People person from a small town. Working hard to better myself everyday and will take on every project I have time for.

Chris Cunningham

Head of Marketing: I'm fixing our attribution by asking customers how they found us.
CEO: No you're not. That's not scalable..

Head of Marketing: Neither is last click attribution... Dark social is 70% of our current pipeline and we're pretending it doesn't exist.

CEO: What are you on about... what's dark social?

Head of Marketing: Every untrackable share that actually drives decisions. Like screenshots shared in Slack, Discord or a text between two VPs.

CEO: We can't measure that... and we can't optimize what we can't measure.

Head of Marketing: We can't measure it because our attribution model is broken. Our tools only tell us "what did they click?". Instead we should just ask THEM "how did you actually find us?"

CEO: And people will just... tell us?

Head of Marketing: They already are. I added one question to our onboarding calls: "Walk me through how you discovered us."

Turns out our biggest deal this month came from a Reddit thread that got screenshot, shared in a private Discord, then forwarded to their team Slack.

CEO: Our attribution says "direct traffic."

Head of Marketing: Exactly my point.

CEO: The board wants dashboards.

Head of Marketing: The board wants revenue. I can show them a spreadsheet of "how we actually found you" from every customer. That's real attribution.

CEO: How do we scale this?

Head of Marketing: One question in every sales call that gets added to a field in the CRM. Actual insights that marketing can work off of.

CEO: If this doesn't work...

Head of Marketing: It's already working. We stopped tracking last-click nonsense and started listening. Turns out customers will tell you the truth if you just ask.

PS - Dark social drives more B2B pipeline than any channel you're tracking.

Thoughts?

I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social media at ClickUp.

Follow me for more actionable marketing tips & tricks.

Chris  Cunningham

li_at

JSESSIONID

Talks about #saas, #startup, #branding, #marketing, and #influencermarketing

Founding Member ClickUp / Marketing

Michelle Strom

When ClickUp launched, nobody wanted us. I was our first sales rep and nobody cared what I had to say. So I set a rule for myself...go for 50 no's before I quit.

I made call after call. Most people hung up, while others laughed. A few were polite but not interested.

Then I closed my first deal & that feeling was so sweet I'll never forget it.

I set the counter back to zero & went for 50 more no's.

But I never hit 50 again. I closed another one, then another, and the momentum built from there.

I took a lot of those early lessons from sales & still apply them to content/social media today.

I see the same patterns with content. Founders post 3 times, get no traction, and quit. They never make it to their first win because they aren't expecting all the "no's" or failed posts.

But content is the same game as sales. You're going to hear no most of the time and the algorithm will ignore you. Your first 20 posts will probably flop. Maybe even your first 100 posts.

That's not failure though...that's the process.

Set a number. 50 posts. 100 posts. Whatever keeps you going long enough to see what works.

Because the first win will feel so sweet that you'll want to keep going. You'll start to learn what your audience responds to. You'll build momentum, and eventually you'll stop guessing.

But you have to make it to that first win. Most people quit before post 15.

Thoughts?

It's Monday. Which means we're going to pitch 20 content ideas to create this week. Only 8 will survive. Here's exactly how it works (steal this framework):

I show up with 3 ideas that I usually find from tweets that went viral or something bizarre I saw over the weekend.

Like last week I saw a tweet asking "what would you do if the FBI showed up and you had 30 seconds to hide a thumb drive?" The replies were unhinged. That became a video.

Luke shows up with 3. Adam shows up with 3. Our guest writer - usually some comedian from the LA scene - shows up with 3-4 more.

We pitch them all, and then we vote blind. No one knows whose idea is whose.

The winners are whatever gets the most votes - pure democracy.

After we pick our 8-10 winners, I sort them into what I call the ABCD formula:

A = Stuff we know crushes. Like HR guys dancing. We'll remake 2-3 of these.
B = Concepts that worked elsewhere that we can steal and make our own.
C = Whatever trend is happening. Severance drops? We're making a Severance parody.
D = Complete wild card. Something so weird it might bomb or might get 100 million views.

By noon, we know exactly what we're shooting Thursday.

Tuesday we'll figure out props and locations.
Thursday we shoot all day.
Friday I color-code everything based on performance.

This system has generated over 1,000 videos & we've hit 200+ million monthly impressions with this strategy.

All because every Monday, a room full of comedians and actors who barely understand project management software vote on what makes them laugh.

Your content strategy probably took months to develop.

Ours takes 2 hours every Monday (and adapts to trends in real time).

Head of Marketing: We're done with the brand voice guide.
CEO: The 47-page document we spent $30K on? No way..
Head of Marketing: That's the one.

CEO: Why? It ensures consistency.

