people that were like just taking swings with you when you were 20 are now also 40. And have raised $200 million, right? And so your network becomes that much more powerful and the doors open up more, much more easily.

Yeah, I agree. And I feel like I had similar mentality when I was maybe 15. I was like, oh bro, for sure, I'm going to be a millionaire by 20 or whatever. Right. And then it's like, all right, now I'm 30. I'm not there. I'm like, okay, well, I'm just understanding part of the process. Yeah. So to your point, James, like you said, you created a blog at age 15. You sold an ad network at age 19, and then you also hit up on something that's important that you talked about getting datasets to validate, like whatever business you're working on for yourself. Sure. You know, your bread and butter right now is buying and selling businesses. How and like what data do you look at to validate the business that you're buying is legitimate? Because for myself, I look at it as if I'm like downloading pirated music on LimeWire to figure out how to buy a business here. So just kind of walk me through that.

So I think that it's just— so, A, part of that data pattern recognition is like you have to lose too, right? You have to recognize what is likely to not work, right? And this is— so this is where that irony comes in, right? Like, you want— you, you're praying, your hope is that you learn pattern recognition through winning. Well, you do in some regard, but it's pretty invaluable or non-valuable— not invaluable— non-valuable data If you don't know what doesn't work too, right? So you also need to know what doesn't work. So I have just tried enough things to recognize things that do not work to understand like CAC to LTV ratios that are important. And then I've made enough things work and I don't mean work in massive ways, right? Like the two big wins I had, I sold a financial media business in 2020 for like low mid-eight figures with a, with a partner. And I owned less than 30% of it by the time it was mostly stock, whatever. And then we bought, I bought a hearing aid brand and sold that a year later. That was a company doing a few million dollars a year. So I don't want to pretend I'm not like, my data recognition, my pattern recognition hasn't come from like billion-dollar transactions, right? But what I mean to say with that is that like in those process, I probably had 1,000 things. When I say 1,000 failures in my bio, some of them were absolute zeros where I lost $10,000 of my money. Some of them were things that made me like $800 and I realized just were not, the juice was not worth the squeeze. So I've now learned where the better monetization opportunities are. That's really my thesis on buying things, right? Is like there is meat left on the bone that has not been optimized yet. Right. I'm not a true large private equity guy. I don't think about redomiciling businesses for tax purposes, right? Like, I mean, one day that'd be cool. That's just not my space. But when it comes to internet marketing, I'm a strategist at my core. And so I can look at an internet-based business and tell you, this is under-monetized. These email flows are missing, right? This creative is bad. The retention models attached to this are bad. And I can say, oh no, no, no, this, the LTV on this is not big enough for us to go run paid, right? So that's just the pattern recognition. And the only way I know that is because I've tried and I've lost my money trying before. So the failure part, the irony, and this is one of those tropes that has only clicked for me at 37, is that like the failures are just as important as the, as the wins if you want to like be able to take giant swings to make much, much bigger wins. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that does. And, and I think for myself too, something that also registered recently was just having a real understanding of like, I guess the reps and the volume I needed to do to actually get some results. And I could give you one example, uh, for myself with this whole personal brand thing. For the past 2 years I've been doing this personal finance bootcamp and I was trying to do this 2 years prior, couldn't figure anything out to actually make sales. And it was just one kind of component of going on TikTok Live and I was getting a ton of quality leads and it's, it's kind of also putting myself in the perspective that things are always evolving and changing. So what worked with me in 2019 with Instagram ads didn't work for me last year, but it's always just trying to figure out what is currently working.

