Mike Cardona

Helping busy solo entrepreneurs save 30+ hours per month | Automate the tasks you hate, so you can spend more time doing what you love | Automation Alchemist 🧪

Are you working around the clock to keep your business afloat? From marketing to writing, accounting to customer service, you're juggling it all. It's exhausting.

You're not alone. This is a common struggle for solo-entrepreneurs and digital creators. The demands of your business often sideline the need for strategic focus and direction, leading to a vicious cycle of low-value tasks.

Don't blame yourself. When you're in the thick of running a business, finding time for growth planning can feel like a luxury. But what if it didn't have to be?

Imagine having:

• Simple but powerful automations.
• Streamlined workflows and systems.
• Time dedicated to strategic growth planning.

This is the promise of Hidden Levers. As a fellow solopreneur, I've walked in your shoes. Nine years ago, I was where you are now.

Today, I'm on a mission to help creative solopreneurs like you:

• Grow a profitable business without burning out.
• Do the work you love and enjoy.
• Achieve time-freedom.

Every Tuesday, I share actionable frameworks, resources, and tips that leverage AI/Tech tools so you can reclaim your time and do the work you enjoy—all in five minutes or less.

Ready to redefine your solopreneur journey? Click here: https://bit.ly/3PhJ8Vi

___

Follow me as well for content on:

• AI
• Zapier
• Airtable
• Systems
• No-Code
• Automation
• Solopreneurship

Operations | Automation Alchemist | Writer

Empowering creative solopreneurs to save time and money by optimizing and streamlining their operations for maximum efficiency.

Acquiring Inbound Leads for B2B Founders with Personal Content Programs • Explaining Content, one Ugly Drawing at a time

Content steals focus, I know. Writing, formatting, visuals, posting cadence, and keeping up with comments. It becomes a weekly tax, then it gets dropped, then inbound stays unpredictable.I build an Authority Engine for B2B Tech Founders. It turns your existing knowledge into consistent content that makes you look like the category leader, without you writing a word.What you get:1) 100% custom AI voice cloneWe extract your voice from your real materials. Whitepapers, sales calls, internal docs, Slack messages, past posts, and anything else that reflects how you think and speak. No generic templates.2) LinkedIn Autopilot5 high converting posts per week, ghostwritten, formatted, and ready to publish. You do not write, format, post, or search for visuals. You approve drafts with a simple yes or no.3) Search Dominance pack2 SEO optimized long form articles per month, derived from your LinkedIn content, so your authority compounds beyond the feed.First week of content can go live within 48 hours of onboarding. You can see engagement on day 1. Your only job is approvals.I will write 3 posts for you for free using your data, so you can see the voice match before you pay. If the first week does not sound exactly like you, or better, I rewrite it until it does, or you do not pay.Best for founders who have real insight and a real product, but do not want content creation to compete with building, selling, and hiring.If you want to test the voice clone, message me: “3 posts”.

Kuba Czubajewski

Trying not to take it personally tho 🫠

IMO, this is the only realistic "future" of content marketers:

Every week, I see here new tools popping up that promise my clients they can let all their content team go because AI can do it all for them.

Not once have I seen it actually work, btw.

Content is a much deeper thing than writing a bunch of paragraphs that sound good or an infographic that looks nice.

For me, it's all about connecting the dots that are usually VERY far apart and turning it into a fresh, impactful message.

This is why I'm in love how Dropbox Dash is approaching AI for creatives.

Instead of proposing yet another "I'll do it for you" tool, they're solving one major pain most of us feel:

Not being able to connect the dots because the dot you're looking for is in a file you forgot the name of.

Sounds trivial, but OH MY GOD, the amount of time I used to spend on scrolling through my G-drive is embarrassing.

And this is where I think the whole AI for content conversation should land.

AI is incredible at recall.

Humans are still the best at judgment what matters, what’s true, what’s new, and what’s worth saying out loud.

You won't win because you can generate 50 posts a day.

But if you can pull the right inputs fast, then make a call on the angle, and ship a message people actually remember, you will win.

PS. this is not sponsored by anyone, I just saw their launch and loved it.

I’ll write 3 LinkedIn posts for free, in your voice. If it sounds like you (or better), we install your AI Authority Engine in 90 days.

100% inbound leads from LinkedIn. No ads. No outreach. Just content.

I tracked every lead for months:

Every single one came from LinkedIn posts.

I don't use paid traffic.
Or cold DMs.
Or endless connection requests.