Head of Marketing: It ensures we sound like every other SaaS company in existence. I ran an experiment. Took our last 10 posts and 10 from our competitor. Removed logos. Our team couldn't tell the difference.

CEO: That's why we need guidelines.

Head of Marketing: Our customers don't want guidelines. They want to know who we actually are. I looked at every piece of feedback from last quarter. The word "generic" appeared 23 times.

CEO: So what's your plan?

Head of Marketing: Let the team sound like humans. Sarah in product has a sarcastic sense of humor. Let her write like that. Tom in sales tells incredible stories. Let him tell them.

CEO: We'll sound inconsistent. The brand team will hate this.

Head of Marketing: The brand team already agrees. They told me they're tired of writing "synergy" and "leverage" when they'd rather just say what we actually do.

CEO: Legal will have a field day.

Head of Marketing: Legal approved our last 5 posts that said "our competitors suck at onboarding." Got more positive replies than anything we've published in 6 months.

CEO: This could backfire.

Head of Marketing: You know what's backfiring? Our NPS dropped 12 points. Customers said we "lost our personality." We used to be scrappy. Now we sound like IBM.

CEO: One quarter.

Head of Marketing: When our engagement rate triples and customers start saying "this actually sounds like you guys," I want to burn that brand guide.

CEO: Deal.

P.S. - Nobody ever bought software because it "leveraged synergies." Stop using corporate jargon, and start telling stories that are actually authentic.

I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social media at ClickUp.

Follow me for marketing that sounds like it was written by a human.

I analyzed our last 1,000 videos at ClickUp. Here are 7 things that actually move the needle on our social media content:
(1) Instagram Trial Reels

Trial Reels are free A/B testing that nobody uses to test 3-5 different hooks. They don't show on your feed, so you can pick the winner for your "real" post. We tested 3 hooks - one got 13k views, another got 1M. That's a 77x difference.

(2) Actors cost less than your agency retainer

LA actors: $60-80k/year. They show up on time, take direction, and don't have ego. The social media gurus recycle the same 5 hooks everyone uses.

(3) Your social media "best practices" are why you're failing

I was told to always show the product, always use UTM links, make people argue in comments... I ignored all of it and now we generate 200M+ impressions/month now...the board loves it.

(4) Stop creating new content - recreate winners

Our HR guys dancing video hit 30M views. So we made finance guys dancing, then IT guys dancing, then Sales guys dancing. 100M+ views total that all stemmed from one winning idea.

(5) Weekly brainstorm meetings > Strategy decks

20 ideas go in every Monday, then 8-10 of the best ones survive after the team votes blindly. The winners get turned into content. This 2-hour meeting generates more pipeline than any strategy deck I've ever seen.

(6) Pattern interrupts that actually work

Opening a banana backwards, someone bursting out of a car trunk, literally circling someone's back when saying "circling back." Subtle confusion from visuals works just as well (if not better) than the words you actually say.

(7) Color-code your best/worst creative

Green = 20k+ views (recreate it)
Yellow = 5-20k (tweak the hook)
Red = under 5k (don't reuse)

This system turned random viral hits into predictable viral hits.

What else would you add to the list?

We spent $50K on a bunch of expensive Sony cameras at ClickUp, but our iPhone videos get 10x more views. This is just the tip of the iceberg on a bigger trend I'm noticing...

People scroll past overproduced content now because it signals corporate ad, not authentic insight. Raw content from a phone feels like you're letting them in behind the scenes, and that's what makes them stop.

I see founders all the time that wait to start creating content because they think they need the perfect setup.

They're shopping for cameras, researching lighting setups, and building out entire studios when they haven't even posted their first video yet.

It's absolutely insane because your audience doesn't care about your gear. Especially when you don't have an audience to begin with.

Whether you're just getting started, or you've been in marketing for 30+ years it's good to be reminded of the basics that actually matter.

The hook matters. The message matters. Authenticity matters. Production quality? Dead last.

tldr; If you can't make good content on your iPhone, your $5K camera won't fix that.

Set your phone up. Hit record. Say something worth hearing. Rinse & Repeat until it works. That's it.

That's the whole playbook.

Agree?

POV: You thought making a rap about ClickUp was a good marketing decision...

It was.

I’ve generated more than 1.8 BILLION views for ClickUp in the last year but NOTHING compares to my first taste of virality - when I FAKED winning the lottery in 2012.

Yep. Long before B2B memes, actors, and 300M-impression goals… I was a broke college kid at Virginia Tech with three friends, Photoshop, and a dumb idea that fooled the entire country.

Here’s what happened:
The Mega Millions jackpot was $640M.

