Nicolas Cole documents a six-hour content day in Scottsdale, Arizona where he and a small team aim to film a high volume of content (ads, long-form videos, and shorts) ahead of product launches (Black Friday and a journaling product). He explains his preference for riffing from high-level bullets for long-form, introduces team members (Alexandra, River, Orion, Tristan), shares business performance claims (annual revenue, lifetime revenue), and reports outcomes and lessons from the shoot (endurance, iterative improvement, and committing to monthly content days in 2026).
Questions this video answers
Six hours.
Four long-form videos (planned).
Over $6 million in annual revenue (stated).
Over $20 million in lifetime revenue (stated).
Five years ago (stated).
Chapters
I think we maybe not. I think we maybe had like 50.
It's one of the best, best selling non fiction books of the past 20 years.
Nothing to it but to do it.
What's up, digital writers? We're doing another content day here in Scottsdale, Arizona. We only have six hours. All right, so we got a great spot. I'm going to try and rip as many ads, long form videos, short form content. I'm going to try and get it all done in one day. This is the only day I have to do this because we're going into our big Black Friday launch. We're going into a huge three day challenge for ghostwriters. We're launching a journaling product here in a week and a half. We got a lot to get done. We got a couple special guests and friends popping by the house today. We got a chef cooking lunch. So this is going to be a jam packed day. So come on inside and let's get started. So, yeah, we rented this house for the day to get a bunch of content done. And just to pull back the curtain here, the reason why I'm renting houses like this in Arizona is to be perfectly honest, I don't want to film them in my house because I don't want people finding out where I live. So I'd much prefer renting different spaces so that I can film a bunch of content there. It's also really efficient just to get everybody in. And in 2026, you know, I'm going to be taking YouTube way more seriously. It's one of most profitable channels for driving traffic for our portfolio of writing businesses. This year we did over $6 million in annual revenue. We actually just crossed 20 million in lifetime revenue. We want to pull up the stripe screenshot. So here we just hit 20 million in lifetime revenue. We started this business five years ago. It's crazy. If you had told me five years ago that writing on the Internet would have led to over 20 million in lifetime sales, I wouldn't have believed you. But here we are. So, yeah, 2026. I'm taking YouTube way more seriously. And this is day one. This is my first time cramming in this much long form content in one day. We're gonna try and record four long form videos all in one day. Six hours.
All right, so quick intro for the day and meet the team. This is my assistant, Alexandra. Say hi to YouTube. She's helping troubleshoot the WI fi right now because no one said it was gonna be easy. And we got river here heading up long Form. We got Orion and we got Great shop here in the kitchen. Wave, say hi. Making some amazing lunch for the day. So. All right, we got a lot to get done, so let's hop to it. Let's say that I go out into the world and I say, hey, I can help you with writing. And this is what you do every 30 days over and over and over and over and over, and you're giving readers more of what they and less of what they clearly don't like. Okay. Over the past year, I've experimented with a bunch of different types of long form, and I have tried doing scripted stuff. I'm still going to do scripted long form in my studio at home, but I find that I actually create way better content when I just sort of give myself high level bullets. And I have a whiteboard and I can just speak to it. I can just riff. So that's what we're going to try today. We're going to try and do it four different times, and we'll see how it turns out.
Pretty good. Yeah. It's. It's a very different environment than doing it at home. I realize how much more. I'm so much more comfortable in my home studio, but this is. This is great. We'll just do this 20 more times and then we'll get used to it, and then it'll be fine. I still think about the last time we did that many ads. That was. That was exhausting. We're gonna do it again today, and we're gonna do it 14 more times in 20.
20.
Good.
This frame looks so nice right now.
Like, river knows what he's doing or something. Something like that. How many do you have on your team, like, here? Based in Arizona.
In Arizona. Not that many. Maybe. Like, who's here? Just you, me and Mitch and Alexandra. Four. Four. But we're like over 30 now. Jeez. Yeah.
Take you to scale to, like, that amount. Like, when did you know that you needed that amount of talent for delivery?
I mean, we tripled this last year. This year before that, we grew very. But in the past, like, two years, yeah, we've. We've grown a lot, so we're probably going to grow more.
Yeah. Is that just because you want to duplicate more? Like, you saw more roles that you want to delegate to people? Like, what was the reason behind the more hire?