Here’s how I built it:

→ Strategy first

I stopped chasing “viral.” I focused on what founders care about – real problems, clear wins, ugly truths.

→ Story + education

My posts mix lessons with personal stories (and a few embarrassing memes). B2B buyers want to see you, not just your tips.

→ Consistency + intention

I post when I have something useful to say. I track what works, double down on what lands.

Strategic, personal content can still be a decent alternative to outreach.

You can mix both (that's what I'll be doing this year), but when you're busy AF founder, you might want to focus on nailing the inbound first.

Because content helps you clarify everything about your:

• Offer
• Process
• Audience's pain points and goals
• Voice that triggers your customers to act

Most B2B founders still spend hours sending cold emails, running ads, or praying for referrals.

But when your LinkedIn posts actually speak to the pain your buyers feel (and show a bit of your own face), inbound leads show up.

You just need a system that works.

Curious about building a LinkedIn engine that attracts buyers? DM me “INBOUND.”

No alternative text description for this image

Your content has no job. It just vibes and leaves. Let’s fix that today:

Most people post, wait for magic, and get nothing but a like from their mom after three days.

Then they do it again.

The fantasy is simple: If I keep sharing valuable stuff, clients will show up in my inbox asking for a six-month retainer.

But content without a job is just noise.

It shows up, hangs around, and disappears. There’s no clear step between “I saw your post” and “I want to pay you.”

Here’s what works for B2B founders and teams who want clients, not likes:

Every piece of content needs one clear job in your funnel.

I use demand packets for this. They are mini stories that turn expertise into something a buyer can understand in 10 seconds.

A demand packet has:

- A trigger: A moment your buyer knows well. Not “digital transformation,” but “everyone on the ops team is one dashboard away from crying.”

- A job: What they are trying to do. Not “improve analytics maturity,” but “turn data from four systems into something the VP can read.”

- A constraint: The villain. Tool chaos, no in-house skills, a boss who thinks Excel is enough.

- An outcome: One sentence, one number. “Cut reporting time by 35% in two weeks.”

- Proof artifact: Two slides, one screenshot, a checklist. Something they can forward in Slack.

If you don’t have big results yet, use:

- Personal stories: “If I were you, here’s how I’d fix this in 30 days.”
- Tiny pilots: Run a test with one friendly company.
- Honest hypotheticals: “I’m looking for two companies to test this with.”

Then, attach a utility CTA. Make it easy. “Comment ‘brief’ for insights.” Give, don’t ask.

One good conversation beats 200 likes from random marketers.

Random content gets likes. Strategic content gets customers.

Let me know if you use demand packets or want to see a real example from my work.

I started with no money, no contacts, no fancy city office.

Picture this:

A small apartment in Poland.
No team.
Nothing to “show off.”
No one backing me up.

Every day – me, my laptop, and clients who didn’t know my name.

Most days felt like:

Write posts.
Wait.
Hope for an inbound lead.

(Usually nothing.)

B2B tech leaders... yep, tough crowd.

I’m creative, talkative, maybe too much for some.

Every call made me sweat.

Every pitch was incredibly awkward.

Sometimes I wondered if I was nuts for picking this path.

But I couldn’t quit.

I learned to spot what they really needed.

I tried new ideas - most failed, a few worked.

I worked with scraps.

Fixed broken things.

Built trust, one honest message at a time.

I got used to hearing “no.”

I got used to waiting.

But I kept sending, kept building, kept showing up.

Then, slowly...

A “maybe.”
A client who said, “you get what we need.”
A few more.

Then referrals.

All because I'm too stubborn to stop.

Now, I help B2B teams turn strangers into real leads.

One content system, built from scratch.

Starting with nothing makes you sharp.

You learn what matters FAST.

If you feel lost in your work, or your niche feels impossible, keep at it.

Your “weirdness” or “wrong fit” could be the thing they need most.

PS. What did you learn from your first clients when you started from zero?

Here's a 10-min flow I use with founders to create weeks of content for them:

The goal is to create one small, high-integrity narrative object that can survive multiple contexts without losing its meaning. 

The easiest way to do that is to start with a 10-minute CEO video (use Tella or Loom), because spoken answers preserve something writing tends to bleach out: conviction, nuance, and those small qualifiers that signal real experience. 

I beg you, don’t ask for “thought leadership.” 

Ask one tight prompt that forces specificity, like what buyers are getting wrong about a problem right now, what that misunderstanding costs them, and what they should do instead.

Once you have the Loom, the extraction step matters more than the editing. 