Less than an hour after the drawing, with the help of Zeb Evans ClickUp CEO, I tweeted a Photoshopped “winning” ticket with nothing but:

👉 “My life has forever changed.”
That was it and the internet lost its mind.

Within hours I was trending globally. Journalists, fans, haters - even Good Morning America and CNN - flooded in.

People I’d never met proposed to me.
The DMs were… unhinged. Let’s just say some invitations were not PG-13.
My parents had to unplug their home phone because my small hometown Martinsville was convinced their son had just become a millionaire.

Meanwhile… we were goofing around in our apartment debating:
“Should we go out drinking tonight… or should we fool the world again?”

We chose the world - and it worked. Our entire goal with this prank was to get onto Comedy Central’s Tosh.0 - and it nearly worked.

That moment taught me my first real lesson in content:
When you understand attention, the world reacts. When you manufacture a moment, the world amplifies. 

When you break the pattern, people stop scrolling.

Fast forward to today, and the same principles drive everything we do at ClickUp:
• Make people feel something.
• Break the “B2B is boring” mindset.
• Be the cool brand in a boring industry.
• Study people harder than you study algorithms.

Because virality isn’t luck - it’s psychology, timing, and understanding humans.

Last click attribution misses 95% of the story which is why your LinkedIn campaigns are probably performing 10x better than your dashboard shows. 

We solved this...By using Dreamdata to connect pipeline data directly to LinkedIn. Now our algorithm optimizes for revenue, not vanity metrics.

Want the same visibility? Comment "DREAM" below.

Special week. Launched ClickUp 4.0 and we’re bringing the OG crew to the DR to work and celebrate. Grateful for the journey.

It still feels like we're just getting started.

I've written 4,000+ posts for ClickUp's social accounts, and cut my teeth on more failed posts than I'd like to admit. Now, every post I make needs to do at least 1 of these 3 things, or I don't post it at all (share this with your team):

Somewhere along the line B2B marketing got so far away from B2C marketing that it's become out of tune with what actually works on human beings.

That gives the saavy B2B marketer a huge opportunity to fill this gap for their audience. Try one of these angles out for your next post:

(1) Make your audience FEEL something

Anger, hope, or relief. The feeling "that someone finally gets it" is what I'm going for here.

We posted about pretending to understand what your boss said in that meeting while frantically DMing your coworker for translation. It blew up because we said what everyone was thinking but nobody talks about.

(2) TEACH them something they can use today

I'm talking about something they can implement before their 3pm meeting. That's the good stuff people will come back for more of.

Not just another framework or theory.

(3) ENTERTAIN them

Yeah, even in B2B you can entertain your audience.

We had our actors dress up as different departments and dance to old songs. Dumb? Maybe. But it got more than 30 million views while our product demos got 800.

Team leads and VPs are real people who doom-scroll at midnight & laugh at the same stuff everyone else does. Lean into that while the rest of the market is clueless.

If your next post doesn't do at least one of these, edit it until it does.

1 out of 3? Solid post.
2 out of 3? Now you're onto something.
3 out of 3? This is where things compound.

Thoughts?

PS - Let me know why you think B2B marketing has become so...boring. When did things first start to go wrong?

I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social media at ClickUp.

Follow me for more actionable marketing tips & tricks.

Every week I interview project managers using tools like ClickUp to learn about the content they actually watch. Their answers almost never match what "thought leaders" tell you to post about. Here's 3 questions you can steal to figure out what content your ICP wants you to create:

Most marketers live in a bubble talking to other marketers… which is great if your ICP is marketers. But if you're selling to anyone else, you have to escape the echo chamber and figure out what they actually consume.

So I started interviewing actual users. Share these questions with your team:

(Question 1) What content do you actually watch?

They never say LinkedIn thought leadership content. They say comedy sketches, TikToks, and YouTube videos about literally anything except productivity hacks.

That's when I realized that after 10 hours of actual project management, they don't want more project management content. They want to decompress.

(Question 2) What's something cool you learned last week?

Not one person has ever mentioned a framework from a carousel. It's always some random thing that stuck because it was entertaining first, educational second.

This told me to stop leading with value props and start leading with entertainment.

(Question 3) What would genuinely help you?

They don't want another "5 tips" post. They want to feel seen. They want someone to acknowledge that work is absurd sometimes. They want to laugh at the same corporate buzzwords that drive them insane.

So we created exactly that. We started making content that makes them laugh about their reality instead of lecturing them about it.

Project Managers spend 8 hours a day in meetings about workflows and optimization. When they open their phone, they don't want more of that. They just want to chill for a second.

A lot of these execs you're trying to reach - they're still regular people & they like to laugh..