So, well, you touched on something that's like a huge lesson of my life recently that like is super important. And I want anyone should know this. Everyone should know this is that you have this, there's a fallacy when you're building businesses and probably in all of life in general, but I've never, I've only had a real job for like a year my whole life. So it's very tough for me to think about like under any other context is that you think that you've, once you figure something out, you then just juice it, right? You're just like, oh, this works. That's how you think scaling works. You're like, "Oh, once I find this ad that works, I will just, instead of spending $20 a day on it, I'll spend $1,000 a day or $10,000 a day." Right? Never. Proformas are fucking bullshit. Excuse my language, right? But like, projections are worthless. They are, I mean, not worthless. You have to build them, but like, it's not true, right? And so, you think, "Okay. Well, I build this process and I hire someone to run that. Then I build this process, hire someone to run that." And specifically, I'm a marketer, right? So, you can relate to this, right? Like, if ads are the easiest one to think of. When I make this ad that has a 3x ROAS, then I can just put more spend behind this and I'll keep getting 3x ROAS. Well, eventually that creative dies. And so the big lesson I've learned here, there's a great quote, actually Tom Hanks quote, but it's this too shall pass.

Right?

And what I mean by that is this is bad, it'll pass. This is good, it'll pass. But you, what that means, so I've recognized I have been on Twitter since like 12 years, but really tweeting, trying since I sold my business in 2020. So 6 years now. I can't believe I'm saying this. Between 2020 and 2022, before Elon bought it, I managed to get to like 50,000 followers and like 30,000 email subscribers because I understood how to go viral. I understood what hit, and I was writing about one thing specifically. Maybe 20. I forget when Elon bought it. My point is, for the past few years, the algorithm has been horrific. I still stuck it out. I was gaining like 300 followers a month. They finally just changed the algo again. A couple of months ago, a little bit, and a big, big amount 2 weeks ago. I've done probably 3,000 followers in the past 7 days on Twitter. That's more than I've done in many, many years. My point to say is I figured out how to make it work. It's a little more TikTokified, it's a little more FYP, like you either go mega viral or you don't. But my point is to say that what I've recognized is this too shall pass. This algorithm will change again. So, my lesson here for me has been like get while the getting is good. Right? Right. Because it will get bad again. I will lose my ability to just go viral on command. So I might as well hammer it, spend 3 hours writing pieces this morning and get everything I can out of it while I can. So while you can hammer the ad set that works, do it because that creative will change. The algorithm will change. The edge will change. And the AI world, the edge changes faster than it ever has before. You know, you used to have this knowledge arbitrage for a lifetime. You would get an engineering degree. You know, the World Economic Forum estimates that the half-life of degrees is like 5 years now, that within 5 years, you'll basically have to relearn all skills inside something. Holy shit. And that's much— that's not even our corner of the internet where things are moving at the speed of light. I'm saying every 6 months, you better refresh on what's working. So anyway, I digress. I could just get pretty hyped about this.

It's something I think about. No, I mean, dude, that— what you just said was just so spot on about like The thing that worked doesn't last in perpetuity. If in 2019 I made $400 off my dropshipping store with that ad, like that same ad set, I legitimately, I remember myself thinking, holy shit, like this is it. I made it forever. I could always make this amount of money doing this same thing.

Uh, well, you have to, the moment, yeah, the moment you realize that though, it's like, I remember I got, I went to 5 high schools. I got kicked out of school a lot.

Holy shit. 5 high schools is crazy.

Dude, 5 high schools. I dropped out of college second semester senior year with 8 credits left. To this day, I never finished. And I'll never forget one of the principals that kicked me out of school. There was this girl, Lydia, who had cut chemistry class with me. And I said, "How come Lydia isn't getting expelled?" She was like, "You know what, James? Life is unfair. And the moment you accept that, the easier it becomes." And that stuck with me forever. Life is unfair. And it's true. Complaining about how unfair it is doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help you at all. Right. So the next lesson to tie that in what we're just saying is that like the moment you recognize that your edge will disappear, that whatever's working today will not work tomorrow, instead of crying and moaning about that, being mad about it, the sooner you accept that as a reality, the sooner you learn that you should go in deep and hit that as hard as you can while you have that opportunity and be prepared to pivot and pattern recognize into what the next opportunity looks like.

Got it. And then, so Right now in 2026, with that being said, right, like, is there a specific vertical in online businesses that it's more so like, oh, this is the one that we should allocate more time, whether it's like a newsletter or a SaaS business, or do they all work in their own ways?

