Ryan DeissCo-Founder & CEO, The Scalable Company

Where Founders Are Actually Wasting Their Budget #businessgrowth #marketing

15 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:47

In this brief YouTube monologue, Ryan Deiss systematically compares a range of common marketing channels—paid social, SEO, YouTube, referrals, partnerships, cold outreach, events, podcasting, and short‑form content—by asking a series of binary questions (e.g., "Paid social or email?"). For each comparison, he consistently selects email as the superior option, arguing that email delivers the highest return on investment (ROI). He emphasizes that for small, newly‑launched businesses, optimizing email—both for outreach and nurturing—is the single most critical activity. By building an email list and learning how to sell to that list, founders can create a sustainable revenue engine and grow their business.

Chapters

Is it paid social or SEO? Paid social. Paid social or YouTube? Ah, I'm still gonna give the nod to paid social, but YouTube's pretty good. Paid social or email? Email. Email or referrals? Email. Email or partnerships? Email. Email or cold outreach? Ah, I mean, cold outreach I guess kinda is email, but I'm still gonna give the nod to email as a whole, both from an outreach and from a nurturing standpoint. Email or events? Email. Email or podcasting? Email. Email or short form? Email. Email is going to win. There is no higher return on investment channel than email. And when your business is small and you're just getting started, this is the thing that you must optimize. Because if you can get people on your list and you can sell them, you can build a business.