Stefan Georgi: The AI Direct Response Playbook for 2025 & Beyond

What's up guys? We are back with Stefan. Georgie said, correct?

Yeah, it's Georgia.

George I. It's spelled like George I so it makes sense. But absolute king of direct response. We went to your event. What was that? Probably not two or three years ago, the Copy Accelerator event and met. That's where we met Eddie Malou for the first time like a bunch of other these big guys. So shout out you for that. But yeah, if you would update everyone on what you're currently up to and who you are.

Sure, yeah, thanks for having me. So who am I? I'm a man, you know, a father and all that. But yeah, my background is direct response. Started off as a direct Response copywriter in 2012. Have scaled a lot of doctor offers and businesses both for clients and for myself. Kind of got more into branded e comm stuff in the early 2000 and twenties. Run a mastermind called Copy Exciter or as it's currently referred to CA Pro. Have sold a few different businesses, sold a call center, sold an AI SaaS and currently co founder of a telemedicine platform that is going to do about 50 to 60 million this year. I was saying 100 million for a while because we were on that run rate and we purposely slowed down a little bit for a while for profitability. Cause we're trying to exit from it. But yeah, I don't know, it's hard to define myself but you know a Dr. D2C marketer.

Yeah, 100%. I mean that's, that's how I know you at least. Right? Like the, the CA thing is crazy. Like if I've looked back at some of the reviews on that site and like when we were looking at the long form pages, our copywriter was going to join that and like you got, you had all of the whales. Everybody who was anybody at that time in space, in copy was in your land.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean it's lasted a long time. For me it's been like I guess six years and it's gone through some different incarnations but we've had a lot of notable alumni and people like Vshred, Golden Hippo, Miami md. I mean Peter Kell is an active member now, but what's cool is like marketing has evolved a lot over the last six years. DTC has evolved a lot of. And one of the things I enjoy about CA Pro is that it helps me stay kind of relevant and stay like attuned to what is working, what is like the business model that people who are doing eight figures a year in D2C type of enterprises are, you know, are following. And obviously there's nuance and there's different business models, but it really is a very valuable thing for me as well. So I provide a lot of value, I hope, but it really helps me have an inside view into what's working constantly and every single year.

Yeah, 100%. I remember when people would have on like they were hiring for copywriters and they were like required. Must have been through rm, like have been through your course. And you just launched part two of that, right?

I did, yeah.

Okay. And what's the like overview of that or what's the kind of idea behind that one?

Yeah, it's sort of like it goes back to the idea that marketing has changed a lot. So it also leverages AI a ton. Like I'm pretty heavy on, on AI for pretty much all things marketing, including copywriting. Like I embraced that pretty early on and I was never one of those people who felt like I can't write copy. Like there's still people out there who try to find reasons that AI, you know, isn't as good and whatever. But I'm like this, this is dumb. Like it's absolutely is good or absolutely as good as like 97% of copywriters. And then with the right tweaks or a little bit of human knowledge, you can get to be as good as the very best people. And so it was sort of updating processes and things using AI and also a lot of talk about kind of platform specific journeys and more context. I think when I made the original RNBC method, which for those watching who don't know what that is, it was like a copywriting course and methodology and it was great. But a lot of it kind of existed in a vacuum at the time. Even in 2019 for D2C, a lot of it was just like video sales letters. So it was like run ad to video sales letter on a page, like great. Whereas now very few people that I work with Use VSL, our telemedicine company. We don't use VSLs. They're fine, they have their own place. But really most of the time it's going to be as ads that are run in feed on meta. Most of the time they're going to be two minutes, maybe four or five minutes long. And they're not really like VSLs or just sort of video ads that have direct response elements in them. You know, occasionally people still run longer form VSLs as ads, but even then it's usually like 14 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever. And you know, beyond that there's a lot of different places where you're getting customers these days. So whether it's from like native or TikTok or YouTube or Google or PMAX or demand gen was part of Google, like there's just like, it's just, it's very different and you really need to understand all of that to actually produce the right copy these days. So it's just. It used to be a lot easier, it's gotten harder but you know, so it goes.

Yeah, yeah. So a majority of this is for. When you say D2C. Is it majority E Com. Yeah. Or is there.

Yeah, like E Comm mostly. I mean I very intentionally use some different examples. Like I do like an Airbnb Arbitrage kind of like hypothetical offer as an example. So everything from like the research process which is using deep research from Gemini or other tools, I like Gemini the most currently. So it's kind of like figuring out product market awareness levels and then competitive research and psychographic research, then combining all that together, then creating this brief that has a lot of the points you would use for during any copy. So anyway, I do examples in other spaces as well. But the bread and butter is probably. Yeah. People selling consumer products, you know, that's the majority of it. Although again I do go out of my way to focus on sort of some high ticket stuff and other things. So that's applicable to everybody.

Yeah. Because I remember you guys when we went to that event, you were talking about the like monetization model that some of these guys could use. So like filament bottle being the same, you roll out VSL scripting or you guys do basically the full packaging in terms of the copy. But the monetization model you guys could charge was crazy. And that was for a lot of those digital products, the, the clickbank days, the I guess supplement and like grouping stuff. But you've done a lot of those, right? Like at some point in life, like.

As far as like kind of supplement.

Like offers and things, build outs so someone will pay. I mean the rough numbers at 20k, a 50k, 100k or whatever to get one of these DSLs written because they just know they're so good.

Yeah. I mean there was a good period of time where I was charging 50,000 per video sales letter script.

Amazing.

I. I'd say from like 2018 to 2022, let's say I definitely made at least a million dollars a year in income just from writing VSLs for people. That's. Yeah, that's pretty good. But you know, now I don't probably.

Produce a hundred, you know, million more. Right.

Like, yeah, a lot of them did. I mean, some of them bombed, but a lot of them did.

Well, that's life.

Yeah, but now. But I mean, I will occasionally do things for, you know, kind of like a quiet project these days. It's pretty rare because of the other things I have going on. But honestly, I don't charge as much. Like I'll usually charge like 35 now. And part of the reason is because of AI, it's just harder to command those prices. But the other part is like, I really like. This is the thing that a lot of people are stuck on who especially aren't on X or Twitter. I think Twitter has the most sort of knowledgeable marketers these days. There's a lot of like, there's dumb shit too because you've got a bunch of like young money Twitter kids who are discovering things for the first time and they'll put some posts about like this really whole elaborate thing that essentially is like, oh, a subscription business is good or whatever it is. Right. But there. But they're definitely savvy. And whereas people on like Facebook, you know, as a counterexample or I feel like they're stuck in like the 2020, 2020 paradigm sort of. And like, so the road of like just starting up a VSL and making lots of money, it really is over for the most part. And so honestly, I'd say more often than not, when people come to me about VSL projects, even if I had the bandwidth, I usually just tell them they shouldn't do a VSL and talk them out of paying me money. So it's pretty great.

But yeah, yeah, it's super interesting. So what are the current. You said a few things of what you're currently doing. I want to get into how that evolved from. Because you were there. Copy Accelerator again is massive. I mean still is massive. Has all these notable. Now you said something around software business last time we talked about. I don't know if remember but we went to that event and then we went over to. I'm trying to remember the place for dinner and you guys were there and like somebody who was working in operations for you there and they like, it's crazy the amount of things that you had your hands in like super cool. You were in distribution, mass amounts because of the AI, distribution availability and being able to own these different niche domains. Now the software. Oh yeah, yeah. Like just so many of these different things. Like it's amazing that you, you're just a starter.