I mean, candidly, they do all work in their own ways. And I think that's like one of the important things for people to recognize. Like, you know, I think the only thing that's truly dying in front of my face is like something I dedicate a lot of my life to and which made me frozen for a while, but which is like basically media through organic search. I do not think that like long-form blog content lives on organic search through Google much anymore. Right? Like I, I own a soccer blog with a partner and like we used to get so much traffic for like, what are the dimensions of a soccer field? Why, why, why would Google give me that traffic? Right? AI can absolutely answer that. Right. And AI Overview has answered that. So with that said, media is not dead. Media is— you see it on Twitter every day. You see it on TikTok every day. Media is bigger than ever. It's just that it's been decentralized into people as opposed to these sort of giant hubs. Now, if you had to make a bet, I mean, it's the obvious ones, right? It is like there's a secular trend that is AI, clearly, right? I think that there are many, many, many businesses that don't know how to implement AI. I think that a lot of people are thinking about like, reduction of headcount, when I don't think that's the future. I think it's more about enabling of headcount, right? So, you'll have less headcount because as you grow, you won't hire more. Org charts get wider and less vertical because each person can do the job of the people below them very easily. But yeah, agents, I mean, it sounds so silly, but like, I think about how do we make bets on workflows, agentic workflows that we then implement for flat rates, and then we update them every now and then. It's not the traditional SaaS model, but it is like, we'll implement these agents in your business and they're gonna need updating every now and then, right? They're gonna need structure, IT management type stuff, right? So for $50 grand, I'll come in and I'll implement an agent in your business that will allow you to not hire 4 people next year as you grow. And then we'll come back every quarter for $5,000 a quarter and update them and make sure that they're working perfectly within your workflows. And It's a similar model, but I think that's sort of how I'm looking at possibly like the next big bet on what to do.

And for someone that's just listening to what you just said when they tune into this podcast, is your thesis more so to have individuals just start completely from scratch, or do you feel like there's some secret sauce in finding a business that's already launched and has maybe already clients, leads? Like, because I know that's your bread and butter, right? Like buying and then selling the business.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think though, but you have to understand, like, this is a function of algorithms forcing you into something and just radical candor, right? It's like, I have made very good money buying and selling things, made, I mean, millions of bucks doing buy-side advisory for acquisitions, right? But like, I've also, the biggest win in my life was going from zero. I mean, that's unequivocally, if you want to have a giant win in your life and you do not have money, the asymmetric bet is starting from zero, right? The problem with buying things, you have to have money, right? That's the big— but if you have zero or $5,000, I mean, you can buy something. I'm a huge fan of people buying a little micro SaaS, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, and changing it. I think a lot of people have the biggest hump for them is going from zero to one. Right? And so that's a huge, huge opportunity to skip that. Anything that we get to— it's hard to explain my framework of thinking here, but anything I just told you, you could do for a business as a service to launch from zero, you could do for a business that you buy as well. Right? Just like, what are the processes inside of this that we can implement? I would just urge everyone to go mess around with Claude and Manus and Claude Code and like, it's just the opportunity. It's just, and it's fun. You start realizing you can just build shit. It's fun. And you'll start seeing how you can do that inside the context of either business that you work at, you start, or that you buy.

And for yourself, right through the experience that you've had, Is there something that's specific that's like one of those things that businesses always kind of sleep on, whether it's like the shopping cart, like following up with people or getting quality leads? Is there like a couple that you would say these are the ones that are consistent?