You’re looking for a structure:

Pull out:

- one contrarian claim that creates tension
- one vivid symptom that makes the claim relatable
- one constraint that makes it believable
- one before/after framing that makes the shift obvious
- one proof detail that anchors it in reality

That proof detail can be lightweight. It can be “we heard this on 12 calls this month,” or “this showed up in every deal we lost last quarter.” 

Now you take those five ingredients and you write one “source paragraph” in plain language. Don't think of any platform yet. 

Just articulate the idea clearly as if you were explaining it to a smart friend over coffee. This paragraph becomes the anchor. Every other asset is a translation of it, not a reinvention. That’s how you keep integrity when you repurpose.

From there, I like to create three outputs that each do a different cognitive job:

First, a short text post that opens with the contrarian claim and immediately explains the symptom. 

The mistake people make is opening with the claim and then drifting into abstraction. Don’t. 

Earn the reader’s trust by describing what they already see in the wild, the call snippets, the internal debates, the marketing copy that “sounds right” but doesn’t move anything.

Second, a simple carousel where each slide is a single unit of meaning. Not “tips,” but progression. The before model, the cost of that model, the constraint that keeps people stuck, the after model, and then one practical move they can try this week. 

If you can’t fit the idea on five slides without it turning into fog, the idea isn’t ready yet.

Third, a longer form piece where you unpack the constraint and the proof detail. 

This is where nuance belongs. Why the obvious fix fails. What tradeoff you’re making. What to watch out for. 

This is also where you can safely include a real example, even if it’s anonymized, because you have space to set context.

Two quality checks before you hit publish:

• If the post could apply to any company, it’s too generic. 

• If the reader can’t repeat your point in one sentence, it’s too complicated.

If you want, reply with your niche and I’ll give you 5 tight CEO prompts that reliably produce these “weeks of content” anchors.

I recently changed my banner to this one below and you might think I went insane:

This is not a typical path content people choose for their businesses.

“Free value” beyond a regurgitated ChatGPT lead magnet is a rare thing here.

My thinking is this:

I built an Authority System for copying B2B founders’ voice with AI.

It’s GOOD. Took me about a year to get here. 

And the easiest way to prove it is to show my potential clients how it works.

Yes, building a sample assistant is harder than posting fancy carousels and “vulnerable” fake-ass stories

But I’ve always been more of a show-don’t-tell kinda guy and not planning to stop now.

Curious how it works? Dm me “3 posts”

You don’t need to show up in the feed every single day to build your B2B content presence.

It took me a while to realize this.

You see loads of advice like:

“Post daily.”
“Be everywhere.”
“Never miss a day.”

But over the last few months, I learned something that changed my process.

You can grow with smart engagement.

Sometimes, I have zero energy for new posts.

Sometimes, my mind is in setup mode, refining a content system or onboarding a new AI assistant for a client.

Those days, I do one thing: I get active on other posts.

→ I drop detailed comments with tactical insight
→ I join B2B content discussions
→ I connect with founders who share their stories
→ I pay attention to what my network is sharing

And my reach keeps going up.
My network is expanding.
My brand feels strong.

Being visible isn’t only tied to publishing.

It comes from being intentional when you engage.

I block a “golden hour” every day for this:

30–60 minutes inside LinkedIn - adding context, supporting creators, offering actual value.

That is what keeps me top of mind for clients and the right audience.

You can skip a post here and there, and still build a reputation.

What matters in B2B content is consistent presence, not consistent posting.

If you want to create a pipeline instead of just filling the feed, build your system around showing up - not burning out.

I build custom AI content assistants for all my clients.

Each one is 100% personalized with:

• Case studies
• Website content
• Long-form articles
• Internal training materials (if allowed)

Each channel we create content for has 2 assistants - a writer and an editor.

For socials, we have dedicated assistants to create visuals and carousels.

For YT, we have a dedicated researcher, script writer, and retention optimization specialist.

This creates a feedback loop that helps us refine the content before a human steps in to make the final tweaks.

This setup reduced ideation + creation time from ~3 days per client to 2 hours.

Until recently, it was a huge work in progress.

But after (too) many iterations, we're ready to launch it to a wider audience.

I'm looking for 3 B2B companies to test this setup with.

If you'd like me to set all of this up for you - 100% free - just DM me "Assistant" and I'll tell you the next steps.

"comment on other creators' posts" is sh!tty advice:

I used to spend 2 hours per day here commenting on probably all of them big creators.