Yeah, I mean I definitely have ADHD and there's like an entrepreneurial ADHD component to that. I mean I'm trying really hard now to be more focused because I think there's two sides to that coin for sure. So like, you know, the, like the call center started with my first supplement company and it was like an in house customer service thing. And then we were getting pretty good like results for, you know, for us, for ourselves. So like whether that was on capturing abandoned cards or just retention or whatever it was. And so that sort of just grew organically. We started taking on outside clients. I had some professional kind of management and it scaled to about 10 million a year in revenue. But it had issues like the leadership of it because even though I owned like 70% of it, but I didn't like, I was very hands off it. Once I started to scale, which was great on one hand, I would always joke it was like one of the best businesses I ever owned because I was making like a million dollars a year income from it. But like literally spending 30 minutes a month maybe on it. So it's great. But when it was like time to, hey, why don't we scale? What like let's, how do we get to 20 million, 30 million? Like the leadership was not very motivated or driven to do that and it got to the point where it was like, well, I probably would need to come in and install new leadership, get really involved and spend a lot of time on this thing. That's not my passion. Or I could just exit and let them do whatever they're going to do. And so I exited from that one. I can talk about the AI SaaS as well, I can talk about all of them. But I will say I think I definitely have spread too thin sometimes in life. So I really try hard not to. So right now, I mean the focuses really are just copy accelerator, which we call CA Pro and then the telemedicine platform and that's really it. I mean I launched RNBC too, but I'm really trying to be more focused because it is hard, I mean to really do something good at scale and at a lot of volume. It's just like, I don't know, it's difficult to repeat that over so many things. I keep wanting to crack the code with the right like leadership or management and the right operator and you can go install the right team and you can have a bunch of these businesses and I haven't fully cracked it yet, so I think it always sounds good, but people are always like, wow, you're doing so many things. But I don't know, maybe I'd be more successful if I just focused on a few things, you know, consistently, to be honest with you.

Yeah, I think that's the constant game. Constant game. I was having that conversation this morning, but. So the telemedicine thing is super interesting. I just had a call with this with a guy who's running one of these over the weekend, actually. Super. It's basically the. Just, like, the software stack, so comes with the connections, has all that kind of piece. But what is. What's the whole game plan there? Like, where did that come from? Because there's tons of regulation, license. I mean, I guess part of the telemedicine industry that. That captures.

But no, I mean, it's. Yeah, it's super challenging. And that's kind of what I like about it, to be honest with you, because it's like going back to the ADHD component. Like, I kind of need something that's new and novel to be really exciting, and I certainly have that with telemedicine. So we're primarily doing GLP1s, which a lot of people are doing. In 2023, I got connected to somebody as a potential client, and the guy wanted to do GLP1s. He was set up to create a telemedicine platform to connect patients with those medications through medical providers. But I quickly realized that he didn't really like it was gonna be a lot of work, basically, because it was sort of the thing where, like, they were like, oh, maybe this guy's got a lot of money. He'll give you, like, $100,000 and you can write a VSL. And I'm, like, going back to what I said before, I'm like, VSL won't do shit for this guy. He has, like, a WordPress website and, like, you know, no idea how to acquire customers or patients or whatever. So end up becoming, like, an equity partner and kind of built from the ground up. And it's been an interesting journey. But essentially, we advertise access to GLP1 medications. People go to our website, they go through a medical questionnaire. If they qualify, a doctor reviews their information, and then a pharmacy will send out their medication to them to their front door, and. And then they can stay on it, adjust their medication, whatever it is. So there's nothing novel about it, but we were early enough to build up a pretty good foundation of recurring customers and when CPAs were lower and things. So if you look at it in 2023, the cost to acquire a customer was like in the hundreds all the time. Now it's often like the 400s, and there's days where we'll spend 800, $900 to acquire, you know, a customer just like, oh, well, you know, it's a little bit annoying, but it's fine because we have millions of dollars a month and recurring now. So, you know, I wouldn't like. There's people out there kind of like, pitching GOP1s is like a good space to go into. And I adamantly disagree, I think, and I'm not saying that because I'm in the space and I don't want more competitors. I just think if you were to go into it now, you would really need millions of dollars, like, to burn through before you could really get to a good level. Because cost, like, typically you're going to make maybe $100, like net on a month of medication that you, you know, provide to a patient, but you're probably gonna spend, if you're not going super black hat. And we're like, we're super compliant, which is also annoying because our CPAs are higher than if we were more aggressive. But whatever. Like, so let's say you're like 80% compliant and we're like 95% compliant. Like, okay, $350 CPA, let's say, okay, so then your profit's like $100. So you're basically losing $250. You're not going to break even until the third month at best. But then you've got to do that enough scale to get enough compounding rebuilds to compete with us and the other big players in the space who are continuing to grow and compound, and then because of that, willing to pay more money. Like I just said, like, we. We literally. I think our c. This is actually embarrassing because there's a bunch of underlying reasons why, but our CPAs have been probably $800 on average so far in August. And we're gonna, like, we don't want them that high. We're gonna get them down. But, like, we're totally profitable with an $800 CPA. But that's because of years of.

Yeah, exactly.

So anyways, it's a really hard space for someone new to come into. And then on top of that, there's all the regulation. Like, Novo Nordisk just sued 14 more people couple days ago. And so it's a very complex space. But for me, as someone who's pretty experienced, it's kind of fun and exciting.

Yeah, 100% the. So what's the funnel for that? Is it just straight to intake?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's like a little landing page. It's just like static or video ad. Honestly, static ads have worked better for us in general. You know, landing page with not even that much information. Right into like a intake questionnaire.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Because we're talking about this and I've talked about it on here, but we're talking about doing a version of that on the back. No GLPs at all. It's like kind of against our ethos, but there's definitely a world of that in that space. You know, a lot of other things that kind of fit that box, but a lot of time that introduces blood work, that introduces some of these other pieces and like, where does the, you know, what's the stack? Right. It's like you have your software, every connection, you have the customers, you have the pharmacies, you have the Dr. Network, your own doctors. And then where does all of the regulation and all that stuff sit? On top of there. Licensing more. So not really regulation, but licensing. And then how that's completely separate from supplements. Right. And how they have to be like. Yeah, so like, we don't know. We've never done either of them. But super interested in supplement space. Super interested in telemedicine space. And like haven't even cracked anywhere near it yet. But that's kind of where our conversations are. So it's, it's interesting to hear.

Yeah. I mean, they're both, really, both supplements and telemedicine are, you know, great spaces where obviously I have a lot of experience in the supplement space. I don't know if it's obvious or not, but I, but I do. It's like one of, you know, my, my superpowers. Um, and then so there's a lot of similarities, but there's differences. Like what you just described there as.

Well.

Um, you know, the nice thing with telemedicine is like, because the medications really do work. You know, ideally your supplement really works as well. But there's so many people.

Yeah.

Like, you can sell a really great, like weight loss, fat burning supplement that really has a bunch of clinically backed, trademarked and patented ingredients, but you're still not gonna get weight loss like you are from a GLP1. Right. And the other, the other really interesting thing is the level of kind of going back to product market awareness with GLP.1s. That was the insight really early on was like, we tried a good vsl, we tried an advertorial, but it's like everyone knows what GLP1s are. Most people want them. They're just like, can I afford it? And is this legit? Right? Can I trust the business, the providing it or the brand providing it to us? So like, that's why you literally just don't need a lot, like just a landing page, a questionnaire, you know, like some ads, like that's it. Other things in the telemedicine space, for example, we have NAD plus and we kind of launched that with a very similar model. And it was like the CPAs were way higher. Because while you and I might know about nad, right, A lot of people still don't. And so we were like, oh shit, we have to educate the consumer way more and more. And so that's, you know that that's like an interesting element of it too.

Yeah, it's interesting. And then when you guys are able to exit and all that. Cause our thing is too, is like how much of it for us, we always, we like joke on these, like spectrum, but it's like over here is you have a partnership, basically, you have an affiliate commission. You send a client over, you get 40%. It's branded like them, it's all of that. And then over here is like you're manufacturing it, like you're hand delivering it. Like the extremes. And we want to live somewhere in between here so we get the equity value and the growth. But I've heard things like, you know, having an outsource doctor network is all good. Having basically a white label software is good. You don't have to build your own tech like some of these other pieces. As long as you just have those relationships and you own that portion. Like the equity value is there for exit versus yeah. Which is crazy. I didn't realize it was like that. I thought you'd have to be like over here and like everyone in house, all your own MDs, all of your own direct connects, like all of that. And it doesn't seem to be that way based on what we've heard.