Yeah, the lowest hanging easy win fruit is almost always an email. It's almost always in retention, like without fail. Everyone spends all their time, it's sort of like fulfillment, right? Versus like versus sales and marketing. I'm a marketer, right? So my gut is like, I want to chase the cool, fun shit, right? I want to make new creative on our new ads. I want the dopamine hit, right? But like, which means everyone's like this, right? Um, especially most entrepreneurs, we have like a tendency to have ADHD, to like sort of jump around, to be very dopamine addicted, right? So you end up with all these people who are not actually worrying about retention immensely. Without fail, the most common opportunity I see is more emails, right? Is more email flows, better SMS flows, better retention, right? I mean, you know, essentially, everyone's worried about their CAC, right? Well, the CAC is actually irrelevant if you have a big enough LTV, right? And so people aren't worried about LTV as much, right? It costs much, much more fucking money and effort to acquire a new customer than it does to get the same customer to spend more money with you. Right. And so that's really where people miss out a lot. A lot of the consulting I've done Um, and implementation I've done has been about like email flows, right? It's like, especially with e-commerce brands, my God. And then mostly founders because they're all on their own because there's so much emotional attachment to it. When you build a dropshipping is different, you're pretty unemotionally attached to dropshipping. When people build brands, I don't want to email too much. I don't want my customers are going to hate me. That's no one's fucking thinking about how much you email you more than you do. You know what I mean? It's just not true. Right. You know, like I know people doing $100 million a year that on Black Friday sent 5 fucking emails. Holy shit. You know, I think that the question you need to ask yourself is, is it more important to make money and be right? Or is it more important to, to like have your ego massaged? And for each person, it's a different answer. But yeah, so I'd say retention models, i.e., email, SMS, community building. Like, how do you suck? Not to sound like such a capitalist, but how do you suck more dollars? Out of a customer, you know, is like the easiest, easy lift to pick up. Better monetization. That's a thesis even with like when we were doing content sites, right? It's like different ad networks, right? E-commerce, it's better retention. Better pricing normally is a big thing too. You find that their price elasticity is much more— price is much more elastic than you think. People's ability to pay more is much more than you think. Like competing on price as a function is like a very, very shitty way to, to, to market. So like we bought this hearing aid brand, like the biggest thing we did, yeah, we worked on some new funnels and new creative and stuff, but the biggest thing we did was like double the price. Yeah. Right. And like, it wasn't that like we were being predatory, we were actually just being competitive what the actual people were, other people were selling the same products for. Mm-hmm. And that doubling in price, if you wanna be sort of altruistic with your capitalism here, the doubling in price allowed us to actually be profitable enough to scale these campaigns massively. Which allowed us to get more product to help people into their hands, right? Like, you know, if you believe that you sell a good product, selling it so cheaply that you cannot afford to run your business is not an altruistic trait. That's just you being a fucking moron, right? You'll make— you can actually get more product into people's hands that change their lives if you make enough money to do so, right? This is the thesis of capitalism and pharma through capitalism, all that shit anyway, right? Like, We can go down that path longer, but I could go on that rant for a bit. I apologize.

No, all good. And, and to that point, right? Like I was watching that YouTube video you had on price elasticity and talking about the blue hearing aids. And there was one thing that you said that kind of caught my attention and something that I've struggled with as well with the blue hearing aids, right? Like someone's making a purchase one time, right? And that's like, it's a one-time thing, right? And, and my, my situation right now with the Personal Finance Bootcamp, it's a one-time purchase. So like, is that something that you're analyzing now as a, like, for a business? It's like, do you want something that's like subscription-based? Or how do you, how do you actually make a shit ton of money with a business that sells a product one time to one individual?