Yeah, I mean, we had the demand. You know, we had a ton of people joining pga. We've created multiple new verticals.
In order to, you know, when you increase capacity and you have more Team members. Now you got to drive more traffic, so we hire more people on marketing. You know, now we have a whole content team, video team, ads team. Right. Paid funnels, organic funnels. So it's like every time you take a step forward, you're like, well, I have more capacity now. I need to fill it. And it just. It's like you have to grow. You grow through it. So that's where we're at. We got the man, the legend. We got.
What's up, fellas?
Tristan here. Fun fact. Tristan was the first recording in progress.
We're opening up the Zoom Room, but we're here.
Tristan was our first sales guy and helped us scale PGA to. What did we get to with you? 300 grand a month. With you and Connor.
I mean, we hit November, we hit the million dollar a month as a team.
That's right. Yeah.
Yeah. I was the closer aiming or at the front lines. It was a lot of fun.
Yeah. Front lines. I don't think your record's been broken yet, has it? Nah. Yeah.
39 enrollments, 104k, 140k upfront cash in a month. Okay, well, July 2023.
As soon as we break that record, I'm gonna send you an envelope.
Yeah.
Your record's been broken.
Yeah.
Yeah, please. What's your close rate? Usually.
So my lifetime close rate at PGA was on live calls. 46%.
No way.
Yeah. 100%.
100%. 48%.
I have this. I have the tracker.
You have the receipts?
I have the receipts, yeah. Lifetime close rate, live calls, 46%.
Or like the top three objectives.
You got fear? Mostly. I mean, we were taking people from working a normal job to building a business. And so helping people take that first step was always kind of nerve wracking. They usually never invested that much into themselves. And so that's where I thrived because I just had so much conviction on what we did. And I knew that if. Even if it was their, you know, last dollar, I know that helping them enroll into our program was going to light them on fire, and it was going to be the best investment they could have made. Yeah, there was. There was a few moments where I believed so much in the person that I literally put my own guarantee on it. And I was like, look, if you don't land a client in eight weeks, I'll pay for the program. It is the single best coaching program on the planet. And a few reasons. Number one, the founders care the most. They obsess over product. They ship violently on improvements.
Tell them.
And we set you up for success to such a high degree that it's really unreasonable to fail.
Start here if you want to start. There's chips, there's homemade guac, a lotte dip and salsa. There's Caesar salad, and then dressings on the side with some poblano in it. There's charo beans, tortillas, corn tortillas, chicken, steak, rice, all your fun toppings.
We're going full top of funnel here.
Did you know that an octopus has nine brains, one central brain, and eight mini brains in each arm? That's like having a CEO plus eight department heads all working in perfect coordination inside one body and something. I almost can't even say this. Seriously.
How do you feel after the.
Whole hundred million reels you just shot?
That was. That was a lot. That was a lot. You lose track of time, though. Was that like another hour? I think, yeah.
Right around another hour.
Yeah, you just zone. It actually helps if you don't think about it. If you start thinking about it, it feels so taxing. You just have to shut your brain off and just straight to the camera. Okay, so now the question is, do we have the stamina to do all the ads in a different location? You tell me that's you.
I'm good.
That's how I humor.
I think we're not the ones yapping.
I think we do. I think we do. Well, I think we do one more location, and then that's. That's a full day.
I rock that pebble jump from your sheet you hear this beat up come at that heavy metal if you got a business, bro please set and stone that rock raw. I came with a brand new ball that man have guys all shot. Don't like Uzi, but this thing rock.
All right, so that concludes our day. I think we probably recorded, I don't know, 100 plus ads, three long form, 20 organic shorts. So I learned a couple things. So one, if we get better at prepping for days like this, we can cram in even more. Two is that this is absolutely a game of endurance because we could do more. It's just. It's so taxing. And so this is a skill that I'm committing to build in 2026. You know, I'm going to do this once a month, every month for the entire year. And I know every time we do it, I'm gonna get better at reading scripts, I'm gonna get better at structuring these shoots. I'm gonna get better at long form, better at short form. Recording here on a teleprompter is actually a completely different skill. And so, yeah, nothing to it but to do it, you know, volume wins. But I would say this was a pretty productive day. We got a lot done and if this stuff is helpful, you know, drop a comment. If you want to know anything about behind the scenes project process, how we structure stuff like this, how we structure content days. Yeah, just let me know. Any questions? Happy to share.