Yeah, I don't think it is. In fact, it's probably better in a lot of ways from like a liability standpoint. Literally just yesterday, one of our vendors is trying to buy a pharmacy and they wanted us to go in with them on it. And I was like, no, I definitely don't want to do that because of the liability. Right. It's actually cleaner In a way, when you're like the middleman. But it does come down to there's certain things. Right. It's also about like the. I mean, obviously retention and LTV and things like that are really important. You know, there is a brand equity component of it. Like are you a trusted provider? So I think that's also really important. And then it's like the actual vendor relationships. I mean that's where having like my business partner and everything and COO Angela is like just incredibly savvy and a really good negotiator. So, you know, without overly disclosing too much, it's like if you can get things like just extremely good pricing, right, really good cogs or really favorable payment terms or things like that, that actually will play a pretty big role as it goes to the valuation as well. Because those are sort of like differentiators that your competitors don't have. And so. But they're not. I don't know if you have a good negotiator. They're not that hard to get, I guess. But I'm not that person. She is. And so thank God I have her.

Yeah, I've heard some stuff too around like if you really focus on one specific ICP versus one specific like skew, then there's just so many more ancillary things that come into cross sells and upsells and you know, catalog version. Um, that's something I really didn't think about prior. So like, I don't know if you guys see that, but like you said, the two examples you use like GLPs, if you have a majority of them coming in there and then post you're educating around nad and then just like the ease potential, sometimes different doctor, sometimes same doctor depending on whatever. But then like having the increase not ltv, not just from recurring but from in addition. In addition, because now you already have that. Do you guys see that much?

Yeah, I mean that's definitely. And it's a goal and part of that's like diversification. And if like the argument is, you know, hey, we're a platform, then if like we just, you know, sell GLP1s to people, then that's like not a really compelling argument. But if it's like people are going through their, you know, getting additional recommendations, you know, customized and personalized to their specific, you know, profile and needs and things. If we're tracking the data right. Is important. We're tracking sort of different metrics. I mean, that's why you're to see, I think a lot more People going into, like, the kind of biomarker testing, like Function Health does. And it makes a ton of sense because you're like, okay, hey, look, I just, you know, the Lab just analyzed 115 different biomarkers. Like, based on that, here are things that are, you know, kind of off inside of you, and here's what you can do to fix it. And whether that's supplementation or it's a medication or whatever it is, like, it opens up a massive world of, you know, cross cells and things. And typically, it's like the same Dr. Networks that can then, you know, have those conversations and make those prescriptions or, you know, those recommendations and everything. So, yeah, there's a huge, like, kind of LTV play, but it's not just on one product. It's, like, across. Yeah. Multiple kind of products.

Yeah, I had Cole Gordon on here. It was the first time we, like, direct met and he said it on there. He was like, well, oh, actually, funny point. I was like, yeah, Cole, I saw you speak for the first time at CA at that Scottsdale event. That's where I met Eddie Maloof and all that was at your event. And he's like, dude, he's like, that was the worst presentation I've ever given. I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm like, really? I thought it was great. He's like, no. Like, I couldn't see. I was like. I felt all weird. I was like, that's hilarious, because I thought it was great. But he said in. In our conversation, he was like, literally, blood work is the best discovery of all time. Right? Like, you get on a sales call and you have to all this discovery process and learn, like, dig for the problems and find the points. He's like, you just get it in a printout. Like, here's what's wrong. Here's how we fix it. Like, very easy. So, yeah, what do you. This would be like, I think probably final, selfish question, but, like, you're talking about selling this and getting that direction. Where do you see valuations land in that world? Like, info coaching is where I mainly live and where a lot of us mainly live. Probably most people who listen to this. So those don't sell. Very, very, very rarely sell. There's 2, 3, 4 that, you know, I know off the top that are, like, truly classified as info coaching that don't have some, like, supplement bolt on or, you know, XYZD software play.

But.

But just the info coaching guys generally don't. But big ones that have are the three to fives. But then you get into this whole supplement game and I hear crazy numbers over there. You get into this telemedicine game. I hear some crazy multiples over there. Like, do you know, rough benchmarks where that land lives? So if you. 10 million a year, call it in EBITDA on a telemedicine, is that like, do you know?

Yeah. I mean, at 10 million you probably look, I mean there's a lot of factors, right? There's sort of like your whole quality of earnings and everything. But you're probably like at right now like a 5x on average. I think if you get up to 15 million, which isn't, I mean, I guess it is a big jump, like, right, 33% increase, but you could push maybe an 8x. I mean that's what we're looking at really is like somewhere in a 5-8x valuation, like, well, you know, our goal is like, I expect to sell for over a hundred million. You know, there's. And again, to be transparent, there's. There's always different challenges. Like right now our CPAs are all shitty and it's like, well, great, because we were going to go to, we have an investment banking group we were going to like go to, you know, start shopping around and like seven days from now and we're like, all right, let's push it back a month and see if we get the CPAs down. And you know, it's not all flowers and roses. And I literally sent out a call with them. I'm like, if it was, everybody would be selling companies for nine figures. As much as we know people who have, it's actually very hard to do. But assuming we figure that out and we execute and we have a great team and all that goal would be and a reasonable expectation, we could sell for 50 million right now with very little headache. But that's not that exciting. I really want nine figures. So, yeah, assuming we execute, we'll probably look around 100 to 125 million. And then of course it depends on how many people are interested. And you know, the other thing is if a strategic comes in at the end of the process and randomly just like throws some FU number around and bushes also would be great. So yeah, we'll just have to see.

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, we've never gone through that. I'm friends with a ton of guys like, you know, my world that are private equity and investment banking and sell side, buy side, like do all this stuff and they just throw stuff around. But we in Our world have never actually gone through one. So you've sold other companies though, thus.

Far you said, yeah, the call center and then the SaaS, but they weren't like huge, you know, the cost center was seven figures, which was cool. It was like the first thing I ever sold. And to sell something for seven figures was neat. And then, you know, the SaaS was like my free ad copy tool. And that was like a smaller sale, but that was like it was going back to the focus. I'm like, this is. I love this, but it's sort of like a distraction and it's draining resources and I want to sell it to somebody who hopefully could take it and grow it more. And so, you know, that was like a modest, like, you know, couple hundred thousand dollars sell, but, you know, still cool.

Yeah.

The way I look at it too is just stacking wins. I'm like, you know what I mean? Like, I thought with the cost center, even, like, I'm like, oh, I'm always selling this for seven figures. I want to sell something for a billion dollars one day. But I'm like, dude, like, you got to start somewhere. Not many people ever sell a company for over a million dollars. So boom, there's one, right? Not many people ever sell two companies. Boom, there's another. It's like you stack the experience plus you learn stuff. You go through the process like you, you know, so that's kind of the. The mentality. I've taken to it, yeah, 100%.

I started trying to, like, talk to the right people and pop on calls and how can I make it so my fin. My financials are export import into their models. Like, what do I need to do here? Because we are so. We know like this much, right? And it's like, we probably need to know all this. So, yeah, it's super interesting to hear. I do want to start going through some of these questions because people have great questions for you. You are all over X in a very good way. But what do we got here for the first one? How have you evolved as a marketer? And what advice would you give a beginner who thinks edge comes from overindulging in creative license?