You become a fucking phenomenal direct response marketer. And I would never recommend anyone runs a business that has a single hero SKU that never makes, that makes the customer not return. So we can talk about it offline, but I'm positive that what you're selling has a ton of opportunity behind it. Just a personal, a personal finance bootcamp. There's plenty of other things can be sold to these people and in a way that helps them. Right. So we can talk about that if you're stuck, happy to. But I would highly, highly, highly— a good— if we're looking at e-commerce, for example, you want to sell a product that creates, that solves a problem for sure., but in the solution of said problem, it should create a new problem for the customer. And that new problem should be what you're selling in an OTO, an upsell, one-time offer, right? An upsell. So I sell a dog food dispenser. I'm making this up right now, right? My dog wants to chomp on food. I can't feed him when I'm not home. I wanna give him treats. Boom. So I give him treats. It automatically dispenses him a treat every hour when he goes up to it to make him happy. Well, what's the new problem? The new problem is I need treats for the dog food dispenser. So the upsell is treats, right? And that's not even a great example, but do you see what I'm saying? Like there should be like, that's, that's magic. That's how to increase an AOV very quickly is these upsells should automatically, you might sell a personal finance bootcamp. I don't know what's inside of it. Right. But let's, so let's say you're teaching people how to manage their money, obviously, right? Well, maybe the new thing is like, well, now I need a QuickBooks, right? I need QuickBooks. I need some sort of way to actually do what you're implementing. Well, now that I've given you all these frameworks to follow and rules to follow, you need a way to automate it and make it happen. The upsell for you right there would be very clearly the— do you see what I'm saying? Like, the selling your product creates a new problem for for the customer. And so I think that also with that, it said like, yeah, for— I consult a beauty brand, they're crushing it. It's consumable, right? I mean, e-commerce, what are the rules? Beauty and supplements, que magnifico. You want things that are demonstrable on social media. I want to be able to show a transformation. I want it to be consumable so you have to come back and buy again. I would love it to be a gross margin over 75% or 80% so I can get first order profitable, which is very important if you're bootstrapped instead of venture-backed. Because again, you're competing in an auction. We're talking about Meta, for example. You're competing in an ads auction or even actually in organic TikTok, Instagram, anything. You're competing in an auction there as well for retention, right? But in general, like when you're competing against people that have better backend or venture capital, it doesn't matter which it is. If they've got a better LTV, more lifetime value for that customer because they sell them more products, they can be unprofitable on acquisition. So they will win in that auction against you because they can pay more to acquire customers. There's a great Dan Kennedy quote, which is that he who can pay the most to acquire a customer wins. And it's pretty much true, you know?

Got it. And one thing I was going to ask you, let me see if I had it written down. Okay. So back to the point that I made about the blue hearing aids, that maybe it was like a one-time big purchase. I had kind of the understanding that it's like, well, if it's like a one-time big purchase, the idea is to maximize, I guess, sales to then sell that for like 2 to 3 times its value. Do you also go into businesses with the mindset of, okay, I want to build this up for a year or 2 years and flip?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so I mean, candidly, I don't think I've ever had like an actual framework to it, ironically. You know, I mean, everyone asks me that. People like, how many businesses, how many sites you flip in a year? Like, I don't fucking know. Like, I just been so— I mean, I just like approach life like a bull in a china shop. Do you see what I'm saying? And then I look back on it and I recognize what the patterns are. And that's how I started writing about it all. Um, but yeah, I mean, you would want to wait at least a year because most of these businesses at this size, they're not hypergrowth businesses. They're not tech businesses. They're valued at trailing 12-month EBITDA multiples or SDE, seller discretionary earnings. So you're going to want at least 6 to 12 months of your new revenue of the new profits that you've created, right? Before you sell it, because that's where you're really making the big upside on a small business like that is the EV value on the flip. Right. So like I buy something for $300 grand, if I double the money it makes, at a 3x, it's probably only making $100 grand a year. Okay. You know, that's fine. So that means over the next year, maybe I double it, maybe make $200 grand. But when I double, when I double that revenue to $200 grand, probably $200 grand, and I'll go sell for $600 grand.

Yeah.

Right. So I'm making another 3 years of future value on the exit. Right. So you want to do at least 6 to 12 months of changes implemented before you go sell it again. I think that answers what you asked.

Does it?

Yeah.

No, it did. It did. It did. And I asked to that point earlier that you said, right, about like, I guess, figuring out what's working and stuff like that. Trends come and go. You said Twitter was kind of, you know, cooked for a while. Now it seems that you're figuring something out here. In terms of ads, because I've heard you talk about it a lot on your YouTube channel.

Yeah.

Is this something that still works for you in your businesses to this day?

Yeah, I mean, I've run very little ads right now. I consult on some brands that are running a lot of paid. Yeah. But I really believe that, like, it's really clicked for me recently that, like, people really discount how important it is to be good at organic. Mm-hmm. Because it's free eyeballs, it's free top of funnel. And to be honest with you, the world has shifted in the type of terms of creative that works really well. Good creative that works feels organic, right? And so getting great at organic content, things that naturally go viral, things that naturally get shares, things that naturally convert, that'll be your best paid creative you can ever fucking run, right? So I would urge people to get good at organic. I mean, yeah, Meta and Google are the best things that's happened to small businesses for all time. Right. Huge fan of paid, but I really don't think like, it's just a fucking grind. Excuse my language to like go in and be like, I'm going to be so good at run— dude, I'm not great at running cold traffic. I'm also a little bit removed, candidly. Right. I'm 37, dude. I'm not, you know, like I was like trying to make for a newsletter for me, some ads or something the other day. And like, I was in Canva and I literally messaged someone on WhatsApp from work. I was like, bro, I'm just like not at a place in my life where I'm spending 3 hours. I don't even mean to be cocky. I just like, it's just not a good use of my time, right?

