Most companies use offsites to slow down. We use them to speed up. We just wrapped our San Diego offsite 🌊 Time at the beach, in the city, on the range, and up the coast. But more importantly, getting fully aligned on what’s next. New people. New systems. New direction. The next phase is already underway. We’re hiring engineers, sales operators, and a few key roles. Know someone sharp? Send them this 👇

a lot of sales pitches fall flat for one reason they keep explaining the problem the buyer already knows is there they're on the call because they already know they're losing money telling them again isn't new information the pitches that close show them something they haven't seen a fix they didn't know existed, from someone who has solved this exact thing before that's what actually makes someone move

most founders can't tell the difference between a product problem and a marketing one but there's one question you can ask your customers that answers it "how would you feel if our product no longer existed" if they wouldn't care, it's a product problem if they couldn't function without it, it's a marketing problem the companies that win build something people can't live without then get as many eyes on it as they can

the first time someone sees your product is your best chance to actually tell them what it is if you don't, they'll decide for themselves and they usually get it wrong the companies that do this best keep it simple "it's like X, but for Y" that's all it takes now the customer sees the product exactly how you wanted them to

a lot of business owners say AI doesn't work for them but it's their process that's the problem they ask it to write ads they give it a basic product description and feed it old ads that never converted in the first place then wonder why the output is bad AI works when it has real data on what's already working the tool was never the problem the process is

the best business owners aren't hiring copywriters right now they're hiring creative strategists for one reason a good creative strategist with AI beats any copywriter because the hard part isn't the writing anymore it's the decision making

the biggest lie in AI marketing right now is "set it and forget it" no AI tool runs your marketing without someone steering it what good AI does is remove the repetitive work so the person steering it can actually think instead of spending their day copying and pasting between platforms people don't go away they just get to do the part they're actually good at

AI marketing tool tier list S tier: one platform running copy, creative, ads, and reporting together A tier: 2-3 tools connected through automations B tier: 5 tools you switch between manually C tier: ChatGPT in one tab and Canva in another D tier: "we use AI" (they paste prompts into ChatGPT and call it a strategy)

if you run an agency and your team is still manually building reports every week, you're burning money not because reporting doesn't matter but because the 3 hours your account manager spends pulling screenshots and building slides could be spent actually thinking about what to do next the report itself should take zero human time the thinking about what it means should take all of it

hot take: most agencies "using AI" are just producing bad work faster speed without strategy is just more noise

what's the one thing you'd automate in your marketing tomorrow if you could?

everyone talks about AI replacing marketers nobody talks about what AI is actually terrible at it can't tell you why a campaign worked it can't read the room on brand tone it can't decide when to kill a creative that's technically performing but slowly damaging the brand AI handles volume humans handle judgment the companies getting this right use both and know which one to trust on each decision

what's the most overrated AI marketing tool right now?

the agencies dying right now aren't the ones ignoring AI they're the ones who adopted AI but didn't change a single process around it

the AI marketing space has a credibility problem every tool claims to "automate your marketing" but what they actually automate is one step out of fifteen writing the copy? sure but deciding what copy to write, who to target, which platform, what budget, which creative format, and then measuring whether any of it worked? still you "AI-powered" has become the new "cloud-based" sounds impressive and means almost nothing

describe your current ad workflow in 3 words

agencies are spending $300/month on 6 different AI tools and none of them talk to each other one tool writes the copy another makes the creative another schedules posts another runs ads another pulls reports and someone on the team still has to manually move everything between them that's not an AI workflow that's the same workflow just with more tools and less control

most "AI marketing tools" are just ChatGPT with a nicer UI and a monthly subscription the bar for calling yourself an AI company is on the floor right now