15 minutes talking to actual users taught me more than 3 years of marketing conferences.

You're guessing what your audience wants based on what other marketers tell you. I'm asking them directly and creating exactly that.

One of us is getting 100M views from dancing videos.

Maybe try asking your audience what they want instead of telling them what they need.

We doubled our content performance in 90 days at ClickUp using a color-coded system. Here's how it works so you can steal it (bookmark this for later):

Most teams create content, then move on and never analyze what actually worked.

At ClickUp, we test everything so we can double down on the winners and ditch the losers. Here's the exact process:

Step 1: Create content for at least a full week

Don't analyze results daily, you need to give yourself enough data to spot patterns.

Step 2: Put all your videos/posts into a table

Links in one column, impressions in another, likes, comments, and so on. 

We use ClickUp for this (and you should too!)

Step 3: Color code everything - keep it stupidly simple

Green = Winner. It performed well.
Yellow = Potential. Needs tweaking.
Red = Miss. Don't repeat this.

Step 4: Make decisions

Reds: Stop making this type of content.
Yellows: Change the hook or format, try again.
Greens: Remake it. Your audience already proved they like it.

Most marketing teams try reinventing the wheel every week. This allows you to have an ongoing system. Then when trends happen, you can hop on them without breaking your entire process.

When something works, double down on it. Make more versions of it.

Your greens show you what your audience wants so give them more of it.

Do this every week and your numbers will climb because you're learning what works instead of guessing.

In App analytics are great, but there is something to having all your channels + posts in a single location to analyze and share with your team. It makes things more accessible.

Thoughts?

The most interesting distribution channel in 2025 isn't TikTok or LinkedIn.

It's AI model training data.

Let me explain:

Warner Music Group just partnered with Suno.

They went from suing to partnering.

Why?

Because they realized something:

If AI models train on your content...

Your brand becomes part of AI's worldview.

When someone asks ChatGPT for music recommendations?

The models trained on Warner content will recommend Warner artists.

This is distribution at the infrastructure level.

Not on the platform.

IN the platform.

And most brands are still thinking about this wrong.

They're trying to block AI from their content.

When they should be negotiating to be OVER-represented.

Because here's what happens:

AI becomes the default discovery layer.

The brands in the training data win.

The brands blocking it become invisible.

Same pattern playing out in:

Recruiting (AI resume screeners)

Sales (AI research tools)

Marketing (AI content generators)

If AI can't learn about you...

It can't recommend you.

Are you optimizing to be AI-discoverable or AI-invisible?

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Founder

Your situation probably isn't as bad as you think. #perspective

Built & exited $4M agency | Now scaling my consulting firm to $5M+ | DM me "Nashville" to learn about our in-person intensives to help you scale 📈

Everyone thinks scaling an agency is about better ads, better outbound, better closers, better creatives.

It’s not.

The real game is operational maturity... and most founders are wildly underdeveloped in it.

You don’t rise to the level of your ambition.
You rise to the level of your systems.

👉 If your onboarding is messy, you’re capped.
👉 If your handoffs are sloppy, you’re capped.
👉 If your offer is confusing, you’re capped.
👉 If your team doesn’t have structure, you’re capped.
👉 If you’re still the bottleneck, you’re capped.

Agencies don’t fail because of poor performance.
They fail because the foundation was never built to hold the next level.

And the founders who grow the fastest aren’t the ones who “figure out ads” faster…

They’re the ones who eliminate friction inside the business before it shows up.
▪️ They build clarity.
▪️ They build repeatability.
▪️ They build visibility.

And they build teams that don’t depend on them to function.
That’s the difference between an agency that grows by accident…
and one that scales on purpose.

You don’t scale by adding more.
You scale by removing what breaks.

If you understand that, the next 12 months will look very different for you.

I’ve been in a different kind of season lately.

Not a “grind harder” season.
Not a “stack more goals” season.
Not a “chase everything at once” season.

More like a slow down and take inventory season.
A season of paying attention.
A season of asking better questions instead of forcing faster answers.

What I’m learning is this:
You can move fast and still feel stuck.
You can work hard and still make no progress.
And you can hit every milestone… and still feel like something’s off.

Because momentum without meaning eventually burns you out.

This season has been about stripping out the noise... the extra commitments, the unnecessary pressure, the expectations I never actually agreed to. It’s been about choosing the things that matter and letting go of the things that don’t.

A few reminders that are hitting different for me right now:
✅ Clarity beats speed.
✅ Depth beats volume.
✅ Purpose beats pressure.
✅ And alignment beats ambition every single time.

I’m not trying to sprint out of this season.
I’m trying to learn from it.