Yeah, for sure.

Like, to conceptualize and think about what's good and oversee 100%. And I think it's important to be able to get your hands dirty, but I was like getting so frustrated. Like, and that's just not my superpower. My superpower is not aesthetic creative. It's just not it, right? So like, aligning shit and like reformat, just not me, you know? Yeah. So anyway, I hope that, I hope that answers that. Now, I've never been like the total paid monster. Like, I know guys who are just like the, the, the, the, the trope is my, my, my boy Lucas had this on Twitter the other day, but like DR Demons, right? Like, is what you're calling it, right? Like, like, I'm not that dude. Like, there are dudes who can just— I was a big affiliate marketer as a kid, but it was a different world. It was 20 years ago, right? The landscape, apropos what we spoke earlier, was so different. Like, today, dude, like, I'm okay with paid. You mean like I would absolutely layer paid on top of anything that we're doing? But like, that is the gasoline to the fire that organic creates. Right. And that is really what I believe from the way that I approach business. Just because there's like, it's just the under-monetized opportunity still. Like it just like, I did a post on Twitter yesterday. I mean, I'll open it right now real quick, but if I go to like my analytics, I won't stay on it too long, but this month, monthly, I've done 5.4 million impressions on Twitter. That's crazy. Right. Like that's pretty powerful, right? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's, I would've paid a lot for that from this, from the demo that I'm hitting right now. Right. Even at like a $10 CPM.

Right.

You know, like I would've, I would've spent $25,000, $30,000 on that, you know? And I would bet my demo's higher quality than a $10 CPM.

For sure. And I think we touched up on this before we hit record, but you know, you're talking about that Lego post that you, that you were talking about, Pokémon, that you could buy that, flip it later for like 10 years. Yeah. What's your kind of a thought process in finding things that are gonna be absolute bangers on X?