How have I evolved? I mean, evolved in that I never, I feel like I never really overcomplicated things. But I'm more convinced than ever that the secret is just rapid iteration and just putting stuff out there and just testing and getting feedback from the market. So I guess how I've evolved is I'm even less concerned about the nuance or if it comes to copy the perfect phrase or if it comes to a landing page, the perfect font or things. I'm almost flippant about just putting stuff out there and just seeing if it works or not. And I'm also extremely iterative. I don't know if I was always this iterative, but I essentially don't worry that anything I put out, nothing has to be a home run. Like, so it's not even that I'm not a perfectionist. It's like, as long as it's like, I mean, I still have like, I'm one of the, I think one of the best marketers in the world. So what I put out is still going to be good. But like, I don't overthink it. I just put it out there and then I look at data and then I make adjustments and I kind of, I think I can get something from like a single to a home run with iteration versus trying to go for a home run. But maybe when I was younger, earlier on it was more like, oh my God, this has to be a home run or my whole world's going to collapse. Right? Like I'm a failure and a fraud if I don't hit a home run. So that'd be part of it. I mean, the second part of the question was it was on. Can you repeat that part? Because I do want to address it.

Yeah. What would you give a beginner who thinks that or I'm sorry, what advice would you give a beginner who thinks that edge comes from overindulging in creative license?

I mean, I think it's cool up to a point. Like, I think, I do think creativity is valuable and I think being curious and being weird, I mean, some of the most successful things I've ever done, like both from a copy or idea wise or whatever, like with campaigns or even products and brands, it's like having doing weird stuff, like trying weird things. I mean, like my first big successful supplement company was like a Christian biblical supplement brand before anybody had done that. And I'm like, well, there's all these ingredients in the Bible. What if we just make biblical blood sugar pills? And I did like a biblical arousal supplement. There's a preacher in Texas. I read an article about him and how he would talk about bringing God back into the bedroom. And they're like, most preachers don't talk about like sex or they talk about in a sinful way. This guy actually preaches that, you know, it's good to, you know, make love to your spouse, but like, you know, you're honoring God. So I took that and like created like a biblical arousal supplement for husbands and wives so that they could, you know, be more aroused and do it like, you know, like bringing God back into the bedroom. And like, it did great, right? That's a super cool thing because it like wasn't an ED pill specifically, so I didn't have to just. It wasn't like another garbage gas station ED thing. It wasn't like the messaging was different. So women felt okay buying it. Right? Because it wasn't like they had to hide it from their wives because it was like, oh, we can both take it. And then something that you can market it to men and women. Which the problem with ED pills was always, besides, there's lots of problems, but one of them is that they're always only targeted to men. So half your market's cut off. But when you can speak to women too, suddenly like, oh my God, you just doubled your tam. And so just, I think have fun with it. But I guess the counter to it would be you don't always have to reinvent the wheel. Like, it's going back to the iteration thing. It's really helpful or useful to hit a single to have something that's working decently well and then start taking your weird, creative, kind of adventurous shots after that, versus trying to do the most crazy out of the box stuff right away because it might work, but the chances are higher that you're going to fail like 99 times before the hundredth time and you might run out of money or become psychologically deflated before you get to that win. So it's better to start with a solid baseline or a single and then be a creative genius from there.

Yeah, 100%. I am by no means creative in that way. Mine's always like the structure, the system, the funnel, economics, all of that. But we have a new CMO that just is very similar to you. It's just left, just left, right, left, right. Ideation, ideation. Like, how do you go in this direction? How do you see like the dream pod set up for like, for us, for example, we have five front end funnels now. And I talked to Nick Fisher about this and he was asking because I have all these. It's like, do you have basically like pod specific, so like channel specific or I'm sorry, mission specific right there. Or do you have channel specific where you have, you know, a media buyer that buys for meta for all five funnels and you have a copywriter that writes for all Five. And they're just so good at being a copywriter. Or are they funnel specific? You know, then at some level, you like 5x your piano or your, you know, is on your piano, depending on how you do it. But how do you view that? Like the, the dream setup if you have a CMO and then kind of distilled down when you're doing these offers like that?

Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, I think it depends on. Well, I think it depends on how much nurturing and like, kind of attention and like how high maintenance the offers are. Like, if they're like kind of like set up on autopilot where like, okay, I know I need this, like these ad creatives. I know. Like, you know, we're going to test advertorials or we're going to test these landing pages. Like, if you kind of have it really systematized and each offer is like a copy and paste of the last one, then I think having that kind of like horizontal integration could make sense where the copywriter could be doing them for all five. If there are brands that. I mean. But. But honestly, my. My answer is probably. I in general would probably want like a different team for each one.

Yeah.

Because the one thing I found is we found even the telemedicine company. It's like, we've got this great team and then we're like trying to do a skincare brand, and we brought in a bunch of people from telemedicine to kind of help with the skincare brand. And then, you know, my COO has like, brought some of those people to help with people who are in Cairo and help consult and like referring them over to other people. But suddenly there's a dilution that happens, right? And you're like, start to get annoyed suddenly because you're like, why the hell are they not focusing on this really important thing? It's like, oh, because you gave them five more really important things to also focus on. So ultimately it probably would keep them like to like, each offer or brand or whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah. We ended up doing. We had one VSL opt in funnel that we did like everything through. We did like 70 plus million through one and then we went bloom and then it like exploded. We launched all these other ones and now we have like seven of them all at once. And we went from, you know, just like polar opposite sides of things. So we're trying to navigate that right now, but interesting on that creative license versus just like running a playbook. Running the playbook. But yeah, let me get into some more of these because there's some great ones. How have you evolved as a marketer? What would you advice? And then the next one, do you think that the industry is broadening or do you think that there's going to be a shakeout where the best marketers can will rise to the top to assimilate the overuse tactics with rising ad costs, oversaturation, everything that's occurring. So basically, do you think there's a shakeout that's happening where I assume what he's referring to is when AI is rolled out, when it's easier for more people to enter, to be 90% of the way there, does the cream rise to the top or does it get more commoditized?

Yeah, I mean, I'll share. I have weird thoughts about this, so I'll share.

Let's go esoteric. Let's do it.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, I think basically everything will be automated by AI in the next like 2 years. So I think, you know, like media buying people are shitting on icon, but like video creatives like optimization, CRO, pretty much everything. Understanding, like product market fit and positioning, it just makes sense. It's already like, obviously copy customer service retention, like, I think everything will basically be automated. It's still like, I could be wrong and I kind of hope I'm wrong because obviously it's better for me if I'm wrong. But that's sort of what I think. As a result of that, like, it's like, okay, well then if that's the case, how do we thrive if all these marketing activities, which is a huge part of how we identify ourselves and a huge part of how we make money, are no longer human driven or driven by us? And is it like, okay, we're strategists, I don't know, maybe the AI will be able to handle the strategy too. So then it really, to me probably is going to come down to brand equity and resources. The analogy I would use is even in a couple of years from now, like Coca Cola will still be Coca Cola because it's already around and well known now. So I think there's actually an impetus and like an urgency to create brands of strong brand equity today. Like you doing these YouTube interviews is really smart because you know you are going to be known from before this proliferation, right? Because I think there'll be like, this is true for both personal brands and like E Comm, D2C brands, right? When everyone can pull out stuff, when there's content, when there's AI avatars. When AI Stefan, I can go beep boop bop and AI Stefan is like, you know, like 20 pieces of content get published and like it's pretty good. Like people will probably gravitate to the names that they already were familiar with before because like, you know, those people at least have an incumbent advantage. So that's one part of it, you know. The next part would be an actual like physical materials for people who are doing D2C and you could call them like experiences and things like that for people who are doing information. But it's going to be like, how do you win in the physical realm? So in the world of like D2C, I think it's like having superior products, superior like ship times, lead times, things like that. So you're getting, you know, you can. Manufacturing actually becomes more important, but they're better quality products delivered faster, differentiated from the market, et cetera. If you're running like info type stuff, it's like in person events, you call them masterminds, experiences, whatever it is, right? What are things? And by the way, there's going to be a hybrid of that too because like you create a real D to C like a supplement brand. I still want to do this with a supplement brand in the future. But it's like you can still have summits, right? You could have really cool things. You could have for the VIPs, people who are on subscription, everything from an actual festival to you could have people enter for a chance to go join you in a castle in Scotland where a bunch of biohackers come and talk about different processes for living a longer health span and lifespan. Whatever it is, I think it's experience driven and physically driven and then it's resources. Because even if the AI can smartly iterate, optimize and profitably start to grow and scale you, there's still going to be a natural limit of how much money comes in and is redeployed and the timeframe. So having cash stacked up today is probably helpful as well. Um, so yeah, that's the way I look at it. It's kind of pessimistic though because I do think we're being replaced by AI for all the marketing activities. But I do think there are still opportunities as well.