If you’re in a similar place... slowing down, recalibrating, paying attention again just know there’s nothing wrong with it.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do… is rebuild the foundation you’re standing on.

And when you get that right, everything else gets lighter.

Content burnout doesn’t come from writing too much.
It comes from wasting time writing things that don’t land.

I used to overthink every LinkedIn post.

Now, I follow one simple process that keeps me consistent and connected to my audience 👇

→ I start in Slack, checking what questions clients keep asking. If it’s coming up in consulting calls, it’s content gold… because it’s rooted in real pain.

→ I jot down a list of the most common problems we’re solving that week. These become the backbone of my posts… not random thoughts, but problems my ICP actually wants solved.

→ I drop that list into ChatGPT to organize topics and surface patterns. It helps me group similar problems and spot recurring themes across clients.

→ Then I open magicpost.in to turn those ideas into structured LinkedIn drafts in my tone of voice. It gives me the bones, headline, flow, examples, without losing authenticity.

→ Next, I edit for clarity and insight density. Every line should either teach, provoke, or connect. If it doesn’t, it goes.

→ Before scheduling, I ask one question: “Would my audience save this post?” If the answer’s no, I rewrite until it is.

→ Finally, I track performance weekly to find what formats and angles resonate most.

That feedback loop keeps my writing evolving… not repetitive.
That’s how I stay consistent without burning out.
Not through inspiration.
Through process.

Most founders fire SDRs when meetings are low.
Bad move.

Because 9 times out of 10, the SDR isn’t the problem.
You are.

Here’s why:
👉 You gave them a domain that was already torched.
👉 You never monitored reputation or health.
👉 You didn’t check if emails were even landing in inboxes.
👉 And now you’re blaming them for not booking meetings.

That’s like handing a basketball player a deflated ball
and yelling at them for not scoring.

The truth is simple:

If your SDR’s emails don’t land in the primary inbox,
it doesn’t matter how good their copy is
or how many dials they make.

They’re not failing…
they’re invisible.

When I plugged in Maildoso, everything changed:
📈 Reps stopped fighting spam filters
📈 Deliverability stayed healthy
📈 Meetings doubled without adding headcount

The problem isn’t lazy SDRs.
It’s broken infrastructure.

Fix that, and suddenly your “underperformers”
look like all-stars.

A few years ago, I treated LinkedIn like a side project.
I’d post when I felt inspired… then go silent for weeks.

The result?
👉 Zero momentum. 
👉 No inbound leads. 
👉 No trust built with my audience.

That changed when I got consistent. And consistency has done more for my business than any ad campaign ever has.

Because when you show up every week, people notice.
✅ They start following your thinking.
✅ They start reaching out.
✅ They start hiring you.

Now, I batch 7 days of content in under an hour.

Here’s the system I use 👇
→ 7 posts a week
→ Created in 8-10 minutes each
→ All in my tone, without starting from scratch

I use MagicPost, an AI built specifically for LinkedIn, to handle 80% of the heavy lifting.

It studies your writing style, drafts posts that sound like you, and helps you stay consistent even on the weeks you don’t feel like writing.

Since I started using it, I’ve saved hours every week and landed more clients because my content stays visible, relevant, and real.

If you want to create a week’s worth of content in 60 minutes,
try magicpost.in - it’s free to test and could be the system that builds your next client pipeline.

P.S. if you want to try out Magic Post they are running a BFCM promo and you can use code JOSHUABF10 for 70% off annual plans and 40% off monthly plans FOREVER.

Batch 7 Days In Under An Hour

Most offers are too safe.
 
They sound good.
They make sense.
They check all the right boxes.
And that’s exactly why nobody buys them.
 
Safe offers blend in.
They feel logical, not emotional.
And logic rarely opens wallets.
 
If your offer doesn’t make you slightly nervous to say out loud,
it’s probably not strong enough.
 
Because strong offers do three things:
 
1️⃣ They make a bold promise.
“Grow your agency” is vague.
“Add $100k MRR in 90 days” gets attention.
You can’t sell transformation if you describe it like a to-do list.
 
2️⃣ They eliminate risk.
Safe offers leave the risk with the buyer.
Strong offers flip it.
Guarantees, milestones, deliverable-based pricing... whatever makes saying “yes” easier.
 
3️⃣ They carry conviction.
If you sound unsure when you pitch it,
why would anyone trust you to deliver it?
Conviction converts. Every time.
 
Here’s the paradox:
The more you try to make your offer comfortable for everyone,
the less compelling it becomes for anyone.
 
So stop trying to make offers that feel safe.
Make offers that feel inevitable.
 
Because in a crowded market, safety isn’t security...
it’s invisibility.