So this is what I'm trying to quantify. If I could quantify it better, I would have the most successful content marketing agency in the world, to be really candid with you, right? Like, but I do think that anyone can get decent at it. The problem is, actually talking to a friend about this last night, apropos of me trying to figure out where I wanna really dive to, I'm like considering buying, I don't want to say what it is, but there's some guys I know that are buying like a big old 4-letter domain and website right now that it's like doing 1.85 in EBITDA a year. Like I may partner with them on it or do I want to go build an agency from scratch? Who, I don't know. Right. I'm sort of exploring a couple of things. Right. But part of this conversation last night was like, how do I quantify what I'm good at and take people? So I don't think I could do this for like $3,000 or $5,000 a month with 30 clients, which is the only 40 clients, the only way it'd be useful to me. Because for me to really recognize that stuff, I'm just entrenched in our corner of the internet, dude. Like, I just understand like subconsciously, I'm trying to quantify it better. Like, what are the patterns that like people in our corner of the world that see the world through a similar lens than you and I, maybe we don't see the exact same, but clearly similar lenses, find interesting? And then how do we tie that into me, who is this generalist who like builds businesses and sells them and like, helps brands grow. So I think it's about recognizing over time, spending enough time entrenched in a culture to recognize what they find interesting. I mean, I could tell you very specific things like hooks starting with numbers are really powerful, right? People love a number. You want a very strong, direct contrarian take, right? Like the Lego shit works, the Lego Pokémon shit works because there's a collectibles world already. Like you're deeply diving into a very entrenched space of people that are super passionate about what they do. It's also super controversial. I can't tell how many people have told me to kill myself over the past 24 hours, right? Because they're like collectors, right? They're like people that love Pokémon, and they think scalpers are monsters. They think that, you know what I mean? Like, this is— it's destroying this industry. By the way, the Pokémon set I said people could buy and hold for 10 years is $650, limited one per person per order. It's 6,700 pieces. It's not meant for kids, bro. It's Lego. Already capitalizing on millennial nostalgia, right? It's not— I'm not stealing a Lego set from an 8-year-old, bro. You know what I mean? You know what I'm trying to say? Like, you know, it says 18+ on the box. It's not meant for children, right? Like, it is capitalism at its core. And we can get into a different conversation about sort of scalping and how that can destroy things, of course. But my point to say, it's like, mechanics, yeah, you want to— with Twitter, for example, Um, with TikTok, with Instagram, really bold, strong hooks. The hook is 90% of it. Hook and then retention. You want people to feel like they're having an epiphany that they need, that they wanna share with people. They wanna feel like an expert by sharing it as well. Right? That's a big, big piece of it. Um, you wanna create controversy. I mean, we can talk about, again, more, more logistical, like I said that they used to be able to buy a Millennium Falcon for 400 on the, I did an Instagram on this last night. Actually, TikTok marked it as like promotional, so throttled it. But Instagram, it's like 100,000 views already or something, um, about the same thing. And it's like everyone in the comments like, well, actually it was $4.99, you know what I mean? It's like you can like misspeak on purpose to get people to comment, you know what I mean? Yeah, rage bait a little bit. Yeah, be careful though because you don't want it, you know. So those are some of the mechanic stuff, but like what's really important is the bit more intangible, which is like understanding how the culture speaks that you're a part of. Like if we were talking about compliance software, I would have to speak completely differently. I would have to entrench myself. The reason that's why I don't have a content agency, I could only have a content agency if I had like 4 clients that paid me $25,000 a month each. Right. Right. Because I would have to spend 2 hours a day. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like really, really, really working on their content and it could probably translate into millions of dollars a year for them. Yeah. But anyway, I dunno if that makes sense. Like you have to understand the culture of your subculture. Mm-hmm. And what hits for them. And then you can apply the mechanics of like, What's trending currently? What's a good hook? How do I get someone to stop the scroll? On Twitter, if you're going longer form, a big thing I work on, I think a lot of people don't think about is like the— you can write long form, but there's a 280-character limit. So I always try and re-hook you before the 280-character limit. So you want to read more, right? Right. That's like a big— I don't see anyone talking about that. I actually never mentioned that to people. That's a big thing I do. So you have an initial hook. It makes you stop the scroll. But then before they hit the read more section, you should make them want to open that read more section, right? You want to be re-hooking and repaying off. Hopefully that makes some sense.

No, it does. It does. And I guess like to, to kind of wrap things up, Jameson Camp, so all the content that you do on the letter and nano flips and Twitter and Instagram, does this all pretty much funnel to offmarket.so or is there something else?

Like, is that the— No, dude, you're great at fucking research. You have like done the deep dive. Dude, that's so funny. There's nothing else, man. I mean, the way that, the way that, like, I mean, you've just caught me at a very interesting moment in my life, which is, I hate to say it, 37, probably midlife crisis, right? Which is like what I really, you know, I had the quarter-life crisis at 27. I stopped being a club runner and moved to Southeast Asia and I like started, I came back and I built a financial media business, right? Like that was, that was the quarter-life crisis. I'm going through a sort of midlife crisis that I think is, is happening also because there's renaissance that we're going through. Right now with AI in the modern world. And I do believe that the original Renaissance, Da Vinci was not a painter. He was a painter, a sculptor, an inventor. He was everything. And that is what we are going through today. You can be everything, right? The generalists win. The polymath wins. And that's clicking for me. And I want to build something over the next decade. But so to answer it all, no, the ecosystem all ties together, but the hub was always NanoFlips, right? It was always nanoFlips.com. So if you want to hear me talk about buying and selling small internet businesses, I will always talk about it on nanoFlips.com. From that, customers got sent to off-market, customers got sent to our workshops, customers got sent to one-on-one consulting with me, right? And that was that hub there. And now I've got Jameson Camp, which is just my personal website. And just because I want to start figuring out what it is next, and I don't want to be so— part of the problem I ran into with NanoFlips is being so interested in so many things, as you can probably tell from us chatting for 40 minutes, it becomes very tough to be so siloed into only talking about buying and selling small internet businesses. What if I want to grow beyond that? What if I want to work on half billion dollar transactions? Well, that doesn't really work for telling you that you can buy a SaaS for $80 grand, you know, or an e-commerce business for $200. So that will exist and it will continue to exist because it's changed my life astronomically in buying and selling small businesses and working in that space. It's changed my life drastically, but I will either buy something much bigger or I will go build something from scratch again. And hopefully I'll find an operator to run NanoFlips for me, with me. But like a lot of the home that I built like literally 3 days ago or 4 days ago is Jameson Camp. It's just, you know, that's my personal website and that's— and I'll write the newsletter there. I think I'm going to call it, you know, like a modern renaissance and just yap about all this nonsense we yapped about today. And if you want to talk about buying and selling small businesses, you'll be on Off Market, you'll be on NanoFlips and everything else will go there. So we'll see though.