Yeah, it's interesting. So I mean CA classifies as info coaching at some level, right? It has the high tier. Where do you see AI direct affecting info coaching land. So, you know, right, it's your classic, your courses. The generally speaking info coaching is, you know, down to your info coaching. Top tier personalization slash implementation rises up ladder in terms of value and cost in that world. Does AI flip that on its head completely because the personalization can be interlayed or.

Yeah, I mean, in theory the AI should be able to like personalize your sort of, you know, your game plan, your roadmap, all of that. It should be able to hold you accountable. I mean people still may want to talk to a human. Right, I get it. Like, although I don't know, we'll see. But you know, like I think, I think the AI will automate a lot of that. But again, I think where, but even if that's the case, they might be we're wanting to buy the game plan from someone like you, who's been doing it for longer or who has more like preeminence than the new person who comes onto the scene. Right. And again going back to like in person stuff like events, whatever. And you know, and again I think like having like one on one calls or group coaching calls or things like where you're speaking with the person, like the, the spokesperson, the guru, whatever. Like I think there's still value to that because of the craving of human connection as well.

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Because a lot of these gurus or experts in info coaching are starting to use tools like Delphi or Adelphi, whatever that one's called, where it's like a video of the person, audio of the person, messaging, and it's just uploaded of everything and it's generally inside product. So a lot of people are using it inside like their top tier product that's like instant access to. And then they just gate it with what they train it on. So it's only trained on stuff from the inside, not from like public content like YouTube, like giving that access, which I find super interesting. Super interesting. It just doesn't have the context on the person as much. Right. It has the con like or on both situations, I guess. Right. So like unless you're prompting on the front end with like, hey, here's the last three years of my business, the current situation, the desire, you know, all of these things right now overlaid on that, it kind of doesn't hit the mark there, but once it does, once you have your model trained on you, their model trained on them, on their expertise and structured education, whatever, and experience, it's like you plug those together and there's your personalization on both sides.

Yeah. I just wonder like in a couple years from now if like that'll be as Valuable as like the om. Like the omnipotent and omn. Omniscent. Like AI that just sort of knows better than, you know, anyway and is like a better coach than the expert.

Yeah, the expert. Yeah. I, uh, I. So just we're playing the playbook. You basically just said the, the. On the initial portion, which is like move into physical, focus on that, focus on the connection, focus on the human piece. And we're actually trying to like ride the wave backwards and be like FAI f this, like, because you want human connection. Our stuff is already one. Our stuff is all already one to one. So it's already like lean into it, you know, we already have the cost baked into the P and L that it's already one to one. Um, but yeah, I, I am like complete agreement. There's so many questions in here that are about this, but future of Nutra and health within AI so feeling like advertorials are going to get absolutely insane with VO3, however you pronounce and all those improve. But where do you see neutral and health getting impacted the most?

Yeah, I mean, probably it just goes back to that whole automation side of things. I mean it's just like faster than ever to launch and deploy like funnels to test stuff. Whether it's like video ads or advertorials or product pages to iterate. I think that the areas like CRO will get a lot better where the AI will just sort of run all the split tests for you and optimize. You know, there's already tools that do it. There's nobody's come out with like the industry standard that everybody uses. But what are some, you know, there's some good ones, but which ones have you played with do you like, honestly can't remember the names of them because, like I don't use them.

They're that bad.

Yeah, no, there's one I can't remember. I just can't think of the name of it. There's one we used a bit that was okay, but I know a few people have brought up ones that they like, but I mean, that's kind of the point. Yeah, there's not like a standard that I'm like, oh, everyone uses this one. But yeah, I mean, I think that's it. Like, I mean, you know, Nutra, I mean general Nutra is like, you know, the clickbank world is, I think, kind of really dying. And I always hate saying this because whether or not you look at Clickbank and the offers of score, I mean, it is what it is. The people working ClickBank are really nice. Like a lot of them are really nice. But like the offers were like, you know, always aggressive and I used to write them back in the day and like, you know, like coffee Zillow made a whole video about it. And then I was like, yeah, my bad, I'll like. And I stopped. I already stopped actually for the most part. But point is like, I'm not trying to be holier than thou, right? But that was like in 2018, 2019, but like, but now like it's really just the markets evolve so much. So like The VSO on ClickBank model is like, who's it really work for? Like generally like 65 plus people who are pretty like not the kind of technological laggards that are pretty low iq. Like again, I'm generalizing. Please don't you know someone. My grandma bought something from Clickbait. I'm not trying to offend your grandma.

Right.

Just in general, that's like a shrinking, dying way to sell. And so I think it's just like continue to adapt with structures. But it's not necessarily about AI. I think AI is more about the implementation and then, you know, it could be used for more like recommendations, personalizations, things like that as well. You know, just sort of like frankly, easier upselling and cross selling if they build a relationship with like an AI, sort of avatar agent or whatever and then you're making more personalized recommendations.

Yeah, kind of offshoot. But have you ever done another big thing that I heard that was probably just the people in the room, but they were. There was a lot of conversation around data and how people are using the data, using the email list, using it to generate, you know, basically just add to the bottom line for some of their core offerings. Was that ever a piece of kind of what you focus on? Like obviously all the copy stuff, but you're, you're integrated everywhere. So example of this was someone was like, oh, if you're running this, you know, even if you own the full brand, splitting lists, selling off data, you know, do it compliantly for sure in that way. But did you ever play in that game at all?

I mean, a very little bit. Like, I mean as far as like, you know, we like, we definitely split our data at some times with some of the offers I owned where we'd let somebody else like, you know, essentially like you'd hey, congratulations. As a bonus to being a customer, you're now part of like the happy, healthy you like newsletter or whatever it is. Like you know, click here to opt into it whenever they opt in. And then now you can have like a couple different places all emailing the same person with different offers and you'd make more money. It depends on the monetization model though, right? Like obviously those things work if you're sort of churning and burning, like you're just bringing customers in and you're just trying to make as much money from them as possible. It doesn't work for brands and retention as much, but there's still a data value in data for sure. Yeah, we looked at that with like, I mean, so for the GLP1 business, we have millions and millions and millions of abandoned carts. Right. Because people don't qualify or there's like a long medical questionnaire. And so we looked at that, we're like, what could we take those and kind of liquidate them to partners who'd be interested in that information as a lead? We never pursued it. For better or worse, probably could have.

Made a lot of money.

But also we're really trying to create that brand equity and we didn't want to. So I don't know. It's an interesting space. I mean I've looked into a little.

Bit, but yeah, yeah, we had a squeeze more meeting the other day, so it was on my calendar ads, but it was like, where can we do that? And like you just said for abandons, like, okay, how do we staff up internal and we dial them instead. Like how can you layer all of that stuff internal? But then is there another play? And we've been exactly what you're saying, like so much more brand that it's always been. The throughput is going to be higher. The monetization model, the economics of it are going to be better if we can own it. It's just like if we're not executing on it, we're leaving money on the table. But if we are executing on it, then it's the best way to play. So it's like always dancing that. But I have a ton of these lead gen guy friends that are like, you're stupid. Like you're stupid. Yeah, so that's actually kind of a bit of this next question. But you're writing for. So when you're writing for high intent inbound calls, so this paper click or I'm sorry, pay per call. What's the most important emotional driver to lead with? So the prospect picks up the phone immediately.