Most of them don't give a rat's a*s about me or my content.

And that's perfectly fine. Why would they?

Not once have I reached out to them in a DM, they have no reason to see my comment and think:

"I wonder what this guy is about?"

But the folks I exchanged DMs with are consistently showing up under my posts.

Because we established a more meaningful connection than a [put an insightful comment here so they see you're trying hard]

See what I'm getting at?

Connection > tactics.

Build the first one and you'll never need to think about the second one again.

You want an experienced marketer? I got you.

(testimonials from Cleopatra available on the website. Go and see)

A year ago I thought I had it figured out:

Build a content agency for B2B founders. Use AI to do the heavy lifting. Keep costs low, scale fast. Simple.

What actually happened: 

I spent months building something nobody wanted to pay for.

The first version of the system was basically:

1. take the founder's old posts
2. dump them into a prompt
3. generate something that kind of sounded like them

The output was fine. Technically competent. The kind of content that gets 15 likes and zero leads.

I wasn't impressed with myself tbh. Neither were my clients.

So I overcomplicated everything:

A 12-step onboarding process, 5 different content formats, a pricing page that looked like a software feature comparison matrix...

I was trying to cover every possible use case for every possible client, and the result was that nobody could figure out what I actually did.

The solution was so stupidly simple, I facepalmed when I finally got there:

I started interviewing founders instead of just ingesting their existing content.

Turns out the best content a founder can publish isn't what they've already written.

 It's what they say when someone asks them the right questions:

- the unguarded takes
- the specific stories
- the things they'd never think to write down but say out loud constantly

Once I built the system around that – extract the thinking first, then write – the output stopped sounding like AI trying to be human and started sounding like the founder on their best day.

That took about a year to nail.

The offer got simpler too:

Interview you -> Write it up -> Publish it -> You approve the drafts. 

That's the whole thing.

If you want to see what it looks like, DM me "3 posts" – I'll write them for free before you spend anything.

I had a chat with a B2B founder that told me he struggles with referrals because his clients "can't explain his value." Here's how I'd fix it with content:

When clients can't explain your value, it usually means one of three things:

1/ You solved a problem they didn't know they had.

2/ You fixed something so complex they can't see the full scope.

3/ You delivered value that's invisible until it breaks.

Your content needs to make the invisible visible.

Instead of writing about what you do, write about what breaks when you're not there.

"What happens when your data pipeline fails during your biggest sales quarter"
"The hidden cost of manual processes that only surface when you try to scale"
"Why your competitors can respond to market changes faster than you"

This type of content does two things:

1/ It helps prospects recognize problems they didn't know they had.
2/ It gives current clients language to explain why those problems matter.

When clients forward your content about "hidden operational risks," they're not just sharing an article.

They're explaining why they needed you without having to understand the technical details.

Your content should make the case for your category of work, not just your company.

The better prospects understand the problem you solve, the easier it becomes for clients to refer you.

AI for content is fast. But it's not designed to think like you. Here’s how I built an AI-Content Engine that does both:

Every high-performing B2B content program I create runs on a four-part system. Not a random pile of AI hacks. Not a “hit publish and hope” workflow.

Here’s the engine:

• Strategic Content Ideation
• Voice-Trained AI Assistants
• Human Editorial Layer
• Automated Distribution

Each part plays a role.

Strategic Content Ideation means you plan topics that actually move your pipeline. No more “guess and post.”

Voice-Trained AI Assistants write in your tone. I build custom bots for LinkedIn posts, carousels, newsletters, editing – each one trained on your best content, not generic data.

Human Editorial Layer = the “taste” filter.

AI is fast, but it’s not flawless.

Humans check for context, nuance, and those tiny details only you know.

The worst thing you can do is hit “publish” without reading the AI output.

Automated Distribution gets your work in front of the right people.

No endless copy-paste. No burnout.

The system publishes, tracks, and learns – so every post gets smarter.

This results in content that attracts real buyers, builds trust, and actually converts.

Generic AI tools can’t do this. You need a custom, hybrid engine built for your niche.

That’s how you scale creativity AND quality.

Want to know how this system could fit your business? DM me. I’ll walk you through it.

A thing we rarely discuss in marketing is how customers perceive our narrative through preloaded meanings:

We think we’re publishing a simple story about a benefit. They’re interpreting a signal about power, intent, and control. 

That gap is what Ring ran into with its Super Bowl ad about a lost dog found through a neighborhood camera network. The creative aimed for warmth and community. 