Well, let's go, dude. Dude, I just wanted to ask you one more thing because you mentioned something pretty profound, right? Like You talked about how you've been kind of a, a renaissance and trying out a bunch of different things. And myself, like, I always feel like I've been like this as well, just always trying new shit. And there's kind of two camps, one that, and I think majority are in Camp A where they're just like focused on one specific niche versus Camp B is like, you know, kind of do what your mind wants and kind of like figure out your journey as you go. Like, what's your take on being hyper-specific on one niche versus kind of just—

I spent 3 hours writing something this morning specifically about that. If you give me a second, I'll read you a couple of quotes from it. I'm gonna post it today. I would love you to— I'll send it to you after this also.

100%.

100%. 'Cause it's really, really, really, for me, like a really personal— hold on, let me see if I can pull it up. I'm just gonna read the beginning of it, you know, 100%. They spent years telling you that you were broken, that your brain was wired wrong, that you just couldn't focus. I'll never forget being 8 years old in a doctor's office, my parents holding me down, forcing Ritalin into my mouth because the world said I needed to be fixed. I'm here to tell you that that diagnosis is obsolete. That thing they tried to medicate out of you is now your greatest competitive advantage in the new world we're living in. So I hope that sort of leads you into where I think this is going, right? I do think that like, you know, that this is changing, you know, like this is the ADD generalist polymath that I am, that you are because internet democratized information. AI democratizes the use cases of said information that you can be that person. You can take a shotgun approach, try 50 things, and then find the thing that interests you that you dive into and be a sniper on that for a bit. And then you can pivot every 3 to 6 months. And if you don't, you will fuckin' lose because the world moves so fast today. And I think that it is our time, right? Like, it took me a long time to be successful, so to speak, because the world was not built for that. And I think that for many people, the world is built for that now, right? So, of course, specialists are great, but I can know everything a specialist knows today, could have for years, but I never knew how to apply it. In the next 2 years with AI, I'll be able to apply whatever any specialist can apply. The question will be who has taste and who has distribution? Who understands that from 10,000 feet up how the puzzle pieces should go together that fit within the culture that you're looking at, not just how to make a puzzle piece. Does that make sense?

That makes freaking a lot of sense, dude. James, man, this was an epic, epic conversation, man. I just wanna thank you for your time today. It really means a lot. I know people are gonna gain value from this. Where, where can people find you? What's your best, uh, place? Is it jamesoncamp?

Yeah. So james.camp, it's because I bought jamescamp.com years ago and they never transferred it to me and the person. And so that's the whole thing. But james.camp is my personal website slash newsletter. If you want to sign up directly for the newsletter, but james.camp. And then my Twitter is where I spend most of the time and that's @JamesonCamp or James on Camp. I'm, you know, I'm same thing on, on TikTok, but I'm hardly there. Instagram, it's The James Camp. I probably should put it all under one, but Twitter's the easiest place to find me yapping.

All right, perfect. Ladies and gentlemen, Jameson Camp. Thank you, guys.

Cheers, man.

Thank you.

Cheers.