Hmm, interesting. I mean I'm like, you know, I'll be honest, it's not like, like I own a call center, so I Know, a little bit. But this isn't saying where. I've written like a ton of stuff for it. So we're saying high intent, inbound. So like as in. But wait, does it say inbound? Like, is someone calling the call center? This is. What am I saying? Are we saying like.

I think what they're saying is you're writing four, so it's basically going to be add to Lander. That's either a short quiz.

I say pick up and call. What gets them to pick up and call?

Yeah.

And they're high intent already.

Yeah.

I'm gonna think about for a minute. I want to spout out, but there you go. Yeah, I mean it's probably a dominant emotion. I mean, it's probably going to be like, let's think through it together actually. Okay, so what are we trying to get. Because my initial reaction was to go talk about their future state. Right. So in just X days, you could have solved your problem, whatever it is. Right. Basically. So I think that would be part of it. But there's other drivers too. It's sort of like I can probably get trusting. Nobody wants to call anyone for anything.

Yeah.

So part of it's like, how do we like get around that, you know, that, that, that dislike of. Of picking up a phone and calling. And so, you know, in general, I'm talking about like a future state and talking about how in a time frame and how easy it's going to be. Like as much as I can compliantly. Right. Say all these things. But probably there's another aspect of it that's sort of like trying to emphasize the. Like, I just feel like no hassle, like no obligation call. Like, I just feel like that language is so like used like, so kind of like nobody believes it. So I think there's some kind of like, some kind of like language that's going to get them to feel like confident in the phone call. But also like, I guess this can be like the future state. I don't know. What do you think? Because you've done like a lot of phone stuff, right?

Kind of. I did a lot of the tech stack, so I'm like systems tech ops in that world more so. But the guys I know that have run like the. One of the biggest ones that I was building tech for at the time with the ACA stuff, and those guys were hammering it and it was very classic quiz style when they weren't doing posts. So it was literally just click to call. Like that was basically the only conversion and the whole thing Was. It was pretty classic, but it's just like big offer, big state. Do you even qualify for it? Like you have to put them through the XYZ rigmarole and then it's now you've qualified and you get big result. Right. It's like you get this big promise. Now all you have to do to claim it is this very simple thing which is, you know, pop on the phone and they actually had like a little info thing that was like, here's what the call looks like. So it's like all you have to do on this call is this, this. So like bring down the barrier of like, what do I know? Yeah, you know, create certainty around it. There wasn't actually a lot of trust around it at the time. Trust building. Like, oh, we've helped a brand specific. Because you're routing calls. So they have, you know, it's going to 14 different call centers potentially. Yeah, at that time. But it was government programs. You kind of had the trust from government. It was already well known versus not. And we've never run inbound calls for our stuff. But we're actually talking about doing that at some level right now. Just because we haven't had like the infrastructure for it. Now we do. But yeah, it's an interesting question because it just depends too on, you know, home service dials where something's on fire or flooding is a lot different than somebody who's trying to get XYZ benefit or package or program. So kind of depends.

Yeah, I think it's like, you know what? Yeah, 100%. And I think it's like the ease of the, like this, like, I think speed is a lot of it. Right. It's sort of like we're going to solve your problem faster. Like if you have a. If it's a high, high intent and it's a high urgency problem, it's like you're going to solve it really quickly by picking up the phone and calling. Right. So to that point, like I spent. I moved to my house in January, so like $6,000 or $7,000 on new water heater and I spent like $6,000 on new air conditioning unit already. And it sucks, right? But the air conditioning thing especially. I'm in Florida, it's the summer, so it's like, why do I like. And I call. I hate calling places, but I'll call. Why am I calling when my air condition's out, My master bedroom, my wife's unhappy. I'm like, okay, like I'm gonna call. But what gets me to call. Like why do I pick them if it's sort of like same day? Like right. Same day service. Like same day text, same day air conditioning installation. Like oh, we had a good. They were shocked. Literally the company I called was like Steve was shocked when our tech was able to come out and install a brand new air conditioning unit the same day. Right. So it's really about the time to get the result. And so it's like, okay, if I call now, I can get this problem, this urgent problem resolved as quickly as possible. And so I think that's actually a huge part of it. I mean the future state is like imagine what's your problem solved. And I think that's important. I was thinking about from a really like copy perspective but like yeah, probably a lot of time it's like one call in less than two minutes from now you could be on your way to solving this problem or you could have the answers you're looking for. You could have this. Whatever. And if it's something like a home services or lead gen, super fast, same day appointments, same whatever it is, find out if you qualify in minutes, 60 second approval process, whatever. Super fast, super easy. Just reducing as much friction as possible.

Yeah, I agree. It's a good dream result in XYZ time. That's why our, our framing is you know, skip the line basically. So it's like fill out this thing and then book it for two days from now and then do all that kind of stuff and it's like. Or if you just want to do it right now, just skip the line and you can call. It's like it's offering optionality, not direct to but it's an interesting one. I don't have context on this so sometimes people bait me. So don't tell. So if this is not just tell me. No, but you had mentioned. So do you still do anything with V Shred or Golden Hippo and they.

Just names on there but no, it's cool. Yeah, no, I mean no, like I like Golden Hippo. They were both in CA Pro for a long time and I literally was texting with Nick who's the CEO of V Shred earlier this like two or three days ago. So he'll still hit me up about like just marketing stuff or funnel stuff and you know, I'll be a resource when I can be. So yeah, we're still like friends but I'm not actively, you know, doing any projects for them.

Yeah, yeah, Golden Hip. I've heard amazing things. Like I love going on their website and it just being all about hiring, hiring, hiring, like, just constantly focused on that, which is. Obviously they have like the. Not hidden brands, but they only talk about XYZ ones and they have all that stuff. It's just a behemoth.

Yeah, they're huge.

Yeah, I've heard a few. A lot of people like info coaching talk. First of all, most of them that are loud or online or whatever are make money online versions are like biz op or MMO in some capacity. Then there's some of the other ones, like, you know, maybe us included, or some of these other ones that are 5, 10, 15, something a month. And then you hear about these other guys that, like, nobody really knows about, but, like, you've seen them, but you didn't realize. And it's your performance golfs of the world. It's your, you know, that crew of people that are hundreds of millions a year. And info coaching plus ecom, plus whatever. It's so cool. It's so cool to see. And they're. And they're like. I don't call them like OGs or legacy because. But at some level they are. And in comparison to the rest of the industry, and they just crush.

Crush 100%. And it's cool, you know, they are kind of OGs. I was thinking about that because Nick texted me about, like, a certain type of funnel structure. And then I'm like, oh, like, you know, Peter Kell was just talking about this type of funnel structure. Here's like a VSL Peter did. And then Nick was like, oh, can you connect me to Peter? And I'm like, yeah, but he's gonna be really expensive. And then Nick was like, all right, well, connect me in like a month or two. And I'm like, okay. But, like, it's sort of like, there's like such a high level of trust with people who have. And then performance golf, right? Donnie is. Donnie French is one of the partners there. I'm literally playing tennis with him tomorrow. 25 minutes for me. But it's like, same thing. We played tennis, like, two weeks ago, and it's like when we talk and, like, say stuff to each other, like, there's. There's that level of trust I'm sure you have with people, too. Like, there's certain people where if they recommend something, I just, like, do it. There's no, like, I don't need to bet it. I don't need to, like, is it bullshit? Is it hot air? Are they, like, billing smoke? It's like, so there's Something nice about that with the people, you know, who have been having success for like a long time where, you know, there's just a high level of comfort and yeah, I guess trust there.