In agency operations, 80% of your chaos comes from just 20% of your process.

It’s almost never the work itself that creates the chaos.
It’s the handoffs.

Handoffs are where clarity breaks…
where expectations get blurry…
and where “small errors” become expensive problems.

Here’s how the 80/20 rule actually shows up:

1️⃣  80% of revisions come from 20% of unclear briefs.
If the brief is vague, the work will be vague.
Strong briefs → clean execution → fewer loops.

2️⃣ 80% of delays come from 20% of bottlenecked tasks.
Waiting on client approvals
Waiting on strategy alignment
Waiting on founders to review “one last thing”
Fix those, and your entire timeline speeds up.

3️⃣ 80% of miscommunication comes from 20% of missing context.
People aren’t dropping the ball…
they’re guessing what the ball even is.
And the moment people start guessing, your quality drops.

4️⃣ 80% of churn comes from 20% of expectations not set on day 1.
Clients rarely leave because the work is bad.
They leave because they were expecting something else.

 Most founders try to fix operations by adding more:
 ❌ More SOPs.
 ❌ More meetings.
 ❌ More tools.
 ❌ More steps.
 ❌ More approvals.

But complexity isn’t the cure.
It’s the disease.

If you want a calm, predictable, scalable agency... you fix the 20% that breaks everything else.

Here’s the 20% to fix first:
✅ Your onboarding handoff
✅ Your creative/strategy briefs
✅ Your review/approval process
✅ Your weekly communication rhythm
✅ Your delivery checkpoints
✅ Your project visibility (dashboards)

Fix these, and the rest takes care of itself.


Here’s the question I’d ask every founder:
If you could only fix ONE part of your operations this month…
which 20% would solve 80% of your problems?

Comment below — Clarity, Handoffs, or Expectations?

80/20 Operations Checklist

Everyone blames price when a deal falls through.
“It was too expensive.”
“They couldn’t afford it.”
“They weren’t ready.”

No.
They just weren’t certain.

Price isn’t the real objection... uncertainty is.
People pay premium prices every day for things they fully understand and fully believe in.

They hesitate when something feels unclear, risky, or undefined.
Deals fall apart when your offer has ambiguity in it:
👉 Ambiguity around the problem you solve
👉 Ambiguity around the process
👉 Ambiguity around the timeline
👉 Ambiguity around the expected outcomes
👉 Ambiguity around what they need to do vs. what you own
👉 Ambiguity around why you’re the one to trust

When a buyer is confused, they default to safety.
And “safety” means staying exactly where they are... even if it’s painful.

If you want to close more deals, stop trying to make your offer cheaper.
Make it clearer.

Just got done training with my sales coach and I was working my “Why now?” questions.

Example:
“So you’ve been wanting to reach $100k/mo for the past 2 years and you’re finally reaching out to do something about it… but why all of the sudden is this important now? What shifted for you?”

9/10 times your prospect will give you an apathetic answer like:
“Ya, it’s just time for a change.”

This is where most salespeople nod, move on, and wonder why the deal ghosts later.

You have to go a layer deeper and ask again:
“Ya, I get that you know it’s time to make a change… but why now?”
Then shut up.

If you sit in that silence, you’ll usually get the real answer:
“My team is burnt out and I’m scared I’m going to lose them.”
“My wife told me we can’t keep doing this for another year.”
“My competitor is eating our lunch and I feel like I’m behind.”

That’s the stuff that actually closes deals.
You’re not selling to their goal (“$100k/mo”).
You’re selling to their moment (“I can’t afford to wait another year”).

If you don’t know their “why now,” you don’t have a buyer.
You have a browser.

Start asking “why now?” twice.
The first answer is almost never the truth.

Most “hard clients” aren’t actually hard to work with.
They’re just unclear on what’s happening.

And when people don’t know what’s going on, they fill the gaps with fear, assumptions, and worst-case scenarios.

👎 That’s when the weird emails start.
👎 That’s when the tone shifts.
👎 That’s when they start “checking in” every day.

It’s not personality.
It’s lack of clarity.

Clients get difficult when:
🔺 Expectations weren’t set
🔺 Communication is inconsistent
🔺 Deliverables are vague
🔺 Timelines aren’t transparent
🔺 Nobody told them what “good” looks like
🔺 There’s no rhythm to updates

Confusion creates friction.
Clarity creates calm.

A confused client will churn faster than an underperforming one.
Clients will tolerate slow improvement…
But they will not tolerate feeling lost.

Confusion makes them feel unsafe.
And nobody pays premium prices to feel unsafe.