The audience, already saturated with years of privacy discourse and surveillance headlines, watched the same 30 seconds and didn’t primarily evaluate the plot. They evaluated the infrastructure implied by the plot. 

“AI + cameras” isn’t a neutral prop anymore. It’s a symbol, and symbols arrive with cultural baggage attached.

This is the real mechanism behind “losing the narrative.” It’s rarely about execution quality but about the interpretive surface area. 

When a story leaves room for people to fill in the blanks, they will. And they’ll fill them with the strongest available frame in their mind, usually the one that best matches their anxieties. 

In this case, the counter-frame was waiting in the wings, mass surveillance disguised as safety. 

Once that frame establishes itself, everything that follows stops being “new information” and becomes “supporting evidence.” 

That’s why Ring’s sudden move away from a planned partnership with Flock Safety was immediately absorbed into the same storyline. Regardless of internal motives, it read like validation, not coincidence.

The takeaway isn’t “be careful with your messaging.” That’s too shallow. 

The takeaway is that narrative is not a message you transmit. It’s a negotiation between your intent and the audience’s prior beliefs. 

And prior beliefs are not something you overcome with a nicer tone. They’re something you have to design around. If your product or campaign touches an area where trust is already fragile, you should assume your audience will run an adversarial interpretation, even if they like you, even if the ad is well made.

A better move is to treat messaging like you treat product design:

Reduce ambiguity. Anticipate misuse scenarios. Make the boundaries legible. 

Don’t just tell a heartwarming story about what your system can do at its best. Show that you’ve thought seriously about what it could do at its worst, and what you’ve done to prevent that. 

In 2026, “we’re doing this for safety” is not a persuasive claim by itself. People want to know who gets visibility, who gets veto power, and what recourse exists when the system is wrong.

Curious how you think about this. When was the last time you watched a brand’s “feel good” story and immediately felt the darker subtext the audience would attach to it?

How I helped a B2B consultancy business (very niche) start showing up in AI search:

We focused on turning their LinkedIn content into long-form SEO articles built around real opinions, specific frameworks, and language that maps to actual buyer problems.

AI tools cite sources that are clear and substantive. Since their LinkedIn content had this already, expanding it into articles became much easier.

The results measured over the last 90 days:

Overall: 1,619 AI bot hits → 4,163. That's 3x.
Homepage: 514 → 946. Almost 2x.

Every hit is ChatGPT or Perplexity pulling from their site while a buyer is actively researching. That's pipeline you'd never see in a cold outreach report.

If you want to see what this looks like for your niche, reply ENGINE and tell me what you sell.

Quick tip if you hate when AI says "It's not X, it's Y..."

This rhetorical device is called "contrastive reframing using antithesis structure."

Hard-prompt it into your content assistant to avoid it (example below).

Also, from my tests, Claude 4.6 is much better at this that GPT models.

PS. Let me know any other annoying things AI uses - I'll show you how to remove them from the outputs.

200,000 people just watched a creator get stood up by a brand's AI chatbot:

Reformation used AI to manage its influencer outreach. It confirmed a collaboration, set up a store visit, and ran weeks of back-and-forth with a creator.

She drove an hour to the store, shot video in the dressing room... The manager had no idea who she was.

TikTok called it "an AI bot that went rogue." Reformation sent her a sweater as an apology.

Here's my read on what actually happened: 

AI made commitments nobody at the brand had authorized. And no human was watching the inbox it was running.

The bot did exactly what it was built to do - respond, confirm, follow up. 

But nobody told it where to stop. That's a systems failure.

AI doesn't know when it's overstepping. The tool runs until you build a stop - and plenty of AI marketing setups skip that step entirely.

There are places where automation works well: segmentation, sequences, content drafts.

And then there are contexts that require a human in the seat: real commitments, real relationships, anything a creator or partner will hold you to.

I put a lot of emphasis on that while working with my clients on their content assistants.

First draft can (and should) come from the AI. But the human editor before anything goes live is a must. 

Doesn't matter how good your AI tool is. If there's no one monitoring what it's agreeing to, you're one post away from a mess.

The CEO of impact put it well: "Human credibility becomes more valuable, not less."

That's the thing marketing teams running AI tools aren't accounting for right now, imo.

taplio

The Battle

Mike Cardona

Kuba Czubajewski

Followers

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taplio

The Battle

Mike Cardona

Kuba Czubajewski

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Kuba Czubajewski's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreKuba Czubajewski's LinkedIn Performance