Yeah, it's so cool. Like we're starting to talk in the more enterprise levels of these things and those names just pop up left and right, left and right. Like, you know, nowadays is like you're on WAP and you're on this quick thing and here's your quick group and whatever. And then it's like you get to this next layer and it's like the infrastructure layer and it's the checkout champs and it's the 12 mids and it's the like all these other things and all these guys names pop up left and right every time you start to get into those conversations. Cause they've just played at such a high level. Um, so same thing. It's like you hear that almost like stamp of approval in the same way and you're like, oh, okay, cool. These big guys use it. Like once you get to that tier, check, like check, check.

It's also crazy. Just like even on the biz off side, this is sort of an aside. But like every now and then I'll go through like FTC like complaints and things and what I'm like, what are they focused on? Like, I'm just always curious, right? And even on biz op, it's mostly biz op these days. They actually very rarely are doing anything with health. But you'll just see these people I've never heard of. And it's like, oh, they asked to forfeit like a billion dollars in sales from their biz op. And I'm like, I've never even heard of this company. And that they did $10 billion. There's some crazy numbers that I'm like, how it's so wild. Cause you think you know so much right to that point, like you know, V Shredder, Performance Golf or whoever it is. But then for every person, you know, there's all these other people who are for some reason not on your radar, who are just doing massive numbers. And of course the ones being, you know, pinged by the ftc, that's not a good thing. But there's plenty who are doing more ethically as well. And it's just fascinating how, you know, you think you know everything, but there's, there's, there's some really, really under the radar people also just really crushing it.

Oh, 100%. I mean, I started getting in conversation with these WAP guys or whatever. And even them like they're pretty public and everyone on their plat, like everyone kind of plays in the same rung. But there are people in there that are not playing publicly in the wrong and are doing size and like they'll be like oh, in this industry and they're doing you know, 14 million a month or this industry and they're doing 7 million a month. And I'm like, who, like who is that? Yeah, totally serious numbers when, when you're up there. So okay, next one in here. Obviously you use tons of AI for copy, but how do you set up your own environment for your own AI copywriting machine?

I mean, you know, that's kind of what RBC2 is about. But that's okay. I'm not saying that in like a, oh, you have to buy RPC2. No, but yeah, but I just, I, that's the huge focus of it. But really I use a lot of quad projects. So it's like doing research like I said, like figure out the product market awareness level, which is really important. Right. Because again the way I do it is like essentially go break down the tam, but then also like what percentage of the TAM falls into each of the five stages of awareness. Right. And that's really helpful because I see this mistake a lot actually where people like even going back to, let's go to biz op. Right? Okay. It's like our coaching. If you want to do a couple million $, your coaching business, a lot of your copy talks about all the other gurus say this, the so called gurus and like you know, you tried doing FBA and like whatever but like if you're trying to do like 20 million, 30 million, $100 million a year in biz op like you're really going to like problem aware or even unaware. And this is an interesting thing because like bizops were the only places where going after unaware people can make sense because even people are unaware they have a problem at all. Pretty much everyone wants to make more money, right. And so you kind of have to go all the way up to them in order to get a lot of scale in biz op. Right. Versus let's say you're doing like an eye cream. Pretty much everybody pretty much. How do I say this? Like maybe half the market, let's say it's woman 40 plus maybe like 40% are unaware. Meaning they, they, they don't think they have a problem. It's not like they're not aware. They're like they're like they either they think their skin's good, they're not aware that they have a problem, right? Then there's like, you know, kind of problem aware. They're not happy about the eye bags, wrinkles, the crow's feet, what have you, right? And then you've got sort of solution aware. But what's interesting is like even the unaware women are solution, but basically everyone's solution aware. So okay, there you can talk about solution aware. You talk to them, but it's basically figuring out where in that journey you're actually talking to them with your copy. So it's actually super important. And then there's the competitor research, the other components, your kind of unique mechanism, which for info and biz op can be more about a differentiator or kind of your unique value proposition. It's sort of getting these different elements together, creating a unified research document for everything. I call a unified research document that's got kind of everything you would need about competitor research, psychographic research, levels of awareness, having your mechanism, creating a brief of the pain points and their aspirations, the future state, where they are now, all this stuff and basically taking that brief and I just basically feed that into a cloud project. But I usually have a cloud project with referential material. So I have different projects for like short form, like short video ads. Like you know, if I'm doing like 1 to 2 minute video ads versus 3 to 7 minutes versus 7 to 14 minutes versus like longer advertorials, product pages, whatever. I basically have a quad project that has referential examples, a bunch of them. And I'll give it like my sort of my brief that has like all the info for my product or brand and be like, okay, basically give me an outline, right? Don't just write because if it writes it might go on some adventure. Give me an outline of like I want you to write a medium length bsl. Let's say like, you know, here's the brief, give me an outline of what it would look like. Here's what it looked like. Okay, that's pretty good. But like this part doesn't make sense. Let's change this, let's tweak that, whatever it is like okay, cool. Now we see the outline. Yep, that looks good. Okay, write the copy. So that's, you know, I don't know if that's like that's not going to give you the exact blueprint. But I mean hopefully that kind of gives you an idea of how I approach it.

Yeah. And then from there do you generally like, do you Use AI for the next piece, which is creative portion or usually is that, I mean, a mix of AI or is it full AI at this point where you can drop it in somewhere and get what you need out based on as far as.

Creatives, like, or something like the ad copy or like the images, videos and stuff.

Images, videos, like so that piece.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, most of the people I know are using like AI for most of the images and stuff like that. And creatives, I mean, there might still be. You're using like Canva or like an editor, you know what I mean? For. For statics and then for. For video is trickier. I think that's still one of the biggest bottlenecks for people is like you need good video editors. They're still using like a lot of AI elements in it. But like, that's the, that's the part that I think will get automated. A bunch of people are trying to solve it, but nobody solved it correctly yet.

Yeah, very helpful. Yeah, our team all uses Claude for all of that portion of it. But where they were literally talking about your course yesterday and I was like, oh, that's funny. What did you learn from your worst year in business?