If you want to reduce churn and eliminate “problem clients,” fix the confusion.
Here’s what eliminates 90% of it:
✅ A tight onboarding call
✅ A clear “first 30 days” roadmap
✅ Weekly update rhythm
✅ Defined deliverables
✅ Transparent KPIs
✅ Repeating expectations until they’re nailed
✅ Documented wins every week

Clients don’t need miracles.
They need to know what’s happening.

I used to think the hardest part of posting consistently on LinkedIn was the writing. It’s not.

It’s the decision fatigue behind the writing.

Every day felt like: 
“Should I post?" 
"What should I post?" 
"Does this fit my niche?"
"Is this good enough?”

By the time I answered those questions, the window to create was gone.
What changed everything was removing the decision-making entirely.

Instead of trying to force ideas out of thin air, I built a system where my content pulls from my actual work, conversations, frameworks, and daily thoughts… and turns them into posts automatically.

That system is magicpost.in

Most founders don’t struggle with ideas… they struggle with capturing them.

Good ideas die in your head because you don’t have a system that turns them into content at the speed you think them.

The real magic isn’t that it “writes for you.”
It keeps your voice, your tone, your perspective and removes the friction.

Here’s how I use it daily:
👉 Drop quick thoughts or insights into MagicPost’s idea generator
👉 It organizes them by theme
👉 Turns them into ready-to-post drafts
👉 And lets me polish or schedule them when I actually have time

No blank page. 
No pressure. 
No overthinking.

If consistency is your biggest content problem, it’s probably not motivation… it’s your system.

If your outbound campaigns start strong and then suddenly fall off a cliff, here’s the truth nobody talks about:

I learned this the hard way.

A while back, one of my outbound campaigns started strong… then fell off a cliff.

Same copy.
Same list.
Same targeting.

But suddenly replies tanked, deliverability crashed, and nothing made sense.
I kept trying to fix the messaging, but the problem wasn’t the message at all.

My infrastructure was burning out long before my offer ever got a chance.

Every mailbox has a lifespan.

And I was treating them like unlimited resources… which meant I was burning domains, killing deliverability, and not even realizing it.
❌ It wasn’t the copy.
❌ It wasn’t the audience.
❌ It wasn’t “email saturation.”

It was mailbox fatigue, something 99% of people don’t even know is happening.

That’s why Maildoso’s Self-Healing Mailboxes feature immediately clicked for me. When you create mailboxes inside Maildoso, they automatically split into two groups:
→ Two weeks actively sending
→ Two weeks resting
→ Then they rotate

And during that rest period, Maildoso checks reputation health.
If a mailbox is burned or blacklisted, it gets automatically replaced with a clean one.
👉 No downtime
👉 No broken campaigns
👉 No manual replacements
👉 No babysitting your deliverability

It’s the first cold email infrastructure I’ve used that actually protects the system from the inside out.

And now, with Google Workspace accounts added into Maildoso, you can run high-deliverability cold email and branded communication from the same ecosystem… without sacrificing stability or inbox placement.

This combination (Self-Healing Mailboxes + Google Workspace) solves a problem most people don’t even realize they have until it’s too late.

Curious, have you ever had a campaign suddenly tank and couldn’t figure out why?

Would love to hear your experience in the comments.

Most agency owners think they need better tools, more people, or more systems.

You don’t.
You just need to pull the right levers.

Almost every operational problem: chaos, delays, misalignment, churn... comes back to just three things.

And if you fix these three, the rest of your business finally breathes again.

Here they are:
1. CLARITY
Clarity answers: What are we doing, why are we doing it, and who owns it?
Most teams aren’t slow… They’re confused.

Confusion looks like:
👉 Tasks stuck in “in progress”
👉 Team members guessing instead of executing
👉 Clients expecting things you never promised
👉 Revisions on revisions on revisions

Clarity eliminates 70% of the noise.

2. ACCOUNTABILITY
Accountability isn’t punishment. It’s ownership.
It answers: Who is responsible for the outcome... not just the task?

Without accountability:
👉 Deadlines slip
👉 Quality drops
👉 Problems get passed around like hot potatoes
👉 The founder becomes the bottleneck

With accountability, your team self-corrects.
No hand-holding. No chaos.

3. VISIBILITY
Visibility makes the invisible visible.

It answers: Where does everything stand right now?
Because you can’t fix what you can’t see.

When you lack visibility:
👉 You react instead of lead
👉 You find problems too late
👉 You operate on feelings, not facts
👉 Your team spends half the day “checking in”

Visibility turns your business into a dashboard instead of a guessing game.

Most agency problems aren’t symptoms of scale. They’re symptoms of missing one of these levers. And the bigger you get, the more expensive those symptoms become.

Here’s the real test:
If your workload doubled tomorrow… would these levers hold or snap?