I mean, I've had a couple, you know, bad years. So if I did one, maybe I would, I would quickly do a couple. Okay, so like 2015, when I started my first supplement company and like, you know, we like made $1 million but lost 200,000. I think that one. I kind of learned patience though, because it was, it was kind of like just sticking with it long enough to like, you know, get momentum. Like, how do I, how do I say this where it's valuable for somebody listening? I think also, like, so, like, I mean, I tried to cut, like, basically I didn't know what I was doing. So like I try to do a dev I had was like, oh, I'm going to create a custom CRM when Checkout Champ existed that was connected at the time. But I'm like, all right, do that. And so we spent all this money on this dev going on an adventure to create the CRM that didn't work as well as Checkout Champ. Then I kept being told, work with affiliates. And I was like, oh, for some reason I didn't want to use affiliates. And so essentially I knew we had something good, but I was trying to reinvent the wheel. Going back to that earlier advice a little bit too much. And then finally I just went to out of the box solutions with Checkout Champ and things like that. And Opened up to affiliates and then we did went from 1 million to 23 million the second year. So that was pretty good. Again, affiliates aren't really the right model for most people these days, but in 2015 it was. And then more recently, 20, I guess. I don't know if it was 2021 or 2022. I had a kind of a down year. Like I bought out Justin Goff, who was my original partner in Copy Accelerator, and I changed it because basically copy for people watching this too. It started off primarily for business owners. Then we had this period of time where it kind of transitioned into almost like freelance biz op, which I didn't like. And one of the reasons I bought them out was to stop doing that. So I did and I basically killed this program that was doing like a million and a half dollars a year, maybe 2 million. Really high margin because I didn't want to do it. So like, I lost that income. But I was struggling to get like VSO clients for a period of that time. And basically, I mean, like, I, I was, I've been making like, I made so much money, especially in like, I think it was 2022, let's say. But like, you know, I was, I had like months in 2021 where I was making like $800,000 a month. Like, you know, 400,000amonth, 500. Like, like, like, like actual. Not like revenue, just like in the bank. Like again and again and again. Right. So. And it's kind of like went around when I met you was towards the end of that or maybe the middle of it, but like, so then I can invest in all this shit. Like I'm like, I invested in real estate things because then that's what you think. I'm making us money. I'm. Now I'm an investor. So like I invested in all these different ventures, which sounds really great until you start having cash flow issues and then all your money is locked up because you've invested in all these things that are like startups or real estate and they're not liquid. So my cash flow kind of got tight. I wasn't bringing as much money in. And I think one of the things I realized there was even with my email list, I would sort of send stuff out to my email list and be like, you know, give me money. Basically, like, hey, like, pay me to write a vsl. Or like, I was like asking for money, but I, like, I wasn't providing enough value is what I kind of. What I kind of realized is like, I was I had, like, I had this sense of entitlement. Like, because I've accomplished all these things, people should just give me money. But it's like, no. Like, that doesn't make sense. Like, it's really cool. I've accomplished all these things, but they'll give me money because I can demonstrate value. And yes, even though I have this track record, what do I do? Let me just go back to actually providing value to people. Let me actually, let me share more value for people and then also let me get involved in some ventures and projects so that I'm working on things. I'm involved in things that are actually working right now that can then help to grow and scale because I'll make more money from it, maybe a little bit more incremental than I'm used to, these giant fat distributions every month from these businesses. But at the same time, like, you know, I'll. I'll learn, I'll keep growing. Then I'll have more things to share that are valuable. Plus, you know, those things will eventually bear fruits, and I'll make more money there too. So I guess it was like, not. I know that's not the most succinct answer for people watching. I've been sick this whole week and I'm rallying. But yeah, it's super honest, right? But. But it's like not having a sense of entitlement. Even if you have a great track record not overextending or over investing, being an investor sounds really cool until you have a cash flow crisis. So being an investor is still cool. But don't invest like, you know, that like, like, like invest, you know, small amount, like 20%, right? Not like 80%.

Yeah.

And then the last part of it is I was just too slow. I was so used to making so much money that, like, I was too slow to change my lifestyle. So, like, it's wild to think about now because I barely put anything on my credit cards. But I mean, I was probably spending between business and personal amexes, like $150,000 a month and then cash flow kind of. So I had money stacked away, too. But it turns out if you have a million dollars cash plus a bunch of other shit, and then you're paying $200,000 a month to Amex bills or 150,000 plus you've got mortgages and other things, that money goes really fucking fast. And so I was kind of slow to changed my lifestyle because I kept being like, oh, I'll just make a bunch of money again, because that's what I've done for the last several years versus I should have been more quick to make lifestyle cuts and changes. And so anyway, I mean, it all worked out fine, but it was a stressful period of time for me and it was a lot of like, I learned a lot during that.

Yeah, no, that's amazing. That's my thing right now is just like, people always ask me that. They're like, what do you do with your wealth? I'm like, what do you invest in? I'm like, nothing. I don't know. Like, my whole thing is just like, generation, skill set for the generation. Like, I'm not even close to that side. I mean, not. I don't say I'm not close, but I'm like, it's just so much more important to me to focus on building a skill set, building the machine, building the business for the production, like, income side than it is for the investing side. But no, that was extremely. It didn't need to be succinct. That was extremely valuable.

Let me share one really quick thing on this, Ryan, because it's funny, I was thinking about this the other day in the shower, which is in 2017, 18. It was part of Ed O' Keeffe's mastermind. So starting that started, I did that in like 2016, 17 into 18, he had this guy, Randy Davis, who is sort of not from our world, but he had sold like a couple businesses. He sold like a dry cleaning business for. I want to say it was a dry clean business for like a couple hundred million. And they sold like a financial services business for, I think it was like $800 million or whatever. And it was like, he's going to do this financial investing mastermind thing. And it was, I don't know, 35,000 a year. And a bunch of us from Meadow Keefe's thing joined it. I did it for maybe one or two years. But I remember being so pissed because in my head I'm like, all right, I'm going to get these secret investment opportunities that are only, you know, for like the. Now that I've made it, we've made it, we're going to be able to like, have these. These incredible things to, like, you know, investment opportunities. And like his entire thing was like the greatest investment and the greatest ROI you're going to get is from investing your time, energy and effort into your own business. And I was like, so pissed. I'm like, what the fuck? I just paid you, you know, $35,000 and you're just saying this, like, I want, you know, the sexy investment. And I was just cracking up like this just like the other day, because I'm like, oh, fuck. He was right, though, you know, Like. Like, this guy, it turns out he was actually, like, very smart to say that, you know, and. And. But it's hard to learn that lesson because we start making money and then we want to be like, again, like an investor and we want to go do these other things. But it's like you just kept focusing on your actual business and investing into that, and then you sell it for nine figures or 10 figures or even eight figures or whatever it is. Like, the ROI is going to be way better than the stupid fucking real estate syndicate you put money into that, like, ends up just going bust once interest rates go up, you know.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I'm all in that world right now. Like, mine's almost splitting to do I or do I not do these other opportunities? Because the whole point of starting this was like, talent opportunities. And like, essentially I say network, but, like, friends. Like, I wanted to meet people in the space. I watched everyone's content for 10 years and I didn't produce a thing. Nobody knew who I was like, which is all good. I just was in consumption mode. And now it's like, okay, I got the network part. We get a bunch of the talent and like, the opportunities are banging at the door. But it's like, am I going to split focus like you said earlier in this, like, to pursue these other things versus just working on the golden goose and making it just massive. And I just keep kind of going back to, like, it will. It will hurt it. If I try and go and do this other fun thing or this other thing, and for what, 50 grand a month or 100 grand a month or 500, like, until 1. Then, you know, would become the main. It's so difficult in my head to be like. Because the interest. Because the ease. Maybe it sounds so easy or it sounds like it's in alignment, but, like, is it when you log into two emails, when you're in two different Slack channels, when you're in 12 different HubSpot accounts, when you're, you know, it's like, it's hard in my head to justify being like. To be able to beat the main thing, which you almost don't want.

You shouldn't. Yeah, I think your instincts are right. I would. I'd recommend keep. Keep focusing on the golden goose.

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Um. All right, last one. Cause we're running over if you had to start over again, how'd you speed run to 7 to 10k per month? And even better on that cuz I feel like that one's is if you're at zero. I heard someone say this the other day. But if you're full at zero, you know what you know, but you don't know. Like nobody knows you. You're just kind of like isolated. How would you speed run more than 7 to 10k a month? Because that one's pretty easy, I feel like in your brain based on some of your stuff. But how do you speed run it higher?

I mean, you know, if I knew like copywriting and stuff it would be pretty easy to that point. But I would, you know, I mean I hate agencies so I wouldn't like, I don't want to run an agency but I basically would. Would probably create like an agency. I mean I would, I would just like start doing copy, doing full stack things, use AI to automate it, bring on clients, get a bunch of people on retainer and I mean I could easily, I mean I know how big we're trying to get in this hypothetical but you know, getting that to whatever, like 30 to $100,000 a month like recurring like really fast and easily, you know, I think yeah, just be like not you know, copy but also again just like even like other parts of like the implementation or like whatever it is like agentic stuff of AI, things like that.

Yeah, 100%. Well, this was amazing. Do you have anything that you want to share? I mean I'm probably, I mean we're probably going to buy your course right now for our CMO and senior copywriter. So that would be extremely helpful to have machine but anything else that you want to share before we pop?

No, just you know, appreciate you having me on and I you know, keep doing the good work and you know, honored to, to have been invited to come chat with you.

You made it on the original list. The original around there. So I appreciate it and we will talk soon. You, everyone knows where to find you. But find him online, he's got a fun thing. So talk soon guys. Bye.