If you want a starting point:
Clarity → tighten your onboarding + SOPs
Accountability → assign owners to outcomes, not tasks
Visibility → build a simple dashboard your team actually updates

Fix these three, and your agency gets quieter…
and more profitable.

Most founders think scaling means more people.
Myth.

More people amplify complexity... not revenue.

The agencies that grow the fastest…
Hire last.
Simplify first.

Every new hire adds:
👉 More communication.
👉 More management.
👉 More decisions.
👉 More drag.
And drag kills momentum.

Here’s the real move👇 

Before hiring:
✅ Simplify your delivery
✅ Reduce steps, approvals, and handoffs
✅ Automate 20–30%
✅ Document the process
✅ Make the role idiot-proof

Ask yourself:
Would I hire someone to fix the chaos…
or eliminate the chaos so the hire produces real profit?

Most agency owners don’t have a “lead problem.”
They have a follow-through problem.

Everyone wants more leads…
but then ignores their inbox, ghosts warm prospects, stops posting after 10 days, and never finishes the outbound sequence they started.

You don’t need more leads.
You need more consistency with the leads you already have.

👉 If you actually followed up like a professional
👉 If you messaged people back the same day,
👉 If you posted even when you didn’t feel like it,
👉 If you actually ran your outbound system for 90 days instead of 9 you wouldn’t be complaining about pipeline.

Lead gen isn’t failing you.
Your discipline is.

Want more revenue?
You don’t need a new system.
You need fewer excuses.

The next 18 months are going to split agency owners into two groups:
Those who grow faster than ever… and those who quietly disappear.

And the difference won’t be tactics, platforms, or ad hacks.
It’ll be the founders themselves.

Because the agency model isn’t getting harder... it’s getting more exposed.
Everything that used to hide in the background (messy delivery, weak offers, shallow positioning, founder chaos) is being pushed to the front.

Here’s what’s coming and it’s coming fast:

1. Depth is replacing volume.
Shallow content, recycled frameworks, and generic positioning won’t cut it anymore. People want leaders, not info-dumpers.

The founders who can create belief-shifting content will dominate.

2. Retention will matter more than acquisition.
Everyone’s competing for the same cold leads. But very few are competing to keep the clients they already have.

The agencies with strong onboarding + tight communication rhythms → win big.

3. Complexity will kill businesses.
The era of bloated processes, giant teams, and “we do everything” is ending. Lean, simple, specialized agencies will outperform the Frankenstein ones.

Oversimplification becomes a competitive advantage.

4. Offers will evolve or die.
The market is allergic to vague, safe offers.

You’ll need an offer that:
👉 Has a clear mechanism
👉 Solves an expensive problem
👉 Produces a fast time-to-value
👉 Has a built-in upsell path

Safe offers get ignored. Powerful offers get clients.

5. Leadership becomes the skill.
🚩 Not media buying.
🚩 Not operations.
🚩 Not copywriting.

The agencies that scale to 7 and 8 figures will be led by founders who understand:
✅ Energy management
✅ Decision-making
✅ Communication
✅ Identity
✅ Simplicity
✅ Alignment
✅ Follow-through

Most founders don’t have business problems.
They have leadership problems that look like business problems.

Here’s the big question:
Are you building an agency for the next 18 months…
or are you still building one for the last 18 months?

If you want to be on the right side of the split, focus on:
👉 Simplifying your delivery
👉 Building an undeniable offer
👉 Creating belief-shifting content
👉 Strengthening client retention systems
👉 Leading, not reacting

If everything doubled next month... clients, demand, fulfillment... would your agency expand or collapse?

Your answer tells you exactly what to fix.

Everyone in the agency space is trying to hack lead gen.

Faster. Cheaper. Easier.
Some secret angle nobody else knows about.

But here’s the truth nobody wants to hear:
✅ Ads work.
✅ Outbound works.
✅ Organic works.
✅ They all work.

People just don’t stick with them long enough to see it.

Most founders quit the strategy right before it starts compounding.
Not because it doesn’t work… but because it didn’t work fast enough for their expectations.

So what happens?
👉 They try ads for 30 days → “too expensive.”
👉 They try cold outbound for 2 weeks → “too slow.”
👉 They post for a month → “no traction.”

They burn a little money, waste a little time, and suddenly it’s the system that’s broken.
But the system isn’t broken... the patience is.

Lead gen is supposed to take time.
Because you’re not building campaigns…
you’re building trust.

If you quit early, you never reach the compounding effect.

Ask yourself honestly:

Did your lead gen system fail…
or did your patience fail first?

The market doesn’t reward effort.
It rewards people who stay in the game longer than others can tolerate.

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